By the third day of July 1863, the Second Corps of the Army of the Potomac was a remnant of itself. The previous day’s fighting at Gettysburg had cost it so dearly that every man fit for duty was needed merely to hold the ground already won. The line stretched thin along Cemetery Ridge, a shallow arc of dirt, stone, and exhausted flesh, and the men knew what was coming. They had seen the Confederate artillery massing across the valley.
They had watched the enemy’s preparations through the long morning. And when the guns fell silent, they would come. The morning had been relatively quiet on the Union center. There was sporadic skirmishing, and the Second Corps’ artillery traded shots with Confederate batteries, but nothing suggested the scale of what was about to unfold.
On the right, along Culp’s Hill, the fighting was heavy and persistent, but the center waited. From eleven in the morning until one in the afternoon, an eerie calm settled over the field. Then, at around one o’clock, as if on a signal, the Confederate artillery opened fire. It was the most intense bombardment Winfield Scott Hancock had ever witnessed.
The enemy guns, positioned roughly fourteen hundred yards from the Union line, formed a vast crescent stretching from the town of Gettysburg to a point facing Round Top. Estimates placed their number between 115 and 150 pieces. The sky filled with shells. Rarely was there a moment when several were not bursting simultaneously.
The ground shuddered under the concussions, and the air itself seemed to scream. There was little shelter to be found in the uneven terrain. The open ground behind the Union lines was soon swept clean of anything not fixed in place. The infantry held their ground with remarkable resolve.
They crouched behind their hastily built defenses, thin walls of stone and earth, and took what cover the land offered. Hardly a straggler was visible. All endured the bombardment’s end, understanding what it portended. The Second Corps’ own artillery answered the enemy as bravely as it could, though it was poorly supplied with shot.
One battery, Brown’s Battery of the First Rhode Island, had been severely depleted on the second day and had exhausted its canister; it withdrew before the cannonade ended, unfit for further duty. The other batteries persisted until only canister shot remained, then fell silent, saving it for what was to come. For one hour and forty-five minutes the storm raged. Then the enemy’s fire slackened, and instantly their infantry was observed emerging from the woods beyond the Emmitsburg Road, readying to charge.
A dense skirmish line moved forward, trailed by two extended battle lines, bolstered at intervals by compact infantry columns. Their formations displayed a steadiness and exactness that compelled admiration even from those who were about to face them. The enemy’s left stretched just beyond the right flank of General Alexander Hays’s division, their right approximately opposite General Gibbons’s left. Their battlefront spanned no more than two of the Second Corps’ diminished and under-strength divisions.
The entire assault force was reckoned at over fifteen thousand men. The Union commanders made no effort to impede the enemy’s progress until their foremost line drew to within about seven hundred yards. Then a weak artillery fire opened against it, but the Confederates suffered no significant loss and never paused in their resolute approach. They pushed onward into musket range without immediately drawing Union fire, for the men of the Second Corps were determined to hold their volley until it could prove lethal.
Two regiments from Stannard’s Vermont Brigade, attached from the First Corps, were stationed in a small copse ahead of and at a sharp angle to the main line. They fired obliquely into the enemy column’s right flank, causing those troops to fold slightly toward their left. But the Confederates continued advancing steadfastly, refusing to halt and return fire. The Union rifled artillery, having expended all its canister, was now pulled back or left idle on the field, awaiting the outcome of the infantry clash.
When the enemy reached between two hundred and three hundred yards, they met a withering fire from the divisions of Gibbons and Hays, which they swiftly answered. The battle instantly grew fierce and widespread. Before Hays’s division, the combat proved relatively brief. Cut down by canister from Woodruff’s battery, by fire from two regiments Hays had astutely placed on his extreme front and right, and by volleys from supporting lines behind, the enemy broke in disarray.
They abandoned fifteen flags and nearly two thousand prisoners to Hays’s division. Those enemy troops not shattered before Hays’s division shifted rightward, reinforcing the line that was now assaulting Gibbons’s division. Two regiments of Webb’s brigade, the 69th and 71st Pennsylvania, were positioned behind a low stone wall and a slight breastwork they had hastily erected. The rest of the brigade stood behind the crest some sixty paces to the rear, arranged to fire over the heads of those in front.
As the enemy line, spearheaded by General Armistead, nearly reached the stone wall, most of Webb’s brigade stationed there abandoned their post, though fortunately they did not retreat entirely. By the personal courage of General Webb and his officers, they were promptly reformed behind the crest now held by the brigade’s remnants. Encouraged by this perceived vulnerability, the enemy pressed forward more boldly, many crossing the breastwork vacated by the Union troops. The fighting here became extremely brutal and intimate.
Enemy battle flags were soon seen flying atop the stone wall. At this juncture, Colonel Devereux, commanding the 19th Massachusetts Volunteers, eager to reach the critical point, requested permission to shift his regiment right and forward to where the line was breached. Hancock consented, and his regiment, along with the 42nd New York Volunteers on its right, advanced there immediately. As the enemy had now withdrawn from Colonel Hall’s front, that officer rapidly moved his command by the right flank to further bolster Webb’s position, followed directly by Harrow’s brigade.
The maneuver was executed, though with some disorder, as men left ranks to shoot from the breastwork. The situation had become highly irregular. Men from all brigades had partially lost regimental cohesion, yet individually they stood firm. The eagerness of individual commanders to swiftly seal the enemy penetration, compounded by battle smoke and the ferocity of close combat, caused this confusion.
Nevertheless, the breach was now sealed. In orderly array, the line would have stood four ranks deep. The colors of various regiments were now pushed forward, defiantly waving against the enemy’s long array of battle flags. The men pressed steadfastly after them, spurred by their officers’ energetic commands and example.
After moments of savage combat, the enemy troops were driven back. They cast down their weapons and sought safety in flight, or prostrated themselves on the ground to evade the Union fire. The battle flags were theirs. The charge was broken.
The Confederacy’s last great gamble in the east had failed, and the shattered remnants of the assault streamed back across the valley from which they had come. The center had held. The line had bent, but it had not broken, and the Union position on Cemetery Ridge remained intact. For Hancock, the man they called Hancock the Superb, it was the defining moment of his command.
His corps, shattered and exhausted, had absorbed the full fury of the Confederate army and refused to yield. The war would go on, but the fate of the Union had been decided on that thin line of dirt and stone.