History of Pennsylvania volunteers, 1861-5; prepared in compliance with acts of the legislature, by Samuel P. Bates.

1.863 BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 797
nearly to the Baltimore Pike. Late in the evening an order came for one of
the regiments to report to General Howard at the Cemetery. The Seventyfirst was detailed for this purpose, and on reaching the pike'was met by a
staff officer, representing himself as coming from General Greene, with orders
to advance over the rugged grounds towards Rock Creek. Shirmishers were
thrown out, and the regiment advanced cautiously, when suddenly a shot disclosed the fact that it was in the presence of a strong force of the enemy.
Lieutenants Davis and Boughton, and Adjutant Hutchinson, in charge of the
skirmishers, nineteen in number, fell into the enemy's hands. The command was at once withdrawn to a position parallel to the pike, and dispositions made to meet an attack. But the enemy failing to advance, and believing that the order which had been received was unauthorized by the officer
from whom it purported to come, Colonel Smith led his men back to the ground
which he had vacated.
On the following morning, July 3d, the decisive day, occasional picket firing
was heard along the line, which continued until a little past noon, when the
enemy opened from one hundred and fifty pieces of artillery, which had been
speedily and in a most orderly manner run to the front, concentrating his fire
upon the left centre, in the midst of which, in the exposed part of the field,
stood Webb's brigade. Though this part of the line had now been occupied
for nearly forty-eight hours, it still had little or no protection. A low stone
wall surmounted by a rail, back of which the men had thrown a little earth
dug with their bayonets, was all the shelter afforded them from the unparalleled storm of shells and fiery bolts which was hurled upon them. To the right
of the position held by the Seventy-first, the wall was higher, and stood upon
a shelving ledge five or six feet in height, and upon the left were groves, and
clumps of trees and bushes both of which afforded better shelter; but the
ground where it stood was swept by concentring ranges of artillery that made
its occupation appalling. The batteries of Cushing, Arnold, and Brown, posted
upon the left and a little to the rear, belched forth in reply over the heads of
the men, a perfect torrent of shot and shells. Rarely in the world's battles
has there been an infantry line more fearfully exposed to artillery fire than that
held by this regiment. For two hours was this terrible duel incessantly maintained, in which the crash of the guns, the shrieking of shells and solid shots,
the bursting and whirl of the shrapnell, and the flying fragments of rock
shattered by the solid shot, formed a combination of terrors which the mind
falters in conceiving. Cushing's Battery was at length silenced, its commander
dead, its cannoneers stricken down, and some of its guns disabled. Seeing
its crippled condition, volunteers from the regiment and from the Sixty-ninth
flew to its relief, and soon brought it again into play. Arnold's on the right,
its guns having become overheated, many of its men cut down, struggled with
the few spared to keep its voice in chorus, and thanks to their training and heroism were equal to the task. A shot struck one of Cushing's caissons, and instantly three of these standing near, and loaded down with fixed ammunition,
were blown up, hurling into the air the fragments of this once powerful battery, which descended in a perfect shower upon companies A and F, lying near
them. Men, horses, and limbers were hurled together in confusion.
When the battle with artillery, the best and most destructive which the wit
of man has yet devised, had ceased, a body of eighteen thousand infantry, the
flower of the rebel army, which during the morning had been concentrated,