{"id":27552,"date":"2017-10-03T20:47:07","date_gmt":"2017-10-04T01:47:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.probonopress.org\/?post_type=project&p=5256"},"modified":"2017-10-03T20:47:07","modified_gmt":"2017-10-04T01:47:07","slug":"the-first-minnesota-at-gettysburg-2","status":"publish","type":"project","link":"https:\/\/www.laurabillingscoleman.com\/project\/the-first-minnesota-at-gettysburg-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The First Minnesota at Gettysburg"},"content":{"rendered":"
[et_pb_section fullwidth=”on” specialty=”off” background_image=”http:\/\/www.probonopress.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Screenshot-2014-09-30-19.34.34.png” transparent_background=”off” background_color=”#ffffff” inner_shadow=”off” parallax=”on” parallax_method=”off”][et_pb_fullwidth_slider admin_label=”Fullwidth Slider” show_arrows=”on” show_pagination=”on” auto=”off” parallax=”on” parallax_method=”off”][et_pb_slide heading=”The First Minnesota at Gettysburg” background_color=”#ffffff” alignment=”center” background_layout=”dark” background_image=”http:\/\/www.probonopress.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Screenshot-2014-09-30-19.34.34.png” \/][\/et_pb_fullwidth_slider][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fullwidth=”off” specialty=”off”][et_pb_row][et_pb_column type=”1_3″][et_pb_blurb admin_label=”Placeholder opener” title=”About This Project” url_new_window=”off” use_icon=”off” icon_color=”#7EBEC5″ use_circle=”off” circle_color=”#7EBEC5″ use_circle_border=”off” circle_border_color=”#7EBEC5″ icon_placement=”top” animation=”top” background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”left”]Nick Coleman wrote and reported this five-part series from Gettysburg in July, 1998, as battle re-enactments and ceremonies were commemorating the 135th anniversary of the three-day struggle that turned the tide of the Civil War. The focus of the series, which was published in the Pioneer Press, was the heroic charge of the First Minnesota Volunteers, and its continuing meaning to our state and our times. At the conclusion of the series, you will find Nick’s original June 1998 report commencing the modern-day fight over the Confederate flag captured at Gettysburg.[\/et_pb_blurb][et_pb_divider admin_label=”Divider” color=”#ffffff” show_divider=”off” height=”500″ \/][et_pb_image admin_label=”Taylor Bros pic” src=”http:\/\/www.probonopress.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/TaylorBrothers.jpg.w300h402.jpg” show_in_lightbox=”off” url_new_window=”off” animation=”left” sticky=”off” \/][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”left”]<\/p>\n
“Schools come after Law and Government,”<\/strong> wrote Henry Taylor, who quit a teaching job in Belle Prairie, Minn., near modern-day Little Falls, to join the volunteers. “‘The Star Spangled Banner, O Long May it Wave.’ I go feeling that I am in the right and in a good cause, and if that be the case, I will not fear. Tell all my brothers and sisters to stand firm by the Union and by the glorious liberties which, under God, we enjoy.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Five of Taylor\u2019s brothers would join him in the war, including Isaac, who also volunteered for the First Minnesota and would die at Gettysburg .<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider admin_label=”Divider” color=”#ffffff” show_divider=”off” height=”500″ \/][et_pb_testimonial admin_label=”Roger Moe Testimonial” author=”Roger Moe” job_title=”author, The Last Full Measure: The Life and Death of the First Minnesota Volunteers,” url_new_window=”off” quote_icon=”on” use_background_color=”on” background_color=”#dddbc9″ background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”left”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_testimonial][et_pb_divider admin_label=”Divider” color=”#ffffff” show_divider=”off” height=”500″ \/][et_pb_testimonial admin_label=”Winfield Hancock testimonial” author=”Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock” url_new_window=”off” quote_icon=”on” use_background_color=”on” background_color=”#ddddc7″ background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”left”]<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [\/et_pb_testimonial][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”2_3″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Nor More Gallant Deed” background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”left”]<\/p>\n Series by Nick Coleman<\/strong><\/p>\n Part 1<\/p>\n July 2, 1863<\/p>\n On a sweltering Pennsylvania day, 135 years ago today, a tight-knit band of 262 Minnesotans – survivors of the 1,000-man regiment distinguished as the first volunteer regiment raised to fight for the Union – stood and waited on a hillside called Cemetery Ridge, watching the tide of war turn against everything they believed in.