The idea that any one of us might one day make a decision that will change the course of the history of the world might be a little disconcerting. It would be a heavy burden to bear, to be sure, especially when we don’t know when that day might come, or what decision will do the changing.
But the reality is that, over the course of three days in 1863, men from this area — regular folks like us who lived along the meandering Pompton and Pequannock rivers in the farmland that made up Passaic and Morris counties — actually did do things that have resonated across the ages and swayed the course of events over the centuries.
Those men were, by all accounts, just like us, the only difference being that they were born earlier. They saw the same snows fall on the same hills, watched the same rivers flood in the early spring, and walked the same main streets that we do today.
Now, they are buried in our towns, mute witnesses watching from beneath stone slabs as we wait at the Ringwood Avenue traffic light or amble out of a Pequannock town meeting, utterly absorbed in our everyday lives.
In their own lives, though, they were extraordinary. And at Gettysburg, the little Pennsylvania hamlet of then 2,500 situated just 10 miles from the Maryland border, they proved it in a fashion that ensured that word of their deeds would live far longer than their bodies.
In some ways, they were like the town of Gettysburg itself — famous for nothing in particular before 170,000 soldiers converged there and caused its name to become immediately synonymous with death and devastation on an unimaginable scale, and put it on par with places like Marathon, Hastings, and Waterloo in how it would affect the path of the human race.
It may sound like hyperbole, but it is assuredly not. The importance of what happened on the overgrown, rocky heights around Gettysburg over the course of those three balmy days 150 years ago cannot be overstated, and how those brave souls from Morris and Passaic counties fought can never be forgotten.
Longest spring on record
If, after the disastrous Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862, the Union cause had seemed bleak, by the late spring of 1863, it was in total shambles.
The northern Army of the Potomac had been taken over by a new general, the Massachusetts-born "Fighting Joe" Hooker, and he promptly whipped the soldiers back into shape before taking them into action at Chancellorsville that May, where he was promptly defeated in spectacular fashion.
As usual, the army had performed well, but the overwhelming incompetence of its commander, who was replaced soon after, led it to failure.
General George Meade replaced Hooker, and he followed the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia north as it invaded Pennsylvania in the hopes that one last, great victory, this time on northern soil, would either clear the path to Washington or bring about foreign intervention from England or France.
Using the mountains of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley as a screen, the Southerners, commanded by the legendary Robert E. Lee, were likely headed toward Harrisburg until a chance run-in between a brigade of Confederate infantry and some Union cavalry sparked the bloodiest battle in American history.
The first day’s fight
Legends abound about why exactly the rebels were marching down the Chambersburg Pike on the morning of July 1. Popular myth says that Confederate division commander Harry Heth had heard that there were shoes in Gettysburg, and moved to seize them for his troops, many of whom had made the long walk from Virginia barefoot. Others say he knew exactly what awaited him.
Regardless, when his lead brigades ran into the Union cavalry of General John Buford, a fight quickly ensued. Buford, a career soldier, recognized the value of the series of ridges around Gettysburg, and his men used their new breach-loading carbines to fight a frustrating delaying action that gave the Union infantry time to arrive.
Soon, thousands from each side had arrived, and units dove headlong into the battle as commanders from both armies sent couriers to other commanders telling them to get to the little crossroads with all possible speed. By the afternoon, Union soldiers had formed a wide semi-circle northwest of the town that held against repeated attacks until eventually, outflanked and outnumbered, they broke and ran.
It looked as if the Army of the Potomac had been defeated once again, but slowly, the panicking troops rallied on a hill with a cemetery on it just south of the town, and the Confederates, tired and disorganized, rested instead of pressing the attack.
More federal troops arrived that night, and by morning, the Confederates were facing a fortified position that extended east to neighboring Culp’s Hill.
‘They held their own’
By the morning of July 2, the Union line resembled a gigantic fish hook, with the barb at Culp’s Hill and the shank on Cemetery Ridge, which ran south away from Cemetery Hill before culminating in two rocky hills: Little Round Top and Big Round Top.
With federal troops now firmly entrenched on the high ground and the prospects of a frontal assault looking grim, Lee ordered General James Longstreet to take the 17,000 men of his I Corps and turn the Union left to attack Cemetery Ridge and the Round Tops.
Standing in his way was the Union III Corps, led by a New York Democrat named Dan Sickles. Sickles, who was made a general more because of his political affiliations than his expertise in the field, decided that the ground in front of Cemetery Ridge looked a bit higher, and thought that moving his men forward might give them a better position. What it really did, however, was create an isolated salient in the Union line; now, the shank sat a mile in front of the rest of the hook.
