Buffalo’s Gunners:Bayard Wilkeson, Michael Wiedrich & the Battle of Gettysburg
By C. Douglas Kohler
Lt. Bayard Wilkeson commands his artillery battery on Barlow’s Knoll, July 1, 1863.Credit- From Battle and Leaders of the Civil War, Vol. III, 1887.
The outcome of the Civil War was still very much in doubt in the late spring of 1863, when Confederate General Robert E. Lee led the Army of Northern Virginia across the Potomac River and into Union territory for the second time in under a year. An invasion of Maryland and Pennsylvania would relieve pressure on Southern famers, allow the Confederate troops to live off the fat of Northern farms and would threaten Baltimore and perhaps even Washington, DC. Lee’s forces were flushed with confidence, having routed Union General Joseph Hooker at Chancellorsville at the beginning of May.
By contrast, the Union high command was in disarray. Joseph Hooker had been bested by Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson’s daring flank maneuver at Chancellorsville and might have been totally defeated had Jackson not been killed by “friendly fire.” Many clamored for a third return of General George McClellan to command the Army of the Potomac, an option that President Abraham Lincoln never seriously considered. Ultimately, as June drew to a close, Lincoln selected Major General George Gordon Meade to lead the Union’s primary army in the East. Meade would soon be tested among the rolling hills of southeast Pennsylvania in what would become the bloodiest battle ever fought on American soil. In addition, a pair of Buffalo artillerists would play significant, albeit very different roles in the battle and its subsequent legacy.
The morning of July 1 dawned dry and clear, with just a few whisps of clouds left from the previous day’s rain. On the low ridge west of Gettysburg, Union cavalry under Brigadier General John Buford had established pickets near the McPherson farm astride the Chambersburg Pike. At 7:30 am, Lieutenant Marcellus Jones of the 8th Illinois Cavalry rode to the forward picket line, and borrowing a carbine, felled a Confederate in Major General Henry Heth’s skirmish line. Throughout the morning, Buford’s cavalry and the “flying artillery” of John Calef’s Battery A, 2nd U.S. Artillery, slowed Heth’s advance. With the Union army scattered across northern Maryland and Southern Pennsylvania, Buford knew that help would be slow in coming and that every hour they held back Heth bought time for General John Reynolds’ I Corps to arrive from south of Gettysburg. By 10:00 am, I Corps had taken positions to relieve Buford. Reynolds arrived shortly after but was struck by a Confederate minié ball and died almost instantly. His death placed Brigadier General James Wadsworth, of the Geneseo Wadsworths, in command until Major General Abner Doubleday arrived on the field. By the end of the day, Wadsworth’s command was forced to retreat back through town to Cemetery Hill.
While the I Corps took the brunt of the morning fighting to the west of the town, Major General Oliver O. Howard’s XI Corps was advancing on Gettysburg from the south. The XI Corps was unique in the Army of the Potomac. Recruited from cities in the East and Midwest, the XI Corps was composed largely of German-speaking men from the North. Many of the officers, like Franz Siegel, Carl Schurz and Adolph von Steinwehr, were “’48ers” who had emigrated from Europe after the failed revolution of 1848. German was the dominant language, and the soldiers were issued rations of beer and brown bread. Unlike their European compatriots in the Irish Brigade, the XI Corps did not have a reputation for being an effective fighting force. Early in the war, they had fought well under Franz Sigel in the Shenandoah Valley campaign. However, the political machinations in the Army’s command structure caused Sigel to resign, and he was replaced by General Howard, a New England teetotaler and moralist, who never really connected with the Teutonic men of his command. At Chancellorsville, the XI Corps was caught unprepared by Confederates under General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. Their hasty, disorganized retreat earned them the dubious moniker, “the Flying Dutchmen.” It was a reputation that would not be expunged at Gettysburg.
