Just Before the Battle: Marching to Gettysburg with the 11th Corps

    On the night of June 30, 1863, the Ohioans attached to the 11th Army Corps under the command of Major General Oliver O. Howard lay in camps around Emmitsburg, Maryland. “That night at Emmitsburg, with its recollections, is to me as sacred as holy writ,” recalled Leonidas Jewett of the 61st Ohio. “The excitement, the knowledge of a great battle soon to be fought with the killing and wounding of many of the brave boys of Ohio and the other loyal states of the Union; the wonder what fate awaited us, were all thoughts that flew through the minds of the soldiers of our army who camped at Emmitsburg. Of my own regiment, I remember that night Colonel Stephen J. McGroarty, Lieutenant Colonel William L. Bown, Major D.C. Beckett, and many others in the next days that gave up their lives that this vast Republic might live.”

The XI Army Corps headquarters flag belonging to Major General Oliver O. Howard who led the corps for much of its existence. 

          The Buckeyes and their comrades of the 11th Corps had marched all day through the rain on June 29th before going into camp in the fields along the Emmitsburg Road. “That day had been cold and rainy, the roads heavy, and the march very tiresome,” remembered General Howard. “We arrived at Emmitsburg at 4 o’clock in the afternoon having marched 38 miles in 24 hours carrying knapsacks, blankets, 60 rounds of ammunition, and three days’ rations,” noted Major Samuel H. Hurst of the 73rd Ohio. “This march which, for rapidity, has rarely been excelled during the war, led us through a very rich farming district. But the citizens seemed wonderfully indifferent to the danger threatened by an invading army. They only exhibited curiosity and wonder at seeing so many soldiers and from their remarks, evidently thought our force was abundantly able to annihilate the rest of the human family. We expected to see them rising as one man and rushing to arms to defend their homes; we only saw them rush to the fields, scythe, and reaper, and leave the work of driving back the foe all undivided to ourselves.”

Sergeant Henry Lockwood, Co. C, 75th O.V.I.

The men enjoyed their day of rest after several days of marching, much of it along the hot and dusty roads of Maryland where the troops moved upwards of 30 miles in a day. “During the afternoon, we got our mail for the first time in several weeks,” wrote Jacob Smith of the 107th Ohio. “At such times when the mail was being distributed, there was considerably crowding around of the boys, all anxious to hear from home and loved ones. If any failed to get a letter, they went away apparently sad at the disappointment. Many of the boys spent part of the afternoon writing letters to the folks at home and their sweethearts. There were many of those writing home today who were penning their last messages to loved ones, never more to see or hear each other until the great day of final reckoning shall come. It was the earnest desire of every Union soldier that we might gain the victory in the coming engagement. Many prayers went up to the Supreme Ruler for the success of our Army.”

Quartermaster Sergeant Cecil C. Reed of Battery K of the 1st Ohio Light Artillery recalled that on the night of the 30th “came a report along the line that our advance had overtaken the invaders and there would surely be an engagement on the morrow. We soon received orders to make ourselves comfortable for the night, and you may rest assured that it was not long until the boys were snugly ensconced- some under rail piles, some under the bushes, and some under tents, with nothing to disturb their peaceful repose but some of the many pleasant dreams that never fail to visit the soldier’s couch.”

Generals Howard and Carl Schurz, commanding the Third Division, both found quarters at St. Joseph’s Academy and Free School on the south side of town. “I waited upon the Lady Superior to ask her for permission to use one of her buildings as my headquarters for the night, suggesting, with perfect sincerity, that her buildings and grounds would be better protected by our presence within than by any guards stationed without,” Schurz later wrote. “The Lady Superior received me very graciously and at once put one of the houses within the enclosure at my disposal. She even sent for the chaplain of the institution, Father Borlando, to conduct us through the main edifice and permitted one of my officers, a good musician, to play on the organ in the chapel which he did to the edification of all who heard him. The conduct of my troops camped around the institution was exemplary and we enjoyed there as still and restful a night as if the outside of the nunnery had been as peaceful as daily life was ordinarily within it.”

Major General Carl Schurz

“I mention this as one of the strange contrasts of our existence, for at daybreak the next morning I was woken up by a marching order directing me to take the road to Gettysburg,” he continued. “We did not know that we were marching towards the most famous battlefield of the war. In fact, we, I mean even the superior officers, had no clear conception as to where the decisive battle of the campaign was to take place. Only a few days before, General Hooker had left the command of the Army of the Potomac and General Meade had been put in his place. Such a change of commanders at the critical period of the campaign would ordinarily have had a disquieting effect upon the officers and men. But in this case, it had not, for by his boastful proclamations and his subsequent blunders and failures at Chancellorsville, General Hooker had largely forfeited the confidence of the army.”


          The cloud of Chancellorsville hung especially heavy over the men of the 11th Corps as the collapse of the corps on the evening of May 2nd had been seized upon by many as the root cause of the loss at Chancellorsville. Some newspapers hurled invective at the “cowardly Germans” of the corps. Horace Greeley of the New York Daily Tribune charged that "if the 11th Corps had held its ground, the defeat and destruction of Jackson would have been inevitable, but when they fled, it became necessary to recall Sickles and the whole maneuver was foiled. General Howard who commanded it is a brave and skillful general, but neither his efforts nor those of General Devens and General Schurz could arrest the panic. We trust that swift justice will overtake the regiments that broke; that if it be deemed too rigid to shoot them all, they may at least be decimated and then dissolved.”

General Carl Schurz described the effect this type of "publicity" had on his troops, exhausted, and bloodied after a hard campaign. “Every newspaper that fell into our hands told the world the frightful story of the unexampled misconduct of the 11th Corps, how the ‘cowardly Dutchmen’ of that corps had thrown down their arms and fled at the first fire of the enemy, how my division led in the disgraceful flight without firing a shot, how these cowardly Dutch like a herd of frightened sheep had overrun the whole battlefield and come near stampeding other brigades or divisions, in short, the whole failure of the Army of the Potomac was owing to the scandalous poltroonery of the 11th Corps. We procured whatever newspapers we could obtain- newspapers from New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Boston, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago, Milwaukee- the same story everywhere. I was thunderstruck." General Schurz and other officers of the corps fought back fruitlessly against this type of incendiary rhetoric, but General Hooker, consumed with defending his own record with the public and the Lincoln administration, seemed content to let the Germans take the blame for the Chancellorsville defeat. The men would march to Gettysburg with this criticism ringing in their ears but determined to prove themselves in the next fight.

The following morning, the First Division under General Francis C. Barlow marched to Gettysburg along Emmitsburg Road following the three divisions of the First Corps while the Third Division under General Schurz and the Second on General Adolph von Steinwehr marched on a crossroad to the Taneytown Road and then turned north.

 

Major Samuel H. Hurst, 73rd O.V.I.

Sources:

Hurst, Samuel H. Journal History of the Seventy-Third Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Chillicothe: n.p., 1866, pg. 65

“From Stafford Heights to Gettysburg in 1863.” Leonidas M. Jewett, 61st Ohio Volunteer Infantry, Sketches of War History, 1861-1865 of the Commandery of the State of Ohio Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, Volume V, pgs. 213-222

Schurz, Carl. The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, Volume III, pgs. 3-4

Smith, Jacob. Camps and Campaigns of the 107th Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Navarre: Indian River Graphics, 2000, pgs. 85-86

Letter from Quartermaster Sergeant Cecil C. Reed, Battery K, 1st Ohio Light Artillery, Cleveland Morning Leader (Ohio), July 24, 1863, pg. 2


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