Battle of Gettysburg, July 3, 1863

The cloudy and humid dawn of Friday, July 3, found the men of the Philadelphia Brigade resting in the same area of Cemetery Ridge that they had defended less than twelve hours earlier. The Californians rolled out of their blankets to find themselves surrounded by the wreckage of battle. Unburied men and dead horses, destroyed artillery equipment and a surfeit of small arms and accouterments littered that viciously fought over acreage of Cemetery Ridge. It was going to be hot today; by seven o’clock the temperature was 73 degrees and climbing.

The California Regiment lay behind Alonzo Cushing’s Battery A, 4th United States artilleryt just to the west of the crest of the ridge with its right flank at or near the angle formed by the intersection of the east-west stone wall and a north-south trending stone wall set back from the forward wall about 150 to 160 feet, the inner angle. On Colonel Smith’s right was Captain William Arnold’s Battery A, 1^st Rhode Island Light Artillery. The men of the 69th Pennsylvania held the same position at the forward stone wall behind which they had fought the day before. That portion of the wall from the right flank of the 69th to the east-west stone wall at the outer angle, a distance of roughly 155 feet, was unoccupied and served as a field of fire for Cushing’s rifles. The 72nd Pennsylvania was in a reserve position behind and to the left (south) of the Copse of Trees on the reverse slope of the ridge and in the rear of Norman Hall’s brigade. At some point during the early part of the morning Alexander Webb ordered Captain Edward B. Whitaker of Company G, 72^nd Pennsylvania, to lead a detail of 40 to 45 men to cover the rear of the brigade and to prevent anybody but the wounded from passing to the rear. The brigadier also directed Captain James C. Lynch of the 106^th Pennsylvania to take charge of a skirmish detail that included two companies of the 72^nd Pennsylvania and an unspecified number of men detached from the California Regiment, 69^th Pennsylvania and Companies A and B of the 106^th Pennsylvania. These men trotted out to the Emmitsburg Road and into the fields beyond. The balance of Companies A and B of the 106^th remained on the reverse slope of the ridge to the left of the 72^nd Pennsylvania.

Post-war image of the area between the Copse of Trees and the inner angle.
The monument on the right is that of the Philadelphia Brigade.

The severe fighting of the previous evening seems to have elevated the wrath of some men on both sides of the Emmitsburg Road. William Burns recorded that "the fire commenced all along the lines" early in the morning. A member of the 69^th Pennsylvania explained that the picket fire was "sometimes very brisk and again all quiet" when "a death-like stillness prevailed throughout the army." Yet some veterans remembered this morning’s action as the heaviest and deadliest skirmishing that they had experienced in two years of war. Particularly noteworthy of this morning’s activity was the Federal effort to drive Confederate sharpshooters from the Bliss farm buildings, roughly halfway between the opposing lines. As soon as it was light enough, Mississippians hidden within the farm house and outbuildings began an intense firefight with Federal troops on Cemetery Ridge. Confederate skirmishers were forced out of the buildings by five companies of the 12^th New Jersey of General Hays’ division. Soon, however, the Yankees were compelled to return to the main line on the ridge, and the buildings were reoccupied by gray marksmen. But before long, eight companies of the 14^th Connecticut evicted the Southerners from the farm. Once again, though, the outnumbered blue-coats were unable to hold the Bliss farmstead and withdrew to Cemetery Ridge. General Hays reached his limit of tolerance at about 11:00 a.m. and ordered the farm buildings torched.

The artillery on both sides was hardly silent during the morning, although the guns were not engaged with the same intensity as the skirmishers and sharpshooters. Artillery exchanges heralded the intense fighting on Culp’s Hill at 3:00 a.m., but another four hours would pass before field guns along the center of General Lee’s Seminary Ridge line opened fire on Federal positions on Cemetery Ridge between the Copse of Trees and Ziegler’s Grove to the north. At about 8:00 a.m., Alonzo Cushing’s battery came under direct artillery fire and three limbers were blown up sending burning debris in every direction. When one of William Arnold’s caissons on the right of Cushing’s pieces, was blown up, the captain responded in kind by destroying a Confederate ammunition chest on Seminary Ridge. Still, artillery fire during the morning accounted for little damage and relatively few casualties.

Lieutenant Frank A. Haskell of General Gibbon’s staff recorded that by 11:00 a.m., the sharp skirmishing between the ridges and the struggle for Culp’s Hill had subsided and the field lapsed into tense stillness. The sun was near its zenith and the temperature had ascended well into the 80’s. "The sun was shining in all its glory, giving forth a heat almost stifling and not a breath of air came to cause the slightest quiver to the most delicate leaf, or blade of grass," recounted a member of the 69^th Pennsylvania. Some of Alexander Webb’s men stretched shelter halves across ramrods and bayoneted muskets thrust into the ground to gain some modicum of shade. Officers of Alonzo Cushing’s battery began cooking rations over a small fire kindled behind the guns. Near noon, General Gibbon and some of his aids decided that it was time for dinner. Gibbon, Haskell and a number of generals, including Meade and his staff, partook of what Haskell described as "an enormous pan of stewed chickens, and the potatoes, and toast, all hot, and the bread and the butter, and tea, and coffee." The officers spent a leisurely noontime eating, smoking cigars and discussing the events of the day as well as what the future might hold for them and for the Army of the Potomac. "We dozed in the heat, and lolled upon the ground, with half open eyes," wrote Haskell.

