Often overlooked as just a sideline to the rest of the battle, Culp’s Hill was every bit as important as Little Round Top, and perhaps more important than the Wheatfield, Peach Orchard, and Devil’s Den, considering where a breakthrough would have landed the Confederates. Certainly the Confederates must have realized this, since they persisted so long at their attempts to take Culp’s Hill.
Modern-day visitors to Culp’s Hill need merely look along the battlefield road, revealing regimental monuments clustered together, indicating just how many units fought here. Two earlier blogs recounted the fighting for Pardee Field and Spangler’s Meadow in the later stages of the fight for Culp’s Hill, as well as the potential for ghostly encounters. This blog will cover the area higher up the hill and the areas that appear to be the most haunted.
But first…
It must be remembered that early in the American Civil War, the “Napoleonic Tactics” being taught at West Point dictated that soldiers march in straight lines on the battlefield, like so many children’s blocks, face each other across open fields, and fire away en masse. Maneuvering against a flank would gain an advantage, since soldiers will usually stand facing fire, but retreat when bullets start coming from the side or rear.
The reason for these rigid tactics was firepower. The weapons of Napoleon’s time were mostly the muzzle-loading, smoothbore, .69 caliber, flintlock musket, model 1777 Charleville with a maximum effective range of 100 yards. According to the regulations, a well-trained unit could load and fire about three rounds per minute. Tactics would compel the officers to march their men to something under 100 yards of the enemy, fire a volley, then charge the enemy with fixed bayonets. The enemy would then have to return fire and load again in the 30 to 40 seconds it would take for the screaming, running, bayonet-tipped attackers to reach them.
The widespread introduction of the rifled-musket of the Civil War Era gave common infantry weapons a range of nearly 300 yards; the introduction of the “minié ball”—a reference to its inventor Captain Minié, and certainly not its size of .58 caliber—with its hollow base gave the rifled-musket a range of over 500 yards. (Example: Union officers were being picked off on Little Round Top from Devil’s Den, a distance of about 550 yards.) Even at 300 yards, an attacking force could not be expected to fire a volley, then run the 300 yards—all the time taking successive volleys from the enemy—and fight hand-to-hand.
The folly of standing toe-to-toe and volleying back and forth (ala First Manassas and the Brawner’s Farm fight at Second Manassas) was rapidly losing its charm. Whenever possible, and certainly by the time of the Battle of Gettysburg, when soldiers got to a position they wanted to hold, they began to construct breastworks consisting of a ditch, piled-up rocks and fallen logs. At Gettysburg, with its ubiquitous fieldstone walls, they were often improved upon with log headers, and used as breastworks.
Brig. Gen. George S. Greene’s Brigade was sent to Culp’s Hill on the morning of July 2. At 6:00 a.m., the men began constructing breastworks using the trees available on the wooded hill. The men who, according to Capt. Jesse H. Jones of the 60th New York, were “accustomed to woodcraft” and realizing the importance of solid breastworks, began their work in earnest and by 10 a.m. had a fine defensive position constructed. For the cause of the Union, it was a good thing.
Another point about Civil War tactics:
We’ve all heard of how important “the high ground” is to military tacticians. Early in my studies of the Battle of Gettysburg and other battles—American Civil War and battles throughout history—I’d heard the adage “to seize the high ground” was tantamount in securing a battlefield. I realized that the Confederates, in winning a victory on the first day at Gettysburg, inadvertently sealed their fate as eventual losers of the battle by driving the Union forces to the high ground south of the town.
South of Gettysburg, the Federals ensconced themselves upon high ground that now has become famous, perhaps even legendary: Culp’s Hill, Cemetery Hill, Cemetery Ridge, Little Round Top, the occupation of which forced the Union Army of the Potomac to form the famous compact “fishhook” interior line. The interior line facilitated the movement of troops, ammunition, and information across a shorter space between the flanks of their line.
High ground is also the key (at least before the advent of the airplane) to observing enemy troop movements. From those observations, a commander could move his troops to any endangered point in his line.
