Reflections on Gettysburg

There is one museum, one nat­ural won­der and one his­tor­i­cal site that after vis­it­ing have all left me breath­less and with­out words.

The museum is the Mooney Worther Museum out­side New Philadel­phia. Mooney Worther carved wooden steam loco­mo­tives, among other things. The nat­ural won­der is the Grand Canyon, and the his­tor­i­cal site is Gettysburg.

Ken Burns’ depic­tion of Get­tys­burg — the hero­ics, the logis­tics, the land­scape and cer­tainly the death toll told in images are breath-taking, yet still not enough! I wanted to know more about Cap­tain Cham­ber­lain — Lit­tle Round Top especially.

What I saw from Lit­tle Round Top were the peach orchards and the wheat fields, which reminded me of any small farm, even ours. And still I can­not find the words to cap­ture the entire drama. A bat­tle­ground on such pas­toral scenes seems jar­ring and unfit­ting. How­ever, my ances­tor Fran­cis S. Wolfe, did find the words; he was there!

“We had many stir­ring times in our three years of sol­dier­ing but the fight at Get­tys­burg was the worst. We had been on the march from Wash­ing­ton for sev­eral days and when we got within about five miles of there, we got orders to dou­ble quick. If any­body called this a joyride they were a poor judge of nav­i­ga­tion as it was like rid­ing a log-cart and imag­ine the horses going on the lope. When we got there we were put in posi­tion at Lit­tle Round Top on the front line. We had not been there very long when we saw a flag and troops com­ing up a small val­ley. The Cap­tain took out his glasses and took a hur­ried look and yelled ‘Rebs, boys, rebs, give ‘em hell’ and we surely did. We gave them shells awhile and then grape and can­is­ter but they came rush­ing and yelling like demons. The last charge we gave them was a dou­ble charge of can­is­ter. When the gun was dis­charged it almost upset and we could see it mowed a gap nearly a rod wide through their ranks of man­gled human­ity but they closed up and came on. The Cap­tain saw we could not hold our posi­tion and gave orders to retreat. They brought up the horses and got away with four of the guns but as they were just ready to hitch to our gun and the one next to it some of the horses were hit by shot and became unman­age­able and the Cap­tain yelled to save our­selves and let the guns go. It is the duty of No. 8 (2nd cor­po­ral) to spike the guns before leav­ing them. This is done by ram­ming a rat-tail file in the vent and break­ing it off as this pre­vents any­one from using the gun until it is drilled out, but No. 8 had got it bad in the leg and retired for repairs.

“I took a piece of heavy wire called the prim­ing wire (I was No. 3) and intended clinch­ing it but had not the time as No. 1 had the sponge staff run­ning off and I couldn’t clinch it so I jammed the wire into the vent and was the last to leave the guns. The rebs were not over 30 feet away. As I started to run they shouted, ‘Stop you damned Yan­kee son-of-B…’ I yelled back that wasn’t my name and sure did some sprint­ing. The bul­lets were whizzing all around me and I do not know how any­one could escape being hit but we did.” (The Wolfe Fam­ily His­tory by Nora Wolfe Adkins, daugh­ter of Fran­cis S. Wolfe, Law­head Press 1964)

Sylvia Zim­mer­man is the owner of Ful­ton Creek Jer­sey Cheese in Rich­wood. She holds two grad­u­ate degrees and, when not work­ing on her farm or pur­su­ing her inter­est in sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture, writes her own blog.

Posted by Sylvia Zimmerman on Sep 10 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.