LM#33--Gettysburg's 160th anniversary, part 1

Listen, those of the drums of liberty. 160 years ago today, those drums sounded in south central Pennsylvania, in a sleepy little town named Gettysburg. Let's talk about it on this special Liberty Minute.

Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now here's your host, david Kaiser.

Anyone who took the trouble on one of the few fair days in late June of the year 1863 to climb the winding forest trail to the old Indian lookout on South Mountain would have enjoyed a sweet reward for his trouble. Looking to the east and north across central Maryland and south central Pennsylvania, a watcher at the lookout stood high above a plain full of pleats and tucks, rolling effortlessly eastward to the Sesquihanna River. Only a last chain of hills in the blue distance hid the vista that led southeast down to Washington or northeast to Harrisburg. Late across this expanse were spines of forest white and red oak, black walnut, sycamore, chestnut, hickory, alder, elm whose tree crowns would have shimmered in the humid golden sunlight, between the fingers of forest-leighed, green and gold patches of grassy farmland irregularly dotted with small white barns and houses. If the watcher shifted and looked to the west, the slopes of the South Mountain fell away into the lengthening shadows of the Cumberland Valley before pitching sharply upward again to the ranges of the Tuscarora and Blue Mountain and the vast pine covered spines of the Appalachians now turning cobalt in the late afternoon haze. South Mountain is the first outlier of the Appalachians and it runs on an axis that tilts northeast from the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, another outlier chain of the Appalachians to the west bank of the Cisquahan near Harrisburg. On the western side of South Mountain the fertile Shenandoah and Cumberland valleys could take a traveler without too much difficulty from Lexington, virginia, down to the Potomac and across into the Cumberland Valley to Carlisle or Harrisburg some 220 miles. But on South Mountain's eastern face the ground drops sharply to the rich green farmlands of the plain. This plain itself subsides into a series of low lying ridges that parallel South Mountain itself, as though they were undulations from the mountains upthrust until one by one, they gradually expend their height and their force. 60 miles away of the sesquihanna, the roadways which cut across the plain conform themselves to the undulations and ran mostly north to south. Only two major east-west roads bored their way horizontally through South Mountain, one stretching from Philadelphia through Lancaster in York to the cash-down gap and the other reaching up from Washington across Maryland to Turner's and Fox's gaps and dense to Harper's Ferry. From the vantage point of the watch on South Mountain, gettysburg lay at the north edge of the horizon, although a good brass naval telescope could bring it pretty easily into view. But on that late June afternoon the watchers attention would be captured not by James Gettys distant town, or the newly minted or the I'm sorry, newly cut mounds of grass and hay, or by the fields of full grown wheat in the knee-high cordon stocks spread out like yellow aprons on the plain below. Instead, if the watcher looked to the west into the oncoming twilight, the darkening shadows over the Cumberland Gap, cumberland Valley quickly became pinpricked with a carpet of firelights. Or if the watcher looked east, what caught the eye was an interminably long snake of traffic White canvas-topped wagons, horses, men on foot, ambulances, more and more men on foot with sun glinting sharply off the rifle barrels perched on their shoulders, big-wield cannon flags some huge in square, some small and swallow-tailed the stars and stripes, state flags, headquarters flags all stomping and starting and stopping again and then sluggishly moving again, and all of it headed north towards Gettysburg. The watcher was beholding something never seen before from this spot and never seen again Two great armies bound for the greatest and most violent collision the North American continent had ever seen. And those were the opening words of the prologue by Alan Gelso, titled Gettysburg the last invasion, written in 2013. Gelso is a professor and director of civil war era studies at Gettysburg College and he has written an excellent book which is organized and broken into four large parts. Number one, the march up. Number two, day one. Number three, day two. And number four, day three. Today is the 160th anniversary of that fateful battle at Gettysburg, july 1st 1863. The first skirmishes and true shots were taken in the battle, and so for the next three days we're going to offer you a glimpse into that history, into the battlefield that I have now visited over four times in my life. And before we go any further, i want to dedicate this series of episodes to a friend of the show and a listener, ed Gallagher, who first convinced me and brought me to the battlefield of Gettysburg and showed me the ropes at the National Battlefield Center. It helped me and a friend to buy one of the National Battlefield guides to learn in depth more all about this most pivotal of battles in our nation's history. Ed gave me the inspiration to keep revisiting over and over Gettysburg but also to check out the other Civil War battlefields. So, with friends and by myself, i have visited over seven different battlefields, from Gettysburg to Antietam, to Fredericksburg, to Chancellorsville, to Shiloh, to Perryville, to look out mountain. Now Ed just lost his father this past week. So we offer our deepest