Culp’s Hill was one of those hills on the battlefield that made the Union line impregnable. And yet, despite having two virtually inviolable tenets of military tactics securely on their side—entrenchment and the high ground—the Union Army, because of what happened on Culp’s Hill, still almost lost the Battle of Gettysburg.
Culp’s Hill was also, in spite of the “PR” other sites have gotten over the years, some of those most-fought-over ground on the battlefield.
I don’t have the space to detail the entire battle for Culp’s Hill, which took three to four hours on the evening of July 2, then started up again at first light—about 4:30 a.m.—on July 3, and lasted until at least 11:00 a.m. Suffice it to say, it was the site of the longest fighting of the whole battle.
And here’s the reason the Union nearly lost:
After the Union troops, on July 2, had constructed their breastworks, at about 4:30 p.m., when the Confederate attack on Little Round Top was gaining steam, Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, commander of the Union Army at Gettysburg, ordered some of the troops from Culp’s Hill over to the southern end of the field to help deal with Confederate assaults. That left Brig. Gen. George S. Greene’s brigade pretty much alone in their trenches on Culp’s Hill.
I remember my necessarily brief explanation of the Culp’s Hill battle from when I was a Licensed Battlefield Guide. I explained that the Confederates in that sector finally got their attack underway about 7:30 p.m. on July 2, but by that time it was nearly dark.
Astoundingly, some Confederate units actually walked right into abandoned Union trenches without a fight. They found coffee pots full, campfires still warm and smoking, playing cards lying around as if they’d just been set down, and at that point the Confederates halted. In the dark, they thought they were walking into a trap, an ambush, so they sent out scouts to see where the Yankees were. They didn’t know that the Union troops had been withdrawn earlier to the south side of the battlefield to help repulse Longstreet’s attack on that end of the field.
The remarkable thing is that the Confederates were only three hundred yards from the rear of the Union line, the Baltimore Pike and all the non-combatants, supplies, wagons, and horses parked there. Not only that, the Baltimore Pike was the main retreat route for the Union army. In other words, they were within three hundred yards of almost certain victory. When their scouts returned, they were followed closely by the Union soldiers eager to resume their positions. It took the Yankees until morning to re-capture their breastworks. By then, the Confederate advantage was lost.
But before the Union troops returned, Greene’s soldiers heard advancing Confederates in front of their thin, but well-entrenched lines, the men being about an arm’s-length apart. According to Capt. Jones’s account of the 60th New York in Battles and Leaders,(Vol. III, p. 316)their skirmishers had just made it back into their defensive works as the Confederates were fifteen yards away, and the battle began: “Then out into the night like chain-lightning leaped the zigzag line of fire. Now was the value of the breastworks apparent, for, protected by these, few of our men were hit.”
A few yards in front of the line of monuments, on the right of the road, are remnants of the breastworks the Union troops dug on July 2, 1863. You may notice some depressions in the area, obviously not part of the breastworks or the natural terrain. These are, most likely, empty burial pits.
Greg Coco, in his book Wasted Valor: The Confederate Dead at Gettysburg, called the Culp’s Hill area the “most visited by soldiers and civilians after the battle.” Someone noticed the angle in the breastworks in this area where the Union line curved around the summit of Culp’s Hill, then straightened out. It was defended by the 28th Pennsylvania. It was here that “many curious sightseers” to the area were treated to the horrifying sight of Confederate bodies still lying where they fell. David Monat, a member of Co. G, 29th Pennsylvania Volunteers, wrote to the Superintendent of the battlefield in 1899 and sent a map of where he and his comrades buried just a few of the dead rebels in two “lots” containing “one officer and 16 or 17 men in one lot and 13 men in the other.” In a moment of compassion for their fallen foes, they covered the bodies with the burial party’s old blankets.
From another of Greg Coco’s books, A Strange and Blighted Land, Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle, he quoted J. Howard Wert, an early visitor to the battlefield, describing the “angle” in the Union line on Culp’s Hill as covered so thickly with the dead that for four acres one could hardly walk without stepping on a body. On the Confederate side of the angle the dead were stacked three deep. Some piles of bodies were almost to the height of the breastworks.
