Small Talk-Trivia

Gettysburg Trivia

By Stephen Davis · Originally published August 2019 · pp. 41–46

Who sent this note to Pickett, “The 18 guns have been driven off. For God’s sake come on quick or we cannot support you. Ammunition nearly out”? 2. Who was the only Gettysburgher who fought in the battle near his home? 3. Which two regiments fought each other at Little Round Top on the afternoon of July 2? 4. Who commanded the 20th Maine during the battle? 5. Which Confederate division commander was seriously wounded in the arm at the start of Longstreet’s attack on the afternoon of July 2? 6. Federal III Corps commander took a wound to his leg on the afternoon of July 2 that led to amputation. Which general? 7. Who commanded the newly formed Third Corps of Lee’s army? 8. During the battle, who was commander of the Union II Corps, which took the brunt of the attack of Pickett, Pettigrew, and Trimble on the third day? 9. Who commanded Lee’s cavalry in the summer of 1863, who proved himself famously absent in the several days before the battle? 10. Which one of Pickett’s three brigade commanders rode his horse ahead of his troops in the charge of July 3, was killed, and whose body was never identified for burial?

Answers found on page 46. Steve Davis is the Civil War News Book Review Editor. He can be contacted by email at: [email protected].

Small Talk Trivia Answers 1. Col. Edward Porter Alexander (1835–1910), commander of an artillery battalion in Longstreet’s corps. Maury Klein, Edward Porter Alexander (University of Georgia Press, 1971), 89. 2. “John Burns, the only citizen of Gettysburg who fought in the battle.” Earl Schenck Miers and Richard A. Brown, eds., Gettysburg (Rutgers University Press, 1948), 84. 3. The 15th Alabama and 20th Maine. Glenn W. La Fantasie, Gettysburg Requiem: The Life and Lost Causes of Confederate Colonel William C. Oates (Oxford University Press, 2006), 95-100. 4. Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (1828–1914). Edward G. Longacre, Joshua Chamberlain: The Soldier and the Man (Combined Publishing, 1999), 129-45. 5. Maj. Gen. John B. Hood (1831–1879). Richard M. McMurry, John Bell Hood and the War for Southern Independence (University Press of Kentucky, 1982), 75. Dr. McMurry wrote that an overhead shellburst lodged fragments in Hood’s left hand, forearm, elbow, and biceps. His source was the earlier biography by John P. Dyer (1950), in which the author noted that this information had come from “a member of the Hood family who prefers to remain anonymous” (p. 348 n. 60). In the last few years, though, the medical log of Hood’s physician, Dr. John Darby, has been published, and from it we learn that a lead ball from a shrapnel/spherical case shell had struck the radius in Hood’s left arm 2 ½ inches below the elbow, but had not broken the bone. Surgeons extracted the metal and did not have to amputate the arm. 6. Maj. Gen. Daniel E. Sickles (1825–1914). “A twelve-pound cannonball that had failed to explode came visibly lolopping, far too fast to be avoided by Dan and his mounted staff, across the farmyard from the direction of the Confederate artillery on Seminary Ridge and shattered and tore to pulp Dan’s right leg in its blue fabric.” Thomas Kenneally, American Scoundrel: The Life of the Notorious Civil War General Dan Sickles (Anchor Books, 2002), 287. 7. Lt. Gen. Ambrose Powell Hill (1825–1865). “A. P. Hill was called to Lee’s tent on the morning of May 24 [1863]. There the Commanding General told him that he was being promoted to the rank of lieutenant general and given command of the new Third Corps.” Martin Schenck, Up Came Hill: The Story of the Light Division and Its Leaders (Stackpole Company, 1958), 258. A half-century ago, I learned from my Civil War professor at Emory, the great Bell Irvin Wiley, a useful mnemonic device to remember the names of A. P. Hill’s three division commanders: Anderson, Pender, Heth. It’s funny how things stick with you…. 8. Maj. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock (1824–86). During the Confederate assault of July 3, Hancock took a bullet wound. “He was hit in the front of the right thigh by a Minie ball that had passed through the pommel of his saddle. As the bullet entered his groin it carried with it some bits of wood and a bent iron nail, apparently from the saddle. He was able to pull the nail out unaided but mistook the source of it. ‘They must be hard up for ammunition when they throw such shot as that,’ he remarked to the group that gathered around him.” Glenn Tucker, Hancock the Superb (Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1960), 155-56. 9. Maj. Gen. James E. B. (Jeb) Stuart (1833–1864). John W. Thomason, Jr., Jeb Stuart (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930), 426-38. 10. Brig. Gen. Richard B. Garnett (1817–1863). During the night of July 3-4, Federals behind the stone wall pilfered the bodies of Rebels buried before them; General Garnett’s sword, scabbard, and other signs of rank were thus stolen. When Federal soldiers buried the Rebel dead, Garnett’s body was likely thrown into the mass grave dug for common soldiers. In the early 1870s the Southerners’ remains were disinterred and transported for reburial to Richmond’s Hollywood Cemetery. Garnett’s remains were probably among them. In 1991 I started a fundraising campaign to erect a cenotaph to the general. We succeeded in having a stone created and we dedicated it on July 3, 1991. Today you may see it at Hollywood’s Gettysburg Hill, inscribed thus: AMONG THE CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS’ GRAVES IN THIS AREA IS THE PROBABLE RESTING PLACE OF BRIGADIER GENERAL RICHARD BROOKE GARNETTT, C.S.A. WHO WAS KILLED IN ACTION JULY 3, 1863, AS HE LED HIS BRIGADE IN THE CHARGE OF PICKETT’S DIVISION ON THE FINAL DAY OF THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. FIRST BURIED ON THE BATTLEFIELD, GENERAL GARNETT’S REMAINS WERE LIKELY REMOVED TO THIS AREA IN 1872 ALONG WITH OTHER CONFEDERATE DEAD BROUGHT FROM GETTYSBURG BY THE HOLLYWOOD MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION. REQUIESCAT IN PACE RICHARD BROOKE GARNETT 1817–1863.