BEYOND THE HIGH WATER MARK

The 48th Georgia at Gettysburg

They were three days which changed the world.  So much of the courses of our lives today were set in motion in the rolling hills of southern Pennsylvania exactly 150 years ago today. The place, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania - a cross roads town just above the Maryland border - would become the scene of the most horrific carnage of the Civil War or any other war on American soil.   Nearly 50,000 men, roughly thirty percent of the effectives on the field of battle. were killed, captured, wounded or missing in action in three dying days. 

Each corner of the battlefield has its own name.  Little Round Top, The Devil's Den, The Peach Orchard, The Wheatfield, and Cemetery Ridge are names which still live in infamy.  Every year, more than a million people  conduct pilgrimages to the scene of the climactic battle of the Civil War.   

Robert E. Lee, still celebrating his greatest victory at Chancellorsville, launched his first invasion of Pennsylvania.  Although Lee wanted to avoid contact with the Union army at Gettysburg, advance elements of both armies collided on July 1, 1863, sucking both combatants into the chasm of the war's most brutal and critical battle. 

On the second day of the battle, Robert E. Lee launched an all out attack on the Federal positions from Little Round Top to Cemetery Ridge.  Each division attacked in order from south to north.   Late in the afternoon, the order came for A.R. Wright's brigade to attack the Federal positions on Cemetery Ridge.  The brigade commander (LEFT) was a Louisville born attorney, whose brigade consisted of four Georgia Regiments, including the 48th Georgia.      

The 48th Georgia was composed of companies from Jefferson Co., "The Jefferson Volunteers"; Johnson Co., "The Battleground Guards; Twiggs Co., "The Slappey Guards"; and Emanuel Co., "The McLeod Volunteers."  Several Laurens County residents were members of the Battleground Guards.  The 48th Georgia were a part of R.H. Anderson's Division of A.P. Hill's Corps.

At 6:30, Anderson sent his three remaining brigades to attack the center of Cemetery Ridge.  Wright's men were deployed from left to right:  48th Georgia, 3rd Georgia, and 22nd Georgia.  The 2nd Georgia was deployed in front as skirmishers.  A few hundred yards away on the  Bliss farm, four New Jersey companies were lying in wait.  Wright, with his sixteen hundred Georgians, began the attack in a quick step march across a mile-wide open field toward a small dip in the terrain.  

The advance went smoothly until the men came within musket range of the Emmitsburg Road.   There they encountered a strong body of infantry behind a fence.  The skirmishers from the 2nd Ga. were preparing the way.   The battle line moved rapidly toward the ridge.  Wright later recalled "We were in a hot place, and looking to my left through the smoke, I perceived that neither Posey nor Mahone had advanced and that my left was totally unprotected."   Wright sent a courier to Gen. Anderson, who replied "both Posey and Mahone had been ordered in and that he would reiterate the order."  (Left - Capt. Alexander C. Flanders, McLeod Volunteers) 

As Wright's Brigade passed the Bliss' yard, only a portion of Posey's men were in support of his attack.  After a brief and furious fight at the Emmitsburg Road,  Wright's right wing passed the Cordori House with little resistance.  With half of their advance forces down and both of their flanks turned, the 82nd New York and 15th Massachusetts regiments fell back to a superior defensive position on the ridge. . 

"As we were in the charge I had an old U. S. Musket that would not shoot, but seeing a wild Yankee lying in a ditch in the pike road with a fine rifle I asked him it was any good, he said that it was, I told him to take off his belt and cartridge box and give it to me, which he did. I cut off my old belt, cartridge box and shoulder strap with my jack knife, put on the Yankee accouterments, took his rifle and went to the charge," wrote a member of the 48th Georgia.

The  attack was directed toward a battery between a small clump of trees and Ziegler's Grove on the ridge to north.  Wright's brigade, stretching four hundred  yards wide, would just fit in between the trees and the grove. The six Napoleon cannon of Brown's Rhode Island Battery pounded Wright's men with case shot and then canister.  Wright's men routed the Federals from their second line of defense, a stone wall which would later come to be known as the "High Water Mark of the Confederacy. 

The Rhode Island Battery moved further up the hill under pressure from Posey's 19th Mississippi.  The 48th attacked Gibbon's lines in hand to hand fighting.  With well directed fire,  Wright's men drove the cannoneers from their guns.  As the charging Confederates  captured the Napoleons of the Rhode Island Battery,  they were suddenly pelted with canister and small arms fire from a ridge, one hundred yards away.

