Read Online Gettysburg: The Last Invasion by Allen C. Guelzo - Free Book Online Page B

Federal infantry were now in possession of the town. Upon closer inspection, it turned out that the infantry amounted to just over 2,500 Pennsylvania emergency militia, with two guns manned by thirty of the U.S. Regulars who had been forced so incontinently to abandon theCarlisle Barracks a few days before. The prospect of administering a convenient whipping to some open-jawed militia roused Stuart’s men as a compensation for their long frustration. “We were preparing to have the time of our lives with thePennsylvania Militia,” wrote one of Stuart’s artillerymen. But Stuart preferred to waste as little in the way of lives or strength as possible, and sent in a courier under a flag of truce—“a third of an ordinary bed sheet” in size—warning that Stuart would bombard the town if it was not surrendered to him at once. 17
    The Yankees may have been militia, but their commander was not. He was William Farrar Smith, known more colloquially as “Baldy” Smith, West Point class of 1845, colonel of the 3rd Vermont at First Bull Run, a division commander in theArmy of the Potomac on the Peninsula and then of the6th Corps at Fredericksburg. “Shell away,” he snarled to Stuart’s messenger, “and be damned.” For three and a half hours, Fitz Lee’s artillery flungshells and solidshot on the hapless town, striking houses and the county courthouse, but doing “no particular damage.” It was not a task Fitz Lee enjoyed: “My first military service after graduating from West Point was there” and he had “received the hospitalities of most of its citizens”—whom his artillery were now very likely to kill. “It was with much regret that I proceeded.” 18
    When the bombardment produced no further response from BaldySmith, the increasingly testy Stuart ordered the4th Virginia Cavalry to torch theCarlisle Barracks, and for a grand finale Stuart’s gunners shelled the town gas works, which blew up in a spectacular red cloud of flame. Stuart sent one last courier to Smith at midnight, but the Confederate shelling had done nothing to make Baldy more pliable. He asked “that the bearer inform General [Fitzhugh] Lee that he would see him in a hotter climate first.” Stuart’s gunners had fired over 135 rounds into the town to no useful effect, and after a little more desultory firing, they gave up. Whatever pleasure the shelling gave Stuart, it gave little to his men. “I could not but reflect as I looked back on the burning town, on the wickedness, the horrors of this felt war,” wrote one of Stuart’s weary junior officers. “I was made to feel very unhappy indeed, and to pray, ‘God grant that terrible war may lead to an early peace.’ ” 19
    Stuart’s irritation faded before the fires he had set burned out, because “about midnight,” one of Stuart’s couriers “returned with the first information we had received from our army and with orders from Gen. R.E. Lee for Stuart to march to Gettysburg at once.” Stuart’s column swayed perilously southward toward Gettysburg until they had passed through the village of Hunterstown, just five miles north of the town. Sometime between two and four o’clock in the afternoon, as the rear guard underWade Hampton cleared Hunterstown, Federal cavalry skirmishers began nipping at the heels of the column. But Dick Ewell sent a pair of 10-pounderParrott rifles to back Hampton up—the first direct involvement of the army with Stuart’s cavalry since the campaign began—and by dusk the skirmishing finally petered out. After eight days of almost ceaseless riding and fighting, Stuart’s cavalry had been forced to ride and fight right up to the end. 20
    However late Stuart was in arriving, theArmy of Northern Virginia was still glad to see him. As he rode along theYork Pike into Gettysburg, “such joyful shouts as rent the air I never heard” and “the cavalry for once was well received.” Lee, however, had grown increasingly “uneasy & irritated by