Day One Of The Battle of Gettysburg July 1,1863
The two opposed military commanders, Maj.Gen.George G. Meade for the North and General Robert E. Lee for the South, whose army’s clashed at the Battle of Gettysburg, both held strategic objectives that would indirectly hinder their troops operations on the first of three days of fighting at the small but strategic road hub town in south central Pennsylvania, what some historians see as the decisive battle of the American Civil War.
Meade had wished to fight a defensive battle in nearby northern Maryland behind Pipe Creek on the heights of Parr Ridge that might shatter once and for all Lee’s aura of invincibility. Lee on the other hand hoped to catch the Union Army in isolated parts rather than fight pitched battle with the entire enemy force. But as things eventuated this was not to be the case. The point of this second invasion of the North in Lee’s mind was to gain victories on Northern soil that would hopefully frustrate the will of the people in the North to the point of not wanting to keep the war going and even possibly entice — a long shot at this stage of the war — a European power to directly support the Southern cause.
Order of Battle On Day One
The Union Army
First Army Corps
Three Divisions and an Artillery Brigade
Eleventh Army Corps
Three Divisions and an Artillery Brigade
First Calvary Division
First Brigade
Second Brigade
Horse Artillery
Confederate Army
Lieut. Gen. Richard Ewell’s Second Army Corps
Early’s Division
Rhodes’ Division
Artillery
Lieut. GEN. Ambrose. P. Hill’s Third Army Corps
Heth’s Division
Pender’s Division
Artillery Reserve
Cavalry Detachments
Confederate Advantages On Day One
As fighting commence on July 1,1863, Lee’s forces at Gettysburg, both regarding positions of deployment and total strength, were superior to that of his Union foes. Maj. Gen. Henry Heath’s Division of A. P. Hill’s Third Corps to the west of Gettysburg were deployed on Herr Ridge, along with a strong contingent of artillery that dominated Union forces to the east To the Northwest upon Oak Hill, Maj. Gen. R. E. Rodes Division of Ewell’s Second Corps, would also eventually hold dominating artillery posts that looked down upon the Union First and Eleventh Corps of Wing Commander Maj. Gen.John F. Reynolds and Buford’s supporting cavalry that was strung out along McPherson ridge and various other point around the town.
Sequence of Union Generals Commanding at Gettysburg Day One
John Buford Calvary
John F. Reynolds army wing commander, Killed around 1030
Abner Doubleday First Corps
O. O. Howard Eleventh Corp
Winfield S. Hancock Second Corp sent by Army of the Potomac commander Meade
Henry W. Slocum Twelfth Corps
George G. Meade Army commander came to the Union fallback position on Cemetery Hill near midnight.
Timeline of Battle
It should first be noted that Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was divided into only three army corps, on the otherhand the Union Army was devided into seven smaller corps. so that while just parts of two Confederate army corps and some fragments of cavalry fought at Gettysburg on day one, it was against two smaller Union Army Corps and a division of calvary. Thus the Yankees were significantly outnumbered by the time that Hill’s Corps were joined by two thirds of Ewell’s Corps (Stonewall Jackson’s old fighters)
The day before (June 30) Union Brig. Gen. John Buford had set up a defensive deployment of his cavalry division at Gettysburg, and would hold on until reinforced by the Union First Corp. This was mainly to deprive Lee use of the town’s strategic road network that radiated outward in every meaningful direction. It was around 0800 when the Rebels of Maj. Gen. Henry Heath’s Division of Hill’s Corps first made hostile contact with the federal horse soldiers..
Around 0930 the Union First Corps, some 12,000 strong, along with left Wing Wing Commander Reynolds, began moving into position on McPherson Ridge, facing west astride the Chambersburg Pike.. Reynolds knew that the other corps of his wing, the Eleventh Corps, with just slightly less troops, would soon be on the scene — the Army’s other five corps being strung out to the southeast, all within about a day’s march.
It was Around 1015–1045 that Brig. Gen. Archer’s Brigade from Heath’s Division of Hill’s Corps attacked from Herr Ridge, it being about three quarters of a mile to the west of the Yankees line of deployment on McPherson ridge, hitting the Iron Brigade sector of the Union line. A small stream ran at the base of the Union line causing Archer’s troops to suffer a terrible beating as they struggled through the heavy entangling foliage along the waterway. It was at this place of fighting, between1030 and 1115, that General Reynolds was instantly killed by a bullet to the head. Upon learning of Reynolds death First Corps commander, Maj.Gen. Abner Doubleday (yes, he of baseball fame), assumed overall command of Union forces on the field and First Division Commander, Brig. Gen. James S. Wadsworth, moved up to corps command.
Maj. Gen. William D. Pender’s Division also of Hill’s Corps had reached Herr Ridge at 1100, just as the tide of conflict was beginning to turn against Archer’s troops, but inexplicably Pender did not act to support his fellow Third Corps fighters in their time of need.