 The Georgians jumped the stone wall and rushed to stand at the crest of the ridge.  With an irresistible charge, they swept the Federal infantry from the ridge into a gorge beyond.  The men were jubilant.  

"We were now complete masters of the field," Gen.  Wright, "having gained the key, as it were, of the enemy's whole line."

The point where they stood would be the objective of Lee's attack the following day.  Wright again requested support.  The help they prayed for never came.  Posey was stuck in the field to the north, west of the Emmitsburg Road.   For some unknown reason Mahone, sitting idle,  would not budge his brigade from Seminary Ridge - despite the repeated urging of Gen. Anderson.  

 The 69th Pennsylvania counterattacked on Wrights' front. Wright's men suffered three effective volleys upon their unprotected flanks. Wright reported that the enemy was closing in.  With no sign of support, the 48th retreated from the ridge.  The Federals launched a bayonet charge and severe artillery  attack.

The rapid retreat continued under artillery fire from Cemetery Ridge.  The 106th Pennsylvania, under Gen. Abner Doubleday, the fictional inventor of baseball, caught up with the 48th Georgia just before they reached the Emmitsburg Road.  Col. William Gibson and several other officers including Capt. Thomas Kent of Johnson County were captured.  After an hour or so it was all over.  Nearly one half of the brigade lay dead, were wounded, or were captured.  The 48th lost 70 men killed, including 8 officers, with 97 wounded and 57 missing in action. 

The 48th Georgia's advance was the closest Lee's men came to breaking the Federal center at Gettysburg.  Wright's men are often ignored in the history books for their accomplishments.  They went further than any Confederate brigade at Gettysburg.  A lone marker in front of the stone wall marks their historic feats of courage in their valiant charge.

On the third and final day of the climatic conflict, Lee, observing that Gen. Wright broke the Union center with a single brigade, ordered Gen. George Pickett of Virginia to attack the same point, confident that an entire division could easily break the Federal center and secure a sure victory.  That attack, slow to start from the beginning, utterly failed, costing the lives of many of Pickett's men.  Their advance to the Angle at the  Stone Wall, where Wrights men had stood alone, if only briefly the day before, will be forever known as the "High Tide Of The Confederacy." 

Although no Laurens Countians were killed during the fighting, John Swinson was wounded and died one week later, while Wiley K. Bracewell would die from his wounds 8 weeks later.  The wounded were: Robert A. Beall, John T. Bender, Jesse Bracewell, Lewis Coleman, Allen Cowart, William E. Duncan, James Bryant Gay, T.D. Hudson, James E. Jones, James P. Kinchen, Dennis McLendon, James M. Mincey, John B. Roberts, Rev. Peter S. Twitty, William C. Vaughn, and Wade Wright.  Taken as prisoners were David Alligood, William F. Brewer, William M. Cardell, Thomas J. Green and Samuel Miller.

At the end of the arduous third day as the moon hung high in the sky, General Robert E. Lee mournfully reflected, "Yes, it has been a sad, sad day to us." 

WALKING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF GLORY

At the appointed hour of three o’clock on the afternoon of July 3, the roaring reports of the cannon stopped reverberating throughout the hot, humid Pennsylvania countryside in Gettysburg. It was the signal to begin the advance to east.  Some fifteen thousand history buffs and curiosity seekers assembled behind the flags of the nine brigades of George Pickett, Johnston Pettigrew and Isaac Trimble.  We were there to commemorate the supposedly glorious, war changing charge led by General George Pickett on the climatic moment of the climatic battle of the American Civil War.

It was exactly one hundred and fifty years ago to the hour from the time when Lt. General James Longstreet, in dutiful obedience to the decisive orders of General Robert E. Lee, reluctantly nodded his head in approval of Pickett’s request to move his division forward from the Confederate position on Seminary Ridge in an effort to strike and break the center of the Union line, well positioned behind a stone wall between “The Angle” and “The Copse of Trees.”  (Left)

After a two-hour Confederate cannonade, the largest ever staged in North America and one which was heard as far away as Baltimore and Pittsburgh, Longstreet’s  12,000 men moved out.  After an hour long advance across open fields in the face of skirmish fire and a relentless barrage of Union artillery fire, a fragment of Gen. Lewis Armistead’s brigade managed to briefly break the Federal position at the angle.  (Left)

With nearly half of their men dead, wounded or captured, and all three of Pickett’s  brigadier generals, along with three others of Pettigrew and Trimble’s divisions,  dead or gravely wounded, the battered brigades reversed their course and limped back to the safety of the woods along the Seminary Ridge.  The failed attack, one which General Longstreet had feared would be futile and a waste of lives, would be forever known as “Pickett’s Charge” and “The High Water Mark of the Confederacy.”

