Gettysburg’s second day of battle was a tumult of acrid smoke, clamoring musketry, and death as the men in blue and gray grappled on the slopes of rocky hills and in the farmers’ fields south of town. After carrying the first day’s battle to victory, General Robert E. Lee decided on a flank attack of George Meade’s Army of the Potomac. Feeling too unsettled to remain in Pennsylvania for long, General Lee knew that he had to attack as the Union army was now in its own territory. With Washington as the coveted prize, and with it the end of war, General Lee planned a Napoleonic maneuver: to hit the flanks of the Union line and roll them up. The result was the bloodiest day of the worst battle of the war.
With Lee’s decision to attack the ends of the Federal position, many soldiers’ lives were fated to become forfeit. And, with another decision made by Union General Daniel Sickles, commander of the Federal 3rd Corps, the tragic outcome of many more were sealed.
Dan Sickles, a well-connected senator from New York, had been promoted to brigade command at the recommendation of Abraham Lincoln early in the war. A powerful Democrat, Sickles was instrumental in helping to procure the necessary funds to run the war. In order to get his support, Lincoln secured for Sickles a brigadier’s star. Sickles was patriotic and fearless – he had the necessary temerity that makes a good commander. Because of his audacity and determined patriotism, Sickles rose to corps command in November of 1862. However, Sickles lacked military tactical skill – much of his notoriety came from battles that had been waged on the Senate floor.
General Sickles was often at odds with his superior commanders, and was further miffed in June 1863 by the resignation of his good friend, General Joseph Hooker who, until just a few days before the Battle of Gettysburg, had commanded the Army of the Potomac. The conservative George Meade reluctantly took General Hooker's place on June 28.
With the loss of his friend and the rise of power to a man he detested, Sickles embarked on a road of no return. He defied the new general, and refused to obey his orders in the deployment of his corps at Gettysburg. Sickles’ feelings were understandable: the Union had lost most of its battles thus far. Sickles felt the way many of the enlisted men and officers did. They had lost confidence in the Union high command. Still, George Meade had not been tested in his new position, and had always been considered a capable commander. Instead of placing his troops where Meade directed, Sickles moved his men closer to the Emmitsburg Road – where he believed Lee would be trying to skirt the Union and head to Washington. Instead of remaining solidly with the rest of the Union defensive line, Sickles placed his men in places a bit farther out – a brigade in Devil’s Den, another in the Roses' Wheatfield, and the majority of his corps in Joseph Sherfy's Peach Orchard.
In addition to placing his corps away from the rest of the army, Sickles also left large gaps between his own troop deployment. Not believing that they would be attacked, Sickles gave no orders for the men to entrench or throw up barricades. In the hot, hazy July sun, the men merely waited for a fight many believed would never come. The oversight would cost the Union and Confederacy many, many lives.
Across the Emmitsburg Road General James Longstreet saw the redeployment of the Union 3rd Corps and could not believe his eyes. He had been ordered to take the Union left flank, which until recently had been a rocky hill (now called Little Round Top). He noticed that the hill was vacant, and the troops were scattered over fields and rocks on lower ground. He immediately ordered his troops into battle.
Today Devil’s Den, the Peach Orchard, and the Wheatfield are synonymous with absolute destruction. The Wheatfield, when measured by square footage, is arguably the bloodiest acreage at Gettysburg, where 10,000 men fought, and fully half of them fell. Remembering the carnage that day in the Wheatfield, Captain Patterson of the 62nd Pennsylvania wrote, “It has been fitly styled as the whirlpool of the battle.” Of the thousands who fell at Gettysburg, few names are recalled so many years later. Their only heritage for their sacrifice is the grave.1
Lieutenant Scott C. McDowell, who met his fate in the Wheatfield, is one of them.