Meanwhile, around this time Brig. Gen.Lysander Cutler’s Yankee brigade, turning north across the Chambersburg Pike, just south of the McPherson farm, slammed into Brig. Gen. Joseph R. Davis’ rebel brigade’s flank as it moved southeast above and parallel to the pike. Cutler’s men drove the rebels into a railroad cut that became a slaughter-pen for the hapless Mississippians.
Following the victories of Wadsworth’s First Division brigades over Archer and Davis’ troops, there was a noontime lull — regarding close-in infantry fighting only — as the balance of the Union First Corps and Eleventh Corps troops came to the scene of action. Indeed, all was not quiet as 33 booming rebel guns (cannon) on the advantageous position of Herr Ridge, and some guns of Rodes Division began arriving upon excellent placements on Oak Hill, all of which gave noticeable discomfort to Union forces a half mile to the east and south. By this time, Confederate artillery everywhere was particularly damaging to small scatterings of poorly situated Union artillery.
It was 1130 and just after his Eleventh Corps had mostly arrived at the scene of fighting that Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard learned of Reynolds’ death, meaning that he was now senior on the field of action and thus suddenly in command of all Union forces on hand. Howard had already surveyed the local topography and enemy deployments from both Cemetery Hill and high up in a Gettysburg town structure. With the arrival of the Eleventh Corps, Union forces held a momentary advantage in troop strength — 21,000 to the rebels 15,000.
Perhaps Howard’s initial handicap in bringing his corps to Gettysburg was that the troops were looked down upon by the rest of the Army of the Potomac. To begin with, the Eleventh Corps was something of a German immigrant lot of which many hardly spoke English. But worst of all it had performed badly in the pervious grand battle of Chancellorsville in May. It was guarding the Union extreme left flank when overrun by Stonewall Jackson’s audacious flanking move against General Hookers deployment in the Wilderness, causing the stunned Union commander to order his army back across the Rappahannock River in humiliating defeat.
In any event, at Gettysburg Howard decided to place his arriving troops to the north of town as it was momentarily expected that Ewell’s Rebel Corps would soon be coming down from the Harrisburg area. A serious tactical error occurred when Brig. Gen. Barlow pushed his understrength brigade too far forward to what looked to him like an advantageous little hill *which after the battle became known as Barlow’s knoll.) This move made connection with First Corps troops facing west a tenuous situation, and caused the overall Union deployment to be overextended and vulnerable on its right flank.
Therefore when Rode’s Division rolled down Oak from the northwest the hinge of the Union line between First and Eleventh Corps would become stressed. Yet, even more unnerving was that as Maj. Gen. Jubal A. Early’s Division of Ewell’s Corps — perhaps the best lead unit in all the Confederate armies — came slicing in from the northeast across Rock Creek and the Harrisburg road bridge, the rebel hordes were caused to hit Barlow’s men in front, flank and rear. Moreover, being so far forward reinforcements came to Barlow slowly in piecemeal fashion, making it easy for Early’s rebels to gobble up each arriving enemy element one after the other.
What was accidentally accomplished by Early’s troops tactically, picking off the enemy in parts, at this instance was what General Lee had hoped to accomplish on a grand strategic level. Alas for Lee, after all the fighting was over and done at Gettysburg, this was about as good as such a maneuver was ever going to get for the rebel commander during his Pennsylvania venture.
By1230 Rodes divisional brigades were beginning to form up on the southeast slope of Oak Hill. When they started pushing down, with Col. E. A. O’Neal’s bridge in the lead, O’Neal was first turned back by the men of Brig. Gen. Henry Baxter’s Union brigade. At about 1415, to the left of where Col. E. A.O’Neal troops had retreated, Brig. Gen. Alfred Iverson’s brigade on the southeast side of the Mummasburg road were moving through the wide open Forney field and did not see Baxter’s men hidden behind a stone wall. “The veteran troops of Baxter’s brigade held their fire and quietly awaited their command to open.” Soon the hidden Yankee’s jumped up and devastated the Rebels. “The surprised Confederate line suffered such heavy loses that (the) dead lay in a distinctly marked line of battle.” Fighting continued to rage on the lower slope of Oak Hill between Rebel and Yankee forces for the balance of the afternoon.
When, as previously noted, the the hard luck Union Eleventh Corps was struck by Early’s Division, it commenced a series of disjointed retrograde movements, first to area of the Alms house and then the Brick Yard, both on the north edge of town, and finally dissolving into what was becoming a mess of beat-up humanity in the streets of Gettysburg — the town becoming crowed with other fleeing Yankees and chasing Rebels,
Most of the day the the First Corps had been holding off, from its line of battle along McPherson Ridge between the Fairfield Road and the Cashtown Pike, the Division of Heath. By 1530 it was facing the fresh division of Pender from the west, joined by Rodes Division coming from Oak Hill. The first Corps brigades thereupon soon fell back to the next ridge just west of town, Seminary Ridge. This slight rise, about 40 feet above the level of the town, was named for the Lutheran seminary that was peached upon it.