For the culmination of the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, the National Park Service invited reenactors, living historians and the public to participate in a walk across the same mile wide field which led to the capture, wounding or deaths of 11 of 15 of Pickett’s regimental commanders a total loss of more than 6,000 men in a single hour.

Visitors had their choice of following in the paths of Brockenbrough, Davis, Lane, Marshall, Fry, Lowrance, made of up of units from nearly all of the southern states, supported by Thomas’s Georgia Brigade including two companies from Laurens County on the left.  Pickett’s three brigades of Virginia infantrymen were positioned on the right with Garnett in the lead on the left, Kemper on the right and Armistead in the rear.

The largest crowd gathered behind the flag of the  brigade of Armistead, whose brigade broke the Union center and whose leader, General Lewis “Lo” Armistead, is featured prominently in Ted Turner’s movie, “Gettysburg.”

My wife Kathy and I took our spot on the far right end of the Confederate formation.  We were there to walk in the footsteps of Kathy’s great-grandfather, William Foushee Harrison, a slight in stature, long bearded, 22-year-old 2nd Lieutenant of  Co. A. 7th Virginia Infantry, of James L. Kemper’s brigade.

(Lt. William F. Harrison, Co. A, Richardson Guards, 7th Virginia Infantry, Kemper's Brigade, Pickett's Division.

For our point of departure, we were moved a few thousand yards north from the original position toward the center to shorten our strides. We could not see our objective on the ridge a mile in front of us, nor could the swiftly swelling crowd on Cemetery Ridge see us.  Pickett chose this position around the Spangler farm to take advantage of the  swales to conceal his position from Union lookouts.  Like Pickett’s men, we baked in the sweltering sun for nearly two hours before moving out.

While Park Ranger and author, Troy Harman, was  giving us our final instructions and interesting aspects of what would have happened along our path 150 years ago, a bellowing voice rang out.  A  tiny man asked if anyone remembered the scene in the movie when the 7th Virginia’s  commander, Waller Tazwell Patton ( great-uncle of General George S. Patton) was wounded.  He pointed to the scene with the actor portraying Col. Patton, he movie’s producer, Ted Turner,  rallied his men and then grasped his left rib and fell mortally wounded  on the field.  In fact, the old man exclaimed loudly, “part of his jaw was ripped away.”

In an instant, astonished park rangers and professional and amateur historians recognized the booming voice.  Ed Bearss, a Marine veteran of World War II and the country’s consummate dean of Civil War and World War II guides and historians, was among our ranks!  As he spoke to our brigade, whispers rang out, “Who’s he?” “He’s famous!”

We even had our own mascot in formation.  An white-headed, brindled English Bulldog, sporting a 3"x5" battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, was attempting to stay cool in the shade of adoring, camera clicking participants.

After our chaplain recited the Lord’s Prayer, Ranger Harman led us  followed by a chorus of Dixie.

“Forward march,” came the command!

Two wavy ranks began to climb the hill to the fence line where General E.P. Alexander’s artillery was once stationed to pound the Union positions on the ridge to the northeast.   Our leaders directed us to go through a gap in the rail fence and reform for the second leg of our march to the left of Rogers house on the Emmittsburg Road, though along the line some couldn’t resist the urge to climb over the rails.

As the formation began to disintegrate into a jumbled mass, I looked a few steps to my right to find Bearss walking beside me.  Asking for answers to questions to be delayed  until the end, Bearss wanted to personally embrace the moment.  As the prolific author Bearss wavered in his pace, I felt I should do the military thing and guard my superior’s unprotected left, just in case he fell.

For a few moments, I looked left down the entire line to see the breath taking sight of thousands and thousands of people walking, running and trudging forward.  A wave of a rainbow colored horde spotted with gray clothed soldiers and waving battle flags was rolling, rolling  across the plain and steadily up the hill.  

As we approached the road and the second fence row, I noticed Bearss had moved well ahead of me, confirming the statement in his Wikipedia article that he frequently outwalks the much younger members of his tours.  I certainly could stop worrying about him  and concentrate on my own ability to make it to the objective.

