Gettysburg: The Last Invasion (10 page)

One reason for this odd reluctance to invest in a fully operational mounted service was symbolic: just as the American republican tradition sat uneasily beside the notion of permanent professional armies, nothing made Americans more uneasy than the image of the mounted soldier (the vision of the
Manchester and Salford Yeomanry hacking down protesters with their sabers in the Peterloo Massacre in 1819 remained a toxic one for cavalry through much of the nineteenth century). But just as persuasive a reason for minimizing cavalry in the
U.S. Army was its sheer cost. Mounted troops were enormously expensive to maintain, requiring at least six months to train just in riding
drill. Beyond that, admitted one veteran officer, another “three years had been regarded as necessary to transform a recruit into a good cavalryman,” all of which cost money with no sign of immediate return on the investment. Cavalry horses were even more costly. A cavalry brigade in the Crimea consumed 20,000 pounds of fodder a day (in addition, each horse required five gallons of water), and that did not even begin to reckon with the cost of the horses themselves or their attrition (in a six-month period in 1854–55, British cavalry in the Crimea lost 932 of its 2,216 horses to sickness). It was easier for budget-conscious American Congresses to stint the cavalry, authorizing only light cavalry regiments.
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Moreover, the heavily forested terrain of North America did not lend itself very easily to the kind of line-breaking charges of heavy cavalry that distinguished European battlefields. Although some sporadic attempt was made at the beginning of the Civil War to diversify both Union and Confederate cavalry (the most signal example being the creation of “Rush’s Lancers”—the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry—at the prompting of George McClellan), the sudden onset of the war not only found the U.S. Army shy of an officer cadre which could train diversified cavalry units, but with neither the time nor the inclination to create them. “Our cavalry are too often satisfied with a few discharges of their pistols and carbines, and then ‘retire’ to give the infantry a chance,” complained a Confederate infantryman in 1863. “An idea that cavalry are only fit for spying out the enemy’s position, picketing, and opening the fight, seems to prevail.” The proof was in the numbers: at Waterloo, the ratio of Wellington’s infantry to cavalry was approximately four to one; in the Crimea, Raglan’s army had thirty infantry battalions and ten cavalry regiments; at Sedan in 1870, MacMahon’s
Army of Chalons had an infantry–cavalry ratio of six to one; at Gettysburg, Lee’s ratio of infantry to cavalry was ten to one.
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The hard result in the Civil War was that, as
Francis Lippett complained in 1865, “neither side had a sufficient force of true cavalry to enable it to complete a victory, to turn a defeat into a rout, and drive the enemy effectually from the field.” By the end of the Civil War, the light cavalry forces of both armies finally concentrated on providing wide-ranging screens that concealed infantry movments from prying eyes, or on behind-the-lines raiding missions to interdict the flow of enemy supplies. “The Americans in their vast country … used cavalry wisely in sending it off on distant forays to cut communications, make levies, etc.,” wrote the keen French military analyst Ardant du Picq, in 1870. Significantly, there are comparatively few instances in the Civil War where worthwhile intelligence was garnered by cavalry operations. Cavalry screens might provide some limited amount of news, but screening was primarily a protective operation, and any information the
screening units might produce was usually limited to scrapings against the enemy’s cavalry screens. At Chancellorsville, James Ewell Brown Stuart had provided Lee with the key information that Joe Hooker’s right flank was dangling, unprotected, in the air; but Stuart had been able to contribute this vital tip because Hooker’s cavalry had galloped itself out of reach and supplied no cloak against Stuart’s probing. Even then, it was not Stuart, but two of the locals—Jackson’s chaplain,
Beverly Tucker Lacy, and
Charles Wellford—who supplied Lee with the crucial information about access roads for an attack. “Raiding,” and not intelligence collection, “was Stuart’s hobby,” wrote one of Stuart’s staff officers, and “it was urged with all the earnestness which characterized him whenever his heart was set on any particular object.” In the
Army of the Potomac, intelligence collection was being done by a tightly knit cadre of operatives attached to Col.
