After weeks of hard marching, when the “German” XI Corps reached Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, it was suffering from the scorn of many American nativists who blamed the “Dutch” for losing the Battle of Chancellorsville in May. Immigrants made up roughly half of the men in the Eleventh, but the crushing blow Stonewall Jackson delivered to the Corps was blamed on supposed German racial characteristics. 1
Many Americans described the Germans as unmanly and not suitable to military life. Referring to the immigrant soldiers as “Damned Dutch”, a mispronunciation of “Deutsch”, some American-born soldiers and newspapermen turned the Eleventh into a scapegoat for the failures of the Union Army of the Potomac. 2
XI Corps soldiers blamed their native-born commander, General O.O. Howard, for the disaster at Chancellorsville. He had laid out their lines facing in the wrong direction. He had ignored repeated warnings that the Confederates had slid around his flank. Worst of all, he had left the Corps right before Stonewall launched his attack. Because Howard refused to admit responsibility for the failure, his men had little love for him.3
Howard, a devout “Puritan” in the view of his men, won no friends by trying to evangelize his mostly Catholic, Lutheran, and Freethinker men to his godly way of life. His religious haughtiness was offensive to the immigrant soldiers, and led to suspicions that Howard did not care about or identify with his men. One man in the ranks wrote that he thought Howard “wanted to have us slaughtered, because most of us are Germans.”4
Perhaps no men felt the “Puritan” yoke more than those commanded by Brigadier General Francis Barlow. Barlow was a Boston lawyer with a Harvard education. On the road to Gettysburg, Barlow had one of his brigade commanders, Leopold Von Gilsa, arrested for allowing his thirsty men to get water. He was known for beating men who were exhausted with the side of his saber to keep them moving. In a letter to his family, Barlow said that he felt “contempt” for the “Dutch” whom he commanded. He added that he had “always been down on the Dutch.” Christian Samito, the editor of his letters, says Barlow displayed “distain for German immigrants.”5
When the XI Corps arrived at Gettysburg shortly before noon on July 1, 1862, fighting had been raging west of the town for several hours. General Howard was told that the commander of the army wing on the field, General John Reynolds, had been killed and that he was now in charge of all the Union forces on the field. Howard learned that while the initial Confederate attack had been west of town, an even greater threat was coming from the north. With only 9,000 men, Howard moved most of the XI Corps to difficult defensive terrain north of Gettysburg. The Corps was further weakened when he decided to keep nearly a third of his men miles behind on Cemetery Hill. This decision would later help save the Union’s strongest defensive line, but it would leave the XI Corps badly outnumbered when the Confederates attacked that afternoon.6
With Howard temporarily in overall command, Carl Schurz became acting commander of the XI Corps. Following Howard’s orders, Schurz moved the depleted XI Corps north through Gettysburg to protect the right flank of the Union army. There he saw the leading edge of the more than 20,000 Confederates who would soon strike him. Schurz halted his men and made a reasonable line to protect the Union right. Recalling the failure of Howard to correctly deploy his far right at Chancellorsville, Schurz made special provision for Barlow’s division to “refuse its right.” This meant that it was supposed to turn its line at an angle towards the southwest so that Confederate troops could not get around it into the Union rear.7
When Barlow got to his position, he saw a slight rise of ground forward of his assigned place. Instead of staying where his orders placed him, Barlow unilaterally moved his 2,100 men, half the Union troops on this end of the field of battle, towards the hill, ever after known as Barlow’s Knoll. The move disconnected the XI Corps line. As at Chancellorsville, the far right of the Union line would be “up in the air” at the moment of the Confederate attack. Compounding his mistake, in spite of warnings, Barlow seemed to be unaware that 1,500 Confederates were hidden on his right flank. When they attacked along with an equal number of Confederates from the front, the outnumbered Union division reeled. Harry W. Pfanz, longtime Gettysburg National Park Service historian, wrote that Barlow “had blundered, and in doing so he had insured the defeat of the corps he so despised.”8
The situation in the late afternoon of July 1, 1863.