<\/p>\n The Union. The Flag. Freedom. Home.<\/p>\n As the remnant of the once-strong First Minnesota cradled its rifles and gazed grimly across a dry creek towards a peach orchard half a mile away, Robert E. Lee’s Confederate soldiers were turning the battle of Gettysburg , on this, its second day, into a disaster for the North. If the Confederate forces gained the top of Cemetery Ridge, they would turn the Union flank and drive the Union Army all the way back to Washington or Philadelphia.<\/p>\n The war might be over then, with the Emancipation Proclamation, barely 9 months old, not worth the paper it was written on, the slaves still in bondage, and the Union gone forever.<\/p>\n But that’s not how the story came out. The First Minnesota soon would charge headlong into the crossroads of history, laying its life and honor in the way of defeat.<\/p>\n While the battered First Minnesota waited, held in reserve, it watched the Union troops break and flee the field, the panic-stricken Northern troops running through the ranks of the waiting Minnesotans. The First Minnesota did not join the retreat.<\/p>\n “The First Minnesota had never deserted any post, had never retired without orders,” one Minnesotan wrote later. “Desperate as the situation seemed, and as it was, the regiment stood firm against whatever might come.”<\/p>\n “I never felt so bad in my life,” Sgt. John Plummer would write after the battle, of watching the other Union troops panic and run from the advancing Confederates. “I thought sure the day was gone for us, and felt that I would prefer to die there, rather than live and suffer the disgrace and humiliation a defeat of our army would entail on us, and if I ever offered a sincere prayer in my life, it was then, that we might be saved from defeat.”<\/p>\n Sgt. Plummer’s prayer would be answered. The Union would be saved from defeat that day, July 2, 1863. By the bravery of Plummer and his comrades who, without hesitation, made a suicide charge against a vastly more powerful opponent in order to buy enough time for Union commanders to bring up reinforcements and turn the tide.<\/p>\n They succeeded, but at a cost that would shock and sadden the new state of Minnesota, which two years earlier had sent its soldiers off to war with parades, prayers and aching hearts. When the awful day was over, only 47 of the Minnesotans had come through unscathed; 215 lay dead or wounded on the field that President Abraham Lincoln, four months later, would declare consecrated by the valor of those who fought there.<\/p>\n This is their story, as best as we can tell it.<\/p>\n And yet they went forward<\/strong><\/p>\n “The Civil War was the formative event in our nation’s history,” says Richard Moe, whose 1993 book, “The Last Full Measure: The Life and Death of the First Minnesota Volunteers,” is the best account of the famous regiment. “There are 100 million Americans who have ancestors who fought in the Civil War; it’s hard for us to understand how profoundly it has affected every family.”<\/p>\n The effect of the war was seminal and formative in Minnesota. Almost 60 percent of Minnesota men of service age joined the Union Army – 25,000 of the 40,000 men eligible for duty. Of that number, 10 percent were killed or wounded and thousands more had their lives changed forever.<\/p>\n For Minnesota, as for the country, the story seems to reach its climax with the epic battle of Gettysburg , a bitter three-day fight that was the largest battle ever fought in the Western Hemisphere, pitting almost 160,000 men in a contest that would ultimately represent the “high-water mark” for the Southern rebellion – the beginning of the end of a war for the soul of the nation.<\/p>\n The First Minnesota, as history shifted 135 years ago, was at the fulcrum. It will be there again this week in spirit as well as in symbolic recreation. Almost 50 Minnesotans – members of a Civil War re-enactment group that portrays the First Minnesota Regiment – will arrive in Gettysburg today for a three-day, full-scale recreation of the battle, beginning Friday and running through Sunday.<\/p>\n With more than 15,000 Civil War re-enactors expected to participate in the mock battles, the Gettysburg re-enactment is being billed as the largest gathering of the Blue and the Gray since the Civil War ended in 1865.<\/p>\n Commanded by Capt. Keith Gulsvig, a 41-year-old photographer and computer programmer from Champlin, the reconstituted First Minnesota’s ranks will be bolstered by hundreds of other re-enactors wishing to become – if only briefly – part of the fabled regiment.