Civil War Articles by Julian Williams49th Marches Toward Enchanted Entrapment: Gettysburg
This article is compiled by Julian Williams.
The boys and men, like John Henry Bowen and Lucius Williams, from Jacksonville, Georgia, and the other sections of Telfair County had never been so far from home.
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was, and is, a place of beauty. Away from previous storms of civil war - tucked along the bottom of the state - was the little village of unruffled repose and green fields and small ridges and granite outcroppings and peach orchards and cherry trees. Like an enchanted place, the little kingdom of its own was a crossroads to the places of the world but at the same time, maintained a serene and almost passive obscurity. We are almost drawn to the pleasant and alluring sound of the idyllic names of its Peach Orchard, Plum Run, Big Round Top, Little Round Top, and Seminary Ridge - where those of academic bent obtained knowledge, and hopefully, more than that. But the tiny place came to have other names also. Ominous, foreboding and fearful names that begat a rendering of sacrifice beyond all imagination. Those names echo like dirges in our historical memories - Cemetery Ridge, Devil's Den, the Slaughter Pen, Bloody Angle, and the Valley of Death.
Never in this land has there converged such a gathering of men with such determination and respective singleness of purpose as witnessed that place on July 1-3, 1863.
But, the men of North and South did not approach what was to become a sacred place with much reverence at all. Few, if any, probably recalled Luke Campbell's dramatic words on the steps of the Jacksonville, Georgia, county courthouse that day as he accepted his unit's flag from the ladies of the county - "Yes, fair donor, we will take this banner and we will bear it where the battle is hottest, the sword gleams brightest, and the blood flows freest; and if it be our fate to die in war, be assured we will fall where liberty's sacrifice is most copious. And if it should be our happy lot to return to our homes and friends, we will restore this banner, 'unsullied, untorn, untouched, save by liberty's hand'." (Mann's History of Telfair County). Not that these thoughts were not important. And notwithstanding the fact that Luke himself was gone - lost early in the war near his old alma mater of William and Mary. God rest his soul. His destiny had been sealed. For the men at Gettysburg - theirs lay ahead. They didn't remember Luke's words but they would feel them. But, there were just more practical things to attend to. To the war-weary soldiers of the South the stomach was wanting , the foot was hurting and the aching head wanted a cool place to rest - out of the rays of a hot July sun and away from the smell of sweating horses and cannon-drawing mules stirring up a stifling dust. There was no time for social etiquette. And the natives of Pennsylvania took note:
"And then the Rebs starting appearing. They were mostly dressed in gray, some in butternut and others in various colors. The warning went out that the Rebel cavalry was coming and everyone should take cover. The startling thing for the eyewitnesses of Gettsyburg were the ragtag look of the Reb army and the fact that many, even leaders, had no shoes, but rags wrapped around their feet." No wonder General Heth was riding into Gettysburg trying to find shoes for the feet of his soldiers. Battle position would have to wait.
Lt. T. J. Smith of Company B, 49th Georgia, gives us his recollections of the journey toward the North --"We found the people of Maryland very friendly disposed towards us, and a large portion of them professed to be secessionists, though a great many of them looked very sour at us. Private property was respected here, and there seemed to be but little disposition in our Army to plunder and destroy. Our troops seemed to look upon Maryland as friends rather than enemies. But when we entered Pennsylvania it appeared as though every man was bent upon retaliating in full for the many wrongs we have received at the hands of the Yankees. We were then in the enemy's country and no respect was shown to private property whatever. It was mortifying to see the destruction and devastation our Army carried with it. The whole country was in the highest state of cultivation, and the wheat was just ready to harvest. But how changed was the condition when our Army passed. Fencing was burned, fields laid waste; hogs and sheep shot down and butchered whenever found convenient; horses and cattle drove off; houses broken into and robbed. In fact, every species of depredation that you could think of was committed. But I must not forget to mention that all of this was against Gen. Lee's orders, but the officers generally favored it, and there was little restraint placed over the men." (Mann's History of Telfair County). As terrible as this account sounds we must realize that one of the main reasons General Lee went into Pennsylvania was to procure food for his starving army. And, retribution also played a part because the enemy had done the very same type of thing at Fredericksburg. War is ugly and General W.T. "Burning" Sherman had no patent or monopoly on its meanness.
And , according to Nancy Roberts in her writings, the Union soldiers seemed to exhibit the same type of behavior on the way to Gettysburg - "Infantrymen helped themselves to the large sweet cherries beside the road as they passed through the lush green Maryland farm country with knee-high corn and ripening grain. Leaving the sometimes hostile state of Maryland and crossing into Pennsylvania, the drum corps struck up "Yankee Doodle," but the inhabitants behind their roadside stands selling bread, milk, cakes, and pies did not respond to this patriotic gesture. Seeing this, many of the hungry men, outraged at the prices, began to help themselves." The angry vendors even called their fellow countrymen-soldiers "thieving rebels" as it was the worst insult they could think of from their point of view. But the Union soldiers just ignored them (and kept taking and eating without paying). War has a way of encouraging strange economics.
And war also has a way of making large egos. The victories of the past had instilled in the military leaders of the South a feeling of invincibility which would haunt them at Gettysburg. Let us again be reminded by Lt. T.J. Smith, "For be it remembered that up to Gettysburg battle, which was two months after Stonewall Jackson was killed, Lee's army had the Federal Army on the run all the time, with the exception of Sharpsburg (Antietam), Md., which was a drawn battle. But alas these brave men did not know that they had a "Little Round Top," a "Big Round Top," "Devil's Den," the "Peach Orchard" and "Bloody Angle" ahead of them, where human valor could not avail." (Mann's History of Telfair County).
But it was not only a matter of feeling invincible. Lee had some of the gambler in him, as Longstreet did, even though not evidenced by his lieutenant's cards of poker. He knew he had only two choices: go into enemy territory (while he still had an army), project a victory, and lay the cards of negotiated peace on Lincoln's desk in Washington, or, remain in a resource-barren South and let the North slowly but surely place into effect the once rejected, but now resurfacing Anaconda Plan of the old but crafty General Winfield Scott - strangling the South by dividing its land and forces, destroying its transportation and communication channels and slowly but surely diminishing the number of soldiers in the forces of the South.
With this in mind, General Lee knew he really had but one choice - so he turned Traveller's head northward and in due time arrived, for better or for worse, on the battlefield of Gettysburg.