Generals Hancock (left) and Gibbon (right).

It was a few minutes past 1:00 p.m. and Major Samuel Roberts of the 72^nd Pennsylvania sat in the sweltering heat on the open ground behind the Copse of Trees. As he relaxed listening to a sergeant talk "about some girls in Philadelphia," Roberts heard the crack of a lone artillery piece and within a split second the boastful sergeant was slammed in the chest by an artillery shell. Then all hell broke loose. "The air is filling with the whirring, shrieking, hissing sounds almost in one, as a volley of artillery pours out its deafening roar," remembered the historian of the 69^th Pennsylvania. William Burns declared that the Confederate bombardment "was the heaviest shelling that troops lived under during the war or any other wars." "The shot seemed to be tearing and plowing the hill to its very foundation all around us," recounted one of Lieutenant Cushing’s batterymen. Penn Smith tried to portray in words to Isaac Wistar the fury of the barrage: "My God it was terrible….The field was a grave. Such a sight you never saw." Years later, the memory still was vivid in his mind’s eye: "The air appeared to be thick with cannon balls." Even regimental quartermaster Joseph Elliot, about 23 air miles southeast of Gettysburg, heard the cacophony of the cannonade.

Alonzo Cushing’s guns were the focus of much of the Southern iron. Colonel Smith wrote that "the destruction caused by them [the Confederate artillery rounds] was the most severe I had ever seen." Sergeant Burns watched as men and officers of the battery fell under the concentrated Rebel fusillade. "[I]t was a terrible sight," declared this veteran of almost two years of fighting. One batteryman was struck by a piece of shell. A comrade recalled that the men fell to the ground and "began writhing and begging us to shoot him." The projectile "had torn away a part of the flesh of his abdomen and let some of h is entrails out upon the ground." The men watched horrified as the dying man pulled out his revolver and blew his brains out. Two shells exploded over open limber boxes exploding the caissons and showering the men of Companies A and F of the California Regiment with debris and burning embers.

More than an hour of continuous shelling had badly damaged Arnold’s battery, had silenced T. Fred Brown’s Rhode Island battery sited just south of the Copse of Trees, and had disabled many of Alonzo Cushing’s pieces and gunners. When some of his batterymen broke for the rear, the lieutenant threatened them with death impelling them back to their guns. At length, Cushing, who had sustained a shoulder wound, struggled over to General Webb seeking help from nearby infantry to work his guns. The plea for aid was transmitted to Colonel Smith whose call for volunteers was answered by as many as 50 Californians, including almost everybody in Company E. The men rushed out of formation to help the remaining batterymen work their rifles and to bring ammunition forward. The passage of more than 20 years had not dimmed Smith’s memory of the names of many of those ersatz artillerymen: there was Sergeant Paul Dubin of Company B, Sergeant George Donnelly, Corporals Samuel Clawson and John Heap, and Privates John Barlow and William Brown, all of Company D. Also helping to work the artillery pieces were Corporal Richard Margerum, former Ball’s Bluff prisoner, and Captain Bernard McMahon, officially under arrest for murder and facing death by firing squad. Sergeant Albert Bunn of Company B rushed out of the ranks, reportedly took charge of one of the guns and began loading it to the muzzle. "Sergeant, your gun is elevated too high," blurted Lieutenant Colonel Charles Kochersperger. "All right," Bunn responded, turning the elevation control and lowering the barrel. Kochersperger expressed concern that the overloaded artillery piece would explode. "All right," the sergeant shouted, "if it does it will burst some of them!" With that, Bunn pulled the lanyard. "My men - my most brave men worked his [Cushing’s] battery, until all [ammunition] was gone," pronounced Penn Smith. A number of Californians were struck down while serving the Napoleons. Private William Brown of Company D was wounded in the forehead and died later in the day, and Sergeant Bunn was hit in the head by a shell fragment and instantly killed beside the gun he had loaded and fired. It may have been at this time that Private Robert Kennedy of Company E was grievously wounded in the head and leg. He died several hours later.

Private Robert Kennedy

Even though many of the Confederate shells soared over the infantry on Cemetery Ridge, some fell into, or ricocheted through General Webb’s regiments. The scene was one of high chaos. Cannons, limbers, caissons, horses and men were literally blown apart. Fragments of iron and rocks whirred through the air striking man and animal alike. Colonel Smith claimed that the bombardment "made frightful decimation in the ranks of the Philadelphia Brigade." Webb, on the other hand, believed that he lost no more than 50 men the artillery assault. One casualty was 21-year-old Private J. Kavanaugh of Company B, whose left humerus was shattered by a shell fragment. Kavanaugh found his way to a field hospital in the rear where surgeons tried to set his arm in hopes that amputation might not be required. More than three months later, on October 21, physicians excised more than three inches of the soldier’s humerus leaving him permanently disabled. Kavanaugh survived the frequently lethal after-effects of Civil War surgery and was honorably discharged on April 11, 1864. Another Californian, First Lieutenant John Rogers of Company B, sustained a rupture, was severely wounded in the left thigh and, worse than any of this, received a compound fracture of the skull from a piece of shell. He was helped to the rear by Joseph Truitt of Company B and several other men. Twenty-six-year-old Captain John H. Steffan of Company A, a man who Penn Smith believed someday would be promoted to major, was grievously wounded in the chest and died before the end of the day.

