GETTYSBURG IN PERSPECTIVE
By Captain A. N. Husted

The battle of Antietam in September following should, I think, he called a "draw;" Lee was halted and compelled to retreat, but we hardly dare call the result a Union victory. The rebels were attacking and could not carry our lines-honors were fairly even. In mid-December the armies again faced each other, now on opposite sides of the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg. Every advantage rested with the southern army strongly entrenched on Marye's Heights a mile back from the swift flowing river. Great, indeed, must have been the political pressure to induce General Burnside to take the desperate chance of attacking when success was scarcely a possibility. A novice in war would have foreseen the inevitable result. Prodigies of valor were performed by our brave troops, but our army was defeated with loss of more than 10,000 in killed, wounded and missing, while the enemy's loss was comparatively small.

This was my first battle. Our Third Brigade, First Division, Fifth Corps, was the last line of battle to be ordered forward to the slaughter. Fortunately the merciful night enshrouded us before we had time to rally for the final dash; we were spared the frightful losses and terrible experiences of the gallant battalions whose thrice-decimated ranks had met inevitable defeat. It seems to me to-night, as it seemed to all of the participants then, that this fiasco, this complete and humiliating failure should have convinced both the soldier and the civilian, that only defeat and discouragement could result from another forward movement in winter; but, not so. The "Onward to Richmond" cry and the "Peace at any price" cry, and the howls of the "Copperheads" of the North were so loud and persistent that another attack on the rebel stronghold was planned for January 20, 1863. The surface of mother earth was well frozen; the roads were hard and good, and the march began. Fortunately, again, the Great Commander of all the earthly armies, countermanded the order before we had marched many miles; that very afternoon the south wind blew softly and the softening moisture descended. Next morning the "chariot wheels" of the artillery "drove heavily" as they sank to the hub through the thin crust of frozen ground. The Army of the Potomac was literally "stuck in the mud." After a few days, well spent in building corduroy roads we laboriously but gladly made our way back to the shelter of our log-and-canvas domiciles. Thus passed into history the famous "Mud March" of the Army of the Potomac-there had been no "firing line" and no casualties.

After three months of reorganizing, reinforcement and drilling, the great army, now in full strength and full too of courage and enthusiasm, again took up the "Onward to Richmond" march. Under the gallant Hooker whose victories in the West had won him prestige and fame in the East, success was anticipated. The initial movement of this, the Chancellorsville campaign, up the Rappahannock and across both the Rappanhannock and the Rapidan, by which the confederate intrenchments were rendered worthless, was brilliantly conceived and admirably executed. The fatal mistake was the halt at Chancellorsville; had the march continued an hour longer, the army would have passed out of the "Wilderness" where its superiority of numbers would have given it a great advantage; but, the halt at Chancellorsville, the wounding of the commanding general and other happenings which I need not narrate doomed us to failure. In less than one short week, the Army of the Potomac, mourning the loss of about 17,000 men, killed, wounded and missing, again sought safety behind the sheltering river. I should not omit to state, comrades, that here, as at Fredericksburg, the rear of the retreating army was protected by the valiant and reliable Forty-fourth New York. This second defeat, in a few months was very discouraging to the patriot army, and also very inspiriting to the rebel host.

During the months of May and June the two armies moved leisurely northward, we by way of Manassas and Fairfax Court House; the Confederates via the rich Shenandoah valley, protected by the mountain wall which separated the two armies. By June 26 both armies were well across the Potomac, and both were in good fighting spirit. Lee's army flushed with its successive victories, boastfully regarded itself invincible; Hooker's men, maddened by this invasion of a free state were eager to meet and vanquish the rebel foe. At Gettysburg they have the opportunity. Gettysburg! "High-water mark of the Rebellion." An army of nearly 100,000 veteran rebel soldiers, confident of victory, a hundred miles directly north of the national capitol; the slave holders and slave drivers of the South threatening to occupy our northern cities; even to call the roll of their human chattels "at the foot of Bunker Hill monument."

Let us now imagine ourselves standing July 2, 1863, at high noon on Little Round Top, looking north. Three miles away lie Gettysburg and Cemetery Hill-the latter now occupied by our shattered forces, so nearly defeated the previous afternoon. A mile or more, to the west, running nearly parallel to Cemetery Ridge is Seminary Ridge, held now by the marshalled forces of the rebel army. Round Top is, as yet unoccupied. It is the key to the field of battle-an ideal field; such a field and such a chance for open, field fighting on equal terms as the Army of the Potomac had rarely, if ever, before enjoyed. All the forenoon our regiments, brigades and field batteries had been coming up. The Fifth Corps, after marching a great part of the preceding twenty-four hours, arrived about 8 A. M.

Four o'clock in the afternoon had come and still there is no sound of battle. But listen! The Fifth Corps bugles are sounding. Our "signal" men have just reported that two columns of Confederate soldiers with banners waving are rapidly marching to seize the coveted position. In a few minutes ten thousand "Boys in Blue," at "double quick" are hastening to repel the attack. A wide gap intervenes between the left of our troops on Cemetery Ridge and Round Top, the objective of both forces; when it is filled, only the Third Brigade of the first division- four small regiments numbering scarcely 1,200 rifles-remain. Only 1,200! but they are all men-volunteers, every one, not a "bounty man" or a conscript among them. They were veterans too; they had fought under McClellan on the Peninsula and at Antietam, under Burnside at Fredericksburg, and under Hooker at Chancellorsville; right well they knew that a great crisis, not only in the history of our nation, but also in the history of the world, was at hand. There was the Twentieth Maine, hardy woodsmen from "way down east;" the Sixteenth Michigan, their worthy companions; the Eighty-third Pennsylvania, whose roster of "Fell in Battle" (282 names) was exceeded by but one of all the hundreds of regiments that followed the Stars and Stripes; there, too, was the Forty-fourth New York, picked men from the Empire State- a regiment classed with the "300 fighting regiments of the war." These are the men whose task it is to seize and hold that hill, and they are not too late; they gain the summit ten minutes in advance of the rebel line.

