Part Four: The Third Day
Chapter 22: "Are you going to do your duty today?"
When the formidable Henry Knox first recommended to George Washington the organization of an artillery arm for the Continental Army in 1776, his notion involved the supply of just 120 pieces for the entire American service (including fortifications), most of which ended up being shipped to America by the French. The battle of Buena Vista was won by Zachary Taylor with the support of only two batteries of artillery, as opposed to the seventeen guns deployed by his Mexican opponent, Santa Anna. Not until the Civil War did American armies begin to make use of large-scale Napoleonic-style artillery forces on the battlefield - the 100 guns used by Napoleon at Wagram, the 94 deployed by Russians at Inkerman. Even then, at Malvern Hill, the most famous artillery-dominated battle in the war thus far, only 37 Union guns had faced down 16 Confederate ones. Nevertheless, the impact was beyond anything American soldiers had seen before. "The fire from the enemy's artillery was truly terrific," wrote one awed Confederate general. Two and a half months later, at Antietam, Stonewall Jackson held off the Federal attack on the West Woods with 40 guns, and Harvey Hill held back Federal attacks in the center with 50, earning Antietam the nickname "Artillery Hell."
But in all of this, there was nothing to match the stupendous concentration of artillery which James Walton and Porter Alexander had arranged for Longstreet on July 3rd. It would be, in fact, the single loudest sound ever heard on the North American continent. "The noise and din were so furious and overwhelming as well as continuous that one had to scream to his neighbor lying beside him to be heard at all," wrote one of Wilcox's Alabamians. "Men could be seen, especially among the artillery, bleeding at both ears from concussion." Ten miles to the southwest, at Jack's Mountain, a signal officer could see "hundreds of shells" bursting, and even as far away as Hagerstown, "we could distinctly hear the cannonading." In York, "the roar of artillery" was "heard distinctly... at times rapid and heavy." In Lancaster, "persons who arrived there from McCall's Ferry, Peach Bottom and Safe Harbor" on the Susquehanna "report a continuous cannonade audible at all these points... from the direction of Gettysburg." One hundred and twenty miles away, farmers in Cecil County, Maryland, and Chester County, near Philadelphia, "looked up to the sky in puzzlement for the source of thunder on a cloudless day."
The sheer noise of the first ripple of fire along the massed line of Confederate batteries, followed by the unremitting blasts of fire from two miles' worth of artillery, beggared description. Hidden in his family's cellar on Baltimore Street, "the vibrations could be felt" by young Albertus McCreary, "and the atmosphere was so full of smoke that we could taste the saltpeter." Behind the Confederate lines, teamsters parked "two or three miles away, declared that the sashes in windows of buildings where they were shook and chattered as if shaken by a violent wind." At the far end of the Confederate line, a Texan in Hood's division thought it was like being "an eagle in the very midst of a tremendous thunderstorm," and compared it to "Milton's account of the great battle between the combined forces of good and evil."Now storming fury rose,
And clamour such as heard in Heaven till now
Was never;...
...dire was the noise
Of conflict; over head the dismal hiss
Of fiery darts in flaming vollies flew,
And flying vaulted either host with fire.
[Paradise Lost, Book VI]
Or if it was not the noise, it was the incessant concussions and the damage that rippled outward from them. "It seemed an earthquake would not have caused the foundations to tremble as did the fire of those... pieces of artillery," marveled one Confederate. A soldier in the 1st Minnesota felt solid shot "strike the ground in front of us and... go on their way growling in an anger too terrible for conception." So unnerving was the shaking of the ground that "loose grass, leaves and twigs arose from six to eight inches above the ground." Soldiers anywhere near trees saw "the iron tempest" sheer off "branches large and small" and "strewed the ground with fragments, and placed us in great danger even from falling limbs." One Federal artillery officer described it as a "deluge of limbs falling from tree tops."
Abraham Bryan had planted shade trees around his whitewashed cottage on Cemetery Hill, and Bryan's neighbor, David Ziegler, had planted an orchard on the west side of Cemetery Hill, beside Bryan's property. But now the Confederate artillery tore "large limbs...from the trunks... and precipitated [them] down upon our heads... Small trees were cut down and large ones shattered almost to pieces." Or if not tree limbs, then pieces of fence or housing. A solid shot struck Bryan's barn and whirled a board through the air, hitting a captain in the 111th New York. A Federal artilleryman on Cemetery Ridge even caught glimpse of the wheat fields beyond the Emmitsburg Road moving in waves as the unending blasts of the artillery blew it "like gusts of wind."
The author and his masterful book came to my attention when watching C-SPAN3's American History TV live coverage from the 150th anniversary observances of the Battle of Gettysburg this past summer. If you have an appreciation for enthralling lectures in history, as any students of Uncle Phil Shriver must, I urge you to spend the better part of an enlightening hour watching Professor Guelzo's Gettysburg Address [sorry, I couldn't resist] here.
While You Were Out... for the past 50 years!
From 1963 through 1989 there were 26 seasons of Doctor Who. When the programme re-booted in 2005, the season terminology was changed to series. In this space, over the upcoming weeks, I will highlight each series chronologically with whichever few clips that may be found at YouTube in order to give you a small sense of what the programme is like.
Today, the Ninth Doctor from 2005.
Series 1, Episode 2 "The End of the World."
Series 1, Episode 8 "Father's Day."
Series 1, Episode 11 "Boom Town."
Series 1, Episode 13 "The Parting of the Ways."
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