Bayard Wilkeson, Battery G, 4th U.S. Artillery
Samuel Wilkeson Sr. was so instrumental to the formation of Buffalo, that his marker at Forest Lawn Cemetery simply reads, “Urbem Condidit,” literally, he created the city. He also helped to save the Union, as eight of his grandchildren served in the Civil War. Among them was 18-year-old Lieutenant Bayard Wilkeson, whose father, Samuel Wilkeson Jr., was a war correspondent for The New York Times. Lieutenant Wilkeson and his Battery G of the 4th U.S. artillery had initially seen action in Virginia’s tidewater in the winter of 1863. With the reorganization of the Army of the Potomac, Battery G was assigned to Howard’s XI Corps, a move that did not please Wilkeson given the poor reputation of the “Flying Dutchmen.”
Elements of the XI Corps began arriving south of Gettysburg around noon on July 1. Taking command of the entire Union force upon the death of General Reynolds, Howard placed General Carl Shurz in command of the corps, instructing him to deploy his own Third Division, along with the First Division under Brigadier General Francis Barlow, north of town, while leaving Brigadier General Adolph von Steinwehr’s Second Division in reserve on Cemetery Hill, just south of town.
Wilkeson’s battery was attached to Barlow’s First Division. At about 1:30 pm on July 1, under his own initiative, Barlow moved his troops forward to a rise of land known as Blocher’s Knoll (today, it is known as Barlow’s Knoll in his honor). While the position gave Wilkeson additional elevation for his four 12-pounder Napoleon guns, Barlow’s move exposed his flanks, and his men soon found themselves being attacked by Confederate brigades under Generals George Doles and John B. Gordon. Worse, Confederate artillery greatly outnumbered Wilkeson’s guns and their vulnerable position soon proved fatal.
Exposed to Confederate fire, Bayard Wilkeson, the youngest battery commander at Gettysburg, was struck in the leg by a cannon ball. Urban legend holds that Wilkeson fashioned his officer’s sash into a tourniquet and then used a pen knife to cut away the remnants of the limb. Though almost certainly apocryphal, the story continues to be told. More likely, Wilkeson was borne from the field by his men. A field hospital had been established at an almshouse adjacent to the Harrisburg Road, northeast of Gettysburg. Though gravely wounded, Wilkeson was still clinging to life when he arrived at the hospital. The almshouse was quickly lost as Barlow’s men broke and ran from the assault of Doles and Gordon. Lying in the field hospital, Wilkeson’s fate was, for the moment, unknown.
Bayard’s father, Samuel, was one of the most respected correspondents of the war. As Meade pursed Lee northward toward Gettysburg, Sam Wilkeson, along with a cadre of other reporters, trailed the Army of the Potomac. Traveling by train and then horse, Sam Wilkeson arrived at General Meade’s headquarters about midnight at the end of the first day’s fighting. Reports made it clear that the XI Corps had been ravaged in the fighting northeast of the town, but there was no information regarding Lieutenant Wilkeson particularly. Over the next two days, Sam Wilkeson reported on the battle without knowledge of whether his son was alive or dead. On July 3, he filed one of the most highly regarded reports about the repulse of “Pickett’s Charge,” and the resulting Union victory. His attention then returned to his son.
Lt. Bayard Wilkeson’s kepi and officer’s sash are currently on display at Gettysburg National Military Park.Credit- Gettysburg Museum of the American Civil War, National Park Service
Interviewing survivors of Barlow’s division, Sam Wilkeson made his way back to the almshouse where Bayard had last been seen. There, he found the shallow grave that contained his son. On July 6, Samuel Wilkeson filed a report that appeared on page one of The New York Times. “Oh, you dead, who at Gettysburg have baptized with your blood the second birth of Freedom in America, how you are to be envied! I rise from a grave whose wet clay I have passionately kissed, and I look up and see Christ spanning this battlefield with his feet and reaching fraternally and lovingly up to heaven. His right hand opens the gates of Paradise — with his left he beckons to these mutilated, bloody, swollen forms to ascend.” There is no question that, four months later, the words chosen by President Abraham Lincoln for his “Gettysburg Address” had been influenced by Samuel Wilkeson’s dispatch. Even after he had seen Bayard interred in Buffalo’s Forest Lawn Cemetery, Wilkeson remained critical of Barlow’s decision to move to the exposed position in advance of the Union line, and he believed that that decision had cost his son his life.
