Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg by James M. McPherson

notable regiment. Most of its companies were composed of rough-hewn backwoodsmen, famous for their marksmanship. But all of the soldiers in Company A were University of Mississippi students who enlisted as a body in 1861—the University Greys. They later earned literary fame through the medium of William Faulkner's
Absalom, Absalom!
On July 3, 1863, a baker's dozen of the Eleventh did get as far as the place where their monument now stands. But what the tablet on the monument does
not
say is that when the lieutenant commanding this contingent looked back for the rest of the regiment, he was dismayed to see it running to the rear “in full disorder, at the distance of about one hundred & fifty yards from us.” Having no choice, the lieutenant hoisted a white flag and surrendered to the Yankees of the 111 th New York.
    These controversies about who got the farthest would be amusing if Confederate heritage groups didnot take the matter so seriously. Pickett's Charge— excuse me, the Pickett-Pettigrew assault—is viewed not only as the Confederacy's high-water mark, but also as one of the most courageous and praiseworthy events in military history. For decades the hearts of surviving veterans swelled with pride when they recounted their deeds in that attack. Southern honor knew no finer hour. I have always been struck by the contrast between this image and that of the Army of the Potomac's frontal assault against Confederate lines at Cold Harbor exactly eleven months later. In that attack, ordered by Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, fifty thousand Union soldiers suffered seven thousand casualties, most of them in less than half an hour. For this mistake, which he admitted, Grant has been branded a “butcher” careless of the lives of his men, and Cold Harbor has become a symbol of mule-headed futility. At Gettysburg, Lee's men also sustained almost seven thousand casualties in the Pickett-Pettigrew assault, most of them also within a half hour. Yet this attack is perceived as an example of great courage and honor. This contrast speaks volumes about the comparative images of Grant and Lee, North and South, Union and Confederacy.
    The Eleventh Mississippi monument stands close to the Brian house and barn. One of the park's markers spells the name as Bryan; the other, a few feet away, as Brian. Perhaps the Park Service agrees withAndrew Jackson, a notorious misspeller, who said that he could not respect any man who knew only one way to spell a word. In any case, Abraham Brian's twelve-acre farm was right smack in the middle of the fighting on July 3. Shells tore holes in his roof; bullets broke his windows; soldiers trampled his crops. But Brian/Bryan was not there to see it. Like many of the other 474 African-Americans in Adams County— 190 of them living in the town of Gettysburg—he had fled north with his family to put the Susquehanna River between them and the Confederates.
    These black people had good reason to flee. Although most of them, including Brian and another black farmer who lived on the battlefield, James Warfield, had always been free, some were former slaves who had escaped from Maryland or Virginia. In the previous Confederate invasion of Union territory, in September 1862, Southern cavalry had made little distinction between free blacks and escaped slaves, driving dozens of them back to Virginia and slavery. They were doing the same thing again in Pennsylvania. In Chambersburg, two local residents wrote in their diaries that when Confederates entered the town in June, “one of the revolting features of this day was the scouring of the fields about the town and searching of houses in portions of the place for Negroes.” “O! How it grated on our hearts to have to sit quietly & look at such brutal deeds—I saw no men amongthe contrabands—all women and children. Some of the colored people who were raised here were taken along.”
    The Chambersburg newspaper estimated that the Rebels sent at least