David McMurtrie Gregg

On July 3, 1863, the battle was going full fledged in Gettysburg. During the morning hours, Union General David McMurtrie Gregg's 2nd Cavalry Division was guarding the Baltimore Pike in case the Confederate's decided to attack the rear of the Union army. But Gregg looked at the maps that he had and decided that Baltimore Pike was NOT the place to be.....he felt that he needed to be on the Hanover Road. Hanover Road was the place that he felt was going to be attacked by the Confederates. And the feeling never left him.

Gregg let's General Alfred Pleasonton know that he is not comfortable guarding Baltimore Pike and that he feels the real threat is Hanover Road. Pleasonton doesn't agree with him. He tells Gregg to stay right where he is and to follow the orders given to him. Then Pleasonton tells him to get one of Kilpatrick's brigades and to place it on the Hanover Road. Gregg sends an aide to Two Taverns (which is where Kilpatrick was last located). When the aide gets to Two Taverns, the only brigade left in Two Taverns is Custer. So Custer comes to the rescue and moves his men to the corner of Hanover Road and Low Dutch Road.



Photo: David McMurtrie Gregg and his staff (Gregg, seated on right)

Thanks to Gregg's gut feeling and Custer's being eager to do whatever he could to fight, this move may have saved the Union right. To make a long story short, the battle takes place and thanks to the crazy charges made by Custer, the Confederates are forced back and that is where they stay until the Confederates leave Gettysburg.

Who were they?

I think about the civilians of the Civil War often. They had it rough. Not only did they have to hand over their loved ones to serve and fight in the war, but in many instances, they were forced to experience the war first hand. Often, these men, women and children were caught right in the middle of battle.

I was thinking these thoughts as I was walking around Harpers Ferry last week. For those who have never had the priviledge to go to Harpers Ferry, the National Park consists mostly of the lower town. As such, many of the buildings in this part of town (if not all of them) are owned by the NPS and are pretty much open to the public at any time. Most of these buildings are places where you can walk in the front door and stand in a little roped in area. What you see when you look into these buildings can only be described as stepping back in time. You can look into a room and see what shops looked like in the 1860's or someones living room or apartment, or just about anything. When I look into these glimpses into the past, I imagine what these shops and homes must have been like when things were bustling. I love to watch TV shows that are based on the 1800's. Mostly I watch (thanks to Netflix) Little House on the Prairie and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. As I look into these rooms, I picture the dry goods store to be the Olson's Mercantile or Loren Bray's General Store. I look into these homes and see the homes of the Ingall's, the Quinn/Cooper family, or any of the other characters in these homes. I see many people moving around inside these buildings....purchasing their food, shopping for yarn (to knit socks, of course), looking at bolt fabric, and children looking at the latest toys and yearning for some licorice sticks. What I see in my head is what I have seen on TV. I wonder what life was really like for these people? Life was tough, but life was so much simpler than it is today.

When the Civil War arrived, many of the civilians were forced to either leave their homes or to hide out in their basements. Neither plan was ideal. If you stayed in your basement, you ran the risk of getting hurt or worse, killed. If you left your home, you had a much higher chance of coming back to nothing. What do you do? They did both. And unfortunately, many people died in the process of doing both....not just at Harpers Ferry but at all the Civil War battlefields. These were innocent people.

As I walk around and look at these buildings...interiors and exteriors....I can't help but feel proud for these people. They worked hard and made themselves a life in which they were able to survive. But then the war came.....

Catoctin Furnace

After my adventure to Harpers Ferry the other day, I made a little side trip to Catoctin Furnace. The furnace is just off Rt 15 in Thurmont, MD. This is a little visited (I've stopped there 6 or 7 times in the past couple of years and have yet to see another car) Civil War site.

The ruins of the Furnace are sitting there just waiting to be explored. I highly recommend taking 1/2 hour and visiting this site. To explain the significance of the furnace during the Civil War, I'm going to write what it says on one of the wayside signs:

When Union General John F. Reynolds' I Corps marched by here on June 29, 1863 en route to Emmitsburg and soon to Gettysburg, his men were progressing "swimmingly". The workers of the Catoctin Furnace had little time to notice, since the charcoal furnaces were in full blast.

The landscape then looked much different than it does today. The air was filled with smoke and ash and smelled like rotten eggs, while temperatures inside the casting sheds reached temperatures upwards of 120 degrees. The mountainside was barren because it took an acre of trees a day to produce the charcoal needed to keep one furnace in blast. Large pits had been dug around the area to mine the valuable iron ore, and there were large piles of slag, the byproduct of iron making, scattered in every direction.

During the Civil War, John Baker Kunkel owned Catoctin Furnace. With two furnaces in operation, production was never interrupted during the war, and the furnace workers shipped three tons of pig iron a day east to the larger arsenals and forges that made war materiel. Iron produced here was used in the manufacturing of ironclad ships like USS Monitor. Employees worked around the clock in 12-hour shifts, earning credit at the company store. According to local tradition, lost and disoriented soldiers from both sides making their way south after the Battle of Gettysburg were offered jobs here because of the chronic labor shortage.

Frederick Roeder

When going around to historic sites, the thing that really brings home what occurred at these sites are the human interest stories. I hate that term. This isn't a "human interest" story....this is history....the kind of history that happened to a real person.....at a real time. Harper's Ferry isn't any different. There are stories all over town about things that happened to real people. One of the homes that you can go into (well....you can go inside the door but that's about it) was the home of Frederick Roeder. He was a baker. I'm going to put here what the marker says about him. The marker can explain his life far better than I can.

