“Press On, Men, Press On!” The 21st North Carolina on July 1

“Stonewall Jackson died on May 10 and the whole South mourned,” but Robert E. Lee had prevailed in Chancellorsville, and hopes were high for Jackson’s replacement, Lt. Gen. Richard Ewell.¹ Indeed, in order to create better troop control, Lee created the Third Corps, to be commanded by the former head of the hard-fighting Light Division, Lt. Gen. Ambrose Powell Hill. Lt. Gen. James Longstreet continued as commander of the old First Corps.

After the Battle of Chancellorsville, the sixty-eight thousand soldiers constituting the Army of Northern Virginia shifted toward Fredericksburg and pulled picket duty for the rest of May. Ewell’s new command, including the 2,064 men of Brig. Gen. Robert Hoke’s Tar Heel Brigade and the 21st North Carolina, 467 strong, patrolled along the Rappahannock between Deep Run and Smithfield. As the result of Hoke’s wounding at Second Fredericksburg, young Col. Isaac Avery assumed command of the brigade. Avery, thirty-four years old, had risen from captain of Company E of the 6th North Carolina to lead that regiment. Now he also commanded the 21st North Carolina, 54th North Carolina, and 57th North Carolina as brigade commander in the division of Maj. Gen. Jubal A. Early. Early also commanded the Louisiana brigade of Brig. Gen. Harry Hays, the Virginians of Brig. Gen. William “Extra Billy” Smith, and the Georgians of Brig. Gen. John B. Gordon.

It had become apparent that Virginia could no longer support seventy thousand Confederates and who knew how many Yankees. Lee decided to take his army north and see what he could do to provision it from the lush farms and factories just two states over from Virginia—in Pennsylvania.

Col. Isaac Avery. From Walter Clark’s Histories of the Several Regiments and Battalions from North Carolina in the Great War 1861–1865, vol. 1 (Raleigh, nc: E. M. Uzzle, 1901).

On June 3 the Second Corps packed up and headed back toward the Valley of Virginia. The destination remained a secret; but soon the 21st North Carolina passed into familiar territory, the battlefield at Cedar Mountain and the sight of the Blue Ridge. After halting to make sure that the aftermath of Gen. J. E. B. Stuart’s unfortunate grand review did not result in a victory for Yankee cavalry, Early’s infantry headed back through the path they had taken to First Winchester the previous May. The cavalry evidently had a different agenda, for they would not be seen for three weeks.

The troops of the 21st North Carolina took notice of the massive trains and of the movement of all of the Confederate army in the same direction. Another invasion! The first had not turned out so well, but this army was far superior to that one in all regards.

The first order of business was to rid themselves of a pesky Union garrison at Winchester under Maj. Gen. Robert Milroy. Lee could not afford to leave seven thousand enemy troops in his rear. Just as Jackson had done a year earlier at Harper’s Ferry, Ewell’s corps, in a lightning strike consisting mainly of Hays’s Louisianans, routed the enemy and captured most of them. Early sent the 54th North Carolina to shepherd the prisoners to Staunton, leaving Avery with just three regiments, about 1,200 men. The South cheered Ewell as Jackson incarnate, but his fallibility would be apparent only too soon.

The three corps made their way north in separate columns, Ewell going through the valley and into the Cumberland in Pennsylvania. On June 24 at Chambersburg, Ewell assembled his division commanders: Early, Maj. Gen. Robert Rodes, and Maj. Gen. Edward “Allegheny” Johnson. His instructions from Lee were to forage the land, under orders to treat the populace with respect but not necessarily compassion. Lee also gave typically discretionary orders that if Harrisburg became available, he would not complain. This last order fell like music on Richard Ewell’s ears, and his actions between June 24 and June 30 were taken with this goal in mind.

Knowing that Old Jube could handle independent command, Ewell sent him with his division east toward a town named Gettysburg and then on to York. Ewell headed with the others north to Carlisle, the site of an important U.S. Army equestrian training center. From these points, the two wings could march on Harrisburg from two directions.

Early set out the next day, exacted tribute from Gettysburg, and then marched into York on June 28. The 21st North Carolina and Avery’s brigade occupied the town square and, between picketing assignments and guarding the liquor stores, spent the better part of two days helping themselves to all that the shops lining the square had to offer, from needle etuis to candy to haberdashery. Of course Confederate scrip was offered, though it was seldom accepted; and Avery’s men liberated a staggering amount of goods.

Also on June 28 Abraham Lincoln fired Joe Hooker and replaced him with Maj. Gen. George Meade. The next day, Lee hurried a courier to Ewell at Carlisle, telling him to forget the march to Harrisburg and instead to fall back toward Cashtown to consolidate the army. This certainly disappointed Ewell, who had already begun the organization for taking the Pennsylvania capital; but he obediently sent another courier to Jubal Early, alerting him of the change in orders.

Thus, at around 9:00 p.m. on June 29, Isaac Avery began withdrawing his pickets and retired out of town to the Carlisle Road to camp. No harm had been done to York and its citizens save a tribute of $28,000 and 1,500 pairs of shoes. Early’s division marched at dawn for Heidlersburg.

