Pale Horse At Plum Run: The First Minnesota at Gettysburg

Preface: “That these dead shall not have died in vain”

ix p r e f a c e “That these dead shall not have died in vain” a chilly rain fell. Rain always seems to follow me onto CivilWar battle fields. I have visited many in the past quarter century, and most of my visits have been under steel-gray skies in intermittent monsoons. It has always reminded me of the stories from soldiers of the period of how the skies seemed to open up the night after a great battle. Some thought the enormous clouds of battle smoke rising into the sky had something to do with it. The even more scientifically challenged thought it might be connected to all the roaring and thundering of the weapons shaking the rain loose from the sky. I think it just as likely that God was weeping over the whole sorry mess. My previous visit to Gettysburg had been more than a decade before, long enough that I couldn’t conjure up a mental image of the field over which my state’s premier regiment, the First Minnesota, had charged on July 2, 1863. I recalled many other sites on the battlefield, but this stretch of Pennsylvania turf remained elusive to my mind’s eye. I drove into the small parking lot behind the enormous Pennsylvania monument, and my eyes fixed on the Minnesota monument about one hundred feet away: a stair-step granite base leading to a rectangular column and the word “Minnesota” in prominent, raised letters at the base. At the top of the column is a silent metaphor for the First Minnesota and especially its performance at Gettysburg: a bronze soldier in charge bayonet position. It stands solid, determined, immovable, and frozen in 0-8735-1-text 2/27/04 1:29 PM Page ix PUB007 Macintosh HD:Desktop Folder: Looking west down the slope of Cemetery Ridge. The tree line was not there during the battle. Plum Run snakes through the bottom of the swale, about thirty to forty yards into the trees. Looking northwest from the First Minnesota’s position in the Plum Run ravine. Plum Run cuts across, left to right, in the left background where the low bushes are growing. 0-8735-1-text 2/27/04 1:29 PM Page x PUB007 Macintosh HD:Desktop Folder: x the perpetual forward motion of running into the oncoming rebel horde to the west with bayonet pointed at their hearts. Rain streaked the monument and dripped from the soldier’s forage cap and face, like tears for his fallen comrades. A short walk in the steady rain and I was there— alone on that hallowed ground. I was grateful to find that the site was still an open field, unlike many other parts of the battlefield. The field slopes down three hundred yards to the shallow ditch of Plum Run, a small stream that meanders through much of the southern part of the battlefield. What was scrubby brush and small saplings along its banks at the time of the battle is now a dense forest of mature timber. Fortunately, by the time of this publication, some of these woods will have already been removed . The Gettysburg Military Park management plans call for the rest to be taken out in the next few years, returning the site to its July 1863 appearance. The dense green canopy extended fifty yards on either side of the stream at the time of my visit. It was midafternoon, but the overcast day made it dark as twilight among the trees. The soil was sodden and spongy in places. Here was the real killing ground, among the flat boulders and along the banks of Plum Run. The American Civil War took hold of me when I was about eight or nine years old. My childhood fascination with uniforms, flags, and battles has given way to the more subtle study of the politics, strategy, motivations, and culture of the period. But, as with all military history, the blood and the battle smoke are never far away. Ultimately a war is decided on the battlefield, and a country’s civil war is certainly the most personal to its people. The personal connection drew me to these places and the history of the war fought here—a sad and tragic period of fratricidal insanity, where we chose sides and killed and died on our own fields, hills, valleys , and...