Gettysburg Day 2 - The Advantage Of Moving Down The Hill

Originally published on forbes.com on July 4th 2013.

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Around 4:30 PM on July 2, 2013, my covivant and I were approaching what I thought might be the high point of our Gettysburg experience, well my experience anyway.  At 5:00 PM, Ranger Jim Flook presented the last of the Key Moment presentations at Station 1 - Little Round Top.  Ranger Flook wanted us to learn how it took all soldiers operating in concert to save a position.  General Governeur Warren perceives the importance of the position.  We stood right behind the general's statue.  General Warren was Chief Engineer of the Army of The Potomac with no troops under his command.  He sends a courier to ask for troops to be detailed to defend the hill.  Colonel Strong Vincent intercepts the courier, learns of the need and, on his own authority, moves his brigade to defend the position.  Among the regiments in Colonel Vincent's brigade is the 20th Maine commanded by Joshua Chamberlain.  It is Vincent that orders the regiment to hold at all costs.

Ranger Flook then took us back to the 20th Maine monument which is across the road from Warren's statue and a bit back into the woods. There he told us about the post-war epistolary dispute that raged between Chamberlain and  Colonel William C. Oates of the 15th Alabama.  By Oates account, he had decided that further attack on the hill was futile, particularly after he heard cannons which he thought to be Union artillery, and chose to withdraw.  Then he saw the 20th Maine descending on him.  Chamberlain, on the other hand, thought that he was hearing Confederate cannons and that the desperate charge was what provoked the 15th's withdrawal.  Post-war memoirs are replete with such disputes and hard-core enthusiasts love to debate them to this day.

Where Were The Real Timers ?

We lingered on Little Round Top as long as we dared given our concern about not wanting to miss the last shuttle, since the buses ran only to 6:30 PM. I was hunting for familiar faces.  I had told CV about the real timer phenomenon.  When I was at Antietam in September, I ended up chatting with two fellow who recognized one another from Bull Run.  Real timers are a peculiar self-recruited unorganized group response to the sesquicentennial.  According to the two fellows, there are about thirty or so of them.  Real timers seek to be on the exact location of critical events at the exact time 150 years later (They seem to be liberal about day light savings time throwing things off by an hour).  They do not care whether there are any activities going on and from what I could gather would be just as happy if the only people there with them were a handful of other real times.

One example of a hard-core real timer is my friend  George.  I met him as we were walking towards the Cornfield at Antietam around 6:00 AM on September 17th.  From his accent I inferred that he had come from a distance.  I was right.  George grew up and lives in Bavaria.  This was grounds for immediate bonding since the most colorful teacher I ever had (And believe me, I had quite a few colorful ones) was Father Harreis, who was supposed to be teaching us German in our senior year at Xavier High School.  Instead he mostly regaled us with stories that usually began with "Venn, I vas a young boy in Chermany".  Street fighting among Catholic youth, Nazis and Communists in the streets of Munchen was a common topic.  At any rate, I asked George what the Park Service had planned for the day.  It is one thing to drive from Massachusetts to Maryland on a whim, but coming all the way from Europe, you would think a little advance research would be in order. He didn't know and didn't care.  He just wanted to be in the Cornfield at the right time.

George is one of those scary smart people who came to a Civil War obsession through board gaming.  His favorite was Gleam of Bayonets, which is about Antietam.  He was motivated to improve his English in order to be able to read the instruction manual.  I knew George was planning to be at Vicksburg during his six-week vacation (It really stinks to be a European doesn't it ?) this year, but I hoped I would glimpse another familiar face.  No such luck.  After several days of battlefield wandering (particularly when you include Chancellorsville), CV is becoming skeptical about the existence of real timers.  I keep telling CV that my obsession is moderate and my knowledge superficial.  CV has become confident that the real timer club has only one member and it is somebody that CV knows.  I, on the other hand, have concluded that all the real real timers are at Vicksburg, which actually has much more strategic significance than Gettysburg.