Ewell, meanwhile, headed south from Carlisle with Rodes’s division. In order to minimize clogging the one road with two divisions, Edward Johnson escorted the immense wagon train to Chambersburg, a trip that would add fifty miles to the journey and cause no end of dismay late in the afternoon of July 1. That night, both Rodes, on the Carlisle Road, and Early, on the Harrisburg Road, bedded down eight and nine miles, respectively, north of Gettysburg, preparing to move to Cash-town the next day.

After a confusing series of orders, around mid-morning, word came from A. P. Hill that his Third Corps had become actively engaged with significant enemy resistance from the Union First Corps and that Ewell’s goal should be Gettysburg, not Cash-town. Both divisions simply continued on as they were, in a fortuitous turn of events that would send Rodes’s division emerging from the Carlisle Road onto Oak Hill directly on the Union right flank, with Early’s troops attacking down the parallel Heidlersburg Road into the shaky resistance of a rapidly forming refusal by the Union Eleventh Corps.²

Early’s division crested the ridge in sight of Gettysburg just as Rodes’s attack kicked off on their right. Some of Early’s men peered anxiously ahead at the dense clouds of smoke rising above the battlefield and watched the developing battle.

Early’s infantry cleared the road as the guns of Lt. Col. Hilary P. Jones’s battalion dashed forward and unlimbered to the left of the Heidlersburg Road, both to assist Rodes and to cover Old Jube’s imminent advance. At 2:30 p.m. Jones’s twelve guns sent the first barrage into the Eleventh Corps line. One Union battery, posted with Barlow’s division on Blocher’s Knoll, vigorously returned the fire; but even after losing three jammed Napoleons and one with its barrel bent from a direct hit on its muzzle, Jones’s artillerymen proved quite effective in countering the lone battery (Battery G, 4th U.S. Light Artillery).³

By now, Doles’s brigade had become “pressed by a considerable force of the enemy.”⁴ While two of his regiments advanced to strike the thin Union line presented by Col. Leopold von Gilsa and Brig. Gen. Adelbert Ames at Blocher’s Knoll, Doles observed another Union brigade, this one commanded by Col. Wladimir Krzyżanowski, coming toward him from the direction of town. Doles’s troops needed help.

From his small brigade, von Gilsa positioned about 450 men of two regiments, the 54th and 68th New York, in a northeast-facing skirmish line in front of his assigned position atop Blocher’s Knoll. This line ran perpendicular to and butted against the Harrisburg Road on the right and connected to the 17th Connecticut of Ames’s brigade on its left. The 153rd Pennsylvania, still well over five hundred strong, formed in line of battle atop the knoll, behind the skirmish line.

At this point, little more than nine hundred men—three-fourths of von Gilsa’s brigade—stood directly in Early’s front. The 153rd Pennsylvania, nine-month men out of Northampton County, home of the Moravian diocese of Pennsylvania, lay in wait in the dead center of the brigade’s route of attack. The 153rd was under the command of Maj. Fred Frueauff, the son of the headmaster of the Moravian Girl’s School in Bethlehem. Like the Moravian pastor in York, Pennsylvania, many Tar Heels in the 21st North Carolina personally knew Frueauff from prewar religious connections.

Lt. Col. Alexander Miller, 21st North Carolina. From Walter Clark’s Histories of the Several Regiments and Battalions from North Carolina Regiments in the Great War 1861–1865, vol. 2 (Raleigh, nc: E. M. Uzzle, 1901).

Von Gilsa’s thin, slightly refused defensive line gained strength by incorporating into its fortifications the shallow Rock Creek, difficult to cross even at just three feet deep and twenty feet across, which ran around the base of the fifty-foot-high knoll. Tree lined on each side, Rock Creek still presented something of an obstacle with its “abrupt and rugged banks . . . so abrupt as to prevent a passage excepting at certain points.”⁵

Nearly six hundred yards north of the trees along Rock Creek, Early placed Gordon’s 1,200 Georgians west of the Heidlersburg Road in a line that stretched for a third of a mile and completely lapped von Gilsa’s thin numbers on both ends. Early ordered Gordon forward, aimed directly at the two small regiments facing him from behind the stream and tree line.⁶

Around 3:00 p.m., after Gordon’s line had stepped off, Hays’s Louisianans formed a line of battle astraddle the Heidlersburg Road. Hays’s brigade positioned itself somewhat behind Gordon’s left flank, with Avery’s Tar Heels formed in line of battle east of the road, their right flank connecting with Hays’s left. Combined, Hays’s and Avery’s eager Confederate brigades numbered over 2,500 officers and men. Extra Billy Smith deployed his smaller six-hundred-man brigade behind and in support of Avery, adding to the weight of this side of Early’s alignment

With the exception of the narrow tree line along Rock Creek, the entire area north of Gettysburg was one vast plain covered with cultivated fields defined by six-rail fences, only interrupted here and there by a farmer’s apple or peach orchard. The 21st North Carolina could see the entire tableau from their position. One Tar Heel described the sight of the breaking enemy lines in almost awestruck terms:

From our position we could see the Confederate and Federal lines arrayed one against the other in open ground, no breastworks, no fortifications, but they stood apart in battle array and were in plain view for two miles except where the line was lost in the depressions of the hills. Then a Confederate Brigade away on our extreme right, moved forward upon the expectant enemy; there came a jet of white smoke from along the enemy’s line and a scarcely audible roar of musketry, filled in by the sound of the artillery; then there came the expected yell, a rush, and the enemy’s line broke. As this first brigade moved, a second was moving in echelon; there was the same yell, the same rush, and the same flight of the enemy. Still another brigade; the sound of the conflict and yell of men becoming more distinct; a rush forward and the Stars and Stripes were soon in full retreat. As the conflict neared our position the effect was marvelous; the men were wild with excitement, and when their time came they went in with the wildest of enthusiasm, for from where they stood they could see two miles of the enemy’s line in full retreat. It looked as if the end of the war had come.⁷

Jones’s artillery battalion continued to fire from directly in front of the 21st North Carolina, and the combined din of cannon and yelling of troops created an atmosphere that bordered on frenzy.

Gordon’s infantry splashed across Rock Creek first and swarmed through its protective trees. After a “short but hot” assault on von Gilsa’s thrown-together line, the Northerners’ resistance, briefly stubborn, faltered and dissolved.⁸ The overwhelmed brigade fled once again.

Barlow reacted with valor but could not stop the rout. Wounded at least twice already, the New Yorker now received a near-mortal wound. One Confederate staff officer said later that he watched from across the field as a ranking Union officer accompanied by his staff raced up to the Union battery on the far right just as a shell exploded in the middle of the group of mounted officers. Amid the smoke and confusion, the wounded officer went down, victim of the shell or of a ball fired by one of Gordon’s men. Either way, Barlow had been put out of action, and the Yankee right was suddenly leaderless. Within minutes, Barlow would become Gordon’s prisoner.

Young Ames alertly assumed command from his position near his brigade but had no more success than Barlow at stopping the flight of von Gilsa’s brigade. A disgusted Ames commented afterward that the fleeing 1st Brigade raced through his brigade’s ranks, “creating considerable confusion.”⁹ Ames’s right flank was now exposed, and his brigade quickly followed von Gilsa’s, although not in such a mad rush.

Schurz saw the collapse developing and ordered both of his divisions to withdraw to defend the outskirts of Gettysburg. At about the same time (4:10 p.m.), Gen. Oliver O. Howard ordered both the First and the Eleventh Corps to withdraw, a directive not entirely necessary for either corps.

Gordon continued forward with his five Georgia regiments, and any organized defensive tactics quickly collapsed in the face of his surge. The 1st Division of the Eleventh Corps joined the First Corps in streaming through the streets of the town, and many more were captured. The two somehow generally fled in two groups—the First Corps, down Washington Street, and the Eleventh Corps, down Baltimore Street.¹⁰

With Gordon’s brigade in pursuit of Barlow’s shattered division, Early ordered Hays’s and Avery’s brigades to attack, leaving Smith’s command as a reserve and support to Jones’s artillery. Skirmishers went forward. Tate’s 6th North Carolina, five hundred strong, filed into line on the brigade right, next to the Louisianans, an arrangement used successfully before. As at the Downman Plateau, Kirkland’s 21st North Carolina, with over four hundred officers and men, held the brigade center, while Godwin’s 57th North Carolina provided the far left flank and put forward some three hundred soldiers and officers. Avery’s brigade chomped at the bit. Hays’s 1,300 Louisianans toed the mark excitedly. Finally, as the two brigades “advanced in line to Rock Creek” unopposed, things suddenly changed in their front.¹¹

Gordon’s brigade had swept all in its path for the nearly half mile from Blocher’s Knoll to the county almshouse. Upon reaching the outskirts of Gettysburg, however, they suddenly encountered Union resistance substantial enough to flank the left of the brigade. Gordon successfully halted his battle line in a protected swale and called on Jubal Early for consultation about what to do next. Early did not need much time to reflect. Not one half mile away, he had 2,500 eager Southerners who had not yet fired a gun and were already formed in line of battle.¹²

The threat to Gordon’s left came from the sudden appearance of Col. Charles H. Coster’s brigade from von Steinwehr’s division. When Schurz realized that the weight of the Southern attack was directed from the northwest and his wavering line was in danger of crumbling, he sent a request to have one of von Steinwehr’s brigades to assist him. Howard overruled the plea, considering the defense of Cemetery Hill to be more vital to the overall Union effort to the north. Schurz persisted with messages to von Steinwehr and then directly back to Howard.

Col. William W. Kirkland, 21st North Carolina.

Courtesy of the U.S. Army Educational and Heritage Center.

While waiting for reinforcements, Schurz personally worked the streets. In much the same hands-on fashion he had used to stem the rout at Hazel River the previous summer, Schurz cursed, cajoled, and pleaded with the leaderless 1st Division as it rushed past. Now he received word that his own 3rd Division had been flanked and was falling back. The last of his committed forces had been broken. Things looked decidedly bleak for the Eleventh Corps, and Schurz sent one last courier to beseech someone, anyone, to send him reinforcements.