CASUALTY OF WAR

German immigrant Frederick Roeder was a prosperous baker, the father of seven children, and recent widower. Roeder was also about to die. The Fourth of July was normally a day of celebration , but not this year - not 1861. In March Roeder had buried his wife, Anna Maria; the following month the Civil War erupted, Virginia seceded, and Harpers Ferry became a war zone - businesses collapsed and the local economy collapsed.

A Union sympathizer, Roeder longed to catch a glimpse of the United States flag flying on the Maryland shore. Venturing out to the Potomac River, he gazed across to the Stars and Stripes , only to be struck down by a ricocheting bullet fired by a Union soldier. He crawled back to his building, his home, where he died.

Roeder was the first towns person to die during the war. His home, business and other property were confiscated by the Union army for use as a military bakery, post office and headquarters.

His orphaned children abandoned their home, but returned a year later and lived here until 1881. They filed claims with the government for extensive wartime damage to this house and other family property. They were finally approved for $504.00 in 1906.

John Brown's Body by Stephen Vincent Benet

I picked this book up while down in Harper's Ferry. Here is an excerpt from the book. It's about the Battle of Gettysburg:

Buford came to Gettysburg late that night
Riding West with his brigades of blue horse,
While Pettigrew and his North Carolinians
Were moving East toward the town with a wagon-train,
Hoping to capture shoes.
The two came in touch.
Pettigrew halted and waited for men and orders.
Buford threw out his pickets beyond the town.

The next morning was July first. It was hot and calm.
On the grey side, Heth's division was ready to march
And drive the blue pickets in. There was still no thought
Of a planned and decisive battle on either side
Though Buford had seen the strength of those two hill-ridges
Soon enough to be famous, and marked one down
As a place to rally if he should be driven back.

He talks with his staff in front of a tavern now.
An officer rides up from the near First Corps.
"What are you doing here, sir?"
The officer
Explains. He, too, has come there to look for shoes.
_Fabulous shoes of Gettysburg, dead men's shoes,
Did anyone ever wear you, when it was done,
When the men were gone, when the farms were spoiled with the bones,
What became of your nails and leather? The swords went home,
The swords went into museums and neat glass cases,
The swords look well there. They are clean from the war.
You wouldn't put old shoes in a neat glass case,
Still stuck with the mud of marching.
And yet, a man
With a tasted for such straws and fables, blown by the wind,
Might hide a pair in a labelled case sometime
Just to see how the leather looked, set down by the swords.

The officer is hardly through with his tale
When Buford orders him back to his command
"Why, what is the matter, general?"
As he speaks
The far-off hollow slam of a single gun
Breaks the warm stillness. The horses prick up their ears.
"That's the matter," says Buford and gallops away.

Chills. I get chills reading this. Awesome. But the proven wrong "shoes" theory is still included. Oh how I wish that STUPID theory would just die. There were NO SHOE FACTORIES in Gettysburg. The Confederates were NOT coming to Gettysburg for shoes. I don't care what Harry Heth stated in his report....he was just trying to cover his butt.

Harper's Ferry and John Brown

Inside John Brown's Fort



John Brown's Fort

I just spent the morning in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia. Living in the Gettysburg area is great because there are dozens of Civil War sites (not just battlefields) that are within an hour or two of town. Harper's Ferry is included in that list. It's about 50 minutes from here.

John Brown's Fort (above) is one of the places that you can get up close and personal with John Brown. This building has had a very interesting history. This is what the plaque in front of the building says:

1848 Built as fire-engine house for U.S. Armory

1859 Serves as stronghold for John Brown and his raiders

1861-1865 Escapes destruction during Civil War (only armory building to do so), but is vandalized by souvenir-hunting Union and Confederate soldiers and later travelers

1891 Dismantled transported to Chicago Exposition

1895 Rescued from conversion to stable and brought back to Harper's Ferry area to be exhibited on a farm

1909 Purchased by Storer College and moved to campus

1968 Moved by National Park Service within 150 feet of its original location

This building has had such a varied history but its incredible to see it still standing. Its not a very big building and its standing right near the insection of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers. As I stood looking at the building, I thought about who John Brown was....what he did....why he did what he did. I went into the John Brown wax museum and saw a wax reenactment of the hanging of John Brown (he wasn't actually hanging....he was standing on the steps leading up to the gallows) and this thought raced through my mind: "John, you had the right idea. It's a shame that you did it the wrong way." But then this thought came into my head: "What was the right way?" John Brown's action in Harper's Ferry was the unofficial start to the Civil War. If he had stormed the armory at Harper's Ferry in the hopes that more slaves would join him, would the Civil War had started when it did? So many questions....so little answers.

The Gettysburg Atlas

The ultimate map book on the battle of Gettysburg has been published and it is The Gettysburg Atlas. For us map lovers, 421 maps on the battle is more than we can handle. Follow in the footsteps of your favorite regiment or brigade. Follow your favorite general. See who stood on your favorite part of the battlefield. Whatever you need (or want) to know....its in this book.

What makes this book even better (as if 421 maps on the battle isn't good enough) is that it is spiral bound. This makes taking it on the battlefield so much easier. Instead of standing around trying to figure out how to hold open a book (which I've done many times) and look around without dropping said book, this makes following the battle while on the field 1000x better.

There is also a wonderful order of battle in the back. Ever wonder how many and what type of guns a particular artillery unit had....its in here. Ever wonder what the casualty rate for a certain regiment was.....its in here.

There's a real in-depth index in the back. AND a really long bibliography (which is something that I look for in a GOOD book).

The book sells for $40 and is worth every penny. For anyone who is looking for the ultimate book, The Gettysburg Atlas by Phil Laino is it!