prayers for his father's soul, for Ed and his family, and to the direct message Ed, we are praying for you and your family. Okay, so on July 1st 1863, as we read in this first quote from Gettysburg, the last invasion by Alan Gelso, the army of northern Virginia, the south, led by Robert E Lee, is on the march and the army of the Potomac, the north, led by George, general George Mead, who ironically became the commanding general just three days before this battle. Lincoln made that switch from General Joseph Hooker to General Mead. They are protecting the nation's capital, and so, with that general introduction, let's pick up the action around noon on day one. Going back to the book, mead's first inclination was to treat Reynolds's move as a covering action for the Pipe Creek withdrawal, and he sent Sedgwick and Slokum a note informing them that Reynolds would probably hold the enemy in check and fall slowly back. In that case, the line indicated in the circular of today will be occupied tonight. But then came word from Buford with the same dire news of a collision at Gettysburg, followed by yet another note from Buford, via his chief, alford Pleasanton, announced that General Reynolds was killed this morning and that there seems to be no directing person in charge. We need help now, pleaded Buford. This was not the battle that Meade wanted, nor was it in the place that he wanted. But the first corps was in serious trouble, and perhaps the eleventh corps as well. The unpredictable Sickles sent another dispatch, energetically informing Meade that Otis Howard had called on the third corps to quote support him, and Sickles was now on the road to Gettysburg. So for all Meade knew, almost half of his army was heading into some unknown mall sixteen miles to the north Before John Reynolds was dead, and that made the Pipe Creek plan look more like a run for cover. On the other hand, the information from Gettysburg was so fragmentary that Meade could not be sure what he would be ordering the rest of the army into. If they went there, would the first corps still be holding its ground? If they were overrun and scattered by the time Meade could get troops there, would each of his corps be smashed in similar fashion as they arrived? So he improvised. Meade was getting this information on his way to Gettysburg Was roughly noon to 1 pm. Let's go back to the book. It was not clear to Hancock at that moment whether Meade intended him to take charge of a fight or a range for a retreat, quote extricating from peril the two corps at this front. But even as Hancock was on his way, dispatches and wigwags from the signallers continued to come into Tannitown and Meade's mind slowly began revolving toward a decision to redirect the army toward Gettysburg. By 3 o'clock the second corps was on the road to Gettysburg. The Pipe Creek Circular was cancelled and at 4.30 pm began issuing orders to Sykes, slocum and Sedgwick to turn their corps around and move up to Gettysburg. Once The fight was coming to Gettysburg First, starting west and north of the town itself, it slowly moved and fits and starts through the town. The Confederates were without their cavalry, led by Jeb Stuart. He had been missing for over seven days. At this point The cavalry is the eyes and ears of a 19th century army and General Robert E Lee didn't know what his forces were up against. Ahead in that column, just west and north of Gettysburg, general Lee was physically still issuing orders from the other side of South Mountain, which we learned about in the beginning of this podcast. Let's go back to the book. Three of O'Neill's five Alabama regiments bolted forward prematurely and collided on the Mumbasburg Road with Union infantry. That wasn't supposed to have been there. These were the six regiments of Henry Baxter's brigade two New York, three Pennsylvania and one Massachusetts That Wadsworth had planted at the last minute on La Cinder Cutler's unprotected right flank. Henry Baxter was a blunt, rumbled Beard Miller from Hillsdale County and South Central Michigan who seemed to rise conveniently in the rifle sights of every confederate he encountered, sustaining a bad wound to the midsection on the peninsula, a wound to the leg at Antietam and another to the shoulder at Fredericksburg. From each he bounced back, his feistiness undiminished, and he was steadily promoted until reaching Brigadier General by March of 1863. As a convinced abolitionist, he was happily parked in John Cleveland Robinson's division of First Corps on the road to Gettysburg. All six of the regiments in Baxter's brigade had seen action before, but the brigade itself had only been cobbled together in late May, and Gettysburg would be their first fight together. Now General Robert E Lee is quoting is quoted as saying I do not wish to bring on a general engagement today. Long street is not up Without all of General Lee's inventory within close reach. General Lee didn't want to risk, run the risk of hammering into an unidentified Union Army Corps only to discover that it was connected to the rest of the Army of Potomac. The battle would rage with engagements until later that day, day one, july 1st 1863. The Union armies that were fighting retreated through the town to settle on cemetery Hill just south of the town. The Confederates coming down through the town from the north and from the West began to fan out to shadow the Union lines as it took stage on cemetery Hill. Here is some of the action as written by Gilzo The 18 guns of the first corps assembled near the seminary gave the retreating Federals a brief respite. 