The 16th Maine at Gettysburg  
Maj. Abner Small, 16th Maine

At nine o’clock in the morning of Wednesday, July 1^st, we began to march towards Gettysburg, our division bringing up the rear of the corps. The road was hazy with the dust of the marching column, and the farm lands, drifting by, were dry and shimmering in the sultry heat. As we neared the town from the southwest we heard away ahead to the left an unexpected warning of battle. It was cannon. We quit the road and set off through lanes and fields in the direction of the firing. Just as we left the road we met a black servant with a horse, and the servant said that the horse belonged to General Reynolds, the general was killed.

We hurried towards a low ridge a little west of the town. Along the ridge was a scattering of trees and houses, and lording it over them was a brick building, the Lutheran Seminary, which gave the ridge a name. Our brigade went around to the western face of the building, and there we threw up a barricade of fence rails and anything else that was handy. The barricade took the shape of a crescent, bending to the west. Beyond it the ridge sloped away through trees into fields, and beyond the fields was another low rise of ground, topped with woods. There was fighting along that farther ridge, and the action appeared to be spreading beyond our right. I recall that as I looked up at the building behind us and saw some officers in the cupola taking a view, I noticed them pointing northerly. Baxter’s brigade soon marched off in that direction, and General Robinson went with it. Our brigade was left in reserve.

As we waited by the seminary, Captain Whitehouse came to talk with me.

"Adjutant," he said, "I wish I felt as brave and cool as the colonel appears."

"Why Captain," I said, "he’s as scared as any of us. Cheer up! ‘Twill soon be over."

He tried to cheer up, and made sad work of it, his face wore a look of foreboding, and his smile was a stiff mockery. While we were talking we heard the command to fall in; and he looked me full in the face and said:

"Good-by, Adjutant. This is my last fight."

We moved around the northern end of the seminary, and passed in rear of a battery there, and slanted northeast. We crossed the Cashtown pike, which led to our left across the ridge, and a little beyond the pike we crossed an unfinished line of railroad, which ran through the ridge in a sharp cut. Then we slanted northwest towards the ridge again and went across a field towards a grove. Along the edge of the grove were low heaps of stones. They had been hauled from the field and dumped there by some farmer, years back, and among them now were thick bushes. We clambered over the stone heaps and bushes, wheeled to the right, and went up through the trees to a rail fence. This brought us under fire, and some of our men were hit, and Captain Whitehouse was killed.

We went into line along the fence. Beyond it was another field, and from behind a fence at the farther side of the field a rebel line was firing. Corporal Yeaton of our color guard was shot dead. Captain Waldron, shouting to his men to keep cool and aim low, was struck; I saw him put up his hand as blood gushed from his neck. He clung to a tree, and stood there stubbornly, keeping his place and refusing to be taken to the surgeons. Colonel Tilden rode up to the line, his mount was shot, and horse and rider went down; but the colonel was on his feet in a moment, unshaken. Under his steady eye and voice our men poured a hot dire across the field. Other regiments were blazing away. The rebels took to the rear. Up went our colors and over the fence, and the regiment followed with a shout; but our line was recalled. As we came back over the field a rebel battery shelled us, and some of our men fell.

We returned to the grove and presently we moved around to the right and took up a position by a stone wall near the crest of the ridge. We joined with Baxter’s brigade there and beat off an attack. I remember the still trees in the heat, and the bullets whistling over us, and the stone wall bristling with muskets, and the line of our men, sweating and grimy, firing and loading and firing again, and here a man suddenly lying still, and there another rising all bloody and cursing and starting for the surgeon. Lieutenant Deering picked up a musket and fired without first removing the rammer, and the rammer went hurtling away with a crazy whizz that set the boys of his company to laughing. It was strange to hear laughter there, with dead men by.

After the attack was beaten off, Baxter’s brigade, now wanting ammunition, was withdrawn, and our brigade took over that part of the ridge, the extreme right of the corps line. It was a hard place to hold, the rebels half surrounding it, but a skillful defense was made under the direction of General Robinson. I don’t know who was in command of the brigade. General Paul had been disabled, shot through both eyes; and Colonel Leonard, succeeding him, and Colonel Root, succeeding Colonel Leonard, had both been wounded. Our regiment was under the direct orders of the division commander.

As the afternoon wore by, the rebel forces increased and ours didn’t; their army was coming fast towards Gettysburg, crowding the roads from both west and north, and their lines formed and moved in with overpowering strength. All along the ridge behind our left the battle was still raging. The defense was stubborn against repeated attacks from the west. But east of the ridge in the fields beyond our right the fighting was soon over; Howard’s troops there were driven back rapidly towards the town. Our right flank was exposed.

I should say it was after four o’clock when our regiment moved yet farther along the ridge. My recollection is that we crossed the Mummasburg road. We saw a brigade of rebels coming against us, and we looked around for support, and saw none, and were falling back for a more favorable position, when an aide came from General Robinson with an order for us to advance and hold the ridge as far north as possible. A few moments later the general himself rode up to Colonel Tilden and repeated the order. The colonel protested that our regiment without support couldn’t hold the ridge; we numbered fewer than two hundred all told; as well set a corporal’s guard to stop the rebel army; but the general insisted:

"Hold it at any cost!"

"You know what that means," said Colonel Tilden, turning to us, and in the same breath he gave the commands that sent us hurrying back towards the Mummasburg road again. The stone wall came along on the left, and bent sharply ahead of us to face the road. We made a dash for the corner and planted our colors in the angle. We got there just as a flag and a line of battle showed up across the way; we heard distinctly the commands of a rebel officer directing his men to fire; and a volley crashed, and we saw some of our men fall. Our line blazed away in reply, and the rebel flag went down, and the officer pitched headlong in the stubble. In the field across the road were dead men and scattered equipments, wreckage of a rebel repulse earlier in the day; and now there were more. But the attacking line came on, and following behind it was another, and we knew that our little regiment could not withstand the onset. With anxious hope we looked again to the rear for support - and saw that the other regiments of our brigade, our division, were falling back rapidly towards the town. The ridge could be held no longer. We were sacrificed to steady the retreat.

How much more time was passing, I can’t say; it was only a matter of minutes before the grey lines threatened to crush us. They came on, firing from behind the wall, from fences, from the road; they forced us, fighting back along the ridge; and Captain Lowell fell, and some of our men. We got to the railroad cut, which offered a means of defense against the rebels following us, but just then we saw grey troops making in from the west, and they saw us. We were caught between two fires. It was the end. For a few last moments our little regiment defended angrily its hopeless challenge, but it was useless to fight longer. We looked at our colors, and our faces burned. We must not surrender those symbols of our pride and our faith. Our color bearers appealed to the colonel, and with his consent they tore the flags from the staves and ripped the silk to shreds; and our officers and men that were near took each a shred. I have one with a golden star.

Though the rebel lines were fast closing in, there was yet a chance for some of us to escape, and nothing now forbade our risking that desperate hazard. We that took the chance bolted across the Cashtown pike and made our way, in a fever of anxiety, to a hill south of town. There were batteries on the hill, in a cemetery; and Howard’s reserve division, with some of the troops that had been driven through the town; and what remained of Reynold’s corps, under Doubleday. Directing the placing of troops where we turned up was Hancock, whose imperious and defiant bearing heartened us all. We found a remnant of our brigade, with what was left of the 11^th Pennsylvania added to it, and Colonel Coulter of that regiment in command. Once more we formed in line; more gap than line. The survivors of the 16^th Maine then numbered only thirty men, four line officers, and myself.