Michael Wiedrich, Battery I, NYLA
Some cities, like New York and Pittsburgh, sent entire regiments of Germans to fight in the XI Corps. Buffalo did not. There was, however, Battery I of the New York Light Artillery. Organized by Captain Michael Wiedrich, Battery I was composed of 140 German immigrants from Buffalo and Erie County. Some of the men were veterans of the failed 1848 revolutions that had swept through central Europe. Western New York had been heavily impacted by Germain immigration starting in the 1830s. Political instability and pressure for Lutheran conformity drove a wave of migration largely from the northeastern German states. Among those émigrés was Michael Wiedrich. Settling in Buffalo in 1837, Wiedrich went to work as a shipping clerk for the iron-making firm of Pratt & Letchworth. Prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, he was a captain in the 65th New York State Militia and, after the fall of Fort Sumter, he and his men volunteered their service to defend their new homeland. They had seen action prior to July 1863, but their laurels would be earned at Gettysburg.
Composed of six, 3-inch Ordinance Rifles, Wiedrich’s Battery had already been an invaluable part of the XI Corps’ Artillery Brigade. At Chancellorsville, the battery, along with that of Ohio Captain Hubert Dilger, provided covering fire as the XI Corps broke and ran. Dilger won the Medal of Honor for his actions, while Wiedrich was forced to leave most of his guns on the field because Confederate fire had killed too many of the horses needed to draw the gun limbers. Now, on July 1, Wiedrich’s Battery was part of the artillery assigned to the von Steinwehr’s Second Division of the XI Corps.
Held in reserve while the rest of the XI Corps was struggling north of Gettysburg, von Steiwehr’s men deployed themselves along Cemetery Hill. Its height, “commanded every eminence within easy range. The slopes toward the west and south were gradual and could be completely swept by artillery.” The guns with the Second Division, including Wiedrich’s Battery, dug in atop the hill.
Throughout the early afternoon, General Jubal Early’s Confederates pushed in from the northeast and were visible in the distance from Wiedrich’s position outside the cemetery gate. Confederate guns along the Harrisburg Road caught General Howard’s attention, and he went directly to Wiedrich, ordering his battery to open fire if Wiedrich thought they could reach the enemy. Unfortunately, Wiedrich’s shells fell short and landed among units of Colonel Thomas Devin’s calvary, which was screening the Union flank, though no cavalrymen were injured. Reports blamed the shortfall on the poor quality of the ammunition.
As units of the XI Corps north of town collapsed and retreated chaotically through Gettysburg late in the afternoon, Wiedrich’s Battery covered their hasty retreat with canister shot, which “gave our troops time to rally in rear of the battery.” The fighting on July 1 did nothing to improve the XI Corps’ reputation, with a I Corps officer suggesting that the XI Corps could, “go to hell.” While Barlow’s division crumbled, retreating through the town to Cemetery Hill, General Early’s forces were never able to mount an attack on the hill before sunset, and the Union position along Cemetery and Culp’s hills became the anchor of the Union line.
July 2 dawned mostly cloudy and warm. Atop Cemetery Hill, the grass in front of the Evergreen Cemetery gate bristled with Union guns facing east across the ravine created by Rock Creek and west toward the Confederate lines on Seminary Ridge. Wiedrich’s four guns stood on the northernmost point of the Union line, which now wrapped like a fishhook from Culp’s and Cemetery hills southward along a ridge line to a peach orchard almost two miles away. Throughout the day, the guns under the command of Wiedrich, along with other batteries that had arrived overnight and that morning, exchanged fire with Confederate batteries to the northeast on Benner Hill. There was a brief respite around 6:00 pm, but a new threat emerged in the swale below Cemetery Hill.
Having failed to take the hill at the end of July 1, Jubal Early resolved to drive the Union forces from the high ground. In the fields below Cemetery Hill, Colonel Isaac Avery’s North Carolinians and General Harry Hays’ “Louisiana Tigers” formed battle lines. Along Cemetery Hill, Union Brigadier General Adelbert Ames, who had taken over for the injured Francis Barlow, commanded units that had been depleted after the previous day’s fighting north of town. In the growing darkness, the Confederates slammed into the weary Union troops at the foot of the hill. Many of the units broke and ran for the top of the hill very quickly, where the gunners were having trouble sighting Confederates among the dusk and gun smoke.