Von Steinwehr, with Howard’s approval, finally heeded Schurz’s request and ordered Coster to rush his brigade to the assistance of Schurz’s embattled line north of town. Appointed to temporary brigade command on June 10, Coster was somewhat of a wonder soldier, having steadily risen through the ranks from private in 1861 to colonel of the 134th New York Infantry by October 1862. Coster entered Gettysburg riding at the head of his troops and raced his men up Baltimore Street at double-quick, unaware of the disaster just then occurring north of town.¹³

Coster’s 1st Brigade was composed of four regiments, two from upstate New York and two from Philadelphia, and, fair or not, the brigade suffered the same dissension between immigrants and native-born troops that was then pervasive throughout the Union army.

The New York regiments, the 134th and 154th, were composed of “American” troops, each commanded by battle-tested lieutenant colonels. The two Keystone State regiments, the 27th and 73rd, were filled largely with German immigrants out of Philadelphia, and both were three-year regiments. The 27th Pennsylvania, once assigned to Brig. Gen. Julius Stahel’s brigade during the Valley Campaign along with the ill-fated 8th New York, was at least capably led by a Prussian Army veteran and contained a number of American-born recruits as well as immigrants. The 73rd Pennsylvania, which had been denuded of officers at Chancellorsville, arrived at Gettysburg commanded by a twenty-something captain.

Schurz met Coster in the town square and took personal responsibility for leading three of Coster’s regiments up Carlisle Street to the outskirts of town. Already shy two hundred men who were earlier sent on a reconnaissance mission, Schurz inexplicably left the three hundred men of the 73rd Pennsylvania in reserve to guard the railroad as the rest moved north to face daunting numbers of an attacking enemy.¹⁴

John Kuhn lived on Stratton Street, not quite a quarter mile from the edge of town. Kuhn owned a large five-acre fenced lot that extended behind his spacious two-story house on the east side of the street. Behind the house, he had built two large brick furnaces and developed a thriving business firing and selling bricks made from the local clay. Various other structures and fenced plots for animals and gardens shared the large, sloping yard with the kilns.

Stratton Street formed the western boundary of the property. A seven-hundred-foot-long post-and-rail fence, with “portions made of stone,” marked the northern and northeast boundaries of Kuhn’s brickyard.¹⁵ Stevens Run, a shallow stream with steep banks that trickled past the property on its way to Rock Creek, helped form the southern boundary. On the east and south sides, the fence, which enclosed the entire compound, actually crossed the run and enclosed part of it. Large fields of ripe wheat surrounded the brickyard on its north, east, and west boundaries.

The lot did not lie flat but, rather, ran in a humped slope from Stratton Street down to Stevens Run. Someone on the east side of Kuhn’s yard was not visible to someone on the west, just three hundred yards away. Even worse, the undulating fields in the last quarter mile to Kuhn’s fence dropped nearly thirty feet as they neared the lot. The waist-high fields of wheat obscured the view from Kuhn’s yard beyond forty rods (about two hundred yards), and the gradual descent toward it gave the defenders the sense of being at the bottom of a hill, which commanded their position. Kuhn’s brickyard was hardly the ideal spot for a defensive position, but Carl Schurz had run out of other options.¹⁶

Around 4:00 p.m. Schurz trotted Coster’s small brigade north on Stratton Street and ordered them to protect his right flank. More specifically, Schurz deployed Coster’s brigade, now numbering less than one thousand men, in John Kuhn’s brickyard.

Positions of the forces in the brickyard fight.

Courtesy of Phil Laino.

Despite some obvious deficiencies, the cleared area with its fences and structures would help Coster at least slow the fast-approaching Confederates, their frenzied yelps now quite audible above the noise of battle even though not yet in view.

As Coster’s three regiments passed the Kuhn house and hustled into his yard through the carriage gate, Capt. Lewis Heckman’s Battery K, 1st Ohio Light Artillery, rushed up parallel Carlisle Road and unlimbered his four Napoleons west of the Kuhn house, approximately 300 yards northwest of Coster’s left flank, where they opened fire “with grape and canister.” Heckman’s purpose may have been to support the retreating troops, though his presence surely gave Coster’s men some confidence that the big guns would break up the Confederate attack before it reached the brickyard.¹⁷

Schurz formed his infantry line in front of the kilns before moving it forward about twenty-five yards to the post-and-rail fence on the north and northwest border of the lot. The fence provided little protection but was the best they could do. Schurz placed the four hundred men of the 134th New York on the right of the line on the downhill slope, with some of the men actually standing in Stevens Run, which flowed through its line from outside the fence. Slightly refused to follow Kuhn’s fence line, the flank of the 134th New York hung in the wheat field on the east. At best, the 134th New York fronted one hundred yards.

The 154th New York, about 240 infantry deployed on a sixty-yard front, anchored the line in the center where the swale reached its most pronounced symmetry in their front. The 27th Pennsylvania’s 280 soldiers, last through Kuhn’s gate, completed the line to Stratton Street, 120 yards from the left of the 154th New York.

Coster positioned himself to the left of the 27th Pennsylvania, whose nervous troops watched uneasily as the rest of the Eleventh Corps rushed wildly past them down Stratton and Carlisle Streets. From his post behind the 154th New York, their commander could not see Coster at his post, an unfortunate situation for both commanders once the fight developed.

