Cushing of Gettysburg: The Story of a Union Artillery Commander (review)

322CIVIL WAR HISTORY skirmishing along Brinkerhoff's Ridge "might well have been decisive" (153) because it kept the Stonewall Brigade fromjoining Gen. Edward Johnson's division for the main assault on Culp's Hill. The missing brigade might have permitted the Confederates to overwhelm the defenders, for the Union high command had blundered terribly by ordering units from the right flank to reinforce other areas of the battlefield. Only one brigade manned almost a half mile of defensive works when Johnson's depleted division advanced. Night fighting, like urban fighting, was rare. But the assault on July 2 against Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hill took place after dusk, adding an extra measure of confusion to the normal "friction" of war. Reflecting the poor coordination that prevailed in the Army of Northern Virginia, Ewell's July 2 attack occurred after Longstreet's main action on the Union left, while Ewell's renewed attack against Culp's Hill on July 3 ended before Pickett's Charge struck the Union center. For the South the struggle for the Union right flank, where Confederate success would have had dire consequences for the Army of the Potomac, had been a tragic waste. Because Pfanz considers the fighting north and west of Gettysburg on the afternoon of July ? "a distinct and complex action deserving of full treatment" (40), he does not cover it in the book under review. Perhaps Pfanz is mobilizing his expertise to provide a definitive account of those events. Considering the two masterful books he has already written on crucial aspects ofGettysburg, Civil War scholars should hope so. Peter Maslowski The University of Nebraska-Lincoln Cushing of Gettysburg: The Story ofa Union Artillery Commander. By Kent Masterson Brown. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1993, Pp. xiii, 330. $32.95.) It is one of the indelible images of the Battle of Gettysburg. The already grievously wounded Union artillery officer ordering a last devastating round of canister to be fired into enemy ranks before expiring beside his guns. The terribly thinned Confederate forces, led by a general with his cap atop his upraised sword, swarm over the wall; the general is seen to put his hand possessively on the dead lieutenant's silent guns before he, too, is shot down; and the high tide of the Confederacy ebbs sullenly back from the "bloody angle" on Cemetery Ridge on July 3, 1863. The life of that artillery lieutenant, Alonzo Hereford Cushing, arguably the most famous of three brothers and a cousin with notable Civil War records, is the subject of Kent Masterson Brown's military study. Born in Wisconsin in 1 841 , "Lon" Cushing was left fatherless due to tuberculosis at age six. The family knew poverty and hardship before returning to Fredonia, New York, the seat of the New York branch ofthe ubiquitous Cushing clan of Massachusetts. Lon's mother, who could trace her own Massachusetts roots to the Mayflower, opened BOOK REVIEWS323 a "dame school" in a commercial, agricultural, and educational center ofthe old Holland Purchase in western New York. The author's detailed study of the extended and extensive Cushing family reveals how a kinsman, Nativist congressman Francis Edwards, and two other cousins, Navy Department bureaucrats, were able to secure an Annapolis appointment for Alonzo's older brother, William Barker Cushing, and a West Point berth for Lon in 1857. Lovingly detailed, Cushing's West Point years were a time for academic growth, maturity, and a development of many friendships resulting from his winning affability and prankishness. A member of the time-shortened class of 1861, Cushing was assigned to Battery A, Fourth United States Artillery. He saw limited service as a part of McDowell's unengaged left wing at First Bull Run. In McClellan's reorganized Army ofthe Potomac, Cushing's unit was part of Edwin Vose Sumner's division. "Old Bull" Sumner became Cushing's mentor and friend, resulting in Cushing's service on the general's staff throughout the Peninsula campaign. Cushing fought his guns at Antietam in support of Sumner's unsuccessful assaults around the Dunkard church but resumed his staff assignment for Burnside's Fredericksburg campaign. Upon Sumner's retirement in January 1 863, Cushing resumed...