Pale Horse At Plum Run: The First Minnesota at Gettysburg

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Thebestwehadintheshop the first rifle shot cracked in the still morning air at dawn on July 1, 1863. As the battle opened, the dismounted Union cavalry troopers using their breech-loading carbines held back the rebels.The battle escalated as the race continued for more Confederate and Union troops to arrive on the scene. The rebels won the race, overwhelming the federal troops, and pouring into town from the north and northwest. By nightfall of July 1, the Union army had drawn up into a fishhookshaped battle line on the high ground southeast of the town. The right flank was anchored on Culp’s Hill, across Cemetery Hill, and southward down Cemetery Ridge. The Confederate army faced them in a wide arc through the town of Gettysburg and south along Seminary Ridge to the west of the federal position. Around 4:00 p.m, the rapidly marching Second Corps began to run into the refugees from the battle. Accounts mention that these men were the“camp followers”—cooks and noncombatants of various kinds, civilian refugees, as well as “skeedadlers,” men who simply looked for any opportunity to leave the fight and keep going toward the rear. All had tales of utter defeat and rout of the Army of the Potomac. William Lochren mentioned with some contempt that most were wearing the crescent-moon insignia of the Eleventh Corps. This ill-fated corps did not have much reputation left after they were routed by Stonewall Jackson ’s flank attack at Chancellorsville. 28 — 3— 0-8735-1-text 2/27/04 1:30 PM Page 28 PUB007 Macintosh HD:Desktop Folder: The Eleventh Corps had been commanded earlier in the war by the German immigrant Major General Franz Sigel. These men, many of them also German immigrants, were known for proudly declaring, “I fights mit Sigel!”The corps had been commanded since March 31, 1863, by Major General Oliver O. Howard. After Chancellorsville and Gettysburg , the corps became the butt of a classic bit of scathing soldier humor as the proud statement was reworked and repeated mockingly by others as, “I fights mit Sigel, but I runs mit Howard!”¹ The First Minnesota continued its rapid march north. Somewhere between nine and ten o’clock on July 1, the Minnesotans formed in line of battle, stacked arms, and bivouacked for the night. Given their proximity to the battlefield and the results of the day’s fighting, there appears to have been some initial indecision as to whether the men should stay or move onto the battlefield proper. Relating a scene that must have been maddeningly frustrating for the exhausted, hungry soldiers, Company K’s Sergeant Mat Marvin, a twenty-four-year-old farmer from Winona, Minnesota, wrote in his diary of this night,“Three times we got permission to have fires & twice they were put out; four times we made coffee & three times we threw it away and packed up & fell in. At last the order came to build brest works, that we should stay all night.”² Twenty men were sent out on picket detail and, as Mat Marvin indicated , the rest of the regiment was ordered to build barricades, or breastworks —an order that was obeyed selectively. John W. Plummer of Company D, a twenty-three-year-old plasterer from Minneapolis, wrote, “as we were pretty tired and couldn’t really see the necessity of work that far from the field, we boys did not build any, but laid down to sleep.”³ The bivouac was east of the Taneytown Road, roughly three miles south of the town of Gettysburg and The best we had in the shop 29 JohnW. Plummer, shown later in the war as captain of Company F, Eleventh Minnesota 0-8735-1-text 2/27/04 1:30 PM Page 29 PUB007 Macintosh HD:Desktop Folder: about one-half mile southeast of Big RoundTop in the southern portion of the battlefield.Today the area encompasses the field southeast of the intersection whereWright Avenue crosses theTaneytown Road and becomes Howe Avenue.⁴ JamesWright remembered the moment: Those not required to watch [not assigned as pickets] hastened to make coffee and, this done, to bestow themselves for the night as best they could, near the stacked guns. This was a brief matter as they simply looked for a smooth spot, as any animal might, spread their blankets and laid down with their heads on their knapsacks; then covering their...