<\/p>\n On Saturday, the second day of the re-enactment, they will commemorate the desperate charge of the First Minnesota in which 82 percent of the regiments’ soldiers were killed or wounded – traditionally recognized as the largest one-day loss of any Union regiment in the war. And on Sunday, the First Minnesota will re-create the astonishing feat of the surviving fragment of the regiment, when the Minnesotans engaged in frenzied hand-to-hand combat with Confederates at Pickett’s Charge, and captured the battleflag of the 28th Virginia Regiment.<\/p>\n Oh, yes. That flag.<\/p>\n While re-enactors from Minnesota and Virginia meet on the battlefield to re-stage its historic capture, the attorney general of the state of Minnesota is still considering a formal demand to return the original flag – captured July 3, 1863, and now stored at the Minnesota Historical Society – to its native soil.<\/p>\n Just because the Civil War is history doesn’t mean it’s over.<\/p>\n “ Gettysburg and the First Minnesota remain a profoundly moving story,” says author Moe, a former aide to Vice President Walter Mondale, who now serves as head of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. “It was a climactic battle, filled with great dramas and tragedy, and it was the decisive battle of the war. The experience of the First Minnesota was absolutely critical. There were other critical parts in the battle, but the First Minnesota’s experience exemplifies the courage and valor that made a difference for the union.<\/p>\n “You can read about all the grand strategies and everything. But when you read about the men who suffered so grievously, you can’t help but be moved. The extraordinary thing about the First Minnesota is that when they stood on Cemetery Ridge that day and heard the order to charge, they knew exactly what that meant, and yet they didn’t hesitate. They knew most of them would not survive, and yet they went forward.”<\/p>\n Stand firm by the Union<\/strong><\/p>\n Minnesota’s Alexander Ramsey, the second governor of the 32nd state of the Union (admitted in 1858), was in Washington, D.C., on April 13, 1861, when word came that Fort Sumter, S.C., had been captured by Southern rebels.<\/p>\n The long-feared war had come, and Ramsey was the first governor to offer troops to the Union, promising to raise a regiment of 1,000 volunteers on the Minnesota frontier.<\/p>\n There is little evidence there was any rejoicing in the streets of Washington when news came that far-off Minnesota might send some soldiers to aid the Union. Few, in 1861, thought the war would be long or that a regiment of Minnesotans would make any difference. But out on the prairie farms and in the woods and fledgling cities of Minnesota, men flocked to sign up.<\/p>\n Whole companies enlisted from St. Paul, St. Anthony (Minneapolis) and Stillwater. Farmers, lawyers, woodsmen took the oath, joined the new regiment at Fort Snelling, and signed on for three years.<\/p>\n By today’s standards, the reasons for their enlistments seem almost quaint, or hoary. God and country, flag and freedom. Honor. And, above all, the idea of preserving the union, something we take for granted in 1998, but which was in peril then.<\/p>\n “Schools come after Law and Government,” wrote Henry Taylor, who quit his teaching job in Belle Prairie, Minn., (near modern-day Little Falls) to join the volunteers. “`The Star Spangled Banner, O Long May it Wave.’ I go feeling that I am in the right and in a good cause, and if that be the case, I will not fear. Tell all my brothers and sisters to stand firm by the Union and by the glorious liberties which, under God, ween joy.”<\/p>\n Five of Taylor’s brothers would join him in the war, including his brother Isaac, who also volunteered for the First Minnesota. Isaac would die at Gettysburg .<\/p>\n But in the first flush of enthusiasm, the First Minnesota cut a dashing look on its journey east, towards war. Traveling by riverboat down the Mississippi, the regiment paraded and partied in cities along the way, transferring to a train at LaCrosse, Wis.<\/p>\n By the time the regiment reached Chicago, it already had a flamboyant image, burnished by the gaudy red wool jackets and slouch hats the regiment wore at first, sartorial touches it would soon give up in favor of regular army uniforms and forage caps.<\/p>\n A Chicago newspaper raved about the appearance of the First Minnesota after it had marched through the streets of that city while transferring trains: “There are few regiments we have ever seen that can compare in brawn and muscle with the Minnesotians, used to the axe, plow, rifle, oar and setting pole. They are unquestionably the finest body of troops that has yet appeared on our streets.”