After crossing the main road and moving to the right of the Cordori House, the ground became even more treacherous.  A single mowed lane led in the direction of our march.   In accordance with our commander’s original orders to march in ranks and not columns, I urged Kathy to move to the right. I shouted “Come over here to the right where your ancestor would have marched” in the face of frequently fatal flanking fire of the muskets of 59th New York, 20th Massachusetts and the 13th Vermont, which inflicted heavy casualties on Kemper’s men, including Kemper himself, who fell severely wounded and was eventually captured and exchanged.  Kemper, who was a family friend and neighbor  of Lt. Harrison, would be the only one of Pickett’s brigadiers to survive the attack.

After enduring ankle wrenching pot holes, sticky thistles, biting bugs and concealed rocks ravaging her partially covered feet and lower legs, that’s when Kathy broke the ranks and joined the files on the stable and safer path. I was left alone to defend the entire right flank of Pickett’s division.  Soon, I too succumbed to the obstacles in my course along the undulating ground and rejoined her in the column as we moved the last 100 yards.

Little did I know that we were walking over the molecular remains of hundreds of Confederate soldiers who,  for the most part, were buried where they fell that horrific day.

As the formation stopped at the wall, once again I looked left to observe a sea of humanity, converging  at the angle at the stone wall.  The Park Service estimated that approximately 40,000 people had assembled on the same spot where the battle culminated and set forth the course toward the end of the war, accelerated by the surrender of the Southern Army at Vicksburg a day later on July 4.

We were instructed to wait at the wall and listen for the wailing call of a bugle.  One by one, from north to south,  professional and amateur buglers played “Taps” in echo style moving from our left to our right.

       When the last somber middle c faded into the hot July afternoon, I looked over to a big rock in a gap in at the stone wall.  There I saw, Ed Bearss, sitting in the shade of his escort’s rainbow colored umbrella, completely exhausted.  I was still standing and walking, hot and sweating, but not out quite all out of breath.  I didn’t revel in my achievement, after all, he is 90 years old.

For George Pickett and nearly every man in his division, the attack on the Union center was all for the glory of their beloved Virginia.   As I surveyed the tens of thousands of persons congregating, on that day and the third day of July 150 years ago,  around the stone wall and think of half of them being dead or wounded, I looked back to the total tragedy of it all.

Perhaps General Lee said it best when he saw a similar somber sight which  his men inflicted on nearly 8,000 Union soldiers at the base of Marye’s Heights in Fredericksburg when he lamented, “It is well that war is so terrible that we may grow too fond of it.”

It was at this point, late on the afternoon of July 2, 1863, when the Georgia Brigade under the command of General Ambrose Ransom Wright, including many local men, broke the Union center at the Copse of Trees.  This temporary successful accomplishment led Gen. Robert E. Lee to believe that if Wright's Brigade could break the center, surely Pickett's fresh Division could.

WILEY K. BRACEWELL, THE FINAL RETURN HOME

"Never in the history of our city has a more quite, melancholy, and sadly, appreciated occasion been before our people and never have they seemed to feel more seriously," wrote a Savannah Morning News writer. 

CHICKAMAUGA, THE RIVER OF DEATH

       

         It is often said, although with questionable authenticity,  that the Cherokee called the creek which runs through Walker County in Northwest Georgia, “Chickamauga” or “The River of Death.”  That moniker seems all too intuitive and only fitting  for during this week a century and a half ago, the Union Army of the Cumberland and the Confederate Army of Tennessee pommeled, battered and slaughtered each other in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountain Range.  

Nearly everyone has heard of the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863.  In that horrific and climactic three-day battle, casualties were estimated from 46,000 to 51,000 or nearly 17,000 per day.  Many people don’t realize it, but the second bloodiest battle of  the Civil War took place right here in Georgia.

In two days, September 19 and September 20, 1863, the two armies counted roughly 35,000 casualties.  Nearly four thousand (1,657 USA, 2,312 C.S.A.) men would die on the battlefield or in nearby field hospitals.  More than 24,000 (9,756 USA, 14,674 C.S.A.) were wounded during the two days of fighting.  Another six thousand or more men were listed as captured or missing with the Union Army accounting for three quarters of that amount.

For the most part,  Laurens Countians served in the Army of Northern Virginia and another configuration of the Army of the Tennessee.  Slightly more than a half dozen  Laurens Countians took part in the second most deadly battle of the Civil War.  

The highest ranking Laurens Countian to take part in the battle was Col. William H. Wylly.  Wylly, then a captain and later a Dublin lawyer, was in command of Company A of the 25th Georgia Infantry.  Attached to Wilson’s Brigade of Wm. H.T. Walker’s Division, the 25th, which had seen only coastal duty until that time, was engaged in the fighting at the northern end of the battlefield.  Capt. Wylly made it through the battle unscathed.  George M. Prescott, a member of the Brown Light Infantry of Screven County, but later a long term resident of Laurens County, also made it through the fighting virtually free of injuries. 

