6th Wisconsin on July 1, 1863

I love to read first hand accounts of the battle (any battle) because you get a real feel for the intensity and emotions involved in the fighting. Besides which, they also tell you the little things that the history books don't tell us. Below is a bit of what Rufus Dawes had to say about the fighting on July 1, 1863 in Gettysburg.

"I marched by the right flank double-quick toward the point indicated. Before reaching a position where I could be of service, the enemy had succeeded in turning the flank, and, flushed with victory was pressing rapidly in pursuit of our retreating line, threatening the rear of....Meredith's Iron Brigade, engaged in the woods on the left. I filed to the right and read, to throw my line in front of the enemy, and moved by the left flank forward in line of battle upon his advancing line. My men kept up a steady double-quick, never faltering or breaking under the fire, which had become vary falling. When my line had reached a fence on the Chambersburg turnpike, about 40 rods from the line of the enemy. I ordered a fire by file. This checked the advance of the rebels, who took refuge in a railroad cut. The Ninety fifth New York and Fourteenth Brooklyn [which had withdrawn from their original position between Hall's Battery and the woods] here joined on my left....

The men of the whole line moved forward upon a double-quick, well closed, in face of a terribly destructive fire from the enemy. When our line reached the edge of the cut, the rebels began throwing down their arms in token of surrender. Adjt. Ed. P. Brooks, with promptness and foresight, moved a detachment of 20 men in position to enfilade the cut from the right, when the entire regiment in m front, after some murderous skirmishing by the most desperate, threw down their arms....

The loss sustained by my command in this charge was not less than 160 men killed or wounded.

[O.R., XXVII, Part 1, pp. 275-6]