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o • ^mmmammm TIE ii||l OF THE 1 1' M .: I ills M . isii'lTi;. : i 'm.. :' * coti v, < vv* v,vr , v , LINCOLN ROOM UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY The Story of The Battles at Gettysburg Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign http://archive.org/details/storyofbattlesatOOscot COL. JAS. K. P. SCOTT The Story of the Battles at Gettysburg by JAMES K. P. SCOTT H. 1st Penna. Cavalry A survivor of a regiment with a monument on the base-line of the defense at the Angle, with its name inscribed on the pedestal at the High Water Mark %v %v %*? The Telegraph Press harrisburg, pa. 1927 Copyright, 1927, by Col. James K. P. Scott Printed in IT. S. A. Sco ?^A, This story checks up with the official records of the Union and Confederate armies, author- ized by the National Government and published by the War Department in 1880. - PREFACE. By an act approved June 23, 1874, Congress authorized the publication of the official records of the War of the Rebellion, of both the Union and Confederate Armies, directing the then Sec- retary of War to have copied for the Public Printer all reports, letters, telegrams, and gen- eral orders not heretofore copied or printed, and arranged in chronological order. By an act approved June 16, 1880, further provision was made for the printing and binding of 10,000 copies of a compilation of these records and directing their distribution among the offi- cers of the Army and the contributors to the work; and to such libraries, organizations, and individuals as may be designated by the Senators, Representatives, and Delegates of the Forty- seventh Congress. An officer of the Army, Robert N. Scott, Major of the Third Artillery, and Brevet Lieut. Colonel, was selected for the compilation of the work that was finally approved by the War De- partment August 23, 1880, and signed by Alex- ander Ramsey, the then Secretary of War. THE STORY OF THE BATTLES AT GETTYSBURG. As far as humanly possible the story of this field must check up with the spirit of the pub- ' : PREFACE lication of these records—the Truth of History. It is a field where red-blooded men fought out their differences—to a finish that they might ever after live in friendship tried by the horror of armed discussion. The preservation of the field has served a pur- pose—glorious in its conception, a bit nebulous in its beginning, but now well defined as the last bitter drops of passion and prejudice drop from the diminishing end of a long perspective. It is a National Park. We show the world a people who, after bloody civil strife meet and mingle their tears as they cherish the memory of the brave men who fell on this field in their name The lamented Lincoln said "With malice toward none; with charity to all; with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let ns strive to finish the work we are in ; to bind up the Nation's wounds.' Or the written words of a gallant soldier with this crimsoned field at his feet 1 ' I cannot speak of these brave men as their merits and exploits deserve. Some are appropriately men- tioned in the accompanying reports and the memory of all will be gratefully and affectionately cherished by the people in whose name they fell." Gettysburg, Pa. James K. P. Scott (Feb. 18, 1927.) (H. 1st Pa. Cav.) viii . CONTENTS Chapter Page I. Greetings to Old Friends and Hail to the New 1 II. Gettysburg Before and After the Battle 24 III. Appointment of George Gordon Meade to Com- mand of the Army of the Potomac 37 IV. George Gordon Meade 49 V. The First Day 90 VI. Robert E. Lee 94 VII. The Red Shirt in Battle 104 VIII. General Lee's Army 106 IX. A Fortuitiotjs Concentration at Gettysburg . 125 X. McPherson's Ridge and Grove 135 XL At 10 :30 A. M 146 XII. Time Out 154 XIII. On Herr's Ridge 163 XIV. The Iverson Field 174 XV. East Cemetery Hill 183 XVI. Back to Willoughby's Run 193 XVII. The Battle at Willoughby's Run 196 XVIII. Tlie Beginning of the End 214 XIX. Pender Takes the Field 228 XX. The Final Stand 233 XXI. Epilogue 251 XXII. Addenda : Record of Mortally Wounded 253 ILLUSTRATIONS James K. P. Scott; First Pa. Cavalry Monument. (At the "Angle" ) Frontispiece Annual Visit of Chicago High Schools 16 "The Cob-Webs That Weave About the Tired Old Brain" 16 The Rail-Birds 17 From the Heart of France 17 Looking for Bullets 17 Meade Memorial 32 Lee Memorial 32 