The majority of the local men who saw action at Chickamauga were members of the 20th Georgia Volunteer Infantry.  The 20th Regiment, under the command of Gen. Benning’s Brigade, saw little fighting as they were used in reserve during the vicious crisscrossing combat along the LaFayette Road.  Young Woodard Swinson, one of the county’s first men to volunteer for Confederate service, joined the Muscogee Mounted Guards on May 23, 1861.  Swinson survived the fighting, only to be killed at Deep Bottom, Virginia eleven months later.

George W. Belcher, who would later become Police Chief of Dublin, joined the Jefferson County Guards in 1861.  Sgt. Belcher was wounded in the Seven Days Battles and at the Second Battle of Manassas in 1862.  Belcher survived the hellish fighting at the Devil’s Den at Gettysburg as a member of Gen. John B. Hood’s Division under corps command of Gen. James Longstreet.  Longstreet’s Corps, which had suffered brutal casualties at Gettysburg, had only eleven weeks of rest before going into the cataclysmic combat at Chickamauga.

Sgt. Belcher, of Company C,  was severely wounded in the fighting, probably between the Brock House and the Log School east of Lafayette Road.  He recovered and returned to his company which surrendered with General Lee at Appomattox.   Chief Belcher died in 1911 and is buried in Northview Cemetery.  

James McLeod, who briefly lived in Laurens County at the turn of the 20th Century, was a member of Company B from Telfair County.  McLeod survived most to the war unscathed until he lost the sight in one eye at Appomattox Court House, a day before the surrender.

Although not found among the official records, Charles W. Holmes and Richard A. Odom  were shown among county records as members of the Telfair Volunteers, Company B.  

Walter T. Dawson, a private in Gist’s Brigade, Walker’s Division, was wounded in an eye and lost his sight in the heavy fighting along the northern end of the fighting. 

James F. Hawkins, of the Hancock County Guards, was a member of Benning’s Brigade.  Pvt. Hawkins, who moved from Washington County to Laurens County, in 1900, was wounded in the left shoulder at Cold Harbor in June 1864.   

Maj. Gen. William Rosecrans launched an offensive from Chattanooga down into the northwest corner of Georgia against Gen. Braxton Bragg’s forces to drive Bragg’s army out of that strategic Tennessee fortress. Bragg wasn’t going to give up so easily and moved north to meet Rosecrans.  

After skirmishes between infantry and cavalry on September 18, the real killing began the next day.  Longstreet’s Corps attacked and drove a large part of the Union Army off the battlefield.  The Federal Army held onto their tentative defensive position, while Confederate units attacked Chattanooga from its neighboring heights on Lookout Mountain.

 

The brutal fighting started just after dawn on the 19th.  Bragg’s forces made repeated charges against the Union right with some successes.  Determined Union defenders held strong.  Just before midnight,  Longstreet’s two divisions, with six fresh brigades, arrived on the scene, switching the advantage of the attack to Bragg.  

With Longstreet’s Corps on the left and Polk’s corps on the right, Bragg launched a decisive blow to the entrenched Federals.  Rosecrans’ mistaken order to fill a gap in the Federal line, resulted in a move which in fact created a fatal gap into which Gen. Hood poured eight brigades, forcing a total collapse of the Union right at the southern end of the field.

Union Gen. George Thomas, thereafter known as the “Rock of Chickamauga,” gathered his remaining troops and stood solid against the capture of his entire force.   Thomas’ men held their ground against repeated assaults, withdrawing only under the cover of darkness. Neither side had the stomach to fight again on the following day.

The battle resulted in somewhat of a tactical draw.  The Southern army remained in control of the heights above Chattanooga. The defeated Federals escaped back to the safety of their former lines, which they held for the rest of the war.  Had Bragg decided to pursue the retreating Federals the following day, the casualty count could have surpassed the horrific toll at Gettysburg.

The Battle of Chickamauga was a test for things to come.  In the early spring which followed, Gen. William T. Sherman, came down from the hills of North Georgia, attacking and destroying all targets of military value along his way to the rail center of Atlanta.  In his “March to The Sea,” that summer and fall, Sherman put the final nail in the Confederacy’s hopes to retain control of the Southern States and making the end of the war a virtual certainty.

ALL PHOTOS BY SCOTT B. THOMPSON, SR., OCTOBER 2012