Hallowed Ground - James M. McPherson [22]
A quarter-mile north of Father Corby's statue, on the left side of Hancock Avenue, stands one of the most impressive and moving monuments on the battlefield. It depicts a soldier running forward atop a high pedestal. The monument commemorates the attack by eight companies (262 men) of the First Minnesota against an entire Alabama brigade of 1,500 men. The First Minnesota had been in service longer than almost any other regiment in the Army of the Potomac. It had fought in nearly all of the battles since First Bull Run in July 1861, suffering some 260 killed and wounded before Gettysburg. There it would nearly double that total.
As the sun was setting on July 2, the First Minnesota was in line supporting an artillery battery (six guns) near the spot where the monument stands. Fragments of retreating Third Corps units streamed toward the rear while out of the haze of gunsmoke appeared a line of Alabama troops emerging from a thicket three hundred yards away. All other Union infantry in this sector had gone to the Wheatfield earlier. In a few minutes the Alabama brigade would breach this crucial position unless it was stopped. Hancock galloped up and shouted, “My God! Are these all the men we have here?” Reinforcements were on the way but they could not arrive for ten minutes. Hancock needed to buy that much time, even if it cost every man in the regiment. Turning to Colonel William Colvill, Hancock pointed to the Alabamians and yelled, “Advance, Colonel, and take those colors.”
Without hesitation, the 262 men fixed bayonets and began double-timing forward. “Every man realized in an instant what that order meant—death or wounds to us all,” wrote Colvill, who was wounded in the attack, “and every man saw and accepted the necessity for the sacrifice.” With a yell they tore into the Alabamians and bought Hancock his ten minutes and more. The Confederates made it no farther. Seventy Minnesotans didn't make it at all, and another 145 were wounded or missing. This casualty rate of 82 percent of those engaged was the highest of the war for any Union regiment in a single action.
As the fighting died away at dark on the Union left, the volume of artillery and rifle fire a mile or two northeast at Culp's and East Cemetery Hills continued unabated. This part of the battlefield was the most visited by tourists in the 1870s and 1880s, for it was the first land purchased by the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association, a private group formed in 1864 to preserve and commemorate the battlefield. Today, however, it is the least visited portion of the battlefield, partly because it is only on the “optional” route of the Park Service's self-guided auto tour, and partly because all of the action described in The Killer Angels and the film/miniseries Gettysburg occurred on other parts of the battlefield. But the Culp's Hill/East Cemetery Hill fighting was intense, and just as important to the battle's outcome as elsewhere. If the Confederates had captured this position or achieved a breakthrough, it would have been as disastrous for the Union cause as the loss of Little Round Top or Cemetery Ridge.
From the First Minnesota monument we proceed north a tenth of a mile, turn right on Pleasonton Avenue, left onto the Taneytown Road (Route 134), and right at Hunt Avenue, following it for a half mile to a T-crossing at the Baltimore Pike (Route 97). We'll turn right there, then after three-tenths of a mile left onto Slocum Avenue, which will wind through the woods for a half-mile to the optional auto-tour stop at Spangler's Spring. The interpretive markers in this area describe the actions that took place on the evening of July 2 and the morning of July 3. The many