<\/p>\n The pomp and the parades soon ended. In Pennsylvania, the First Minnesota was transferred from comfortable passenger cars to cattle cars for the rest of the trip to Washington, supposedly as a precaution against being sniped at by Confederate sympathizers in Maryland. Instead of cheering crowds, they found a surly throng, and marched through Baltimore with their weapons loaded.<\/p>\n “We were approaching a region where soldiering was less of a holiday matter than it had been with us,” the regiment’s William Lochren wrote.<\/p>\n On the 21st of July, 1861, the First Minnesota saw its first action at the battle Northerners called Bull Run and Southerners called Manassas. The unit fought hard, but without cohesion, and suffered the highest percentage of casualties of any Union outfit in the battle, which the Confederates won. Twenty percent of the thousand-strong regiment lay dead or wounded.<\/p>\n The transformation that would turn a frontier state’s untried volunteers into one of the most elite and battle-hardened units in the Union had begun.<\/p>\n Bull Run. Edwards’ Ferry. Antietam. The Peninsula. Fredericksburg. Chancellorsville. By the middle of 1863, the First Minnesota had more than a dozen bloody clashes commemorated on its battle flag and the easy swagger of the first months in uniform had been replaced by a grim and weary determination to fight on.<\/p>\n There was an almost idyllic respite after the battle of Fredericksburg, when the armies of both North and South rested along the Rappahannock River in Virginia, within a well-aimed rifle shot of each other. The First Minnesota, which by this time had been whittled down by battle and disease to about 330 men, enjoyed the rest. They even traded newspapers, coffee and tobacco with Rebel soldiers, making toy sailboats to carry the trade goods over the river.<\/p>\n The fun was not to last. Gen. Robert E. Lee was going to take the war to the north.<\/p>\n Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia began moving north, down the Shenandoah Valley. The Union forces, moving north with Lee, staying between the Confederates and Washington, D.C., shadowed him. The veterans of the First Minnesota marched at the rear of the column, miles behind the head, jostling along the roads with the army’s surgeons, sutlers, servants and other noncombatants. They had been at war for two years – two-thirds of the way through their three-year enlistments – and were bone-tired.<\/p>\n “Sometimes I think I will turn Quaker or some other harmless sort of animal and live at peace with all mankind,” Edwin Walker wrote. “But unfortunately (or otherwise) I am in for three years and perhaps it will be best to be belligerent during that time.”<\/p>\n By June 29, after a sizzling one-day march of 33 miles, the First Minnesota was in Maryland, near the Pennsylvania state line. Regiment commander Col. William Colvill was under arrest, having been stripped temporarily of his office by a general. When the regiment had come to a creek spanned by a narrow foot-bridge, a general had commanded the men to wade through the water instead of using the bridge, which required balancing while crossing it one foot ahead of the other. Some Minnesotans ignored the order, not wanting to get their shoes wet, which would mean agonizing blisters on the rest of the march. When some soldiers also booed the order (the Minnesotans said it was troops from a Massachusetts outfit), the general put Colvill under arrest and made him walk at the rear of his troops.<\/p>\n The never-ending war<\/strong><\/p>\n “In the heat of battle, anything can happen, and I’ve seen some things that have scared me,” says John Guthmann, a 43-year-old St. Paul attorney who has been part of the First Minnesota re-enactment group since its founding 25 years ago.<\/p>\n There was the time, for instance, when a re-enactor stumbled and somehow managed to bayonet himself in the leg. And the time after a battle re-enactment when Guthmann encountered a Confederate re-enactor and discovered the man had been carrying a gun loaded with live ammunition instead of blanks.<\/p>\n “It takes a high level of trust to do a re-enactment,” Guthmann says dryly.<\/p>\n On top of the possibilities of accidents and injuries, there is also the occasional embarrassing moment when re-enactors get themselves into tactical fixes that no real Civil War soldier would have tried. Guthmann remembers one hillside engagement when the commanding officer ordered the First Minnesota to drop to the ground and continue firing at the Rebels. Since they were standing on a steep hillside, this meant the Minnesota regiment comically found itself on its belly, the heads of the men pointing downhill, their backs exposed as easy targets for the Confederates.