Gettysburg Reenactment Series from Esquire 2013 Robert L. Bateman

 

 

This is a great series by a retired Army Officer.

 

Sadly, Esquire Magazine hasn't maintained a page of all the links in one spot.

 

I got this from here, but you need a password to access it.

 

 https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/some-really-great-writing-about-the-civil-war.1307312/

I haven't hyperlinked because I'm just too dumbfounded at the prospect of Trump being POTUS again.  Or I forgot how in the years of not posting.  You decide.  Copy and paste the links or not.  The choice is yours.

 

 

 1. The Confederate Peacock Who Screwed Up at Brandy Station

 https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a23013/gettysburg-reenactment-battle-of-brandy-station-061113/

2. Winchester Mark the Spot

 https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a23056/gettysburg-reenactment-winchester-061313/

 

3. Vicksberg is the Key

 https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a23137/gettysburg-reenactment-vicksburg-061913/

 

 

4. The Civil War's "****, This Sucks!" Moment

 https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a33028/gettysburg-reenactment-on-june-19-061913/

  

5. The Race is On

 https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a31187/gettysburg-map-update-062613/

 

6. What We Can Learn from Gettysburg Reenactors

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a23274/gettysburg-reenactment-learning-from-reenactors-062713/

7. Meet George Armstrong Custer: Another Flambuoyant Union General

 https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a23270/introducing-george-armstrong-custer-062813/

 

8. Acting Like Schoolboys as the Armies Close In

 https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a23285/iron-brigade-closes-in-062813/

 

9. And the Battle of Gettysburg Begins

 https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a23286/first-day-of-gettysburg-battle-070113/

 

10. Day 2: The Charge to Win 300 Seconds

 https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a23314/second-day-of-gettysburg-battle-070213/

 

11. Custer: The Savior of the United States of America

 https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a23347/gettysburg-day-three-custer-070313/

 

12. Commander Sawyer's Charge

 https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a23342/the-battle-of-gettysburg-is-over-070313/

 

13. Ink Stained and Wretched

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a23387/journalists-cover-gettysburg-070413/

14. Lincoln Was Dead Wrong After Gettysburg

 https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a23903/lincoln-gettysburg-decision/

 

15. Graphite and Granite

 https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a23946/legacy-of-the-battle-of-gettysburg-071613/

 

16. Bateman's Annotated Bibliography

 https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a25518/bateman-gettysburg-bibliography-071613/

 

 

A sample:

Alone and exposed, without supporting units on their flanks, the 8th Ohio stood in a tenuous position. They were about 300 yards forward of the main battle line, and they had been there since the previous day. They were too far away from the main line to expect supporting fire from their fellow infantrymen, and they had been out here all alone since the preceding afternoon. Sawyer recognized that they could not stay out there forever.

So early this morning, after a probing attack sapped yet more from his meager strength, Sawyer sent a request for relief to his brigade commander. The response came back, "You must hold your position at all costs."

Sawyer, while he did not like these orders, accepted them. Now there would be no retreat, no retirement under pressure. The order meant that the 8th Ohio would hold this patch of Pennsylvania or die upon the same. How they did so should have made them legendary, because what happened in the next few hours was perhaps the most audacious display of mass human courage since...about two hours earlier.

At around one o'clock in the afternoon, just as Custer's men were stopping Stuart's rebels, roughly 160 Confederate cannon opened fire. (Please, folks, let us not descend into a debate about if it was 158, 164, or 172…okay?) As a part of Lee's overall plan, this cannonade was supposed to soften the center of the American lines. The barrage of solid shot and exploding shells was to prepare the way for the coming infantry attack. It was an assault that he had asked his right-hand man and longest-serving corps commander, General James Longstreet, to conduct.

As the rounds whistled overhead the men of the 8th Ohio kept low. Death now spoke with a great booming voice. Yet for all the violence of the southern cannonade the Ohioans suffered only two additional casualties during the preparatory fire. (Cannonballs neatly bisected both men, if "neat" can be used to describe such a thing.) They had taken worse during the infantry attack in the morning. Still, though the cannon's solid shots and shells might not be striking home among them, the message was clear, "The Rebs are coming, and they're coming here."

I will stop now, for a moment, and let you think about this. Two days ago I put you in the place of a rebel facing the Iron Brigade. Now I ask you to inhabit the place of an infantryman from northern Ohio.


This morning you shoved off an attack. In historical terms it was a little mite of a scrum. But you started with 180, and now you have about 160 men left unwounded, on the line. Yes, this is "little," in historical context. But to call it that to the men who experienced it would be an insult. But losing a few men here and a few men there, adds up.
Yea, you are a "Regiment", but who is kidding who? A company is supposed to be 100 men. Ten companies made up a Regiment. But there are only 160 of you left in your "regiment" by noon.

​

Out on the line when the cannonade begins, the 160 Ohioans shoulder up under the bank of the sunken road and under the load of the regimental honor they have accrued over the past two years of fighting. The fighting that brought them, from 1,000 men down to 160.


Sometimes honor really sucks.

This brigade had taken a beating on the first day of the battle, a mere 48 hours prior. They do not have a strong leader to stiffen their resolve. That artillery fire they saw in the several hundred yards until they got into the low ground must have acted on their morale. Undoubtedly something less than the roughly 600 to 700 who started the attack moved forward again with the rest of the division after the tactical pause. Stragglers appeared while others took the opportunity to help wounded comrades to the rear, and safety. Let us say, generously, that 500 of them remained.


It was at this moment, seeing the condition of the unit directly opposing them that Sawyer issued his incredible command, "CHARGE!" Mostly hidden until that moment from the view of the Virginians under Brockenbrough, the 160 Ohioans must have appeared as berserkers rising up from the earth. Because of a trick of the terrain, the same swale that concealed the Virginians from the Union artillery in those last moments as they straightened up their lines, also concealed the men of the 8th Ohio until the very last moment.


With a full-throated 'Huzzah!' which vented some of their frustrations and fears the men of Ohio charged forward along the flat ground on the spur with fixed bayonets into the range of the rifles of six thousand Confederates…and straight at the full brigade of rebels under Brockenbrough's somewhat dubious command.


From the Confederate position at the bottom of the swale the appearance of these Yankees was too much. Rational men do not do something like what they were seeing. Rational units do not attack against odds like this, so obviously something else must be in play. Rational men, faced with odds like 160 to 6,000, give commands to fire and fall back. Rational men may be defeated.


Subjectively, therefore, these men from northern Ohio could not by any measure have been considered rational at that moment.