Among the fleeing units, the 25th and 107th Ohio sheltered along a wall to the left of Wiedrich’s four guns. In the chaos of the Union retreat, the momentum of Hays’ “Tigers” carried them right in among Wiedrich’s cannon. One account tells of a Louisianan reaching one of the guns and, throwing himself upon the front of the gun tube, crying, “I take command of this gun.” The German gunner pulled the firing lanyard, while replying in German, “Well, then you shall have it!” The canister round tore the Confederate limb from limb. But the weight of numbers carried the “Tigers” forward and, for a brief moment, they had control of the guns atop the Cemetery Hill. It was a decisive moment that could have caused the Union flank to collapse. For a moment, perhaps, the fate of the Union Army and the Union itself hung in the balance.
Driven from their guns, Wiedrich’s men regrouped, resolute to retrieve their artillery pieces. Seizing handspikes, ramrods and even stones, the Germans stormed back among their guns. Their fury, however, was not enough. Sensing the gravity of the situation, General Wladimir Krzyzanowski ordered the 119th and 58th NY to charge into the fray with the bayonet. The counterattack was overwhelming and secured Wiedrich’s guns, as well as the adjacent guns of Captain Robert Ricketts. In his report, Wiedrich noted that their canister rounds had “good effect” on the retreating Confederates.
Wiedrich’s Battery was not significantly engaged on July 3 during “Pickett’s Charge.” He noted that some of the pre-charge cannonade did see some of the shells land near his entrenchments but without any damage. More troubling was the fire from Confederate sharpshooters secreted within houses along the town’s perimeter. They accounted for two killed and three wounded in Weidrich’s Battery.
After the battle of Gettysburg, the XI Corps was broken up. Given the failures at both Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, their reputation was irredeemable, which was largely unfair. The position they occupied on the afternoon of July 1 was essentially untenable. The vicissitudes of command early on July 1 and the extension of the line out to Barlow’s Knoll created an undefendable salient. Regardless, the “Flying Dutchmen” were scattered. Wiedrich’s Battery was assigned to General William Rosencrans’ Army of the Cumberland and participated successfully at Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge. Finally, they were assigned to the XX Corps and marched across Georgia as part of Sherman’s “March to the Sea.” In February 1864, Michael Wiedrich was promoted to Colonel of the 15th New York Heavy Artillery, another largely German regiment recruited from the lower Hudson Valley. The 15th NY saw extensive action during Grant’s Overland Campaign in 1864, suffering extensive casualties at Spotsylvania and the siege of Petersburg.
After the war, Michael Wiedrich, and many of the men who had served in Battery I, returned to Buffalo. Immediately following the war, Wiedrich served as a collector of taxes for the Internal Revenue Service, and then for the City of Buffalo. In the 1870s, he went to work for the German Fire Insurance Company of New York and, in 1884, he and Edward Wilhelm opened a Buffalo branch of the insurance company. While they returned to civilian life, Wiedrich and his men were never totally removed from the events of the war. In the 1880s and 1890s, the men of Battery I held a series of reunions. Active in the G.A.R. until the end of his life, Michael Wiedrich died on March 21, 1899, and was interred in Forest Lawn Cemetery.
Despite the magnitude of the Battle of Gettysburg, there were very few Western New York regiments engaged during the fighting. The 78th New York Infantry, with one company of Buffalonians, was part of Slocum’s XII Corps on Culp’s Hill. There were some men from Erie County in Colonel Patrick O’Rorke’s 140th New York (largely from Rochester) that saved the Union line on Little Round Top. Daniel Bidwell’s 49th New York arrived late on July 2 and was posted on the far right of the Union flank but did not see significant action. Writing of Wiedrich’s Battery, a Buffalo paper noted that, “It was the only separate company representing the City of Buffalo at the Battle of Gettysburg…”
Yet it may have been the death of young Bayard Wilkeson and the passionate words of his father that provided Western New York’s greatest legacy from the Battle of Gettysburg. For those words of death, sacrifice and freedom first penned by Sam Wilkeson were echoed four months later by Abraham Lincoln and imprinted on the soul of a nation forever.
Author Bio
C. Douglas Kohler teaches social studies in the Clarence school system and currently serves as Erie County Historian.