A good many Morris County troops were with Sickles that day, and many, like those in the 7th and 8th New Jersey, would be in the forefront of the action.
The 7th was a veteran unit that had fought in the war’s most vicious battles, and among them was the 23-year-old Lewis Kerr, who was very likely a resident of Pequannock and would be buried in the graveyard of the First Reformed Church of Pompton Plains.
David Hann, a New Jersey reenactor who has been portraying a 7th New Jersey soldier for the past 27 years, said that unlike many other regiments, the 7th was made up of men from every corner of the state.
"Passaic County had a company, Morris County had a company…and you had firemen from Hoboken, watermen from Cape May, and German iron molders [in the same regiment]," Hann said.
The 7th’s mission was to support Battery B of the 1st New Jersey Light Artillery, which also had a strong Morris County contingent made up of 18-year-old Theodore F. Ackerman, 21-year-old Charles Monks, and James B. Onderdonk (age unknown), all of whom were from Pequannock and are now interred at the First Reformed Church of Pompton Plains.
Butler was also represented, and working the cannons alongside their Pequannock brethren were 17-year-old Abram Brown, 24-year-old James Walker, and John Luther (age unknown). They now lie in the borough’s Manning Avenue graveyard.
The Jerseymen were in a precarious position, however, and none realized it faster than Meade himself. Just as he was about to order them back into line, however, Longstreet’s attack began, and it was Battery B’s guns, commanded by A. Judson Clark, who "announced to the assembled corps commanders that ‘the ball had opened,’" Samuel Toombs wrote in his 1888 book "New Jersey Troops in the Gettysburg Campaign."
Southerners had emerged from the woods Battery B’s front, but the heavy lead shells quickly made them decide against attacking.
"[Clark] opened fire, using shell and shrapnel, firing slowly with good effect… the fire of the battery drove [the rebels] back to the cover of the woods," wrote Sergeant Leander McChesney in his book "History of Battery B."
Clark wrote in his official report that after repelling the attack with canister shot — tin shells filled with hundreds of little lead balls that exploded like a shotgun shell — his guns engaged the rebel artillery in a duel that the New Jerseyans would convincingly win.
"[Clark] passed from gun to gun directing the fire of each, character of missile and time of fuse," wrote McChesney. "As soon as he was satisfied with the effect of battery fire, he gave the order ‘Fire at will,’ and from that moment our six Parrott guns poured a stream of shell and shrapnel into the enemy’s batteries."
Soon, however, other rebel batteries opened on them with what Clark called a "rapid and severe" fire, and Longstreet’s infantry came in hard behind it. Battery B, along with the 7th — which Toombs wrote was forced to helplessly endure the duel — would soon be engaged in one of the most violent maelstroms of war ever seen on this earth.
Clark’s Morris County cannons, which kept up a "very destructive" fire, opened wide gaps in the Confederate ranks moving toward the Peach Orchard, and dying and mutilated men fell by the score. Still, all along the line, the Southerners surged.
The nearby 8th New Jersey, which was the home unit of Pequannock’s George Decker and Henry Morgan as well as Butler’s Isaac Ogden, was ordered to cross a nearby (and soon to be infamous) wheat field and take up a position behind a stone wall, Toombs wrote.
Numbering just 198 men, they were struck head-on by General James Kershaw’s brigade of South Carolinians, which numbered somewhere around 1,300, and in a few minutes, a "sharp, severe, and bloody struggle" commenced, wrote Toombs.
"The 8th fought with the gallantry and bravery which proved them worthy followers of the heroic Kearny," he wrote. "Their ranks were rapidly thinned, and as they fell slowly back, their colors became entangled in a tree. The remnant of brave fellows rallied around them with cheers and re-formed to meet the advancing foe. At this point the 8th was subjected to a severe musketry fire and sustained heavy losses."
Their colonel fell wounded, and by the time the regiment was relieved, it had lost nearly a third of its strength.
South Carolina and New Jersey would prove to be mortal enemies that day, and Hann said that just as the 7th’s colonel, Louis Francine, was about to order the regiment backwards to avoid the cannonade, Battery B came under direct assault from Kershaw’s Carolinians.
Battery B limbered up quickly as its horse-drawn pieces tore through the 7th’s ranks, creating a mass of confusion. To counter this, Francine had all 331 men fire once at the incoming rebels, and then ordered a bayonet charge to distract them from the retreating cannons.