The frightful artillery fusillade finally slackened by about 3:00 p.m. and an ominous stillness enveloped the smoke-filled field. Infantrymen on Cemetery Ridge strained to see through the low-lying haze. The heat and suffocating powder smoke and dust was almost unbearable, and the temperature had attained the highest reading it would reach for the month of July. No doubt, a late afternoon rainstorm was heralded by humidity levels that approached or exceeded the temperature. Not long after the guns fell silent Rebel infantry emerged from the woods along Seminary Ridge, a welcome sight to most of the Northern infantry for it signaled the end of the bombardment. Then the gray lines began moving across the valley with that measured pace so typical of veteran troops. "No holiday display seemed more imposing, nor troops on parade more regular, than this division of Pickett’s Rebels," wrote an admiring member of the Philadelphia Brigade.

Penn Smith was standing with Alexander Webb near the Copse of Trees when the Southerners debouched from the woodline preparatory to their attack. By now, "the artillery firing had become less violent," the colonel recalled, but solid shot and Whitworth bolts still screamed overhead. The general ordered Smith to move his men up to the stone wall and to place the left of the regiment on a sapling. Twenty-two-year-old Sergeant Major William S. Stockton was standing in the rear of the California Regiment on its right flank at the time marveling at the sight of the Rebel phalanx heading toward the Federal line on the ridge. Quickly the prone men to Stockton’s front climbed to their feet and trotted down the slope toward the unoccupied segment of stone wall on the right of the 69^th Pennsylvania. Perhaps it was as he hurried to the wall at the head of Company B that Captain William Dull, a "good and brave officer" according to his muster-out roll, was wounded in the side and died shortly thereafter. Some of the Californians, apparently without orders, ran one of Alonzo Cushing’s remaining rifles to the apex of the outer angle, close to the location of the regiment’s monument on the battlefield. Stockton, a student of dentistry in his pre-war life, watched as the infantry troops began loading the muzzle "with all sorts of things, they even put a bayonet in it." Penn Smith saw these same men jam rocks and broken shells into the barrel.

Colonel Richard Penn Smith (left) and Brigadier General Alexander S. Webb (right).

As the Californians arrived at the stone wall, William Burns peered through the smoke to see the gray lines marching to the Emmitsburg Road. "[I]t was a grand sight and worth a man’s while to see it," he later recorded in his diary. Penn Smith realized that he could not squeeze his entire command into the space on the right of the 69^th. "I could not operate at ease and satisfaction," he explained. In consequence, the colonel was compelled to deploy the right wing of his line in the open field just north of the east-west stone wall, "a fearfully exposed position." In a display of what Alexander Webb later referred to as "true military intelligence on the field," Smith, without orders, sent the exposed troops, approximately two companies of men, to the north-south-trending stone wall about 160 feet to the rear. These Californians hustled up slope and formed behind a stretch of "dilapidated stone wall" recently abandoned by Captain Arnold’s battery and on the left of the 14^th Connecticut Regiment. Though the fence "yielded partial protection from musketry," the colonel believed that the neglected barrier offered little protection from Rebel artillery. Smith placed Lieutenant Colonel Charles Kochersperger in command of the regiment’s left wing at the forward stone wall. Most of the men grabbed as many capped and loaded muskets as they could handle from the pile of weapons collected the day before that lay near the outer angle. According to Smith, some of the boys at the stone wall went into position with as many as three to a dozen weapons each.

The regimental monument and the stone wall defended by Penn Smith's left wing.

After Penn Smith had posted his two companies in the rear, he hurried down to the left wing and instructed Kochersperger to hold fire until the enemy had crossed the Emmitsburg Road and then "to load and fire as fast as possible." He also ordered that when the Rebels got so close that the Californians could not reload and fire, they were to fall back on the right wing of the regiment. Finally, he cautioned Kochersperger to be wary of an enfilading fire from the right or north of the position. Now Smith rushed back to the right wing where he found that the boys had gathered numerous loose weapons lying about and had rested them against the wall. These men were to hold their fire until they "had determined the result with the left wing," and when their comrades at the forward wall had fallen back, they were to deliver a "sure and damaging enfilading fire" into the Rebels. Thus Smith had stipulated the conditions under which the front line men were to retreat. Specifically, no "hold to the last man" orders were issued; rather, the tactics involved drawing the Confederates into a situation where they could be subject to a destructive enfilading fire. Unfortunately, it appears that Colonel Smith never informed either Webb or anybody with the 69^th Pennsylvania of his intentions.