Schurz’s regimental placement resulted in a mild gap between the two New York regiments, but a small squad of fifty men from the 27th Pennsylvania rushed over to fill it. Unfortunately, the departed squad further weakened the Connecticut regiment as it strained to stretch out to Stratton Street, now totally filled with refugees flowing down the road between Heckman’s battery and the 27th Pennsylvania. The mob effectively blocked Heckman from assisting Coster’s men, who braced themselves for the onslaught.¹⁸

“The long line of battle moved with great steadiness across the wide-extended fields of wheat, which were just ready for the reaper,” one Tar Heel remembered, as Hays and Avery swept through the waist-high fields east of the Heidlersburg Road virtually untouched.¹⁹ The two unbloodied brigades meant to finish the job Gordon had started with such seemingly little effort, but another Tar Heel later expressed surprise at the resistance offered by Coster’s brigade. Just as at Sharpsburg, the Southerners encountered a different type of fighting, a style similar to what they themselves had offered on battlefields from Manassas to Chancellorsville: “The enemy seemed to fight with more desperation and gallantry than we had been accustomed to in our engagements with him in Virginia. He was on his own soil, and it was no longer a sentiment about the old flag; it was a fight for home.”²⁰

Coster’s brigade had barely completed its alignment when Hays’s and Avery’s brigades crossed the small creek bed just north of the Alms House and scrambled up the gentle slope to the rolling plain that fed into Kuhn’s yard. At this point, the Confederates were still invisible to the defenders, though their infernal yell announced their approach; but Jones ordered his gunners to cease firing, in fear of hitting his own men, leaving Hays and Avery uncovered by artillery.

One of the most unique of the Civil War monuments, this mural illustrates the brickyard fight between the Tar Heels and the 154th New York, whose monument stands in front. On the right, one can see how the terrain sloped down toward the Union position. Photograph by Walter Lane,

Courtesy of Mark H. Dunkelman.

Hays’s charge steered right of the waiting Yankees, while the Tar Heel brigade headed right at the nervous defenders. Heckman’s gunners could not get at Avery’s men, with scattered groups of their own troops still cluttering up their fields of fire on Carlisle Road and Stratton Street. Heckman instead directed his attention to Hays’s men, pounding the assaulting Louisianans with canister, for an “unusually galling” effect, according to General Hays.²¹ Captain Heckman would later say that his four guns fired 113 rounds of canister in thirty minutes before they were forced to flee the scene.²²

On the Confederate left, the tip of Sgt. Daniel Waggoner’s battle flag appeared first over the swale, followed closely by numerous red-and-blue St. Andrew’s crosses as the 21st North Carolina began to emerge in full gallop from the wheat in front of the 134th New York. A defender recalled, “I shall always remember how the Confederate line of battle looked as it came into full view and started down towards us. It seemed as though they had a battle flag every few rods.”²³

In a letter to Avery’s father, Capt. John McPherson wrote that Avery “rode up and down the lines and some of the time he was in front of the Brigade gallantly leading and cheering on his Brigade.²⁴ Racing forward the final two hundred yards, Avery’s 1,200 Tar Heels slammed into the fence line defended by New York and Pennsylvania infantry, while Hays’s regiments concentrated on Heckman’s guns. The Louisiana attackers captured two Napoleons before the Ohio captain could retire them all.

Avery’s line severely lapped the short Union front. The 57th North Carolina passed it altogether but began to take the first tentative rounds from six three-inch rifles posted a full mile away atop Cemetery Hill directly in front of the cemetery gate. One member of that regiment expressed relief that his men had passed the danger point; but he remembered, “On the right of the Brigade, however, the Sixth and Twenty-first Regiments had a bloody combat with their portion of the enemy’s line.”²⁵ The heavy work would be borne by the only two regiments from the Old North State that had been with this army from the beginning of the war two years earlier.

“The Confederates swept forward in impressive and impetuous style,” according to one chronicler.²⁶ The intrepid Union defenders along the fence line somehow managed to get off a half-dozen rounds apiece, but the irresistible gray line absorbed the blows, closed up, and kept coming. The 134th New York fired an effective volley at around sixty yards, but very quickly the two Confederate regiments flanked the Yankee right.²⁷

The 21st North Carolina simply pounded the New Yorkers. Inspired by Sergeant Waggoner, who “went through unhurt, carrying the colors as gallantly as man ever did,” many of the regiment scaled the fence to engage in hand-to-hand combat.²⁸ Shortly after the 21st North Carolina veterans jumped the fence, the overwhelmed 134th New York disintegrated, and those who could ran for their lives. Many were shot down as they fled behind the kilns, trying to dodge piles of drying bricks; but remnants of the 134th found a way out of the lot, toward the rear, ducking as they ran upstream along Stevens Run. Those who could used the kilns as cover and raced directly behind their fellow New Yorkers of the 154th Regiment, who remained steadfast and noted their departure with dismay.²⁹

While the Tar Heels were routing the 134th New York, Harry Hays’s 1,300 Louisiana Tigers charged and overwhelmed Heckman’s battery, west of the Carlisle Road. The Louisianans seized two guns before the Yankees could withdraw them; but more importantly, the canister ceased its brutal work. Flanking Coster’s left on the west side of Stratton Street, the Deep South veterans began a murderous enfilading fire into the left of Coster’s wavering line from the Confederate right.³⁰

Now without artillery support and seeing his position being turned, Coster ordered the 27th Pennsylvania to withdraw. The colonel sent urgent messages to the other two regiments that it was time to pull out. The Pennsylvanians obeyed in a hurry, and many escaped. But Hays’s brigade now controlled the carriage gate onto Stratton Street, and escape through it meant certain death. Unfortunately, the order to withdraw did not reach the 154th New York, its men desperately loading and firing at will. Of course, the directive made no difference at all to the already-departed 134th New York.