George Sharpe’s Bureau of Military Information. Sharpe’s scouts, in turn, were supported by Signal Corps detachments which could establish chains of flag stations from Harpers Ferry to “South Mountain, Monterey, Greencastle … up to Parnell’s Knob, in the Cumberland Valley,” and by networks of civilian spies and “scouts” (who were scarcely more than spies).
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As the task of cavalry on the Civil War battlefield shrank, the task of artillery expanded. The
U.S. Army’s
artillery in 1861 had fallen off considerably from “the high reputation which it had gained in Mexico … There was no chief nor special administration for that arm, and no regulation for its government.” Experience soon changed that, in both the Army of the Potomac and the
Army of Northern Virginia. Americans might be, as
John Ropes wrote, “an unmilitary people,” but in the mechanical attractions artillery offered a nation of tinkerers, “the American soldier seems, in fact, to take naturally to artillery.” In 1805, Napoleonic armies deployed something less than 2 artillery pieces per 1,000 infantrymen; seven years later, at Borodino, Napoleon had expanded his artillery to 5 guns per 1,000 infantry, and at Wagram, Borodino, and Waterloo he had concentrated grand batteries of over 100 guns to be used in smashing opposing infantry to mush. In 1863, the Army of Northern Virginia brought 283
cannon with it on the Gettysburg campaign, and would have brought more but for lack of horses (and the fodder they required) to haul them; the rebels would capture 26 more guns along the way. The Federal artillery at Gettysburg comprised 372 guns (including horse artillery batteries and an artillery reserve of 118 pieces to be deployed in any emergency), so that the Army of the Potomac actually had a field ratio of artillery to infantry that exceeded European patterns (the ratio of the Prussian 3rd Army at Sedan was approximately 4 pieces per 1,000 infantry).
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Not only had the artillery grown in numbers, it had grown in organizational capacity, as both Joseph Hooker and Robert E. Lee reorganized their
artillery arms into quasi-independent commands, with clusters of batteries attached to different corps commands and a large artillery reserve to be deployed at the discretion of a reserve chief. And like their European counterparts, American artillerists tended to behave as though they owed nothing to anyone. “Gunners are a race apart,” ran the British doggerel, “hard of head and hard of heart.” At Waterloo, it was all senior British officers could do to prevent independent-souled artillerymen from throwing away their energy and their ammunition on counterbattery duels with opposing artillery batteries. “Do not direct your fire on the enemy’s artillery,” sternly advised a British artillery handbook, “unless your troops suffer more from his fire than his do from yours.” The same was true among American artillerists. “The captain of a battery has a very independent position,” wrote an officer in the
13th New York Battery, “and it lies with him almost entirely whether his battery is a good and serviceable one or not”—or what targets he would choose. (The
Army of the Potomac’s chief of artillery,
Henry J. Hunt, would actually impose a rule of firing no more than “one round from each gun in two minutes; and that rate should only be reached at critical moments”; otherwise, “one round in four to six minutes is as rapid as should be permitted.”) And it was a rule of thumb among gunners that a concentration of eighteen guns, like the
Russian battery at Borodino or the eighteen guns with which
Auguste de Marmont saved the day at Marengo for Napoleon, could shake whole regiments apart and break up any infantry assault.
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Controlling the artilleryman’s instinct to let loose was vital, and never less so in the Civil War than at Gettysburg. The chief responsibility of artillery was (according to the
U.S. Army’s
Instruction for Field Artillery
) “to break an enemy’s line or prevent him from forming.” This could be done in three ways, beginning with the use of the long-range
shell
(timed by fuse to explode over the heads of oncoming infantry and spraying white-hot shards of shell or small lead
shot over the heads of the enemy). If this did not disperse the attackers, mid-range
solid shot
would. Gunners would aim to “graze” solid shot at 400 yards so that it would ricochet at just the right level and smash the maximum amount of human flesh and bone in its path. Like some brutal nemesis, or “like a rock skipped upon the surface of the ocean by the powerful arm of a giant,” solid shot could be watched “bounding like rubber balls,” landing “with a heavy thud” and coming “right at the line with the sound of a huge circular saw ripping a log.” “A dozen at a time” could come “bounding along like footballs,” hitting “the ground once or twice” and caroming off at unpredictable and lethal angles into an oncoming infantry formation.