Meanwhile, the Southern columns continued their inexorable march to the Emmitsburg Road and the Copse of Trees beyond. "It was…the grandest spectacle, the most imposing and gallant charge of the war," wrote a member of the Philadelphia Brigade. Federal artillery fired with increasing frequency and although Rebels fell at every step, Lee’s veterans closed ranks and continued forward as if on parade review. As he neared the road, Lieutenant George Finley of Company K, 56^th Virginia, the left flank unit of General James Kemper’s brigade, could see Federal "skirmishers begin to run in and the artillery opened upon us all along our front." Skirmishers of the Philadelphia Brigade deliberately withdrew to the main line, all the while loading and firing. The men of the 106th Pennsylvania withdrew to the Copse of Trees on the left of the 69^th after which they rejoined Companies A and B on the reverse flank of the ridge. Confederate foot soldiers pushing toward the fences that lined the road continued to take heavy casualties. "[V]olley after volley of small arms aided [the damage done by artillery], with dreadful effect, in thinning our ranks," recalled an officer in the 7^th Tennessee Regiment of Colonel Birkett D. Fry’s (Archer’s) brigade.

The Californians at the forward stone wall had finished loading their artillery piece just as the Rebels arrived at the post-and-rail fence along the west side of the Emmitsburg Road. At about this time, First Sergeant Frederick Fuger of Alonzo Cushing’s battery rushed up and instructed the Californians to sight the gun on the road and fire just as the Rebels were climbing the fences. At the appointed moment, the lanyard was pulled sending the bizarre collection of projectiles on its way to the gray-clads struggling over the fences. "[T]he havoc caused by that overloaded gun," observed Penn Smith, "scattering its deadly missiles in the enemy’s ranks, was frightful, being fired at short range." Still, the stalwart Rebels clambered over the fences. "It was not a leaping over; it was rather an insensible tumbling to the ground, in the nervous hope of escaping the thickening missiles that buried themselves in falling victims, in the ground, and in the fence," remembered one of Colonel Fry’s veterans. Even 37 years after the battle, a former officer in the 1^st Tennessee Regiment, Fry’s right flank unit, could hear the bullets striking the fence "like hail upon a roof."

Private George Washington Beidelman (left) was wounded and Private Robert F. Wallin (left)
received a mortal head wound on July third.

As the Rebels struggled over the fences lining both sides of the Emmitsburg Road, two more of Lieutenant Cushing’s guns were rolled forward to the stone wall and positioned among the men of the right flank company of the 69^th Pennsylvania, Company I. These rifles attracted much gunfire and soon members of the 69^th and the left of the California Regiment began to fall. The rifles, worked by batterymen and infantry alike, loosed only a few rounds, one of which exploded prematurely killing two members of the 69^th Pennsylvania. With this, the gunners fled to the rear. Nevertheless, the one working rifle at the wall, and the 3-inch rifles of Captain Andrew Cowan’s 1^st New York Independent Battery brought forward to replace T. Fred Brown’s smashed Rhode Island battery, concentrated their fire on the Rebels who by now had crossed the road and were reforming under this storm of canister and spherical case shot in a depression just east of the road.

Penn Smith was with his right wing at the rear stone wall as the Rebels crossed the Emmitsburg Road and resumed their advance now at the double-quick. When they had reached a point perhaps one-half to two-thirds of the way from the road to the forward stone wall, the Virginia regiments of James Kemper’s brigade obliqued to the left and made for the Copse of Trees. Smith hastened to his left wing which he found "hotly engaged" with the enemy on its front. "The firing had became [sic] general and the sharp ring of musketry and roar of cannon and thunder of bursting shells made such a deafening noise that the human voice was drowned in the din," wrote Penn Smith years after the battle. The boys were loading and firing as fast as they could. Wild shouts and oaths filled the air. Even the colonel picked up a rifle and fired a few rounds; "I fancied that if I could at least, Chinese-like, scare [them] with noise, and I might, by accident, hit a gray-coat." But the enemy continued forward. George Finley and his comrades of the 56^th Virginia were between 75 and 100 yards from the stone wall when "some of the men holding it began to break for the rear." William Stockton at the right of the forward line near the apex of the outer angle, recalled seeing a few Californians "start for the rear and I must say that, at the time, I thought it rather cowardly." It appears that one company may have fled at this time. Still, most of the men around Stockton and along the stone wall remained at their posts. The chronicler of the 69^th Pennsylvania recalled that when the Virginians had marched at the oblique to within 20 or 30 paces of the stone wall, they fronted. The fire was terrific but on they came "like a solid phalanx on dress parade," explained Colonel Smith. "[W]e moved the rebs right and left but still they came on," wrote William Burns who could not believe what he was seeing.

