Gettysburg: The Last Invasion by Allen C. Guelzo Read Free Book Online

railroad bridgehead at Wrightsville (although the civilians quit when a fourth company of blacks was brought in) and reeled in aMaryland militia company, 187 ambulatory volunteers from the military hospital in York, and a few understrength companies of Philadelphia customshouse workers who formed the20th Pennsylvania Emergency Militia—all told, about fifteen hundred men. (Their numbers were slightly increased, and morale correspondingly decreased, by the arrival of Major Haller and the gaudy troopers of the First City Troop in their flight from Gettysburg.) For the purposes of putting up a fight for York, this was a hopeless proposition, and the terror-stricken citizens of York knew it. A three-manCommittee of Safety was designated to intercept Gordon’s brigade as it moved to the outskirts of York on the morning of June 28th and abjectly offered to surrender the town. 23
    That suited Jubal Early handsomely.Isaac Avery’s and Extra Billy Smith’s brigades were ordered to occupy York; Harry Hays would bivouac two miles out of town at the county fairgrounds; and John Gordon would pass through, move the last ten miles down to “the Susquehanna and secure the Columbia Bridge, if possible.” It was Sunday, and the churches were already filling up with “well-dressed … church-going men, women and children” when Gordon’s brigade swung along Main Street, with bands playing and the colors flying. The 31st Georgia stopped in the town center to haul down a garrison-sized Stars and Stripes from a 100-foot-high flagstaff there (provoking one elderly attorney,John L. Evans, to burst out at his apathetic neighbors,
Is it possible to have lived to this day to see the flag torn down and trampled in the dirt?
; the minister ofChristLutheran Church, hearing the naughty strains of “Dixie
”
during his sermon, could only bow his head on the pulpit and weep). Early made his headquarters in the York County Court House, and once again the division quartermaster published the requisitions: 165 barrels of flour or 28,000 pounds of baked bread … 3,500 pounds of sugar … 1,650 pounds of coffee … 300 gallons of molasses … 1,200 pounds of salt … 32,000 pounds of fresh beef or 21,000 pounds of bacon or pork … 2,000 pair of shoes or boots … 1,000 pairs of socks and 1,000 felt hats … and $100,000 in cash. 24
    Gordon pushed on to Wrightsville, topping a rise that allowed him to inspect “the blue line of soldiers guarding the approach” to the bridge from a distance. He could already imagine descending upon the shaky Pennsylvania militia, seizing the bridge, and launching on a march which would “pass rapidly through Lancaster in the direction of Philadelphia.” So, at 6:30, withdaylight beginning to slip away, Gordon’s six regiments ofGeorgians shook out lines of skirmishers and began trading potshots with Jacob Frick’spicket line, “and we had it quite lively for some time.” Eventually, Gordon brought up two of the 20-pounderParrott rifles captured at Winchester and began throwing shells in Frick’s direction.
    Frick actually had no intention of fighting. He knew he lacked the means to hold the bridge. But he certainly had the wherewithal to destroy it. Behind a barricade of coal cars drawn up at the bridge’s mouth on the Wrightsville side, Frick’s black laborers and white militiamen began taking up the plank flooring of the bridge, setting explosive “torpedoes,” and sawing through archways and trusses. After a sprightly firefight of about an hour, Frick ordered everyone to scramble back along the bridge, and as soon as they had reached the fourth span of the bridge Frick ordered the first torpedo fired. 25
    The torpedo failed to blow the span completely, but Frick had torches at hand to set fires, and in forty-five minutes the entire bridge was burning luridly from the middle toward both ends. “The moon was bright” as the bridge burned, wrote a newspaper correspondent for the
York