"One Dread Chorus": Gettysburg Remembered

War ranks at the top of the most hideous actions human beings can inflict upon one another. No one understood that fact better than the soldiers who fought. Here are some of the words left to us by those, both military and civilian, who witnessed the Battle of Gettysburg.

“I shall always remember the storm of rebel shells raining about our house through a back window at the foot of a short flight of stairs leading to the attic, one hitting the brick work of the window, opening a glancing blow, shattering the window frame and sash, splintering the face of one of the attic steps, rebounding and knocking out several of the banisters of the winding stairs, and the terrific crashing sound and rattle it made…”¹ – Robert D. Carson, age 5

“The shells and shot howled, shrieked and plunged through the air like infuriated demons. There was no shelter, not even a stump or a tree.”² – Alfred Lee, 82^nd Ohio, Krzyzanowski’s Brigade, Federal 11^th Corps, First Day

“Our men…used their muskets until, by fast firing, they became so hot they were compelled to drop them, then they would take one nearest them on the ground, rendered useless because the owner of it was dead; and I will add here that there was no scarcity of muskets, as the dead and wounded were largely in the majority of our regiment. Here we were compelled to leave the lifeless bodies of many of our comrades.”³ – Horatio Warren, 142^nd Pennsylvania Infantry, McPherson’s Ridge

“When we occupied the wood recently held by the enemy my attention was attracted by the dreadful – not moans but – howls of some of the wounded. It was so distressing that I approached several with the purpose of calming them if possible, and to my surprise I found them foaming at the mouth as if mad, and evidently unconscious of their voices.”⁴ – Captain Louis Young, 26^th North Carolina, Herbst Woods McPherson’s Ridge

“A good many of our soldiers were killed in the streets. I saw two dead men lying in McCurdy’s Alley when I crossed the street to go home. Four of our men were carrying a wounded soldier on a stretcher down the street when a ball came along and took the legs off the front two men.”⁵ – Jennie McCreary, Gettysburg resident, on July 1, 1863

“The incessant roar of small arms, the deadly hiss of minie balls, the shouts of combatants, the booming of cannon, the explosion of shells, and the crash of their fragments among the rocks, all blended in one dread chorus whose sublimity and terror no expressing could compass.”⁶ – Colonel W.F. Perry, 44^th Alabama Infantry, Devil’s Den

“It was impossible to walk over the ground without stepping on the Rebel dead.”⁷ --- Sergeant Consider Willett, 44^th New York Infantry, Little Round Top (O’Brien, p. 39)

“I was on the Rose Farm and around the Rose building immediately after hostilities ceased…It was about the most gruesome thing of the many gruesome spectacles on the Gettysburg field…The half of a body, rent asunder by a spherical case, was in the spring whence the Rose family obtained their drinking water. A much disgusted man was Rose when he returned. His stock was gone; his furniture was gone…his supply of drinking water polluted with dead bodies; nothing left of his farm but the rocks and some of the soil. Nearly 100 Confederates were buried in his garden; some 175 behind his barn and around the wagon shed, graves were scattered through the lawns adjoining the house, one confederate colonel being buried within a yard of his kitchen door.”⁸ – J. Howard Wert, Gettysburg civilian, on the Rose Farm, Emmitsburg Road

“Men’s heads were torn from their bodies, legs and arms torn asunder and horses lying around mutilated. It took courage to face these things.”⁹ – John R. King, 25^th Virginia, Jones’s Brigade, Culp’s Hill

“Thousands of our brave boys are left upon the enemy’s soil and in my opinion our army will never be made of such material again.”¹⁰ – Private Alexander McNeill, 2^nd South Carolina Infantry, Kershaw’s Brigade, the Wheatfield

“During the night, we could hear the cries of hundreds of wounded and dying men on the field. It was the most distressing wail ever listened to…They were the mingled cries of friend and foe that were borne to us on the night breeze, as a sad, wailing, painful cry for help.”¹¹ – Major Samuel Hurst, 73^rd Ohio Infantry, Culp’s Hill, on the night of July 2, 1863.

