The fighting had by this time become tremendous, and brave men and officers were stricken by hundreds. Posey and Wilcox dislodged the forces about the Brick House.
General Sickles was desperately wounded!
General Willard was dead!
General Semmes, of McLaws’s division, was mortally wounded!
Our left relieved, the brigades of Anderson’s division moved on with Barksdale’s, passed the swale, and moved up the slope. Caldwell’s division, and presently those of Ayres and Barnes of the Fifth Corps, met and held our strongest battle. While thus engaged, General Sykes succeeded in putting Vincent’s and Weed’s brigades and Hazlett’s battery on the summit of Little Round Top, but presently we overreached Caldwell’s division, broke it off, and pushed it from the field. Of his brigade commanders, Zook was killed, and Brooke and Cross were wounded, the latter mortally. General Hancock reported sixty per cent. of his men lost. On our side, Barksdale was down dying, and G. T. Anderson wounded.
We had carried Devil’s Den, were at the Round Tops and the Wheat-Field, but Ayres’s division of regulars and Barnes’s division were holding us in equal battle. The struggle throughout the field seemed at its tension. The brigades of R. H. Anderson’s division could hold off other troops of Hancock’s, but were not strong enough to step to the enemy’s lines. When Caldwell’s division was pushed away, Ayres’s flank and the gorge at Little Round Top were only covered by a sharp line of picket men behind the boulders. If we could drive in the sharp-shooters and strike Ayres’s flank to advantage, we could dislodge his and Barnes’s divisions, occupy the gorge behind Sykes’s brigades on Round Top, force them to retreat, and lift our desperate fighters to the summit. I had one brigade—Wofford’s—that had not been engaged in the hottest battle. To urge the troops to their reserve power in the precious moments, I rode with Wofford. The rugged field, the rough plunge of artillery fire, and the piercing musket-shots delayed somewhat the march, but Alexander dashed up with his batteries and gave new spirit to the worn infantry ranks. By a fortunate strike upon Ayres’s flank we broke his line and pushed him and Barnes so closely that they were obliged to use most strenuous efforts to get away without losing in prisoners as well as their killed and wounded. We gained the Wheat-Field, and were so close upon the gorge that our artillery could no longer venture their fire into it. We were on Little Round Top grappling for the crowning point. The brigade commanders there, Vincent and Weed, were killed, also the battery commander, Hazlett, and others, but their troops were holding to their work as firmly as the mighty boulders that helped them. General Meade thought that the Confederate army was working on my part of the field. He led some regiments of the Twelfth Corps and posted them against us, called a division of Newton’s corps (First) from beyond Hancock’s, and sent Crawford’s division, the last of the Fifth Corps, splitting through the gorge, forming solid lines, in places behind stone fences, and making steady battle, as veterans fresh in action know so well how to make. While Meade’s lines were growing my men were dropping; we had no others to call to their aid, and the weight against us was too heavy to carry. The extreme left of our lines was only about a mile from us across the enemy’s concentric position, which brought us within hearing of that battle, if engaged, and near enough to feel its swell, but nothing was heard or felt but the clear ring of the enemy’s fresh metal as he came against us. No other part of our army had engaged! My seventeen thousand against the Army of the Potomac! The sun was down, and with it went down the severe battle. I ordered recall of the troops to the line of Plum Run and Devil’s Den, leaving picket lines near the foot of the Round Tops. My loss was about six thousand, Meade’s between twelve and fourteen thousand; but his loss in general and field officers was frightful. When General Humphreys, who succeeded to Barksdale’s brigade, was called back to the new line, he thought there was some mistake in the orders, and only withdrew as far as a captured battery, and when the order was repeated, retired under protest.
General Stuart came down from Carlisle with his column of cavalry late in the afternoon of the 2d. As he approached he met a cavalry force of the enemy moving towards the Confederate left rear, and was successful in arresting it. He was posted with Jenkins’s three thousand cavalry[127] on the Confederate left.
Notwithstanding the supreme order of the day for general battle, and the reinforcement of the cavalry on our left, the Second and Third Corps remained idle during all of the severe battle of the Confederate right, except the artillery, and the part of that on the extreme left was only in practice long enough to feel the superior metal of the enemy, when it retired, leaving a battery of four guns in position. General Early failed to even form his division in battle order, leaving a brigade in position remote from the line, and sending, later, another to be near Stuart’s cavalry. The latter returned, however, before night.
At eight o’clock in the evening the division on our extreme left, E. Johnson’s, advanced. The brigades were J. M. Jones’s, Nicholls’s, Steuart’s, and Walker’s. Walker’s was detached, as they moved, to look for a detachment of the enemy reported threatening the far away left. When the three brigades crossed Rock Creek it was night. The enemy’s line to be assaulted was occupied by Greene’s brigade of the Twelfth Corps. It was reinforced by three regiments of Wadsworth’s division and three from the Eleventh Corps. After brave attack and defence, part of the line was carried, when the fight, after a severe fusillade between the infantry lines, quieted, and Walker’s brigade returned to the division. Part of the enemy’s trenches, east of the point attacked (across a swale), vacated when the corps moved over to the left, General Johnson failed to occupy.
Before this, General Rodes discovered that the enemy, in front of his division, was drawing off his artillery and infantry to my battle of the right, and suggested to General Early that the moment had come for the divisions to attack, and drew his forces from entanglements about the streets to be ready. After E. Johnson’s fight on our extreme left, General Early ordered two brigades under General Harry T. Hays to attack. Hays had with his Louisiana brigade Hoke’s North Carolina brigade under Colonel Avery. He made as gallant a fight as was ever made. Mounting to the top of the hill, he captured a battery, and pushed on in brave order, taking some prisoners and colors, until he discovered that his two brigades were advancing in a night affair against a grand army, when he found that he was fortunate in having night to cover his weakness, and withdrew. The gallant Colonel Avery, mortally wounded and dying, wrote on a slip of paper, “Tell father that I died with my face to the enemy.” When Rodes was prepared, Hays had retired, and the former did not see that it was part of the order for general engagement to put his division in night attack that could not be supported.