Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg Read Online Free PDF Page A

see, through the bare branches of several oak trees, the Round Tops four miles to the south.
    For an understanding of the battle, the most important view from this tower is to the east over the open, flat fields defended by two undersized Eleventh Corps divisions (about six thousand men, smaller than a single Confederate division). Known as the “Dutch Corps” because half its regiments were composed mainly of German-Americans, this corps had been part of the Army of the Potomac for only six months. On May 2 at the battle of Chancellorsville, it had borne the brunt of Stonewall Jackson's flank attack, and had buckled under the onslaught. It buckled again at Gettysburg about 4:00 P.M. on July 1, setting off a sort of chain reaction in which the Union line of two miles in length caved in from right to left. The First Corps west of town, despite being worn downby hours of fighting, gave ground grudgingly while several Eleventh Corps regiments were again routed. This happened mainly because Jubal Early's division of Ewell's corps had arrived from the northeast on the Harrisburg Road (sometimes called the Heidlersburg Road) a mile east of our observation tower. This route brought them in fortuitously on the right flank of the Eleventh Corps in a whirlwind attack that the brigade on that flank could not withstand.
    That brigade was in a division commanded by Brigadier General Francis Barlow, a boyish-looking New York lawyer before the war, who had enlisted in 1861 as a private. Barlow demonstrated extraordinary courage and military aptitude that brought him repeated promotions and a reputation as one of the army's best combat leaders. But July 1, 1863, was not one of his better days. He suffered his second serious wound of the war on what came to be called Barlow's Knoll at the extreme right flank of the Union line, and was left for dead when his troops retreated.
    We shall proceed out to Barlow's Knoll along Howard Avenue, lined with Eleventh Corps monuments, to examine yet another of Gettysburg's many myths. This one was probably made up out of whole cloth by Confederate General John B. Gordon, who, like Barlow, was a lawyer (in Georgia) before the war and rose by merit and courage to high command.Gordon led the brigade that attacked the Barlow's Knoll position and, as he later told the story, spotted Barlow lying wounded and apparently dying. Gordon gave him water and had him carried to a shady spot. Gordon fought on through the rest of the war (wounded six times himself) thinking that Barlow had died. Some fifteen years after the battle, Gordon and Barlow happened to meet at a dinner party in New York, according to Gordon's account in his memoirs. When they were introduced, Gordon supposedly asked, “General, are you related to the Barlow who was killed at Gettysburg?” “Why, I am the man, sir,” replied Barlow. “Are you related to the Gordon who killed me?” “I am the man, sir.”
    It is a great story, very much in keeping with the sentimental “brother against brother” reconciliationist tradition in vogue when Gordon published his memoirs in 1903 (seven years after Barlow's death). But there is no evidence except Gordon's account to support it. Barlow's letters written at the time mention no such incident. And Gordon's memoirs are in other respects notoriously unreliable. His sword was mightier than his pen—or at least more truthful. Nevertheless, the story has persisted to this day, told by some guides and swallowed by tourists because they want to believe that the Civil War was an unfortunate disagreement between good and honorable men, not a cataclysmicArmageddon. The interpretive marker at Barlow's Knoll quotes from Gordon's account and implicitly endorses it, even though the current park historians do not.
    We now continue to the end of Howard Avenue, named for Major General Oliver Otis Howard, commander of the Eleventh Corps. A pious Congrega-tionalist from Maine, a graduate of Bowdoin College as well as