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SECOND DAY’S BATTLE, GETTYSBURG

Thus the general engagement of the day was dwarfed into the battle of the right at three o’clock, that on the left at eight by a single division, and that nearer the centre at nine o’clock by two brigades.

There was a man on the left of the line who did not care to make the battle win. He knew where it was, had viewed it from its earliest formation, had orders for his part in it, but so withheld part of his command from it as to make co-operative concert of action impracticable. He had a pruriency for the honors of the field of Mars, was eloquent, before the fires of the bivouac and his chief, of the glory of war’s gory shield; but when its envied laurels were dipping to the grasp, when the heavy field called for bloody work, he found the placid horizon, far and away beyond the cavalry, more lovely and inviting. He wanted command of the Second Corps, and, succeeding to it, held the honored position until General Lee found, at last, that he must dismiss him from field service.

General Lee ordered Johnson’s division of his left, occupying part of the enemy’s trenches about Culp’s Hill, to be reinforced during the night of the 2d by two brigades of Rodes’s division and one of Early’s division. Why the other brigades of those divisions were not sent does not appear, but it does appear that there was a place for them on Johnson’s left, in the trenches that were vacated by the Federal Twelfth Corps when called over to reinforce the battle of Meade’s left. Culp’s Hill bore the same relations to the enemy’s right as Little Round Top did to his left. General Fitzhugh Lee quotes evidence from General Meade that had Culp’s Hill been occupied, in force, by Confederates, it would have compelled the withdrawal of the Federal troops.[128]

General Meade, after the battle of his left, ordered the divisions of his Twelfth Corps back to their trenches, to recover the parts occupied by the Confederate left. It was night when the First Division approached. General Ruger, commanding, thought to feel his way through the dark by a line of skirmishers. He found the east end of his trenches, across the swale, unoccupied, and took possession. Pressing his adventure, he found the main line of his works occupied by the Confederates in force, and disposed his command to wait for daylight. The Second Division came during the night, when General Williams, commanding the corps, posted it on the left of the First, and the division commanders ordered batteries in proper positions.

During the night, General Meade held a council, which decided to fight it out. So it began to look as if the vicissitudes of the day had so worked as to call General Meade from defensive to aggressive battle for Culp’s Hill. But the Confederates failed to see the opportunity and force the issue as it was presented.

In General Meade’s evidence before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, he puts his losses of the first and second days at twenty thousand, and assigns two-thirds of these to the battle of the 2d. As the fighting against the three brigades of our left after night, and two brigades, later in the night, from our centre, could not have been very severe, I claim that his loss in the battle of his left was from twelve to fourteen thousand.

As events of the battle of the 2d passed, it seems fair to claim that with Pickett’s brigades present at the moment of Wofford’s advance for the gorge at Little Round Top, we could have had it before Crawford was there.