<\/p>\n “That’s the only time I’ve ever seen where a man could get shot in the back while facing the enemy,” Guthmann says.<\/p>\n “When you think about what a cushy life we lead, it’s such a stark contrast to how those soldiers lived back then,” says Guthmann, who started out in the re-enactment field in college when he worked for the Minnesota Historical Society at Fort Snelling, portraying an 1820s-era soldier.<\/p>\n “And then you think about having a cause, and being not only willing to die for it but to volunteer to die for it. People fighting for an ideal – as time goes by, and we have more peace, that’s something you admire more than you have a chance to live in your own life. It makes you wonder if we could do it again, if we had to.”<\/p>\n The eve of battle<\/strong><\/p>\n By the night of June 30, the road-weary troops, fatigued from weeks of marching in all conditions, lay down in a Pennsylvania farm field to sleep. “We remained quiet,” Lt. William Lochren said, “and made out the bi-monthly muster rolls, on which so many were fated never to draw pay.”<\/p>\n The next day, July 1, the echoes of distant cannons filled the warm air, and the First Minnesota moved towards Gettysburg and fame.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fullwidth=”on” specialty=”off” transparent_background=”off” background_color=”#ffffff” inner_shadow=”off” parallax=”on” parallax_method=”off”][et_pb_fullwidth_slider admin_label=”The Sacrifice of a Regiment” show_arrows=”on” show_pagination=”on” auto=”off” parallax=”on” parallax_method=”off”][et_pb_slide background_image=”http:\/\/www.probonopress.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/IMG_5350-e1412126824250.jpg” background_color=”#ffffff” alignment=”center” background_layout=”dark” heading=”The Sacrifice of a Regiment” \/][\/et_pb_fullwidth_slider][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fullwidth=”off” specialty=”off”][et_pb_row][et_pb_column type=”2_3″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Part 2 text” background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”left”]<\/p>\n Part 2<\/p>\n Roused from a fitful slumber at 3 a.m., the regiment was ordered to pack up and move up the road a few miles to a place called Gettysburg , where fighting had begun the day before between Robert E. Lee’s Confederates and Gen. George Meade’s Union forces.<\/p>\n For weeks, the First Minnesota – reduced by two years of warfare from its original complement of 1,000 men to just over 300 – had been on the march, shadowing Lee’s Confederates from Virginia through Maryland and now into the fertile, rolling farm country of central Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n There Lee hoped to win a convincing victory on Northern soil and force Abraham Lincoln to end the war, sealing the secession of the South from the Union.<\/p>\n It had been a brutal march, a stamina-draining ordeal in scorching heat, dust-choked roads and, just for variety, mud.<\/p>\n “I lay down in the rain without supper, but plenty of mud,” a Minnesota soldier named Henry Taylor wrote in his journal along the way. Scores of Union soldiers had dropped dead from heat stroke and the combined effects of hunger, sickness and exhaustion.<\/p>\n They had been beaten repeatedly by Lee’s rebels, most recently at Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg. Now the rebs were boldly striking at the North, hoping to win the war and end the idea of the United States.<\/p>\n In most of the battles the Confederates had won south of the Mason-Dixon line, the Southerners were outnumbered but fought with more ferocity and determination to defend their native soil.<\/p>\n Now, the tables were turning; the fight was moving North. This time – with the two great armies almost evenly matched – the Union soldiers would be defending their part of the land. The question that hung gloomily over the Northern columns as they tried to keep pace with Lee’s advancing army was simple: Could Northerners fight with the courage and intensity that the Confederates had demonstrated time and again?<\/p>\n War is hell. Re-enacting it is no picnic, either.<\/p>\n One hundred and thirty-five years after the titanic struggle that changed the course of the Civil War, the little town of Gettysburg , Pa., is bracing itself for another epic meeting between the Blue and the Gray. This time, the soldiers are arriving by tour bus.