William Wheeler, in
Oliver Otis Howard’s
11th Corps, “saw an infantry man’s leg taken off by a shot, and whirled like a stone through the air, until it came against a caisson with a loud whack.” Another officer in the 11th Corps on
July 1st noticed how “many officers dismounted or bent low whenever they felt the pressure of the air created by the shot,” except for “one unfortunate officer [who] was nailed by a six-pounder against a big tree. I got hold of his bushy hair and pulled him down, as he presented a ghastly appearance.” If neither shell nor shot stopped attackers, the cannoneers’ last resort was close-range
canister
—a tin can filled with lead balls that could be blasted directly from the muzzle of an artillery piece in a thirty-two-foot-wide spread at 100 yards, like so many pumpkin slugs.
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When it was well laid, artillery could cause destruction of absolutely hellish proportions, physically and emotionally. Explosive
shells used at long distances multiplied the stress experienced by enemy infantry because under shell fire neither flight nor aggression are possible. “Spherical case shot”—the kind of explosive shell filled with “scores of cast-iron bullets”—was particularly dreaded by
Henry Nichols Blake in the 11th Massachusetts because it “could not be avoided … and was very destructive.” Solid shot was, if anything, even more horrible, since the low muzzle velocities of nineteenth-century artillery guaranteed that attacking infantry at anything less than 1,000 yards could actually see solid shot flying at them from the muzzles of aimed guns. But artillery also had its limitations. Gunners who opened fire at enemy infantry too early in the process of the attack would exhaust themselves from sponging and loading, and the heat from overextended periods of fire could cause bronze or brass gun barrels to droop or to burst, especially in high temperatures.
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On May 26th, Robert E. Lee presided at a “grand review” of Dick Ewell’s corps, starting with Jubal Early’s division, then proceeding on the 29th to Robert Rodes’ division, which “marched three miles to the reviewing grounds, and stood for several hours before getting properly aligned.” Longstreet’s corps would follow on June 1st, with the corps artillery firing a thirteen-gun salute to Lee, bands playing at the head of each brigade, every company “bringing their pieces from ‘right shoulder’ to ‘carry’ … and from ‘carry’ to ‘present arms’ when stationary.” Each regiment passed by in column of companies, “music in front of each brigade, in front of the old hero, who saluted each flag as it passed by taking off his hat, and exhibiting his cotton scalp to the admiring throng around him.” (The cotton surprised a soldier in the 53rd North Carolina, who remembered how, one year before, when Lee took command, “his hair was black [and] now he is a gray-headed old man.”) Rumors of a new campaign were already flying up and down the review columns, and George Campbell Brown, Ewell’s stepson and staffer, noticed that “they are all for [invading] Maryland & Pennsylvania.” And perhaps, when they did, it would
all come to an end. A great battle would be fought, and through the smoke and fire, the way home would finally be open, and there would be peace, independence, and plenty—but especially peace.

Oddly, across the Rappahannock River, soldiers in the
Army of the Potomac had come to the same conclusion. A gunner in Battery B, 4th U.S. Artillery, decided that, “If we are whipped here, and I pull through it alive, I’m going to make tracks for home, and the provost-guard may be damned.” There had been enough fighting to no purpose. “I am inclined to think that this Campaign is going to end this show either one way or the other,” wrote another artilleryman in the
1st Massachusetts Light Artillery, “for if Lee gets the best of us now we are gone up and its no use talking and I think if we get the best of him he is gone the same way.”
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In the evening, the rebel brigade bands that had played so thumpingly through the reviews played again on the banks of the Rappahannock, with strains of
“Dixie” and “The Bonnie Blue Flag” echoing in the still twilight. On the far side of the river, the bandsmen of the Army of the Potomac stirred themselves, and they, too, began to play, this time offering
“Yankee Doodle” and “The Star-Spangled Banner.” And then, remembered
George Henry Mills of the 16th North Carolina, on some mysterious cue the bands on both riverbanks struck up “Home, Sweet Home.” And there “was on both sides a universal shout, reverberating from one to the other, back and forth, showing that there was one tie held in common by these two grand armies.”
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  CHAPTER FOUR