A Confederate described the impact of the wild assault on the “Germans”:
It was a fearful slaughter, the golden wheat fields, a few minutes before in beauty, now gone, and the ground covered with the dead and wounded in blue.”9
Although Barlow would later claim that the Germans simply all ran away at the first sight of the Confederates, Henry Hunt, the Union artillery commander wrote that the combat was “obstinate and bloody” and that the “fighting here was well-sustained.” A Confederate in the assaulting column wrote that the “Germans” “stood firm until we got near them. They then began to retreat in fine order, shooting at us as they retreated. They were harder to drive than we had ever known them before…Their officers were cheering the men and behaving like heroes…”10
Schurz quickly adjusted his remaining regiments, but with half of his troops badly mauled and his right collapsing, his men began to fall back as well. At the same time, Union forces west of town also retreated. Order began to disintegrate as both Union corps crowded into Gettysburg. Men lost their units, got lost, or were shot down or captured by advancing Confederates. By 5:00 PM, as the remnants of the XI Corps were climbing to the new Union position on Cemetery Hill, leaving behind many dead and wounded, they were already hearing the taunts that the “Dutch cowards had run away again.”11
Video: Part 2 Gary Gallagher on Gettysburg
Resources:
Animated map of the Battle of Gettysburg
Map of Unit Movements at Gettysburg
Feature photo: http://www.gettysburgdaily.com/?p=283
Sources:
1. The Gettysburg Campaign; a study in command by Edwin Coddington published by Scribner’s, 1968; Brigades of Gettysburg by Bradley Gottfried published by Da Capo Press, 2002; Pfanz, Harry W. Gettysburg – The First Day. Chapel Hill by Harry Pfanz published by University of North Carolina Press; Gettysburg by Stephen Sears published by Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003.
2. From Chancellorsville to Cemetery Hill: O.O. Howard and Eleventh Corps Leadership by A. Wilson Greene found in The First Day at Gettysburg edited by Gary Gallagher published by Kent State University Press (1992)
3. From Chancellorsville to Cemetery Hill: O.O. Howard and Eleventh Corps Leadership by A. Wilson Greene found in The First Day at Gettysburg edited by Gary Gallagher published by Kent State University Press (1992) p. 59.
4. From Chancellorsville to Cemetery Hill: O.O. Howard and Eleventh Corps Leadership by A. Wilson Greene found in The First Day at Gettysburg edited by Gary Gallagher published by Kent State University Press (1992) p. 59.
5. From Chancellorsville to Cemetery Hill: O.O. Howard and Eleventh Corps Leadership by A. Wilson Greene found in The First Day at Gettysburg edited by Gary Gallagher published by Kent State University Press (1992) p. 61; Fear Was Not in Him: The Civil War Letters of Major General Francis C. Barlow, U.S.A edited by Christian Samito
6. From Chancellorsville to Cemetery Hill: O.O. Howard and Eleventh Corps Leadership by A. Wilson Greene found in The First Day at Gettysburg edited by Gary Gallagher published by Kent State University Press (1992) pp. 73-77.
7. From Chancellorsville to Cemetery Hill: O.O. Howard and Eleventh Corps Leadership by A. Wilson Greene found in The First Day at Gettysburg edited by Gary Gallagher published by Kent State University Press (1992) pp. 76-77.
8. From Chancellorsville to Cemetery Hill: O.O. Howard and Eleventh Corps Leadership by A. Wilson Greene found in The First Day at Gettysburg edited by Gary Gallagher published by Kent State University Press (1992) pp. 78-79; Pfantz Gettysburg The First Day p. 231; Schurz Reminiscences Vol. 3 p. 9
9. From Chancellorsville to Cemetery Hill: O.O. Howard and Eleventh Corps Leadership by A. Wilson Greene found in The First Day at Gettysburg edited by Gary Gallagher published by Kent State University Press (1992) p. 79.
10. From Chancellorsville to Cemetery Hill: O.O. Howard and Eleventh Corps Leadership by A. Wilson Greene found in The First Day at Gettysburg edited by Gary Gallagher published by Kent State University Press (1992) pp. 79.
11. From Chancellorsville to Cemetery Hill: O.O. Howard and Eleventh Corps Leadership by A. Wilson Greene found in The First Day at Gettysburg edited by Gary Gallagher published by Kent State University Press (1992) pp. 83-84.
Originally published July 11, 2013 as part of The Immigrants’ Civil War.
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