<\/p>\n It is expected to be the largest Civil War re-enactment ever: Some 15,000 re-enactors, including 600 mounted cavalry troops and crews to fire 135 cannons, will recreate such famous Gettysburg fights as the battle for Little Round Top, Pickett’s Charge and Culp’s Hill.<\/p>\n In addition to the costumed combatants, an even larger army of spectators – as many as 35,000 – will descend on Gettysburg today for the start of the three-day event that will replay the pivotal battle that was fought here July 1-3, 1863. This time, without the carnage, God willing.<\/p>\n The logistics of such a re-enactment could have confounded Robert E. Lee.<\/p>\n Originally, many of the re-enactors had planned to march to the battlefield along the same roads the original armies took 135 years ago. Event planners, however, quickly realized the roads around the battlefield would become a nightmare if 15,000 marching men were added to the bumper-to-bumper car traffic.<\/p>\n So they put out an urgent advisory: All re-enactors must travel to their battlefield positions by bus.<\/p>\n Gridlock at Gettysburg is not the only potential problem.<\/p>\n Other possible dangers include heatstroke – a re-enactment at Bull Run had to be suspended when nearby emergency rooms started overflowing with stricken re-enactors – and too-enthusiastic sword play: “Overly aggressive `hand-to-hand’ saberfighting is forbidden,” reads Rule 32 for re-enactors.<\/p>\n “Breaking someone’s sword or knocking someone off his horse is not an example of manhood but of selfishness and stupidity and will not be tolerated.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Cemetery Ridge<\/strong><\/p>\n The men of the First Minnesota already had distinguished themselves in almost every major battle of the war, which was 2 years old and close to stalemate. But the regiment, weakened by losses, had been far from the sound of cannons that had echoed from Gettysburg on July 1.<\/p>\n The regiment commander, Col. William Colvill, a lawyer from Red Wing, Minn., had narrowly escaped death on the march north, when his horse was shot from under him during a brief Confederate artillery attack. Now Colvill was under arrest, stripped of his command by a superior officer who was outraged when some Minnesota soldiers, hoping to avoid blistered feet, had disobeyed an order and taken a foot bridge over a creek rather than wade across to save time.<\/p>\n Exhausted, hungry, angry over the way their commanding officer was treated, the men of the First Minnesota packed their haversacks and as the sky began to lighten, began trudging towards the front lines, knowing that 70,000 Confederate soldiers lay somewhere ahead.<\/p>\n Reaching a hill whose name – Cemetery Ridge – would later be known around the world, the men were posted in position before 6 a.m. and listened as a general’s orders were read aloud: This is going to be the great battle of the war, the general’s words informed them. Any soldier who leaves the ranks will be executed.<\/p>\n The threat had a reassuring effect on the battle-weary Minnesotans. At last, it seemed, the whole Union army was going to take this thing seriously. “We all felt better after hearing it,” wrote Sgt. John Plummer. “One thing our armies lack is enthusiasm.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n `No Lincolns’<\/strong><\/p>\n Enthusiasm is not in short supply this weekend.<\/p>\n One of the most pressing problems at Gettysburg is the possibility of a glut of impressionists who attend these events portraying generals, journalists, society women and other historic personages.<\/p>\n To try to control the brigades of impersonators, organizers are requiring registration and limiting performances to approved areas. Most important of all, they have issued a strict ban on the era’s president. “No Lincolns, please,” reads Rule No. 4. “He was in Washington.”<\/p>\n For re-enactors, going through the motions of a Civil War battle is a powerful, sometimes grueling, way to understand war and the men (and occasionally women – more on that later this weekend) who fought it.<\/p>\n As interpreters of the past they consider it a badge of honor to go whole hog – to be as authentic as possible.<\/p>\n “You get a very, very good sense of what they went through,” says Keith Gulsvig, a computer programmer from Champlin, Minn., who is captain of a contingent of about 50 Minnesotans who arrived in Gettysburg yesterday to portray the famed First Minnesota Regiment.<\/p>\n “Obviously, we’re not infected with lice and we’re not starving to death and we don’t have real bullets screaming past our heads,” Gulsvig says. “But we use Napoleonic tactics, we march in columns, we learn about camp life … The sounds and the scenes are pretty much the same. There’s no way you can be exact, but you can try.”