Existing comment:
Into the Battle:
Barksdale and his men arrived in Gettysburg late in the morning of July 2nd. By 3:00pm, Barksdale's brigade had formed a line of battle on the southern end of Seminary Ridge, where they would be part of an assault on the Union left flank. Facing them were the men of General Daniel Sickles' 3rd Union Army Corps in a line stretching from Devils' Den to the Sherfy Peach Orchard. The attack began at 4:00pm. As other brigades attacked, Barksdale waited impatiently, eager to join the fray. When the orders for his brigade to advance finally came he was, in the words of Captain G.B. Lamar, "radiant with joy." Barksdale had ordered all of his officers to dismount to be less conspicuous targets, but he remained on his horse. "He was in front of his brigade," Lamar would recall, "hat off, and his long white hair reminded him of the white plume of Navarre."
Barksdale and his men smashed into the brightly clad Zouaves of the 114th Pennsylvania at the Joseph Sherfy farm. Barksdale was determined to overwhelm the Union defenders. Having crushed the salient in the Union line near the Peach Orchard, most of Barksdale's command wheeled left, while the 21st Mississippi advanced toward the Trostle Farm. "Crowd them," Barksdale told his commanders, "we have them on the run. Move your regiments." Barksdale and the remnants of his brigade had now advanced as far as the trees along Plum Run, where they met strong resistance from a fresh Union brigade commanded by Colonel George Willard. At this critical moment Barksdale fell severely wounded, struck multiple times by Union small arms fire. His men attempted to evacuate Barksdale from the field, but a Union counterattack drove them from the field and Barksdale was left for dead.
The 148th Pennsylvania arrived at Gettysburg on July 2nd and went into action that afternoon to counter the Confederate assault on the Union left flank. As the regiment engaged the attacking Confederates, Hamilton established a temporary field hospital at the farm of Jacob Hummelbaugh. "I did what I could for them both in the house and barn," Hamilton recalled in his diary. Late in evening of July 2nd, he came across a high ranking Confederate officer lying wounded in the yard of the house. The officer was Barksdale. Dave Parker of the 14th Vermont Infantry discovered the wounded general around 11:00 pm that night and carried him to Hamilton's field hospital. "he was suffering from bleeding inwardly and suffering very much," Parker recalled after the war. |