Scott McDowell was born in County Tyrone, in Northern Ireland as the first and only son of C. McDowell and his wife, the former Anna Scott, in early 1841. Scott’s mother was just eighteen years old, and his father was likely not much older when Scott was born. Due to the harsh conditions and widespread poverty in Ireland in the early 1840s, Mr. McDowell died when Scott was just five years old. After trying unsuccessfully to make a life for herself and her young son in a broken nation, Annie McDowell, like many thousands of her fellow countrymen, decided to go to America. She managed to secure passage to Philadelphia in the spring of 1847. They made their way to Pittsburgh, where Annie had friends and acquaintances. In August that year, Scott’s mother married Samuel McClarin, a fellow immigrant, in Pittsburgh. Three children were born to the couple. The marriage was a happy one, though economically times were still tough. Working as a clerk in a Pittsburgh dry goods store, Sam fell ill during the summer of 1855 and died, leaving his widow and orphans without any means to support themselves.2
Scott was fourteen years old when his stepfather died, and immediately became the means of support for his mother and siblings. He went to work as a toll collector for the Allegheny roads, laboring there for two years. At age sixteen he secured a position as a clerk in a dry goods store in Pittsburgh, a job he liked because it paid a better salary. He also enjoyed visiting with customers, many of them coming in on a daily or weekly basis. When paid for his work, he gave the money to his mother for the support of the family.3
In the spring of 1861, Scott was barely twenty years old when the Confederates fired upon Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. A patriotic fervor swept the nation, North and South, and the city of Pittsburgh was no exception. As Independence Day neared, a Mexican War veteran-turned-lawyer began stumping for volunteers to form a regiment and help to put down the rebellion. Samuel Black, the swarthy veteran who served for a time as territorial governor of Nebraska, claimed that on his way home to Pennsylvania, he saw a sign from heaven that war was imminent. He said that on the night of December 8, 1860, just after the moon rose, he and several other witnesses saw a distinct cross – with the full moon forming its center. He saw the arms of the cross extend into the clouds, which lasted for three hours. After the sign disappeared, the sky was bright with several distinct, unusual circles. The strange vision enthralled many who heard the story, and Scott McDowell was no exception.4
The mustering in of what would be the 62nd Pennsylvania Volunteers began on Independence Day, 1861. Scott, needing to convince his mother that he should join the fight, managed to join up on July 23. The next day, July 24, the volunteers boarded the train for Harrisburg, and beyond it, the war.5
Scott McDowell enlisted in Company G. He was friendly and personable with the men of his company. Led by Captain Kennedy, the company elected Scott as Sergeant. While serving in this capacity, Scott managed to take time from his busy schedule of drilling, marching, and drilling some more to have his picture taken. With no sweetheart in Pennsylvania to send it to, Scott mailed the photograph to his mother, along with his monthly salary of $15.
The 62nd Pennsylvania was placed in the Union 5th Corps, the Army of the Potomac. At the time, the 5th Corps was led by General Fitz John Porter. It would see several other commanders before their three-year enlistment ended, including fellow Pennsylvanian George Meade.
The 62nd Pennsylvania experienced their first battle in the Peninsula Campaign in the spring of 1862. During the Battle of Gaines’ Mill on June 27, their beloved commander, Colonel Samuel Black, was killed. The second in command, Lt. Colonel Jacob B. Sweitzer, took over, but was soon wounded and captured. Captain James Hull, the senior captain of the regiment, was promptly promoted to Lt. Colonel and put in command of the regiment.6
The 62nd fought in Second Manassas, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. Scott McDowell was with them, showing fearlessness in battle and managing to stay alive as well. Shortly after the battle at Fredericksburg and just two days before Christmas, on December 23, 1862, Scott McDowell was promoted to First Lieutenant of Company G. According to Captain Patterson, Scott was very popular in Company G. He was “its idol and greatly beloved.” On the home front, his mother worked at the arsenal in Pittsburgh. In addition to earning money for the support of her family, Annie felt that, in her own way, she was supporting her son in the Union army.7
Lt. McDowell turned 22 shortly before the Battle of Chancellorsville in the spring of 1863. The battle in the wilderness of northern Virginia, where General Lee was vastly outnumbered by the Union army, led by General Hooker, became a sweeping Confederate victory. Demoralizing the men in blue and thrilling those in gray, the fight paved the way for an invasion northward. General Lee’s win at Chancellorsville was a double-edged sword. He won a crucial battle that convinced him that it was time to take the war to the north – but it cost him his best subordinate, General “Stonewall” Jackson, who died on May 10.
