Hallowed Ground - James M. McPherson [11]
We now continue to the end of Howard Avenue, named for Major General Oliver Otis Howard, commander of the Eleventh Corps. A pious Congrega-tionalist from Maine, a graduate of Bowdoin College as well as of the U.S. Military Academy, Howard was a strong antislavery man. Known as “the Christian General”—a phrase sometimes uttered with disdain by officers who were neither religious nor antislavery— Howard, like his adversary Richard Ewell, had lost a limb earlier in the war—in Howard's case an arm. When he sent two divisions of the Eleventh Corps north of Gettysburg, Howard kept a third small division in reserve on the high ground south of town, known as Cemetery Hill because the town burial ground was located there. Howard fortified the hill with artillery and infantry breastworks as a rallying point for Union troops if they were driven back—a foresighted action that later earned him the official Thanks of Congress. There were those in the army, scornful of Howard because his corps had again been routed, who attributed this award not to Howard's military skill but to his political influence with antislavery Republicans. In any case, the retreating survivors of the First and Eleventh Corps did rally on Cemetery Hill. Ironically, the sign on the cemetery gate stated that “All persons found using firearms on these grounds will be prosecuted with the utmost rigor of the law.”
Almost 9,000 of the 20,500 Union soldiers who fought on July 1 (against 27,500 Confederates) would have no opportunity to use firearms on Cemetery Hill. Nearly 5,500 of them were killed or wounded and 3,500 captured. One of those who didn't make it, however, was neither killed nor captured: Brigadier General Alexander Schimmelfennig, a brigade commander in the Eleventh Corps. Schimmelfennig has achieved minor fame as a Civil War general for reasons he would not have found flattering. A veteran of the Prussian army who immigrated to the United States in 1853, Schimmelfennig saw little action as colonel of the Seventy-fourth Pennsylvania in the war's first year. The Lincoln administration was eager to solidify German-American support for the war effort; one way to do so was to give commissions to visible German-American leaders. Poring over a list of colonels eligible for promotion in the fall of 1862, Lincoln came across Schimmelfennig's name. “The very man!” the president exclaimed. When the secretary of war protested that better-qualified officers were available, Lincoln insisted on Schimmelfennig. “His name will make up for any difference there may be.” After Gettysburg, however, Schimmelfennig's name became something of a byword. As his routed brigade retreated through town, Schimmelfennig saved himself from capture by hiding between a woodshed and a pigsty behind a house on Baltimore Street a few blocks south of the main square. There he stayed for the next three days while the Confederates occupied the town, hidden and fed by the woman of the house.
The house (but not the woodshed or pigsty) is still there, identified by one of sixty interpretive markers that are scattered throughout the town to indicate buildings and sites connected with the battle. Virtually every public building and church, as well as several homes, became hospitals during the battle. Considerable fighting took place in Gettysburg's streets during the retreat of the First and Eleventh Corps through the town. A walking tour of these sites, guided by a map available at the town visitor center next to the movie theater on Carlisle Street a block north of the town square, is a must for every visitor who desires a full understanding of the battle and its local impact.
One site in town has special significance. As the Eleventh Corps broke in late afternoon, General Howard sent one of the brigades he had kept in reserve into Gettysburg to slow the Confederate advance. They established a defensive