The men of the 56^th Virginia in front of the Californians at the forward stone wall bent into the Federal fire pouring into them and hurried up the slope. Without orders, these men volleyed into the Californians, shouted and rushed the fence, many making for Cushing’s now silent rifles near the left of the California Regiment and the right of the 69^th Pennsylvania. The 1^st Tennessee, holding the right of Colonel Fry’s line and to the left of the 56^th Virginia, was headed for the outer angle. The Rebels stopped about 15 paces from the wall, volleyed and lunged forward with bayonets fixed. Colonel Smith’s troops were beginning to fall. Private Robert F. Wallin of Company C received a mortal head wound; Private Matthew Smith and Sergeant Francis Vanderveher, Companies G and H, respectively, received chest wounds and were helped to a field hospital behind the ridge, possibly the Peter Frey farm just south of the Leister house. Later they were sent to the division hospital on the Sarah Patterson farm. Twenty-seven-year-old Private John Stockton of Company I received a serious wound in his left leg and struggled to the rear. George Beidelman, standing behind the stone wall, was brought down by a minie ball that cut across both legs just above the knees. It left a gash that was as deep as his little finger was wide.

Nineteen-year-old Private John C. Dyre, Company E, was aiming his musket when a minie ball slammed into his head just behind the left ear. He fell heavily to the ground unconscious but regained his senses two hours later in a field hospital. Dyre complained that he could not use his jaw because of excruciating pain in his left ear. The private’s left arm was weak and painful for several days after he had been wounded. Physicians related this symptom to nerve damage rather than a bruise caused by the fall to the ground as was first thought. Further examination revealed that the ball created a small fracture in the mastoid process, the bone behind the ear. By the middle of August, the pain had lessened and Private Dyre was able to use his jaw. Still, he was deaf in the left ear which, at some point, began to discharge pus. By the middle of February 1864, the left side of Dyre’s face was completely paralyzed and his facial features had drooped. At this time a cast of his face was made which ultimately became Specimen 1567 in the Army Medical Museum. Because he could not close his left eyelid, Dyre developed the habit of rolling this eye upward to cover it with the passive eyelid. Surgeon’s never recovered the minie ball that had struck the soldier but believed that it was lodged in his temporal bone. Private Dyre survived the wound and was discharged on July 2, 1864, and eventually pensioned.

Brigadier General Lewis A. Armistead and his men, including some of Kemper’s charges, covered the final yards to the stone wall, funneling toward the abandoned artillery pieces and the gap between the 69^th Pennsylvania and the California Regiment. At the same time, the 1^st Tennessee and elements of the 7^th Tennessee came forward with what one Californian termed "a great rush," many of the gray-coats climbing over the stone wall at a boulder or groups of boulders that marked the apex of the outer angle. "I thought it was all up with us," wrote William Burns. Indeed, some of Burns’ comrades thought it better to surrender than to be shot dead. A Virginian making for the stone wall recalled that some Yankees, probably members of the California Regiment, "rushed toward us crying ‘Don’t shoot!’ ‘We surrender!’ ‘Where should we go?’" Among these captured Northerners may have been Privates Patrick Conner, Company F, and James Nelson, Company G, and Corporal Jesse Hill of Company C. Colonel Smith, realizing that his men still at the forward wall could not load and fire before they would be overpowered, "wished it [the California Regiment] back to a line abreast of the right wing." Implicit in this statement written to Isaac Wistar less than one month after the battle was the colonel’s desire to remove the left wing from the wall, as per his earlier order, and allow the men of the right wing to fire on the Rebels closing on or climbing over the wall. There is no extant evidence that Penn Smith personally ordered the men back from the stone wall. Rather, it seems that the rank and file took it upon themselves to make that judgment. Years after the battle, the commander of the 1^st Tennessee wrote that "the Federals in our immediate front and to our right [California Regiment] yielded and fled in confusion…abandoning their artillery." Although Smith claimed that his men fell back "in order," stopping to load and fire, brigade historian and staff officer Charles Banes, in agreement with the Tennessee officer, argued that the retreat was made "without order."

But not all of the Californians withdrew from behind the stone wall. Sergeant Major Stockton and several comrades at the outer angle remained at their posts and put up a short but stiff hand-to-hand defense. Some of the men who had helped load and fire the rifle at the angle battled the first of the Rebels to arrive at the wall with artillery tools. Private Charles Olcott of Company E "fought and knocked down a Confederate officer with a sponge staff," remembered Penn Smith. Captain J.B. Turney of Company K, 1^st Tennessee, wrote of a sword-bearing Federal officer "who made a vicious thrust at my breast. I parried it just in time." It appears that the first Californians to fall back were those men who had been deployed closest to the right flank of the 69^th Pennsylvania. The latter troops were as surprised as anybody when the Californians started pulling out. Even after 26 years, the historian of the 69^th, a former member of Company I on the right flank of the regiment, was at a loss to understand what had happened. "For some reason or another the troops on the right of the regiment…abandoned their position." This rupture in the Federal line would not be lost on General Armistead.

Those Californians who had retreated toward the crest of the ridge, some stopping to load and fire, were rallied by Penn Smith who had posted himself a short distance to the south of the inner angle. Frank Haskell claimed that he too had been instrumental in rallying the Californians:

I ordered these men to "halt," and "face about," and "fire," and they heard my voice, and gathered my meaning and obeyed my commands. On some unpatriotic backs, of those not quick of comprehension, the flat of my sabre fell, not lightly; and at its touch their love of country returned; and with a look at me as if I were the destroying angel, as I might have become theirs, they again faced the enemy.