Both the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac needed significant overhauling before the summer of 1863. Lee took General Jackson’s corps and divided it in two, promoting two new commanders, Generals Ewell and Hill, to replace the irreplaceable Jackson. On the Union side, Lincoln gladly accepted General Hooker's resignation from army command, replacing him with General Meade on June 28. Within the ranks of both armies, men were promoted to fill the places of those who were lost from the recent battle. For the Union 5th Corps, General Sykes replaced General Meade; and on down the line, the corps was filled with new division, brigade, and regimental commanders. For the 62nd Pennsylvania, changes promoted soldiers within their own circle: Colonel Jacob Sweitzer led the brigade, leaving Colonel Hull officially in command of their regiment. They formed part of General Barnes’ division. Other brigades in Barnes’ command included those led by Colonels Tilton and Vincent. The 62nd Pennsylvania shared their place in Sweitzer’s Brigade with two regiments from Massachusetts (the 9th and the 32nd) and the 5th Michigan.8
The march into Pennsylvania from Virginia was an arduous one. The Federals marched at an incredible pace in an effort to catch the advancing Confederates. One soldier from the 5th Corps recorded that these forced marches covered up to 35 miles per day in stifling heat, crowded conditions, and with little rest. Many fell ill from the heat, and some died. Jacob Shenkel, a member of the 62nd Pennsylvania, wrote that during one particularly sultry day that “Men fell Dead [sic]on the march.”9
In the waning days of June, the men reached Frederick, Maryland and received a heroes’ welcome. They were also greeted shortly afterward by drenching rain. By July 1, the rain continued to muddy the roads and soak the men. It was on that day, at noon, that the 5th Corps, with the 62nd Pennsylvania in tow, crossed the border into Pennsylvania. The soldiers cheered, the flag was unfurled, and the men were filled with mixed emotion. There was joy in returning home – especially for the men of the Keystone State. But a battle was imminent, and they knew it. Already a fight had commenced at Gettysburg, and they soon heard of it. These men in blue marched resolutely through Littlestown, Hanover, and Bonneauville, with just a three-hour rest from midnight to 3 a.m. They reached the outskirts of the village of Gettysburg at 7 a.m. on July 2. As the regiment that led the 5th Corps into Gettysburg, the men of the 62nd Pennsylvania were footsore and exhausted. Held in reserve near the cool waters of Rock Creek off the Baltimore Pike, the men rested, ate their rations of hard tack, and drank and washed themselves from the swollen waters of the creek. According to Colonel Sweitzer, since they were held in reserve and the battlefield to the south of town was relatively quiet that morning, “we began to think that there would be no fight that day.”10
They were wrong. Because General Sickles believed the same, he moved his men from the Union line to the Emmitsburg Road, and General Longstreet replied with an attack. By four p.m. that day, places that otherwise would not have figured in the battle were spots of desperate fighting. Geneal Barnes’ division was ordered into the Wheatfield to bolster part of Sickles’ frantic troops. On the way, Colonel Vincent met a member of General Barnes’ staff, who directed him to Little Round Top. As part of Sweitzer’s Brigade, Scott McDowell and the 62nd Pennsylvania headed into the Wheatfield, which was already “a whirlwind” of battle. The chest-high, golden wheat was already trampled and smoke from the artillery of both sides turned the skies black. One soldier of the 62nd aptly called the place “an alley of death” where “the bullets came in showers.”11
The Wheatfield battle can be best described as a destructive game of back and forth. The blue and gray troops took turns pushing one another off the field, and then taking it back again, across a wide and varied front of at least 300 yards.