A letter which I wrote a few days after the battle says Company E, "the Normal School Company," took ninety prisoners, which was nearly three times the number of muskets it carried. You naturally inquire as to how it came to pass that so many brave Texans could be "gobbled up" by so small a force of Yanks. This was the way it happened. Our men were somewhat protected by large rocks and boulders, and, not far in front of the Union line were other rocks and boulders, which afforded considerable protection for the advancing foe, but from which it was very dangerous to retire when the main line retreated.

Grasping the situation, some half-dozen men, led by First Sergeant Willett, sprang forward and received the surrender of the ninety Texans, who found themselves caught as in a trap. I know that the prisoners numbered at least ninety, for I counted them myself. One of them did me a great favor, for which, I fear, I did not thank him, but for which I have always been profoundly grateful. He stood directly in front of me begging me not to shoot him, when a bullet, from the musket of a brother Texan, entered his back. Probably he saved my life, or, at least, protected me from a severe wound. I commanded the little squad which conducted the prisoners to the rear. While I was gone, another line of battle was seen to be approaching and my company changed its position a little. When I returned I went directly to our first position, judging from appearances that the boys were lying close, when to my astonishment I saw that these men were all either dead or severely wounded. The new rebel line did riot closely approach, fired but little, and soon withdrew; then we went forward to view the work we had done. Our first volley, fired at close range, as they came into view at the brow of a sharp declivity, was very destructive-the dead lay all about, some in groups of half a dozen or more.

The failure of Pickett's desperate charge on our centre, the following day, is a matter of history. Lee's retreat was begun on July 4; by the morning of July 5 he was far away through a mountain gap.

On July 5 I was over a considerable portion of the field, which presented a most horrible sight-literally square miles of the dead lying flat on their backs, as they had lain for two or three days, under a July sun.

Both armies fought at Gettysburg as probably they had never fought before. The Confederates, flushed with the series of victories to their credit, and further encouraged by the draft riots in our northern cities, were confident of success. The Unionists had a deep feeling that they were there to do and die, if need be, in defence of their homes and the free States now invaded by the boastful southron.

General Meade has been severely criticized by the generals of both armies for not ordering a counter-charge when Pickett was so disastrously defeated. Had Grant or Sherman been commanding that counter-charge would probably have been made, with the possible result of routing the rebel forces. I am not, however, altogether in sympathy with these criticisms. It is easy to prophesy after the event. General Meade doubtless knew better than any one else bow narrowly his army escaped defeat on the nights of both July 1 and 2.

It is well known, of course, that in the first day's battle, our forces, outnumbered two or three to one, were badly defeated, though not without inflicting severe losses on the enemy, and were forced to take refuge-if refuge it may be called- on Cemetery Hill. That night, or at early dawn of the next day, before the arrival of either the Fifth or Sixth Corps, was Lee's opportunity to capture the hill, capture or scatter the troops holding it, and thus open the way for using up the Union army by piecemeal. Was not Lee's failure to avail himself of this opportunity at least as great a mistake on his part as Meade's in not ordering the countercharge?

It was the Duke of Wellington who said, "No one can foretell how a battle will result; all we can do is to make every possible preparation, then go in and do our best." At Chancellorsville, the vicissitudes of battle-the happenings which cannot be guarded against-all favored the enemy; all save one, and that one was the death of "Stonewall" Jackson, Lee's ablest lieutenant. Had Jackson at Gettysburg commanded a corps-one third of the rebel army-the Gettysburg story might, and, I believe, not unlikely would, have been a story on which the Grand Army men of to-day would not delight to linger.

At Gettysburg the vicissitudes of battle were quite in our favor. By accident, rather than by choice, our forces had the better position, an advantage which they never before enjoyed. At Gettysburg, almost accidentally, our forces gained and held to the end, the commanding position on Round Top; this fact operated nearly as much in our favor as Jackson's staggering blow at Howard's Corps, contributed to rebel success at Chancellorsville. At Gettysburg Lee had no Jackson to duplicate the blow which gave him the victory in the former battle.

As a commanding general Lee was, doubtless, Meade's superior, but in my judgment he made more strategic mistakes in those three days than Meade did; but, admitting, as perhaps we should, in the words of Colonel Alexander, Longstreet's chief of artillery, that "the enemy here lost the greatest opportunity they ever had for routing Lee's army by a prompt offensive," I am not sure but that in the light of subsequent history, Meade did his country a greater service by "missing the opportunity" than he could have done by seizing it, and especially so, if, by seizing it, the war had soon been ended. To have ended the war with the South in the condition of a half-whipped boy unsubdued and defiant, would not permanently have settled the questions at issue.

The sacrifices, sorrows and sufferings of nearly two years more of war, were most severe and deplorable, but Sherman's "March from Atlanta to the Sea!' and Lee's "unconditional surrender" at Appomatox were the necessary antecedents to a lasting peace.

We rejoice that so many of us have lived to realize that the final and complete success of the Union armies reunited the warring States, and that to-day we speak not of "free States" and "slave States," for all are free, and all are glad to be free, glad to be integral parts of a mighty nation, a "world power" and an inspiration to liberty and progress for all peoples.

Sacrifice has always been the price of national strength and solidarity. We mourn that the arbitrament of war demanded the life-blood of the bravest and best of our youthful countrymen, both of the North and of the South, but, more positively than ever before, are We now assured that the sacrifices of our patriot brothers were not in vain.

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