The 6th North Carolina plowed straight into the 154th New York, who had just witnessed their fellow New Yorkers protecting their right flank get overrun. The 154th changed its front slightly in an attempt to battle Tar Heels now not only threatening the front along the fence but lapping both flanks. Hand-to-hand fighting prevailed, as Avery’s determined Carolinians “crossed bayonets with him. Swords were used on him and when the artillery which he was protecting fired its last round the stream of fire from the mouth of the gun crossed our line.”³¹

The infantry fight had lasted less than half an hour when the 154th New York attempted to withdraw in the direction of the carriage gate to their left rear. At the time they entered the brickyard, the gate had seemed their only clear path of withdrawal, but now the survivors were stunned to find nothing but gray where the 27th Pennsylvania was supposed to be. The slight ridge between the regiments had completely hidden the Keystoners’ departure. The New Yorkers were trapped.

Avery had nearly completely enveloped the 154th New York. Hays’s Tigers and the Tar Heels had now encircled the Empire State regiment from the flanks and rear; and with the 6th North Carolina pressing from the front, most of the 154th New York became prisoners. What few got away did so by ducking through friendly houses and using the banks of Stevens Run as cover. Those fortunate enough to escape joined the stream of blue rushing back through the streets of Gettysburg.³²

Despite the apparent punishment from Heckman’s canister, Hays’s brigade had suffered less than fifty casualties in their day’s work thus far; and he urged his exuberant, relatively unscathed brigade onward. By 5:00 p.m. the Louisianans were chasing the last of the First and Eleventh Corps through the same streets of Gettysburg from which the Yankees had emerged just two hours before.

Hays’s men rounded up hundreds, disarmed them, and sent them to the rear. Others, such as Sgt. Amos Humiston of the 154th New York, resisted while trying to avoid capture and were shot down in the streets. Sergeant Humiston died in a fenced yard at the corner of Stratton and York Streets, perhaps a quarter mile south of the brickyard, his final moments spent gazing at a photograph of his three children that was later found with his body.³³

Other frantic Unionists became trapped as they hid out in friendly basements and attics to avoid capture. General Schimmelfennig was riding down Baltimore Street pursued by Confederates who cornered him and shot his horse. The general escaped only by jumping a board fence and hiding in a backyard animal pen until dark. Schimmelfennig quietly made his presence known to the owner, who came to slop the hogs and cautiously hid him until after the battle. He was one of the lucky ones.³⁴

Hays estimated that his brigade captured many times his own number; and instead of detailing men to guard the prisoners, he simply ordered them to the rear unguarded. The Tigers helped other victorious regiments clear the town of Yankees and did not stop until they reached East Middle Street, facing Cemetery Hill. There they stopped to take a breath and form for the final assault. Rodes’s men followed and finished the job in town.³⁵

While Hays dogged the enemy, Avery wisely chose to momentarily halt his enthused but disorganized pursuit. The colonel ordered wheel left off Stratton Street and regrouped under cover of the railroad just south of the Kuhn property, sheltered somewhat from the guns now playing on them from Cemetery Hill. Unlike Hays, the position of Avery’s brigade in the assault had proven to be almost directly at the most spirited enemy defense, and it had performed heroically. A Confederate on hand felt compelled to write to the Sentinel: “In the first day’s fight at Gettysburg, the action of the brigade was charming. Men never fought better or more gallantly. It whipped everything in its front in short order.”³⁶ But the small three-regiment brigade had sustained over a hundred casualties in the short fight and needed a breather. The old reliable formation of the 6th North Carolina on the right, the 21st North Carolina holding the center, and the 57th North Carolina on the left fell quickly back into place.

After reassembling them to his satisfaction, Avery remounted Old Joe and ordered his eager charges to move out, assuming their next objective would be to take the formidable high ground now held by the Yankee refugees from the Eleventh Corps. The battle seemed about over, but there was still a little work to be done.

Early’s two veteran brigades, together since late 1861, meant to finish things. After all, they had campaigned for a year together with Stonewall Jackson and his ever-insistent “Press on, men, press on!” As flag bearer Waggoner stepped eagerly out in front of the 21st North Carolina, two other resolute Tar Heel standard bearers followed suit. Colonel Godwin wrote in his report, almost breathlessly, “We were moved by the left flank about 400 yards to the left and again moved forward.”³⁷

The surge carried them to the outer base of Cemetery Hill, a protrusion that shielded them somewhat. There was little Union infantry in sight, but Yankee guns in their left front, particularly the 5th Maine battery, which had set up on a knoll to the right of Cemetery Hill, were causing real trouble. The 57th North Carolina on the left, exposed more than the others, now advanced almost into the teeth of the guns.