With most of its artillery now concentrated along this shortened fallback position, the First Corps brigades were briefly able to inflict heavy losses on the hard driving enemy. By around 1630, however, the Union situation was beginning to fall apart along all points of its line due to superior numbers of enemy men and guns.
Thus low on ammunition and with the Eleventh Corps collapsing on its right, First Corps troops soon joined in with what amounted to a semi rout as Union forces in mass began stumbling as best they could through the town streets — toward what looked to be a rallying position on a broad Hill to the south.
Once General Howard had taken command of the situation, he quickly inspected the Union battle lines and then moved to make Cemetery Hill his command post. At that earlier period he was not thinking of Cemetery Hill in terms of a rallying point since he momentary expected reinforcements in the form of the Twelfth and Third Corps, with others corps to follow.
Meanwhile, army commander, Meade, ten miles to the south, sent Maj. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock commander of the Second Army Corps, his most trusted general, to Gettysburg to take temporary charge and see if Gettysburg would be a good place to commit to battle rather than hold to his Pipe Creek Plan. It is unclear with exactly what demeanor Howard, who out raked Hancock, accepted the idea that the latter was to take charge.
In any event the two officers worked well together reorganizing the mishmash of Union troops streaming up from town. Still, most agreed that it was the magnetic personality of the battle-tested and much admired Hancock that quickly brought order to a dangerous situation.
We now come to the most hypothetical question of the war: would the always aggressive Stonewall Jackson have overrun Cemetery Hill on the early evening of the first day of fighting at Gettysburg? Many of the generals and men in Southern ranks thought as much, but that would have been asking a lot even for Jackson.
It was mainly the officers and men of Early’s division that were most insistent on pushing on to take the hills south of town, Cemetery Hill and the adjacent slightly higher but heavily wooded Culp’s Hill. Early’s brigades had experience the easiest, shortest and most successful fighting to date by fairly easily smashing up the enemy’s Eleventh Corps, as was explained. Moreover, a scouting party had been sent to Culp’s to check for enemy personnel. It was determined to be unoccupied.
But as mentioned, it had never been General Lee’s intention to take on the entire Union Army at once, and at that critical moment the exact whereabouts of the various parts of the Army of the Potomac were unknown to Lee because his “eyes” (JEB Stuart’s Troopers) had gone missing for days. He was in effect fighting blind. But he did sense an opportunity if his lieutenants found it “practicable.” General A. P. Hill not in good heath, as neither was Lee himself at the time, thought his two divisions were too beat up and fatigued at the moment — it had been an extremely hot and humid day — for more fighting. This was pretty much the sentiment of General Rodes as to his division’s condition.
Moreover, there were constance rumors of enemy troops spotted coming from the east that unnerved Ewell (which turned out to be untrue.) But, still, Ewell’s other division, that of Maj. Gen. Edward Johnson, had been stacked up west of Gettysburg on the Cashtown Pike behind other confederate units most of the day and had yet to arrive for service.
The reality was that those rebel offices that had scouted Culp’s Hill and found it empty of Union forces had either left just prior to enemy troops arriving on the hill or simply missed seeing them because of thick boulders and the fading light in a dark woods. But even if Ewell had managed to organize Early’s Division, some of which remained jumbled up in the streets of Gettysburg, along with other odds and ends for an attack on Cemetery and Culp’s Hills; and even had the rebels then managed to overrun the two modest heights, they would likely have been in poor condition when they ran headlong into 10,000 fresh troops of the arriving Twelfth Corps, with the Third Corps not far behind.
Thus instead of the first day’s battle of Gettysburg ending in a grand Confederate victory, it most likely would have ended badly, turning the first days impressive Confederate victory into what might have been considered only an even affair, or possibly far worse.
For those who believed, and still believe, that had Jackson been alive and on the field that day, he would have rushed ahead to capture Cemetery and Culp’s Hills, they really do not understand the man’s tactical abilities. True, old Stonewall was a bold leader, but he never rushed into action without a through study of the terrain — and he was not a quick study — which would not have been possible with the onset of evening.
And so as the three day battle eventuated, General Meade came to Gettysburg, strengthen he famous fishhook deployment that held the advantages of modest elevation and interior lines of communication, while conversely a desperate and ailing General Lee felt compelled to fight the very sort battle he had hoped to avoid.
This huge and bloody three days of fighting as it eventually unfolded at Gettysburg was not as some are made to believe — the beginning of the end of the Confederacy’s military possibilities, but surely it was the continuation of an ever fading opportunity for a victorious war of separation from the American Union, a hope for separation that in some depressed minds continues to this day.
