Covered with Glory: The 26th North Carolina Infantry at the Battle of Gettysburg

10. “TERRIBLE AS AN ARMY WITH BANNERS”

CHAPTER 10 “Terrible as an Army with Banners” Mounted on horseback, Colonel James Keith Marshall sat in front of his brigade and waited for the order to advance. At age twenty-four, “Jimmy” Marshall was the youngest front-line brigade commander in the assault force. Handsome, dark-headed and youthful-looking, he was a day away from a memorable anniversary. Just three years earlier on July 4th, he had graduated from V.M.I. Back in 1860, 36 months and several hundred thousand war deaths earlier, some young men had still viewed war as a romantic adventure. At V.M.I., he had solemnly posed for a photograph with four other cadets— all of whom had sported identically trimmed goatees. He had passed endless hours pondering mathematics and artillery tactics. He was one year ahead of Harry Burgwyn, but the younger Burgwyn had gained command of a regiment sooner than Marshall. Now, in one of the tragic ironies of war, Harry Burgwyn lay buried beneath the Pennsylvania soil and Jimmy Marshall commanded Pettigrew’s former brigade—which included what was left of Burgywn’s regiment.1 Another irony for Marshall: While he commanded the only all-North Carolina brigade in the front line of the pending assault, he was a Virginian of the Old Dominion aristocracy. His great-grandfather was a colonel in George Washington’s army, and his grandfather was Chief Justice John Marshall, whose ruling in Marbury v. Madison had helped empower the U.S. Supreme Court. His father, Edward C. Marshall—a former Virginia legislator—was president of the Manassas Gap Railroad and lived as a gentleman farmer in the Virginia foothills. On the march to Pennsylvania a few weeks earlier, General Lee had been a dinner guest at the Marshall home. At V.M.I., Jimmy Marshall had been a mediocre student, excelling only in “moral philosophy,” and after graduation, he had put aside a military career in favor of a teaching job at a private school in Edenton, North Carolina.2 In wartime, however, he had proven himself to be a competent commander . The war had come during his stint as a schoolteacher, so he had enlisted a local company of troops in North Carolina—the Chowan Dixie Rebels—which had joined the 1st North Carolina Infantry. Within a month, Marshall captained a company, and in less than a year he had risen to colonel of the 52nd North Carolina. Like the 26th North Carolina, Marshall’s regiment had been shifted back and forth between North Carolina and Virginia for the previous year. Unlike the 26th, however, the regiment had missed the Seven Days Campaign and the bloody field at Malvern Hill. Marshall had distinguished himself in a skirmish with Federal gunboats on Virginia’s Blackwater River, and had experienced serious fire and real casualties in a brief but heated engagement defending a railroad bridge near Goldsboro, North Carolina . Swept into the Army of Northern Virginia with the rest of Pettigrew’s Brigade for the advance into Pennsylvania, Marshall and his regiment had performed admirably amid the fury and carnage of Gettysburg’s first day. Along with the 47th North Carolina, the 52nd had driven back the Federal troops of Biddle’s Brigade, which had turned the enemy’s left flank and helped break the Iron Brigade’s line. Although the 52nd had not suffered like the 26th North Carolina, the first day’s fighting had depleted the regiment’s ranks, and the head wound that had incapacitated General Heth had ultimately put Marshall in command of Pettigrew’s Brigade. Now, in one of the oddities of war, Pettigrew’s command had become Marshall’s brigade, and General Heth’s son, Captain Stockton Heth, was Marshall’s aide-de-camp.3 Now they waited. In the fleeting moments that had followed the silencing of the Confederate cannonade, the long line of men in gray and butternut— some 13,000 strong—had been roused to their feet in the shelter of the woods atop Seminary Ridge. They knew what was coming, and they stood with a snapping, popping rattle as they fired percussion caps to field-check their weapons. A clatter of clanking metal followed the order to fix bayonets. Shaded by the green leaves of summer, the battle-tested North Carolinians of Marshall’s brigade—including the 26th North Carolina—waited for Jimmy Marshall to repeat the order to advance. Some said General Lee had discouraged officers from making the assault on horseback—mounted officers...