Col. A. C. Godwin reported, “The shells from the enemy proving very effective, we were soon after halted in a depression on the hillside, and the men ordered to lie down.”³⁸ Avery stopped the brigade advance with his left regiment, the 57th North Carolina, strung out along Culp’s Run near the Henry Culp farm springhouse. The 21st North Carolina followed the contour of the south bank of the stream and dropped in line of battle to the right of Godwin’s regiment, with the 6th North Carolina again posted on the brigade right. The entire brigade lay in line of battle behind the protection of a ridge that rises fully seventy feet in 100 yards and for nearly a quarter mile shields the low ground from East Cemetery Hill, now little more than a half mile away.

Hays halted to Avery’s right and rested in line. Gordon’s victorious and now-rested troops were poised in the rear to assist in the impending assault on Cemetery Hill, the most important piece of real estate on the field. Three of Early’s brigades had now reached the jump-off point to take the high ground and total control of the battlefield, but Jubal Early decided to wait for orders.³⁹

Early desperately wanted to take East Cemetery Hill. He had the same proclivity for aggressive fighting as Stonewall Jackson and had learned much from the fallen hero. Early knew the hill to be vital and had already begun the process of locating Ewell, Rodes, or Hill to urge them to continue the fight.

But while Avery and Hays led their men into the fields south of town and Gordon formed his men to follow, brave but inexperienced Extra Billy Smith thought he had spotted a large force of enemy arriving on the York Road to Early’s left rear. Smith dispatched his son with a message alerting Early that the division was about to be flanked. The Smiths even determined that there were troops of all arms among the uncounted enemy forces descending on them, and the Virginian had already moved his small brigade to stop them.

Early knew that he had fought only one Union corps. He also knew that A. P. Hill had fought but one other. There could credibly be an entire enemy corps arriving from the east, and Early had no choice but to pay attention to his subordinate and no time to reconnoiter properly. The York Road not only approached from Avery’s immediate left rear but commanded the rear of Ewell’s entire corps. An attack from a force of any size from that direction could be devastating. Early sent Gordon’s entire brigade to deal with the new threat.⁴⁰

Everyone in both armies knew that at some point the high ground must be either taken or held. Everyone also knew that the Union army was almost limitless and that more blue troops could be seen arriving by the minute by way of the Baltimore Pike and heading straight to Cemetery Hill. Union artillery had to bypass Confederate lines, however, and needed an hour or two to reach a useful position, creating a window of opportunity.

Generals Gordon and Early urged the assault immediately. Hays and Avery expected it. Most of the troops on the scene figured they would be called on just as they felt Stonewall Jackson would have done and wanted to get on with it. Many felt the war was to end that night. Hays later declared that at that point, “he could have seized the heights without the loss of ten men.”⁴¹

Lt. Col. Hamilton Jones of the 57th North Carolina said after the war, “There was not an officer, not even a man, who did not expect that the war would be closed upon the hill that evening, for there was still two hours of daylight when the final charge was made, yet for reasons that have never been explained, nor ever will be . . . someone made a blunder that lost the battle of Gettysburg, and, humbly speaking, the Confederate cause.”⁴²

The memory of Stonewall Jackson remained in everyone’s mind, but Stonewall was not only dead but irreplaceable. Only hindsight is unerringly correct; and those Confederate commanders living on July 1, 1863, all seemed hesitant. Robert E. Lee had earlier urged cautious discretion in fighting before his whole army assembled, and no one in authority presently on the scene wished to misinterpret the great commander. Lee was, at this time, over a mile away on Seminary Ridge.

The Culp farm showing the depression where the 21st North Carolina sheltered.

Courtesy of Lee Sherrill.

Jubal Early had the courage of his convictions, but he had only half a division. In his estimation, the addition of a full division to his available troops would suffice to capture the important hill without undue difficulty, but only if the attack were launched immediately. Early spent valuable daylight tracking down possible assistance from other divisions and then finally located Richard Ewell, presently locked in an animated conversation with Isaac Trimble.

Trimble, free of command responsibility but aching to contribute, had ridden alone to the left of the field in front of East Cemetery Hill. The immediate thing that struck the combat-experienced general was Culp’s Hill, sitting there at once dominating and unoccupied. Trimble rushed back to report this to Ewell, who “made some impatient reply” before refusing to consider an immediate attack, and the interview abruptly ended. With that, Trimble disgustedly left the scene.⁴³

According to Randolph McKim, a generally reliable source, Isaac Trimble showed restraint in criticizing Richard Ewell in later years due to their longtime friendship but shared a more critical assessment during his and McKim’s time together as postwar Baltimore residents. According to McKim, Trimble offered to take first a division in order to take the hill. When that was denied, Trimble said just one brigade would do it. Ewell still waffled, and Trimble asked for a lone regiment, to no avail. Trimble, as an unassigned observer, supposedly threw down his sword and left Ewell’s headquarters in disgust.⁴⁴

Early, Rodes, and Ewell finally got together around 4:30 p.m. In a conference of the generals with staff swirling around, former Jackson aide Kyd Douglas volunteered that as his column had already reportedly passed Cashtown, Edward Johnson should arrive within the hour, and over two hours left of daylight still remained.

