A hundred and fifty-seven years ago the first day of the battle of Gettysburg happened. The number of Union casualties at Gettysburg has been estimated at 23,000, including over 3,100 killed, while the number of Confederate casualties may have been as high as 28,000, including over 4,500 killed. It was the bloodiest battle of the entire Civil War.
One of those casualties was a man I wrote about in my book The Rise and Fall of the Sugar King Martin Short, who would go on to be the top policeman in Williamsburg for decades.
News of the war was bleak a on July 1, 1863. The South was on the offensive. Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia had crossed into Pennsylvania, hoping to win a victory on Northern soil, and compel the North to sue for peace. Lee and his Southern army would confront the Union army at a small crossroads town called Gettysburg. One of the New York brigades trying to defeat Lee was the Excelsior brigade commanded by a Tammany Hall politician-turned-General, Dan Sickles.
Irish-born Williamsburger Sergeant Martin Short was one of the soldiers in Sickles’ brigade. In his service in the army Short had proven himself to be a good soldier. He had been captured by the Rebels at Pittsburg Landing, but was later exchanged in a prisoner swap, rejoining his unit. He won the respect of the men in his unit in a skirmish a few days before Gettysburg when their captain, an Englishman, ironically also called Short, was shot and wounded. Martin Short, seeing Captain Short lying on the ground, ran from cover into a hail of bullets and threw his wounded captain over his large shoulder, then carried him back to safety, gaining him the respect of every soldier in his unit. Short had grown a lot during his two years in the army. He had grown taller, and had become a strong, muscular man with a barrel chest. He was no longer the callow teenager who had enlisted. Everything about him suggested that he was an army sergeant, a rank his heroic action had rightfully earned him.
The 73rd Regiment, with which he served, was now a group of battle-hardened veterans. They knew that they were as brave as their Southern adversaries, but they had continually suffered defeat and many casualties because of bad generalship. They feared a repeat of bad leadership again. On the second day of the battle of Gettysburg, General Sickles, defying a direct order from his commander General Meade, moved his troops forward, occupying higher ground in a peach orchard, but also moving his soldiers out of the range of protective cannon fire, and creating a salient, permitting them to be attacked on two sides. Short and the volunteer firemen in his unit must have grimly thought about the other battles they had been whipped in as they marched forward, full of apprehension. They feared a repeat of the carnage in the battles of Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg, but they were soldiers, and their fate was to follow orders. They correctly sensed that they quickly faced a really tough fight.
Short and the other soldiers, though, could not help but notice the beauty of this Pennsylvania countryside on this sunny summer day. They marched through a wheat field and then were held in reserve at a farm called the Trostle Farm. In the afternoon Short’s regiment found itself still positioned in reserve to the north of the Trostle Farm lane, supporting the advanced line along a country lane called the Emmitsburg Road. As the battle rolled toward a nearby peach orchard early that evening, Major Henry Tremain of Sickles’ staff (and originally a member in the 73rd) appeared in front of the regiment, coming breathlessly in from the left at a gallop. They knew his message well before he reached them, and quickly the men sprang into line. Facing left, they moved toward the peach orchard at double-quick through a shower of bullets and bursting shells. The 114th Pennsylvania Regiment, stretched along the Emmitsburg road just in front of them, was involved in a fierce fight; men of the 114th were getting hit and falling before Short’s eyes.
The 73rd came to a halt on high ground near a farmhouse in the rear of the 114th, which had crossed to the west side of the Emmitsburg Road to engage the enemy, Barksdale’s Mississippians. Here Short’s unit would have to wait until the 114th had cleared their front, though they were already taking fire from the Mississippians, as shells and bullets whistled in. They did not have to wait long, for soon the 114th began to retreat northward up the road. The 73rd found itself facing waves of the gray-clad 13th and 17th Mississippi, who advanced against them. As the charging Mississippians rose into view above the crest, traversed at that point by the Emmetsburg road, the New York soldiers poured into their faces a hot and ringing volley that felled scores of the Rebels. The Rebels momentarily staggered, but closed up quickly, and with the familiar, “Hi-yi!” returned fire, pressing forward with the savage courage of baited bulls. The Union cannon batteries behind Short were belching shot, shell and grape into the faces of the Southern soldiers’ charging columns; showers of branches fell from the peach trees in the orchard in the leaden hurricane that swept Short’s regiment from two sides. Every door, window and sash of a nearby house was shivered to atoms. The barn close by was riddled like a sieve from base to roof, and cannon shot at every instant split its boards and timbers into showers of kindling-wood.
Short was aware of the huge amount of lead that was whistling by him, often hitting members of the 73rd who either fell dead or screamed out in pain. The regiment was melting away quickly in the deadly crossfire, but still stood to its work unflinchingly, and the remaining few finally closed in semi-circle around its riddled flag. Their color-bearer was struck dead, but another brave man instantly caught up the flag, waving it defiantly. A bullet shattered his arm in a few minutes, but then a third man held it up again, The men of his company fell dead and wounded beside him, but somehow Colonel Burns, mounted on his conspicuous old white horse, miraculously escaped the bullets. Suddenly, Short felt something slam into his shoulder with tremendous force, and the impact made him drop his rifle. Then, he felt a hot excruciating pain as if he was burned by fire. He had been hit, and he could feel that a hole had been ripped in his shoulder. Soon, warm hot blood started to fill the opening. He lay down writhing in pain, aware that his tunic was filling with blood. The pain was so intense that it was hard to think, but he wondered if the wound in his shoulder would prove fatal. The Southerners charged at Short’s regiment, and in the intense firefight there were heavy casualties before Short, and what was left of the regiment, retreated in a hail of bullets.
Short, in great pain, walked to the rear, and he was placed in a wagon with other soldiers, many of whom were wounded far more gravely than he. There were men who had shattered limbs, ghastly head wounds and wounds to the torso. He was still writhing in agony, though he was aware that the blood had stopped flowing out of the wound. As he rode in the wagon and surveyed the rear, he for the first time could see the scale of the carnage. The town of Gettysburg, as well as the fields and woodlands for miles about, was a limitless scene of such horrific carnage and gore. He was brought to a church that had been converted into a field hospital. Hundreds of desperately wounded men were stretched out on boards laid across the high-backed pews as closely as they could be packed together. The tens of thousands of wounded men overwhelmed the surgeons. The heat of the tightly packed, breathless church, the pain from his wound and the horrible stench were almost too much to bear.
Short was one of a hundred and three wounded men from his regiment in the battle. Fifty-one of its soldiers were killed, and the unit suffered a 50% casualty rate. Short was one of the lucky wounded men. The bullet had passed straight through his shoulder. The wound was cauterized, and fortunately it did not develop fatal gangrene. His fight was done now, and he would be heading back to a military hospital in New York.
The bloody battle would turn the tide of the war against slavery and the south. Short would be a proud member of a veterans organization The Grand Army of the Republic.
Williamsburgbrooklynhistory.blog 