In all, men from 18 Union states and 11 Confederate states struggled for their respective countries and their lives at Gettysburg. Yet, one Union state actually sent her sons to fight for the Confederacy as well – and this was never more visible than at the pivotal Battle of Gettysburg.
It is hard to fathom how a state could be so divided, until visiting Maryland’s eastern shore. Crossing the Chesapeake takes the traveler to a place completely different and unique, a world apart from the mainland that lies just south of the Mason-Dixon Line. It is like being in the Deep South from long ago, where Frederick Douglass worked the fields in the hamlet of St. Michaels and Harriet Tubman organized the Underground Railroad near the river town of Cambridge. Abundant tobacco farms and fields of grain give evidence of fertile soil for the plantation owners who built a type of life known only to those who settled there.
When war came, the people of the Eastern Shore and lower Potomac peninsula had to decide between their love for the Union and their hope of keeping their way of life. Some chose the first, others chose the latter. A few chose both.
It seems incredible that at Gettysburg there was a regimental commander fighting for the Union who owned nine slaves – and that one of his captains owned over sixty. And yet it was true. Colonel James Wallace commanded the First Maryland Eastern Shore regiment, with his personal manservant attending him through the war. A member of his regiment, Captain John Keene, was the son of a wealthy plantation owner who owned even more. Keene also had a manservant who was by his side at Gettysburg. There were others in the ranks who owned slaves as well – but they had changed sides during the 4 year conflict.
The First Maryland Eastern Shore was called into service in Cambridge, Maryland in September 1861. When the recruitment began, the men were told that they would only serve as a state militia, summoned to action to keep order in a state that was growing more chaotic as the war progressed. As the price of war exacted more men to fill the ranks, the men of eastern Maryland were sent to fight with the Army of the Potomac. This did not suit many of the members, who basically understood the secessionists and did not wish to inflict harm on their Confederate brethren. Some of them, too, including the young Captain Henry, were slave owners – and felt that the State of Maryland had broken its word. Therefore, they switched allegiances and joined with the South. According to Colonel Wallace’s adjutant, John Rastrell, these men were “dishonorably discharged” from the Union army.1 
The new Confederate soldiers from the Eastern Shore formed a new regiment: the 1st Maryland Battalion. In later years, in order to not be confused with the 1st Maryland Eastern Shore, they agreed to be known as the 2nd Maryland Infantry. In an ironic twist of fate, these men saw one another again at Gettysburg.
Maryland troops served in several capacities during the war. They fought in the infantry, the cavalry, and the artillery – and all three branches of military service were used at Gettysburg. Culp’s Hill, where the Union right flank was situated at Gettysburg, is where Maryland troops from both sides of the conflict met in battle – and fired upon each other, on the night of July 2nd and the morning of July 3rd.
Thomas Webb of Brigadier General George Steuart’s Brigade was frustrated that their attack on the hill on July 2nd had not succeeded. “We attacked them and drove them out of their position. During the night they received reinforcements. We attacked them the next morning but could not take the position. Our battalion [the 2nd Maryland] suffered more than any other regiment in the brigade…The men fell on my right and left and in front of me and I thought sure my time had come.”2
According to John Stone, one of the members of the 2nd Maryland Battalion, the men from the Eastern Shore met one another at Gettysburg under the most adverse circumstances. “At early dawn, the morning of the 3rd,” he wrote in his diary, “the slaughter began. It continued to rain shot and shell….So terrific was the strife that scarcely a leaf or limb was left on the surrounding trees. At times one could feel the earth tremble, so fearful was the cannonading.”3
General Henry Lockwood, the commander of a brigade that included Union troops from Maryland, spoke tersely of the Federal wounded during the battle on Culp’s Hill: [We] lost in killed and wounded some 80 men…and ammunition [was] short.” One of the Union soldiers from that unit later remarked, “We saw some of the captured who used to be in our regiment who now fought for the Confederates. Many of them were killed and wounded.”4
William Thomas of the 2nd Maryland was even more concise in his appraisal of the situation: “It was hot work.” The regiment lost well over half their number – including the former Union soldier Captain Henry, who was killed on July 3rd. “Our regiment suffered very much,” wrote another Maryland Confederate to his mother, “especially in wounded. We were exposed to a most murderous fire.”5
Edward Simmons from the First Maryland Eastern Shore remembered, “Our regiment went into the fight with a yell and fought bravely all day. We met the First Maryland reb unit – and killed and wounded nearly all of them.”6