Colonel Regis de Trobriand was the lone commander of the lone brigade occupying the field from Sickles’ 3rd Corps when the determined Georgia troops from Generals Anderson’s and Semmes’ brigades hit him hard. By the time reinforcements came – notably the men of Sweitzer’s brigade, DeTrobriand had had enough. As men from the Sweitzer’s and Tilton’s troops joined his battered men in the Wheatfield, DeTrobriand hurriedly withdrew his troops. On the Confederate side, the soldiers in gray did not withdraw. They called upon General Kershaw’s South Carolinians to aid them in their progressive attack – known as “en echelon” in the annals of war. With the withdrawal of DeTrobriand’s men and the increasing numbers of determined rebels pressing them, the newly arrived Union men were confused and disoriented. The field was sizeable, and though Tilton’s and Sweitzer’s brigades held order for a time, they had to reach the Stony Hill area of the Wheatfield, as well as attempt to hold a stone wall at the edge of a wood lot, where the Georgians were pouring in. In all, Sweitzer’s brigade had to stretch hundreds of yards from flank to flank in an attempt to hold both positions.12
With Kershaw’s troops pressing the Union men at the Stony Hill and the Georgians coming from the woods behind the Rose Farm, the 62nd Pennsylvania found themselves in a precarious area, being shot at from two sides. Men from both sides were falling, mostly from head wounds. The men were ordered to lie down in an effort to keep from being shot by the hailstorm of lead greeting them. General Barnes, who had led the two brigades for a time into the fray, was wounded in the thigh and taken off the field. Without any directive from a superior commander, the Union men in the Wheatfield were in a most dangerous and deadly situation.13
In the midst of ordering his men to lie down to avoid being shot, a bullet struck Lieutenant Scott McDowell in the head and killed him instantly, as he stood near the stone wall by the woods. He lay where he fell, with lifeless blue eyes staring at the blackened sky. The men of Company G were shocked and saddened at the sight – but grimly turned to other matters – such as staying alive themselves – as they faced the gray uniforms hidden the woods and listened to the incessant roar of artillery.14
The maelstrom of death in the areas where Sickles had placed his troops had long before caught the eye of General Hancock, who commanded the center of the Union line. Hancock had watched Sickles advance earlier that day and told his troops that they “would soon be back.” When the order came to aid Sykes’ flailing troops, Hancock quietly ordered General Caldwell to “get your division ready.”15
It seems incredible that with the steady stream of aid in manpower that the Union provided in the Wheatfield that the men in blue would lose it. Yet, they did. The Confederates, who threw themselves into the fight “as though they courted death”, refused to give up. One Confederate officer, when captured by one of Hancock’s men, “snapped his sword’s blade at the hilt and threw it scornfully” at the feet of the Union officer who demanded his surrender. Where the Union men relieved the beleaguered ones who preceded them, the Confederates continued to grow in comparison, though they, too, suffered heavy casualties. General Wofford’s brigade now joined Kershaw’s in the fight. It was a simple mathematical equation of superior numbers. While the number of men from both sides were comparatively the same, the times they fought and the longevity of their stay in the Wheatfield were not.16
In a twist of awful irony, the 62nd were not aided much by the arrival of Caldwell’s Division. As the hours passed and the fight grew deadlier, Caldwell’s men were forced to withdraw, and the 62nd Pennsylvania served as the sacrifice to cover the withdrawal of Hancock’s men – just as they covered DeTrobriand’s brigade earlier that afternoon. By nightfall, when the battle ended, the Confederates occupied most of the Wheatfield, with the dead from both sides mingled together in “ghastly heaps”, easily seen by the light of the harvest moon. At the foot of the Stony Hill area, a small brook ran “red with blood”. Where wheat had stood there was now a more gruesome harvest. Yet, earlier that day, no one had even wanted that field.17
Sickles had placed a brigade in the Wheatfield to connect where he actually placed his men to where he knew General Meade wanted him to be. As a result, 10,000 men fought there, and approximately 5,000 of them fell, both wearing blue and gray.