11 of the guns James Cooper's battery, greenleaf Stevens, fifth main and a two gun section of the first New York had been bunched tightly on the south side of the seminary building with barely five yards instead of the regulation 14 between their hubs. This line of artillery opened fire as if every lanyard was pulled by the same hand as seminary Ridge blazed with a solid sheet of flame. The artillery stopped pedigrees on rushing brigade short of the little rough rail entrenchment around the seminary building and bought the battered federal survivors one last breathing spell to establish a line curved slightly back on either side of the seminary building, with the rail entrenchment on the West side forming a slight bulge at the center. Later on we pick up the action. As the pursuing rebel infantry pressed into the streets, fear sparkled viciously through the tangled messes, masses of federal soldiers. Men began breaking down. Allies like that ran, like the one used by the 82nd Illinois, into a cul-de-sac and together the men had to have a heavy, tight board fence knocked down to make it possible to proceed. An officer in the 80th New York saw an opening like an alley leading through to the next street parallel to the one I was on, to regain the road to the right which I should have taken in the first place. The streets now became a battleground and the crowds of soldiers overflowed into yards and alleys, struggling to escape capture. Men from the 150th Pennsylvania were leaping fences, crossing gardens and passing through shops and dwellings in order to reach streets to which the pursuing forces had not yet penetrated. Henry Morro, the colonel of the 24th Michigan, staggered into Gettysburg, bleeding from a wound to the head. He was taken into Merriam Mallorca McAllister's home, a lady of Gettysburg, who banished his womb, but he refused her offer to hide him and give him a civilian coat and was gobbled up by pursuing Confederates as soon as he ventured out into the streets again. The adventurous Prussian Otto von Frisch was stopped by an excited fellow who grabbed the bridle of Frisch's horse. The rebel failed to see the heavy Saxon cavalry saber Frisch carried. You be damned. Frisch snarled and cut off his hand. Frisch spurred his horse down the street but lost himself in a maze of alleys, surrounded by high fence rails, with the rebels closing in from behind. He put the horse to fence with an enormous effort and jumped it clear and made off towards Cemetery Hill. One final nugget about the first day. Otis Hauer had made many mistakes, as anyone else that day, but he did two things that were incontestably right. He fixed on Cemetery Hill as the point to hold from the first moment He made it to Gettysburg and he made the wrecked debris of two infantry corps who should have been reduced to nervousness. Stop and dig in. There was no hurry, no confusion in his mind, wrote one admiring veteran of the 25th Ohio, and no more chancellors will either. It was Otis Howard's finest hour and he was taking the first steps on the path that would make him and William Tecumseh Sherman's estimate a core commander of the utmost skill, nicety and precision. By the end of the war. I've seen many men in action, wrote a journalist afterward, but never so unperturbed, cool as this general of the 11th Corps. And so that ends the first days fighting at Gettysburg. And let me share with you. Well, let me share with you two recommendations in fact. First, i highly recommend you physically make the trip to Gettysburg. It's worthwhile for you to see it as an American and to appreciate what happened there, to see the ground and understand the battle. So be sure to do that sometime in your lifetime. And number two, to be sure to check out some of these great new YouTubers. First, i would highly highly recommend and I'll put these links in the show notes the American Battlefield Trust. These guys have been putting out some great videos for the last three to four to five years. They do incredible walking tours on their videos and these videos are extremely professionally produced. They have very knowledgeable guides, historians. They grab local folks. It's just a very well done channel. I've learned a great deal from them in their videos. Second, the Armchair Historian offers a great animation around the Battle of Gettysburg And some people, in fact many people, just love the maps along with the animation in real time as things moved, to understand the full complexities of the battle on how it unfolded. That's hard to get when you're at onsite, so be sure to check that out. And then, third, the Gettysburg Images channel is new, but it offers some great reenactment videos and they're well worth watching. These reenactment soldiers should be really commended because they spend a lot of time and research on perfecting their craft in these reenactments. Just incredible stuff on a very little watched channel. So I would encourage you to go check that out as well. But for now, day one in 1863, july 1st, is coming to a close And, to summarize, jeb Stewart's Confederate cavalry is nowhere to be found, general Robert E Lee is fighting blind and the Union infantry is descending on Gettysburg with tons of intelligence about the enemy's troop movements. So, 160 years ago today, day one of one of the most pivotal battles ever fought on American soil has started, and tomorrow will be a vital day. Please come back and listen for part two tomorrow.

Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this theory to action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at teammojoacademycom, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast, as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your mojo on.