Sevier's Symbols- 32 Woods Where Gen. Reynolds Was Killed 33 Herr's Ridge, (from McPherson's Ridge) 96 McPherson's Ridge, (from Herr's Ridge) 97 The Field of the Eleventh Corp 112 Stephen's Knoll 113 At the R. R. Cut 144 The Whitworth Guns 145 Baxter and Iverson . , 160 Oak Ridge, (Right of First Corp) 161 Map "The Fish Hook Line" 248 Maps: At Half Hour Intervals of First Day's Battles . .275-292 X] The Story of The Battles at Gettysburg 1 ) — CHAPTER I. Greeting to Old Friends and Hail to the J^ew (An autobiographic script I was born in a county in southwest Pennsyl- vania more than eighty years ago, a county where, at the time, the pigs squealed, the hens cackled, and the cocks crowed democracy of the old Jeffersonian brand. As the name indicates, I was somewhat Scotch, the blood coming to America in the time of the colonies by the way of County Antrim, the northern-most county of Ireland, where it took on a tinge of Irish; thence to the colonies—a long voyage in those days where it was churned to the pure American brand, loyal to his flag, always ready to fight for his friends, or for those who had no luck in fight for themselves. Adams county, at the time, was the northern- most limit of the old Chester grant and was l Scott I— 2 THE STORY OF THE known as the Uplands—the Highlands, if you please—an attraction to the blood of the Scot. Many of them and their descendants are here yet, but more of them took the trails across the moun- tains, the then frontier, to the wide open spaces beyond. To-day the south-western counties of Pennsylvania and the north-western counties of the Virginias, are filled with the descendants of these hardy pioneers. And if you visit that sec- tion, and if your name happens to be Hugh, Abram, John, William, Edgar, James, Clarissa, Mary, Martha, or Nancy Scott,—write to your folks back home that you are going to stay until after Christmas, or Easter, or Fourth of July, or Thanksgiving, or Quarterly meeting—or tell them to advertise a sale. The first born of a newly-wedded pair, I was inaugurated big chief about two weeks before James Knox Polk, of Tennessee, moved to the capital city of the country for a similar function. Here is where I acquired the K that I after- wards lost: A doting father whispered a few words to the big chief justice at my inaugural that loaded the helpless infant with all the names possessed by the choice of the then electoral col- lege. I learned in later years that he would have ad- ded the names of the star members of the new BATTLES AT GETTYSBURG 3 president's cabinet—but the mother revolted: she was a Virginian and claimed that there had been a few presidents of the then United States chosen by her State, and that she had some rights that even Pennsylvania had to respect. The doctrine of the "Right of States," that, later, caused some considerable argument, was born, I believe, in Virginia. She stood up like a church for her helpless babe but I started life with initials enough that had they been at the other end of the family name, might have served as abbreviated college degrees later in life. In the early days I had to respond to the usual contraction of names that follows, some of us, all through our lives—and I had enough names to go around: Jimmy, Jim, Jim-Polk, Knoxy, and Scotty, and some of the new boys at a new school used to call me Skinny, but not to my face more than once. It is true, I was extensively laid out but thinly settled—like Fayetteville, Pa. My Father and Mother. My father, John Davenport Scott (1819,) of Pennsylvania, was the first-born of a flock of fourteen. My mother, Sarah Ann Norris (1821,) of Virginia, the youngest of ten of an older family. In the early 40's of the 19th century, marriage — 4 THE STORY OF THE was the result of a natural selection. The couple were attracted to each other, loved, and the Church or the Law—the preacher or the squire set their seal upon a union that brought forth boys and girls who, later, became real fathers and mothers in real homes. The father, as his father before him, was a blacksmith—and a good one. The "Scott Axe" was a favorite wherever wood-chopping was in fashion. When I was big enough that I could reach the old bellows-pole by standing on a soap-box, I was initiated into the mysteries of the charred coal one sees on the hearth of the old-fashioned blacksmith shop.

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