“We fought behind breastworks and the rebels had to come out in sight and we butchered them like sheep.”¹² – Corporal James Miller, 151^st Pennsylvania, Culp’s Hill, morning of July 3, 1863

“The Rebels had to come over a hill and through a field before they could reach us…They were permitted to advance 75 yards or so before a gun was fired, when as if by magic, the whole line flashed forth a sheet of flame, hurling death and destruction among them. For a time they strove manfully, but soon they broke and fled in the utmost confusion…Their dead and wounded were left in heaps.”¹³ – Sergeant Peter Corzine, 5^th Ohio Infantry, Pardee Field, Culp’s Hill

“Around me were brains, blood and skull bones; my first thought was that my Colonel’s head had been blown off, but this was dispelled the next moment by his asking me if I was badly hurt.”¹⁴ – Sergeant David Johnston, 7^th Virginia Infantry, during the cannonade that preceded Pickett’s Charge

There are shouts, fire, smoke, clashing of arms. Death is holding high carnival…Men fall in heaps, still fighting, bleeding, dying.”¹⁵ – Lieutenant John Lewis, 9^th Virginia Infantry, Armistead’s Brigade, Pickett’s Charge

“There was an acre or so of ground here where you could not walk without stepping over the bodies, and I saw perhaps a dozen cases where they were heaped upon one another.”¹⁶ – William O. Blodgett, 151^st Pennsylvania Infantry, on surveying the aftermath of Pickett’s Charge

“The sights and smells that assailed us were simply indescribable – corpses swollen to twice their original size. Some of them actually burst asunder with the pressure of foul gases and vapors…The odors were nauseating, and so deadly that in a short time we were all sickened and were lying with our mouths close to the ground, most of us vomiting profusely.”¹⁷ – Lieutenant Robert Stiles, Confederate artillery, describing the first day’s field on July 7

“You folks at home have no idea of what a soldier has to endure.”18 – Private I.T. Fogle, 2^nd Georgia Infantry, Benning’s Brigade, written on July 16, 1863



Sources: 2^nd Georgia File, Gettysburg National Military Park (hereafter GNMP). 2^nd South Carolina File, GNMP. Baumgartner, Richard A. Buckeye Blood: Ohio at Gettysburg. Huntington, WVA: Blue Acorn Press, 2003. The Confederate Veteran, 1901. Copy, GNMP. Dougherty, James J. “A History of the McPherson Farm at Gettysburg.” Gettysburg Magazine no. 26, July 2002. Dreese, Michael A. The 151^st Pennsylvania Volunteers at Gettysburg: Like Ripe Apples in a Storm. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2000. Hadden, R. Lee. “The Deadly Embrace.” Gettysburg Magazine no. 5, July 1991. King, John R. “My Experience in the Confederate Army and in Northern Prisons”. Clarksburg, WVA: United Daughters of the Confederacy, 1917. Copy, GNMP. McCreary, Jennie. Civilian Accounts File, Adams County Historical Society (hereafter ACHS). O’Brien, Kevin E. “Stubborn Bravery: The Forgotten 44^th New York at Little Round Top.” Gettysburg Magazine, no. 15, July 1996. The Philadelphia Evening Telegraph, June 30, 1913. Rollins, Richard ed. Pickett’s Charge! Eyewitness Accounts. Redondo Beach, CA: Rank and File Publications, 1994. Wert, J. Howard. Civilian Accounts File, ACHS.

End Notes: 

1. The Philadelphia Evening Telegraph, Jun. 30, 1913. 

2. Baumgartner, p. 54. 

3. Dreese, pp. 57-58. 

4. Hadden, Gettysburg Magazine no. 5, p. 33. 

5. Jennie McCreary Civilian Account File, ACHS.

6. The Confederate Veteran, pp. 161-162. 

7. O’Brien, Gettysburg Magazine no. 15, p. 39. 

8. J. Howard Wert, Civilian Account File,  ACHS. 

9. King, p. 13. 

10. 2^nd South Carolina File, GNMP. 

11. Baumgartner, p. 142. 

12. Dreese, p. 71. 

13. Baumgartner, pp. 132-133. 

14. Rollins, p. 99. 

15. Ibid., p. 180. 

16. Dreese, p. 79. 

17. Dougherty, Gettysburg Magazine no. 26, p. 31. 

18. 2^nd Georgia File, GNMP.