Soon, the "devoted little band swept across the field with shouts of confidence," Toombs wrote, but quickly, the "hopelessness of the 7th’s effort was apparent, and all knew that any further advance meant certain annihilation for the brave Jerseymen."
"[A charge] was attempted, but the enemy’s fire was so severe that we were compelled to fall back," the 7th’s Major Frederick Cooper later wrote.
Francine went down, mortally wounded, as did Lieutenant-Colonel Price, who rallied the regiment until he himself fell. Cooper took over, and withdrew under heavy attack. The regiment lost nearly 40 percent of its number, but Kerr would survive.
Battery B, which now has a large monument on the field, fired 1,300 rounds at Gettysburg — so many, Hann said, that the barrels of their cannons had to be scrapped after the battle.
And the 7th, Hann said with no small degree of pride, had proved its mettle.
"They really stood tall against Kershaw, and you’re talking about a regiment against a brigade," he said. "The 7th New Jersey held their own."
The 13th at Culp’s Hill
Meanwhile, the men of the 13th New Jersey held a position on the extreme right flank of the Union line — at the barb, as opposed to the shank — and in that regiment were two soldiers from Pompton Lakes: the 27-year-old Capt. David Austen Ryerson and his 25-year-old brother, Peter.
It is written in the "Biographical and Genealogical History of the City of Newark and Essex County" that the brothers were of Huguenot descent, their ancestors having arrived from Holland in the earliest part of the 18th century and settling in the Pompton Valley shortly thereafter.
They’d signed up for the 13th in the summer of 1862, and at least one source attributes the decision to grief over the death of their 63-year-old father, who’d been killed leading a regiment of New Jerseyans at the 1862 Battle of Williamsburg.
The 13th had survived a lead baptism at Antietam, and by Gettysburg was considered a strong, reliable group of about 360 veterans. During the day on July 2, it had been shuffled around to provide support to whomever was being attacked, but found itself back on Culp’s Hill in the early hours of July 3 just as the Union troops were attacking to recoup ground lost the previous night.
"The Union artillery opened along the whole line, and from this time until ten o'clock a fierce, stubborn, and desperate battle was waged. On the success of the Twelfth Corps now depended the safety of the army," Toombs wrote, somewhat dramatically. "The continued roll of musketry, the deafening roar of the artillery were listened to by the waiting army with apprehension. The long lines of wounded men being carried to the rear gave evidence of the severity of the struggle."
As the fight raged, the 13th stayed mostly in support until David Ryerson’s company became embroiled in a southern counterattack.
The Confederates, consisting of mostly men from Stonewall Jackson’s legendary legions, "fought madly," said Toombs, "heroically and with a bravery which only Jackson’s men could show, but they were at a disadvantage — the Union line, sheltered by the rocks and immense boulders up to the face of which the rebels charged again and again, enabled them to inflict serious injury upon their assailants, and heavy as the Union loss [were] that of the enemy was [terrible]."
Ryerson’s company helped repulse the attack and send the rebels streaming back in disorder.
"At the first fire [the Confederates] were completely checked, and at the second they broke in confusion and fled, leaving their dead and wounded on the field," wrote one veteran.
Sometime during the fight, however, David Ryerson was shot. How serious it was, or where he was hit, is unknown, but it was serious enough that he was listed as a casualty. However, he would not follow his father’s footsteps to the other side just yet — he would live, to fight again another day.
And the Union position — all of it — was safe.
Their legacy
As the smoke cleared on the evening of July 3, it was not yet clear that the battle was over. However, heavy rains moved into the area on July 4, and Lee began the process of staging a slow, painful retreat back to Virginia. After a combined 51,000 American casualties, the great fight was over.
There would be more battles, of course — the war would last for two more grueling years — and hundreds of thousands more would die, but the southern army would never again be that strong, and the northerners would never again come so close to total defeat.
The great invasion was turned back, and the men of Morris and Passaic counties had stood firm in defense of their homes, which for once, had not seemed so distant.
Many would serve out the remainder of the war, and some would not survive it. But all who fought on the fields of Gettysburg would be able to say, without exaggeration, that they’d helped breathe new life into a nation that, at least for a few days, was in its death throes.
They were, and still are, heroes deserving of the highest honors.
Email: janoski@northjersey.com
http://www.northjersey.com/community/history/more_history_news/216388111_Local_Civil_War_soldiers_fight_it_out_at_Gettysburg.html
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