A Sea of Blue

Off duty, but fully attired Union generals were on the scene (They are doing weekend events).  Some of them, including General Grant, had their ladies with them. 

 There were also a couple of green-coated US Sharpshooters, who had played a critical role in the action.  Thanks to the Civil War Heritage Foundation, Joshua Chamberlain was on the scene in the person of Roland Servant from Southbridge, MA not very far at all from Oxford where CV and I live. (I have been obsessively adding birthplace of Clara Barton whenever someone asks me where I am from)  We had a nice chat about being Governor of Maine and President of Bowdoin College.  It is inspiring to know that Chamberlain's bravery on Little Round Top was not a fluke:

In January 1880, there was a dispute about who was the newly elected governor of Maine, and the Maine State House was occupied by a band of armed men. The outgoing governor, Alonzo Garcelon, summoned Chamberlain, the commander of the Maine Militia, to take charge. Chamberlain sent home the armed men, and arranged for the Augusta police to keep control. He stayed in the State House most of the twelve-day period until the Maine Supreme Judicial Court's decision on the election results was known. During this time, there were threats of assassination and kidnapping, and on one occasion he went outside to face down a crowd of 25-30 men intending to kill him, and both sides offered bribes to appoint him a United States senator. Having gratified neither side in the dispute, he did not become a senator, and his career in state politics ended

Mr. Servant told me that Chamberlain actually died of one of the six wounds he received during the balance of the war.  I still kind of think being 83 might have had something to do with it.  Just saying.

As it turned out even though it was a key moment and resulted in the best movie clip ever

Little Round Top was not the high point of my experience.  That would be on Day 3, which will be coming soon.

You can follow me on twitter @peterreillycpa.

I actually met Joshua Chamberlain three times in my real time adventures.  The first time was at Chancellorsville, where he was sitting it out due to small pox in his regiment.  Not to nit pick, that fellow needs to work on his Maine accent. Mr Servant at Little Round top is the next picture.  The last is actually a distant cousin of Chamberlain.  He is wearing the uniform of a Major General and the medal of honor that Chamberlain did not receive until the 1890s.  I met him the night before the Gettysburg address ceremonies in November.

Gettysburg Day 2 - Heading Into Action

Originally published on forbes.com on July 2, 2013.

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We did not feel compelled to rise early on July 2.  Although there were National Park Service events going all day, it was the events of the afternoon and evening 150 years ago that would make some small patches of ground forever iconic.  Well perhaps not forever, but certainly as long as there is a United States of America.  There is the Peach Orchard, the Wheatfield, Devil's Den and, of course, Little Round Top.

The Park was starting to be seriously strained on July 2.  Still we were able to get parking in one of the cemetery lots.  My covivant was driving.  CV spotted a couple from Maine approaching their parked car and hung onto the approach with the tenacity of Joshua Chamberlain.  As inevitably happens in such situations, the Maine couple had many mysterious preparations to make before launching.  Their pull-out did not take as long as Longstreet's attack preparations.  It just seemed that way. 

 CV and I have different parking philosophies.  CV, like many people, searches out the spot closest to the ultimate destination and has an instinct for whether people walking to their cars are going to leave.  I am generally indifferent to how close-in the spot is. I want a spot that involves not backing up to either enter or leave with no one next to me on either side.  I also am weak when it comes to parallel parking.  CV was definitely the one to do the in-town driving on this trip.

At the information tents,  I began my intelligence campaign to learn what the line Park Service people thought about Doris Kearns Goodwin's speech.  My slowly developing case of "media envy" heightened.  I deeply envied those large "MEDIA" tags that I spotted from time to time.  The Park Service people, of course, have been way too busy to pay much attention to the controversy.  I've made it a point to tell them what a great job I think they have doing.  Not just this event, but the entire sesquicentennial and actually just about anytime I have ever been in a National Park at any time in my life.  Many people, particularly those that I run into in my business life as a CPA, have a default assumption that private business always does things better than government.  When it comes to vacation experiences, I think our National Parks stack up very well against Disneyworld and Universal.  And it is not just because I am a cheapskate.  I'd hate to think what the last few days would have been like if all the arrangements had been subcontracted to the airlines.