Ewell sent his aide, James Power Smith, not just to find Lee and convey their joint desire to attack the hill but to emphasize the need for support from Hill’s Corps. Smith rushed off and relayed the message. Lee’s exasperatingly vague response essentially told Richard Ewell to do what he thought best about Cemetery Hill, to take it if he felt it “practicable.” Ewell could work out any support with Hill on his own, but he was still to avoid a general engagement if possible.

Ewell pondered Lee’s contradictory response and decreed that rather than chance losing more men from his two veteran brigades in an assault on East Cemetery Hill, they would wait on Johnson’s arrival. Johnson’s fresh division could occupy Culp’s Hill, one half mile to the east, which according to Trimble and personal observation dominated even East Cemetery Hill. That would gain the advantage without further fighting. Decision made, Ewell placed Frank Bond as provost marshal in the town and rode off.

Ultimately, when Johnson became delayed and did not arrive until two hours later, the opportunity as well as daylight had escaped. Union strategists on the scene also recognized the importance of Culp’s Hill and rushed troops to the significant heights. A disgusted former Jackson staff officer who overheard the timorous discussions taking place made the comment to another former Jackson staffer, “Oh for the presence and inspiration of Old Jack for just one hour!”⁴⁵ Everyone below the rank of general seemed to agree.

Capt. Julius Vogler of the 21st North Carolina later summed up the sentiment of the entire division in a letter fraught with hindsight: “The attack on the heights of Gettysburg was an unfortunate affair. Instead of following up our victory the first day we waited until they were well fortified & then led our men up to be slaughtered. Such a mistake was never committed while Jackson was with us.”⁴⁶

Avery’s North Carolina brigade slept that night south of Gettysburg in the same line of battle where it had waited to attack, along the run that stretched from Culp’s springhouse west to a point protected by the back slope of Cemetery Hill. His right hung in the air as dark descended on southern Gettysburg.⁴⁷

Save for the uncertain ending, the day had been a nearly total victory for the Confederates. Union losses totaled 9,000 out of 16,500 committed, well over 50 percent, including 3,000 lost as prisoners. Confederate losses can only be estimated, but they numbered somewhere around 9,000 total out of about the same number, two-thirds of those inflicted by John Reynolds and Abner Doubleday’s First Corps on A. P. Hill’s Confederate Third Corps. The fact is, two corps on each side fought head up, and the Southerners drove the Yankees for miles and held the field and the city.⁴⁸

Ewell’s Second Corps, once Stonewall’s own, sustained over 3,000 casualties alone, with 2,500 of those suffered by Rodes’s division. Early arrived on the field late and fought against a weakened Eleventh Corps. Early’s brigades took a little more than 500 casualties on the first day, with 65 percent of those coming from Gordon’s Georgians, who were first into the fray.⁴⁹

While one-sided in the end, the short fight in the brickyard had not been easy for either side. Though outnumbered and in an inferior defensive posture, Coster’s brigade held until the Tar Heels climbed the fence into their midst. At that point, superior numbers began to tell, and nearly six hundred of the nine hundred Unionists in the fight were either shot or captured, one of the largest casualty percentages in the entire Federal army. The 154th and 134th New York regiments were the hardest hit, losing a combined 237 captured. The 27th Pennsylvania, which got away early, still surrendered 75 prisoners, well over half of which came from the fifty-man detachment sent to fill the gap between the New York units.⁵⁰

Avery’s brigade had borne the brunt of the Hays-Avery assault, being the ones to make a direct hit on Coster’s brigade. The rout did not result in any of the customary Tar Heel “missing and presumed captured,” but the New York and Pennsylvania defenders caused significant casualties otherwise. Of the 135 irreplaceable Carolinians, the 6th North Carolina, attacking directly at the stout 154th New York defending Kuhn’s fence line, suffered 13 killed and 71 wounded for their efforts. The 57th North Carolina nearly swept by the fight altogether, as its position on the wing saved it from more casualties from the infantry fire received by the 21st and 6th North Carolina regiments. A few stray shells lobbed from East Cemetery Hill may have found the mark near the brickyard, but the same disposition opened the regiment up during the late-afternoon artillery barrage in Culp’s meadow. Godwin’s regiment ended up with three killed and sixteen wounded. The 21st North Carolina attacked the 134th New York from the front and flank and came away with five killed and thirty-seven wounded, fourteen of the latter considered severely so. Dr. Isaac S. Tanner, surgeon with the 21st North Carolina, carefully recorded treating twenty-seven of the wounded. Among them he recorded one tobacconist, one student, two traders, and twenty-three farmers. Every company in the regiment suffered multiple casualties. Stokes County lost one killed and seven wounded, while Surry, with three companies, counted four who would never return home—three of them in Company I—and thirteen wounded.⁵¹

The debate over halting the highly successful rout of July 1 has outlived the war and all the participants. All that the soldiers in the 21st North Carolina knew immediately afterward was the night-long sound of digging shovels and chopping axes as the entire Union Eleventh Corps fortified the heights ahead in preparation for an attack that should have already happened.⁵²