In any event, the embattled Californians formed a line on the left of the regiment’s right wing and a short distance to the rear of the 72^nd Pennsylvania which General Webb had called forward into that position most recently held by Alonzo Cushing’s now silent battery. The brigadier’s efforts to get the Fire Zouaves to advance down slope to the stone wall were fruitless. At one point he even grabbed the regimental color staff and ordered the bearer forward. When this failed, Webb hurried down slope to the right flank of the 69^th Pennsylvania, another trouble spot.

By now, the Rebels had gained control of that part of the stone wall vacated by the Californians and were using it as a breastwork from behind which they loosed deadly volleys into the 72^nd Pennsylvania on their front and the much closer right flank of the 69^th Pennsylvania. Soon, Armistead, the only Confederate general officer still standing on this part of the field, saw that the time was ripe for the final drive. He raised himself up and, with his felt hat balanced on the tip of his sword so that his 100 to 150 men might see him, shouted, "Boys, give them cold steel", and over the wall they went. Lieutenant Finley of the 56^th Virginia stepped onto the stone wall and looked to his left where "I noticed for the first time a line of troops just joining upon our left," the men of the 1^st Tennessee. The Virginian also observed that there were no Yankees blocking his way to the crest of the ridge. In order to counter this immediate threat, the right three companies of the 69^th Pennsylvania, A, I and F, were ordered to change front to face Armistead and his band making their way up the ridge. But the commander of Company F was struck down before the maneuver was accomplished and his men remained at the wall. Some of the Rebels gravitated into a gap that had opened between Companies A and F. Just as the right wing of the 69^th was changing front, the rear wing of the California Regiment, in tandem with the 14^th Connecticut, loosed an enfilading fire on the Confederates streaming over the stone wall and up the slope. A member of the 106^th Pennsylvania observed that the Californians did "good service by a flanking fire," and Penn Smith believed that this "most galling and rapid fire" prevented the Rebels from turning Cushing’s rifles against the Union troops in the area although it is unlikely this could have happened given the shattered state of the battery. Still, the destructive crossfire delivered by Smith’s left wing staggered and checked the left of the Confederate column sending some, but not all, of the gray-coats back behind the stone wall.

William Stockton and four or five comrades were on the east side of the stone wall when Armistead and his men scrambled over it. At some point, probably when the right wing of the regiment unleashed its flanking fire, part of the gray mass "seemed to rebound and go back, like a wave receding from the shore," recalled Stockton. As the Rebels tumbled back over the wall, they took Stockton and his companions with them. Although they were ordered to the rear, Stockton instructed his charges to remain where they were. Yet some men did go to the rear. Among them were Private Patrick Conner of Company F, Corporal Jesse Hill, Company C, and Private James Nelson of Company G. In minutes, a noncommissioned officer was ordered to escort Stockton and his intransigent comrades to the rear, but this never came to pass and the men remained at the stone wall interspersed with kneeling Confederate troops who were firing through the smoke at Union troops farther up the ridge. Stockton had a Rebel on each side of him and he could distinctly hear water sloshing in one man’s canteen as the gray-coat moved to load and fire his musket. The parched sergeant asked the man for a drink but the Rebel would have none of that. Stockton thought of escape but the hail of Northern minie balls smacking into the rocks above his head dissuaded him from that idea, at least for now.

Colonel Arthur Devereux commanding the 19th Massaschusetts of Hall’s brigade, observed General Webb "trying to do something with" the 72nd Pennsylvania. He also recognized that the 69^th Pennsylvania was dangerously close to giving way and that the California Regiment had fallen back. Devereux rushed to General Hancock who had just arrived on the left of the Bay State regiment, explained the situation as he saw it and requested permission to advance the 19^th Massachusetts into the fray. The corps commander ordered Devereux "To get in G__ D___ quick." It so happened that Colonel James E. Mallon, commander of the 42^nd New York, the Tammany Regiment, had been standing nearby and overheard the discussion between Hancock and Devereux. Mallon hurried away to get his New Yorkers ready to charge into Armistead’s mob making its way up the ridge. The Bay State troops moved by what Devereux described as a "sharp ‘right oblique’" through Cowan’s battery and toward the Copse of Trees. On their right and slightly behind them were the Tammany Hall men. Both regiments were followed by the 20^th Massachusetts. We were attacked "from every side in overwhelming numbers" recalled the adjutant of the 9^th Virginia Regiment of Armistead’s Brigade.

Alfred Waud's impression of the fight at the Copse of Trees.

Those resolute Confederates who had not been driven back by the deadly enfilade fire delivered by the right wing of the California Regiment struggled up the slope. By now they were taking fire from the boys of the 72^nd Pennsylvania as well as from Companies A and B of the 106^th Pennsylvania to the Zouaves’ left. Armistead apparently had pushed to within 30 paces of where Colonel Smith stood when the general fell mortally wounded among Cushing’s abandoned rifles. Smith believed that the Rebel general was brought down by "the heavy enfilading fire" delivered by the right wing of the California Regiment. Armistead’s wounding appears to have taken the drive our of the Southerners. Indeed, a member of one of the refused right flank companies of the 69^th Pennsylvania claimed that there was virtually no firing after the Rebel general was struck. Another member of the Philadelphia Brigade asserted that many of the Southerners began throwing down their weapons after their commander had been wounded. Alexander Webb, who at about this time was wounded on the inside of his right thigh, saw the Rebel column falter and shouted to his men near the crest of the ridge, "Come up, boys, the enemy is running." "Gnl[.] Webb rallied the men[;]" wrote William Burns in his diary that night, "he went right in front of us when we gave a yell, we charged them."

