Section #1 - Three Days At Gettysburg
Chapter 17: Day One: 10:20 AM–2:30 PM – Union Right
(Hal Jespersen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
Around 12:00 more Union reinforcements arrive to bolster the defense. They are led by one-armed General O. O. Howard, whose XI Corps troops were routed just two months ago at Chancellorsville. Howard is now the highest ranking General on the field and assumes overall command.
His troops, under General Carl Schurz, dig in to face the greybacks coming at him from the west.
Around 1:30, however, thunderous cannon fire is heard from behind Howard’s lines, the work of General Robert Rodes’ Division of Ewell’s Corps which has arrived atop Oak Hill. In response to the attack on his rear, Howard bends his line to the right across Oak Ridge to defend this new threat, leaving the remains of Doubleday’s depleted I Corps on his left.
At 2:00 Rodes follows his initial barrage by sending three brigades led by Generals Junius Daniel and Alfred Iverson down Mummasburg Road toward the center of the town itself. But Rodes’ has failed to reconnoiter the ground ahead and Federals hidden behind a stone wall rise up and nearly wipe out Iverson’s total North Carolina brigade. This stalls the assault for the moment.
