The Battle of Gettysburg: The Country, the Contestants, the ResultsStorrick, W. C. (William Clayton)
History
The Battle of Gettysburg: The Country, the Contestants, the Results
Storrick, W. C. (William Clayton)
Gettysburg National Military Park (Pa.); Gettysburg, Battle of, Gettysburg, Pa., 1863
During the forenoon of the third day, conditions at headquarters were
generally quiet. In the afternoon, when the Confederate artillery on
Seminary Ridge opened fire as a prelude to Pickett’s Charge, it was
directed mainly against the left center of the Union line on Cemetery
Ridge. As the location of Meade’s headquarters was in the immediate
rear, just under the crest of the ridge, much damage was done by the
hail of shot and shell that crossed the ridge. A shell exploded in the
yard among the staff officers’ horses tied to the fence, and a number of
them were killed, while still other horses were killed in the rear of
the building. Several members of the headquarters’ guard were slightly
wounded.
George G. Meade, a grandson of General Meade, in his interesting
narrative “With Meade at Gettysburg,” tells the following story:
“During this rain of Confederate shell, and while Meade, deep in
thought, was walking up and down this little back yard between the house
and the Taneytown Road, he chanced to notice that some of his staff,
during the enforced inactivity while waiting the pleasure of their
general, were gradually and probably unconsciously edging around the
side of the house.
“‘Gentlemen,’ he said, stopping and smiling pleasantly, ‘Are you trying
to find a safer place? You remind me of the man who was driving the
ox-cart which took ammunition for the heavy guns on the field of Palo
Alto. Finding himself within range, he tilted up his cart and got behind
it. Just then General Taylor came along, and seeing the attempt at
shelter, shouted, “You damned fool; don’t you know you are no safer
there than anywhere else?” The driver replied, “I don’t suppose I am,
General, but it kind o’ feels so.”’”
As the firing still continued it was decided to move the headquarters
several hundred yards south on the Taneytown Road, to a barn on the
Cassatt property. There a Confederate shell exploded and wounded General
Butterfield, the chief of staff, who was obliged to leave the field and
was unable to return that day. After remaining a short time, General
Meade and staff removed to General Slocum’s headquarters at Powers’
Hill, along the Baltimore Pike, moving there by way of Granite Lane.
The Louisiana Tigers
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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