The Californians, deployed as they were, could not have advanced until the 72^nd had gone forward. But at about the same time that Webb called for his men to attack, Colonel Hall’s regiments, the 19^th Massachusetts and 42^nd New York, followed by the 20^th Massachusetts, emerged from the small wood stand. This rush appears to have caused the immovable 72^nd Pennsylvania to join the charge thereby enabling the Californians to rush forward. The entire mass of blue-coats, members of the California Regiment, 72^nd, 69^th and 106^th Pennsylvania, 42^nd New York and 19^th and 20^th Massachusetts, moved as an irresistible tide toward the stone wall. An officer in the 56^th Virginia claimed that he and his comrades "held the stone fence not less than 25 or 30 minutes." But, as Colonel William Aylett, 53^rd Virginia and Armistead’s successor as brigade commander, wrote that "our position was untenable, and we were compelled to retire."

As he crouched behind the stone wall, Sergeant Stockton’s thoughts returned to escape. "I was to give the word, which would be the signal, and we were to jump altogether," he communicated to his comrades. Peeking above the pile of rocks, Stockton spotted a line of friendly troops to his front, perhaps the left wing of the California Regiment or the 72^nd Pennsylvania. He shouted the order and the group of five lunged over the wall and started running up the slope. Stockton and his companions had gone only 20 feet when they "were met in a rush by our regiment" charging down the incline to the stone wall. William Burns, part of that downhill thrust, wrote that the regiment, with the other elements of the Philadelphia Brigade and Hall’s regiments, "drove them [the Virginians] back with great slaughter." Another Californian who participated in the rush for the stone wall was Captain Bernard McMahon who earlier in the action, had donned leather accouterments and grabbed a Springfield. Stockton and the others, caught up in the action, turned about and charged, weaponless, back to the wall. As they advanced, the Californians and Fire Zouaves opened their ranks allowing Confederate prisoners to pass to the rear. "[T]he rebs dropped their arms and asked for mercy," wrote Sergeant Burns. Years later Stockton claimed that he and several other men accepted the surrender and swords of a dozen Rebel officers. Penn Smith probably erred a bit high when he bragged that the California Regiment "took some 500 prisoners and as many stand of arms." Still, the rapidly growing number of Rebel prisoners was becoming a problem. A Fire Zouave recalled seeing the captured Southerners milling about "picking up haversacks and canteens and blankets" that littered the area preparatory to being shipped off to Federal prisoner-of-war camps. This man and others like him were concerned that some gray-backs might pick up any number of the abundant muskets that lay about and attack the Yankees from the rear. A group of men were detailed to see that this would not occur.

In truth, much of the fighting was over by the time the Californians, the Fire Zouaves and their comrades in the 106^th Pennsylvania reached the stone wall, although some individual firing or "squabbles" persisted along the wall and in the field beyond. As many as ten Confederate flags, most of them just leaning against the wall, were recovered by men from various regiments after the roughly 30 minutes of fighting had ended. Almost 25 years later, Anthony McDermott of the 69th Pennsylvania declared that most of these flags simply had been picked up from where they had been dropped by wounded and killed Confederate color-bearers. "[I]t was just like picking up muskets that had been thrown down," the veteran wrote, and he "did not see anything brave in that." But 21-year-old Private John E. Clopp of Company F, California Regiment, one of the many men captured at Ball’s Bluff, was credited with capturing a flag in the strictest sense of the word. As the fighting sputtered out, Clopp tangled with the 9^th Virginia’s color-bearer. The two men grappled and fought it out with fists until the Virginian had been subdued and Clopp had the flag. For this, John Clopp would be awarded the Medal of Honor. In addition to Clopp’s flag, Colonel Smith claimed that he turned in flags of the 17^th Virginia, captured by Private George C. Moore of Company I at the stone wall, and the 53^rd Virginia, grabbed by Isaac Tibben of Company F near Cushing’s guns. All three trophies, including Clopp’s banner, were taken from regiments of Lewis Armistead’s brigade. The colonel declared that a fourth flag had been seized but was "in the regiment [and] I cannot find it." Many years later, Smith testified that this fourth flag was appropriated by General Hays "and neither man nor the [California] regiment received credit for it." The colonel claimed that this flag was the banner that Alexander Hays trailed up and down in the dust along the outer side of the stone wall.

Most of General Armistead’s company-size band had surrendered, been killed or wounded, or were withdrawing down the west flank of Cemetery Ridge and across the Emmitsburg Road. They were "helped" on their way by elements of the Philadelphia Brigade, Norman Hall’s regiments and some troops of William Harrow’s brigade. One Californian recalled that Southern artillery, fearing a counterattack, "opened up on their own men with grape [sic]." Meanwhile, several members of Company K of the California Regiment helped carry General Armistead to the rear on a stretcher. William Burns seemed to understand the significance of this day’s fight when he wrote that if the Rebels "had succeeded at this point it would be all up."