One other thing early visitors noticed is that the trees on Culp’s Hill were practically denuded of their bark on their lower trunks, silent witnesses to the volume of fire between the two opposing sides. As an example, according to Harry Pfanz in Gettysburg: Culp’s Hill and Cemetery Hill, one New York regiment started firing at 3:30 a.m. on July 3. By 10:00 a.m., each man in the regiment had fired 200 rounds and had been relieved four times to clean fouled weapons, get food and water, and even more cartridges. And yet, there was a macabre case of grim death being economical: three men from the 150th New York, standing in a row, were killed by the same bullet.
Another passage from Coco’s A Strange and Blighted Land, Sergeant Charles Blanchard saw the still deadly results of a Union soldier who panicked under fire: “I saw a Confederate soldier that a ramrod had passed through his body and pinned him to a tree.” He also saw where 108 Confederates were put into one trench. In the heat of July, the stench was so bad whiskey had been issued to the burial party.
Renowned historian Edwin Coddington recognized the value of the position to both Union and Confederate forces and wrote about it in his classic The Gettysburg Campaign. He pointed out how important Culp’s Hill was with its proximity to the Baltimore Pike. Modern visitors can climb the tower atop Culp’s Hill, look over the trees, and see how close it is to the Pike. As a highlight, visitors may encounter one of the Culp’s Hill Tower ghosts as recounted in Ghosts of Gettysburg VI.
Directions to Culp’s Hill: Take Baltimore Pike (Route 97) South. Go through the light for the Visitor’s Center and turn left onto Colgrove Avenue (follow the Auto Tour sign). This will take you past Spangler’s Meadow on your right and Spangler’s Spring on your left. Continue past the Spangler’s Spring parking area. Take the left hand fork onto Geary Avenue. Continue past Pardee Field to the stop sign. Turn left on the one-way road and the “Angle” area will be to your right as you follow the monument-studded park road.
The road from the angle to the summit, where the tower stands, is the site where numerous strange flashes of light have been seen by the naked eye and caught on film.
One night, pitiful calls for help were heard echoing through the woods by a physician staying at a campground (now closed) near the Baltimore Pike entrance to the Culp’s Hill/Spangler Spring area. Though it was 11:00 p.m. and after the park was closed, he was compelled by his professional instinct to locate the individual who needed help. Driving onto the park with a fellow camper, past Spangler’s Spring and up toward the summit of Culp’s Hill, he turned the car off to listen. From just a few hundred feet ahead, up the hill, they heard the mournful cry again: Help me…help. Several more times he stopped the car and heard the pitiful cries, but every time they got near, the sufferer’s cries seemed to move…or perhaps come from more individuals. Soon a park ranger stopped them for being in a restricted area. The doctor tried to explain and as the ranger was about to write the ticket, the cry came again: Help me…help…. Convinced now, the ranger radioed for help to locate the injured man. They followed the agonizing pleadings around the darkened hill until 1:30 a.m. when the search was called off…although the cries continued.
Then there’s the sighting of a phantom soldier on the trail from the summit parking lot down to the monument to Major Joshua G. Palmer of the 66th Ohio.
The witness to the paranormal event and his family were visiting the site around dusk, about the time of day the fighting had occurred. The whole family saw what they thought was a reenactor on the pathway, but as the man and his family stepped aside to allow the reenactor to pass, instead he looked up, noticed them, and promptly vanished before their eyes.
The steel tower at the summit of the hill has reverberated with phantom footsteps when no cars are in the parking lot and no one is seen going up or down the tower. And at least one visitor has been enamored with an attractive young lady dressed in 1950s style clothing. They both were at the top of the tower. She ignored him, however, as if he wasn’t there, and began her descent down the stairs. Instead of making it to the bottom, somewhere on the way down, the lovely young lady simply vanished.
Mark Nesbitt 
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