Sergeant James Thomas of that “reb” unit recalled, “I think they [the Union] took off all who were near enough their line.” Thomas was one of them, wounded in the hip by a minie ball. “I met General Kane, who was very kind and ordered me to be taken to the Division Hospital. Thomas Leiper, a lieutenant on his staff, went with me to the field surgeon.” The order saved the sergeant’s life. He received timely care and survived the battle. “While lying on the battlefield,” he lamented, “I was grieved to see poor Bill Murray stretched out cold and stiff. Oh! How I felt!...He was a fine soldier, a fine Captain. He used to look forward with such pride and joy to an entrance into Baltimore [Murray’s home town] and to this his life was thrown away.”7
There were many lives from Maryland, especially Confederate, expunged that day at Gettysburg. One youth said to Major Goldsboro of the 2nd Maryland, “If you should get home, tell my poor old father I died endeavoring to do my duty.”8
Goldsboro was also wounded. “The fated brigade,” he said of Steuart’s troops, “emerged from the woods into the open plain and here – oh, God! What a fire greeted us, and the death shriek rends the air on every side….I could not tell where I was struck. In the excitement I felt not the pain.” Propped up on his elbow on the edge of Pardee Field, Goldsboro watched the troops fall: “The struggling column – column did I say? A column no longer, but the torn and shattered fragments of one.”9
Some Marylanders died instantly. Others managed eventual survival or lingered to a slow death from infection. One of the latter was William Nichols, who wrote his sister on July 24th. “I am lying here severely wounded,” he said. “I was wounded in my left leg, below and through the knee. This is the 22nd day and my wounds do not seem to heal fast. I feel that my race is about run. I am happy to say that I do not fear death, I have been endeavoring to make my peace with God. Today I was baptized by Rev. Mr. Price of the U.S. Christian Commission. My grave, I suppose, will be near a barn or house of Mrs. Weible, 2 miles from Gettysburg. O that we may meet in heaven.”10
William Nichols died as he predicted, and was likely buried where he told his sister he would be. Whether she retrieved his body or whether his unmarked grave still lies in Gettysburg, it is improbable that we shall ever know.
One man summed up succinctly the Maryland loss at Gettysburg: “They paid for it with the lives of some of their best.”11
“Time will never tell the number killed at Gettysburg,” added another.12
Time has erased the vestiges of battle that occurred on Pennsylvania farmland, with the exception of the remnants of Union breastworks at Culp’s Hill. There is a quiet serenity that pervades the place that once saw so much horror. Culp’s Hill is even more pastoral than the more famous, and equally deadly, spots of the battlefield, because it is less frequented by visitors. Off the beaten path, its bucolic canopy is like a corridor of calm, every season of the year.
Yet, on Culp’s Hill, brother truly met brother, neighbor fired upon neighbor, and Death became the familiar foe for both to fight. The singular plight of Maryland in the Civil War was aptly displayed here, on the flank known as the Barb of the Fishhook at Gettysburg.
In 1887, the first Confederate monument was placed on the battlefield. Far from the grand state monuments from the South that pay homage to their remembered warriors, this memorial, humble in comparison, quietly shows the place where the former 1st Maryland Confederate Battalion managed to breach the Union line on Culp’s Hill. It is a fitting epitaph for the men from Maryland, who paid the highest of prices for the land they occupied on those early summer days of 1863.
Sources: Goldsboro, William. The Maryland Line: In The Confederate States Army. Baltimore, 1869. Diary of John Stone, Maryland Troops, Confederate File, GNMP. Letter, Thomas J. Webb to his brother, July 18, 1863, copy, GNMP. Letter, Edward Simmons to Cousin Willie, July 4, 1863, Maryland Union File, GNMP. Letter, unknown Maryland writer to “Mother”, Maryland Confederate File, GNMP. Letter, William Nichols to his sister, July 22, 1863, copy, GNMP. Sergeant James Thomas Diary, Maryland Confederate File, GNMP. The Confederate Veteran, Sept. 1889, p. 408.The National Tribune, Baltimore, MD, Feb. 15, 1883. Mitchell, Charles. Maryland Voices of the Civil War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. Pfanz, Harry W. Gettysburg: Culp’s Hill & Cemetery Hill. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.
End Notes:
1. The Confederate Veteran, Sept. 1899, p. 408.
2. Letter, Thomas J. Webb to his brother, July 18, 1863.
3. John Stone Diary, Maryland Confederate File, GNMP.
4. Pfanz, p. 293. The National Tribune, Feb. 15, 1883.
5. The Confederate Veteran, Sept. 1899, p. 408. Letter, unknown to “Mother”, July 5, 1863.
6. Letter, Edward Simmons to Cousin Willie, July 4,
1863, copy, GNMP.
7. Sergeant James Thomas Diary, GNMP.
8. Goldsboro, p. 147.
9. Ibid., p. 157.
10. Letter, William Nichols to his sister, July 22, 1863,GNMP.
11. Mitchell, p. 334.
12. John Stone Diary, GNMP.