Gray, sulfurous smoke hung low over the field this humid afternoon. Building anvil head clouds foretold of rain later in the evening and night. The area around the Copse of Trees, particularly on its front and right, was awash with shattered artillery equipment, knapsacks, haversacks, canteens, jackets and other clothing, blankets, diverse accouterments, weapons and ammunition. Captain McMahon and another man could be seen muscling one of the dead Alonzo Cushing’s guns up the flank of the ridge. Dead and crippled artillery horses marked the positions of the battery’s limbers. William Burns who walked the field shortly after the guns went silent noted that it was "thick with dead and wounded rebs." Colonel Smith too, was struck by the horror that surrounded him. "I never saw so much human blood before," he described to Isaac Wistar. It was difficult to walk anywhere in the general area without stepping on the dead and dying. The cries of wounded men lying in the fields beyond the stone wall were "piteous. We could not comfort [them], it was a grave yard."

Surgeons worked feverishly throughout the night trying to save shattered men of both sides. After nightfall, some Californians were detailed to search the field by lantern and candlelight for wounded soldiers. Dr. John Aiken spent the balance of the day working on his own men as well as members of other Second Division regiments. The case of James Eva of Company K, 106^th Pennsylvania, was typical of many that the surgeon saw that night. The private was brought in from the field suffering from what seemed to be little more than a flesh wound of the left wrist. Aiken found that the man actually had sustained serious nerve damage and decided to amputate the arm just below the elbow. In another case, a Private Morrin of the 126^th New York Regiment of Alexander Hays’ division was carried to Dr. Aiken’s operating table suffering from a compound fracture of the left leg caused by a minie ball. The surgeon examined the wound and found the damage to the tibia and fibula so great that amputation below the knee was required.

That evening, three days’ rations were issued to the exhausted men of the Philadelphia Brigade. By now, Penn Smith had assumed temporary command of the brigade for General Webb, recently appointed to command of the division for John Gibbon who had been severely wounded in the left arm and shoulder. Meanwhile, the Californians, completely worn out by the afternoon’s fight, cleaned their weapons and looked for friends. Somewhat later, their duties completed, those men who still had blankets rolled into them along the stone wall they had fought over. An early evening thunderstorm which Penn Smith reasoned was brought on by "The heavy cannonading," developed into an all night rainfall that completely soaked the men and their equipment including the rations in their haversacks. Some of the Californians huddled along the rock wall in the rain probably talking over the day’s fighting and what it might mean for the future. They must have wondered if they would be called upon for a third day to defend the ridge. Before long, talk dwindled as the men were embraced by the arms of Morpheus. Tomorrow was the Fourth of July.

The California Regiment had exhibited what some would term questionable behavior over the past two days. Still, Colonel Smith was proud of his men. He specifically pointed to the fine conduct of Captain McMahon and Private Edward E. Young, both of Company C and both under arrest at the time. Particularly noteworthy was Smith’s reference to McMahon who had been sentenced to die on July 21 for the murder of Captain McManus of the 69^th Pennsylvania. The colonel hoped "that the approval or disapproval of the findings in the case of the first [McMahon] may be influenced in a great degree by his noble conduct in the field." Penn Smith spoke glowingly of the role that the right wing had played in "putting a temporary check on the enemy" surging up the gradient from the stone wall. "My regiment has lost nothing in the opinion of my superior officers by this battle," Smith proclaimed to Isaac Wistar. Indeed, the colonel was commended for his deployment of the regiment’s right wing by General Webb as well as by Winfield Hancock, who, though seriously wounded just after Hall’s regiments charged into the Copse of Trees, declared that Smith and several other officers, "performed in like manner most distinguished services in leading their men forward at a critical period of the contest." But Smith may have gone a bit too far when he bragged that "Without flattery to it my regiment saved the day."

Notwithstanding Penn Smith’s hyperbole, the California Regiment had suffered its fair share of casualties in its two days of fighting at Gettysburg. Initial returns showed 21 men and officers killed, 58 wounded and 19 missing. In his post-battle report written on July 12, the colonel cited slightly different numbers: 22 killed, 59 wounded and 19 missing. By his reckoning, Smith lost almost 40 percent of the men he took into the fight on the morning of July 2. In the end, twenty-five Californians either had been killed in battle or had died of wounds. But this number does not include Jesse Hill, Charles L. Bushner and James Nelson, all of whom would die in Richmond prisons. On the other hand, twenty-three-year-old Private John Martin of Company I, perhaps taking advantage of the chaos of battle, deserted on July 3. He may have been listed as missing in action, at least for a short time. The last two days of fighting had been difficult for the Californians, the Philadelphia Brigade and the entire Second Corps for that matter. Most of Penn Smith’s veterans could find no argument with Joseph Elliot who, though still on detached duty, recorded that the first three days of July 1863 had been witness to "Without exception the severest battle ever fought."

About | Contact