In Pittsburgh, Annie McClarin fought anxiety when she learned of the Battle of Gettysburg. Within days of the battle, she heard the devastating news of her son’s death. Throughout the war, seventeen officers and 147 men of the 62nd were killed, with another 30 officers and 473 men wounded. Another 77 died of disease, taking half of the men who left Pittsburgh for the front in July of 1861. Gettysburg took a significant chunk of those casualties, with 28 killed, 107 wounded, and 40 missing. Scott McDowell had been one of four officers in the 62nd killed in the alley of death. The losses were 40 percent of those engaged.18
On September 11, 1889, another Wheatfield storm threatened the dedication of the 62nd Pennsylvania monument at Gettysburg. Captain Patterson, who delivered the dedicatory address, was forced to stop because of a severe thunderstorm near the stone wall where Scott McDowell and many others fell to a hailstorm of lead over a quarter century earlier. “Have the dead been mentioned except in numbers?” he asked plaintively during a brief respite from the unrelenting rain.19
“This field had been taken and retaken, the lines swaying back and forth,” he recalled. In his aging memory, the men were so like the ripening stalks of wheat in the field where many breathed their last. “When twilight gathered over its surface, the stalks were strampled [sic] into the earth and dyed with the blood of the blue and the gray, and when the light of the moon cast its gentle rays over the gory plain it revealed scores of the pale, upturned faces of friends and foes, whose only heritage in the glory of battle was soldiers’ graves.”20
Captain Patterson was undoubtedly remembering the upturned face of Scott Mc Dowell, the blue-eyed youth who left Ireland for a better life in the United States. He was, like the regiment with which he fought, taken too soon and largely forgotten; because a general made a decision that may or may not have been a sound one, creating one of many killing fields at a place called Gettysburg.
There were thousands more, from both the North and South, just like him.
Sources: Brooks, Timothy R. “Memories of the War: Jacob Shenkel’s Gettysburg Diary”. Copy, Gettysburg National Military Park (hereafter GNMP). Lt. Scott C. McDowell Military Pension Records, National Archives, Washington, D.C. Mulholland, St. Clair A. The Story of a Regiment: The 116th Pennsylvania. Gaithersburg, MD: Old Soldier Books, Inc. (Reprint, originally printed in 1868). The 62nd Pennsylvania Volunteers: The Way for the Union. Dedication exercises at Gettysburg, September 11,1889. Copy, GNMP. Pennsylvania at Gettysburg: Ceremonies of the Dedication of the Monuments. 2 vols. Published by the Commonwealth of Pennsyvlana, 1893, 1904. Pfanz, Harry W. Gettysburg: The Second Day. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1987. Spisak, Ernest D. “The 62nd Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry: A Forgotten Regiment of Distinction.” Gettysburg Magazine, no. 26, July 2002, pp. 69-93. Additional information found on the 62nd Pennsylvania Memorial, Gettysburg.
End Notes:
1. Pennsylvania at Gettysburg, vol. 1, p. 385.
2. Scott McDowell Military Pension Records, National Archives.
3. Ibid.
4. Spisak, pp. 69-70.
5. Pennsylvania at Gettysburg, vol. 1, p. 384.
6. Spisak, p. 71.
7. Scott McDowell Military Pension Records, NA.
8. Pfanz, pp. 9, 260, 449.
9. Brooks, “Jacob Shenkel’s Gettysburg Diary”, GNMP.
10. Pfanz, p. 77. Spisak, p. 81.
11. Pennsylvania at Gettysburg, vol. 2, pp. 620, 623. Mulholland, p. 293.
12. Pfanz, p. 266. Pennsylvania at Gettysburg, vol. 1, p. 385.
13. Brooks, “Jacob Shenkel’s Gettysburg Diary”, GNMP.
14. Scott McDowell Military Pension Records, NA.
15. Pfanz, p. 268. The four brigades of Caldwell’s divi sion were led by Brooke, Kelly, Cross, and Zook. Both Colonel Cross and General Zook were mor tally wounded in the Wheatfield battle.
16. Ibid., p. 271. Pennsylvania at Gettysburg, vol. 2, p. 623.
17. Brooks, “Jacob Shenkel’s Gettysburg Diary”, GNMP.
18. The 62nd Pennsylvania Memorial, Gettysburg.
19. Pennsylvania at Gettysburg, vol. 1, pp. 384-385.
20. Ibid.
Diana Loski worked as a licensed battlefield guide at Gettysburg National Military Park for nine years. She is the editor of The Gettysburg Experience.
Many thanks to Ronn Palm and his Gettysburg museum on Baltimore Street, for the use of the photograph of Scott McDowell.