As we headed roughly South towards the days action, we ran into some people with 20th Maine t-shirts.  They were re-enactors, currently in mufti, who would be participating in the weekend's events.  They were with the American Civil War Association, which is based in Northern California.  They and the next group we ran into illustrate many of the odd divisions among Civil War enthusiasts (or buffs, if you must use that term).  The 20th Maine is, as you may know,through a combination of a spectacular incident and excellent post-war public relations work by their commander, Joshua Chamberlain, among the most famous in American military history.  Joshua Chamberlain was a college professor in civilian life and he wrote quite a bit, but when he is quoted, it is usually "Fix bayonets" that you will hear

The highlight of our day was going to be Little Round Top at the approximate time of the famous charge.  I was hoping to confirm the time as well as I could.  Who better to ask than a 20th Maine re-enactor ?  He didn't know.  One of his companions thought it had been in the morning.  The real life participants 150 years ago mostly did not have watches, did not spend much time looking at them if they had them and the watches were not well synchronized nor that accurate.  So precise times are always a matter of conjecture.  Nonetheless, the events on Little Round Top are well known to be late afternoon/evening.  

How do 20th Maine re-enactors not know that ?  I'm sure most do and I caught a bad sample, but it is odd that there are any at all.  Re-enactors, though, to do what they do well, need to be focused on artifact authenticity and the details of drill.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to master the technology of an Enfield or Springfield rifled musket, but firing it in coordination with a few hundred other people is not something you learn in half an hour.  When you combine that with knowing whether a particular type of cartridge box or corps badge went into service before or after the date of the particular event you are portraying, there is a vast amount of material that you could study without getting into areas that those with a more general knowledge would take for granted.

CV started quizzing the fellow about the details of his group.  As with many such groups, it is a spin-off of another group.  The original core group was into hyper-authenticity including camp life.  This meant that if women and children were accompanying, they needed to be confined to a separate camp.  I guess it is like being the male child of lesbian moms attending the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. As fellows got older, this became less and less acceptable, but the hardcore leadership was unmoved.  ACWA allows families, appropriately attired in period costumes, to camp with their men.  Re-enacting is a family activity for many.  One of the T-Shirts, you will see is "I am a Civil War nut's wife".  My friend from Central Florida told CV that if we were ever to get married, he was going to get that for us as a wedding present.  As the days go by, my protestations to CV that my Civil War obsession is moderate and my knowledge superficial, both true, become less and less credible.

I did get a more precise answer about Little Round Top timing from another group, that we encountered as the Park Service people were organizing us for the Valley of Death.  They call themselves the Gettysburg Geek Group and are a very informal group that formed two years ago to plan a trip to the sesquicentennial.  There are about seventeen of them, friends and friends of friends of Reverend Keith Hunsinger, a Lutheran pastor.  Five of the group are Lutheran pastors.  Reverend Hunsinger is an intentional interim pastor.  He and his fellow clergy leveraged their ministerial status to score enviable accommodations for the week - the guest house at the Lutheran Seminary. 

 They also included quite a few board gamers in their group - another entry point into Civil War enthusiasm.  Really serious military board gaming can, in fact, require rocket scientist intelligence.  Some of them are scary smart.  The board game Gettysburg by Avalon Hill was published in 1958 and is ground zero of the historical simulation board game hobby.  I could not help but brag about the vintage copy that accompanied me on the trip and one of the GGG told me that they had laid a copy on the table the previous night to plan their day.  They confirmed for me that the ideal time to be on Little Round Top would be for the ranger program at 5:00 PM.  Then it was time to head into Devil's Den, which will be the subject of my next post.

You can follow me on twitter @peterreillycpa.