<\/p>\n Sometimes, re-enactors say, they experience a “rush,” a powerful emotional surge that makes them feel utterly connected to the grand passions, the thrilling patriotism and the intense devotion and sacrifice of the Civil War. At those times, it’s not play-acting, they say. It’s channeling.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A deadly decision<\/strong><\/p>\n It was getting to be the evening of July 2, 1863. The First Minnesota, after being shifted about a half-mile south towards the left of the Union line, was still on Cemetery Ridge.<\/p>\n Col. Colvill, released from arrest in order to take charge of the regiment during the coming battle, was back in command. They had waited and watched all day, held in reserve. Now, in front of the Minnesotans, the Federal III Corps was coming apart, panicking and retreating under an attack by two brigades of Alabamans.<\/p>\n The demoralized Northern troops were running for cover – “skedaddling,” they called it in those days – running right through the Minnesotans, who tried without success to make them stand their ground. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, one of the best generals the Union had to offer, sized up the situation and realized in an instant that desperate measures were needed to stem the Confederate advance long enough to bring up fresh Union troops and prevent disaster.<\/p>\n The only troops at hand were those of the shrunken First Minnesota. There were just 262 of them on hand. Another 60 or so had been detached to other positions earlier in the day.<\/p>\n “Charge those lines,” Hancock ordered, pointing down the slope, where 1,600 Confederate soldiers – seven times the number of Minnesotans in front of Hancock – were now racing forward.<\/p>\n Colvill, released from arrest only hours before, stepped in front of his men, knowing what was being requested of them. He asked if they would go with him. They answered yes.<\/p>\n “Every man realized in an instant what that order meant,” Lt. William Lochren would write later. “Death or wounds to us all; the sacrifice of the regiment to gain a few minutes’ time and save the position, and probably the battlefield. And every man saw and accepted the necessity for the sacrifice.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The time machine<\/strong><\/p>\n Wool uniforms are tortuously uncomfortable in the heat. Spectators pester re-enactors with stupid questions, gibes, and requests to play with their rifles.<\/p>\n The muzzle-loading rifles are not toys. They are real weapons, re-creations as deadly as the originals but heavier (about 10 pounds instead of the original nine).<\/p>\n The barrels have been beefed up to lessen the chance they will explode, injuring re-enactors and leading to – this is the 1990s, after all – litigation.<\/p>\n Put a middle-aged, overweight modern American in a wool uniform on a hot day and make him tote a 10-pound gun across a smoke-filled, adrenalin-pumping battlefield and you can see why re-enactment organizers urge the unfit to stay away. Last year, at a re-enactment of the Antietam battle, a man died.<\/p>\n Despite the hazards and the discomforts – or maybe because of them – re-enactors say they learn more about the bygone era of the Civil War in mock battles and in the campgrounds around them than they could in books.<\/p>\n “It’s like a time machine,” says Dave Arneson, a former re-enactor with the First Minnesota who now coordinates re-enacting for the Civil War Center at Louisiana State University.<\/p>\n “No matter how much you may have read about it, being lost in the middle of 10,000 men seems impossible until it happens to you,” says Arneson. “There you are, in a battle, 10 to 20 feet apart, and you are all alone. Spooky.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Stepping toward fate<\/strong><\/p>\n The instant after Colvill asked his men if they would join him, the First Minnesota was on the move, down a gentle slope, heading for a dry creek 200 yards to the west roiling with rebels.<\/p>\n The weeks of marching, the hours of waiting, the hardships, the lost comrades, the battles of the previous two years – it had all come to this moment. The war was on the line at Gettysburg .<\/p>\n It was most definitely on the line here, where the Minnesotans, bayonets at the ready, were being thrown in the path of the enemy.<\/p>\n ”The regiment, in perfect line, with arms at ‘right shoulder, shift,’ was sweeping down the slope directly upon the enemy’s center,” Lochren recalled. “No hesitation, no stopping to fire, though the men fell fast at every stride before the whole concentrated fire of the whole Confederate force.” Men dropped and fell, brought down by rifle fire and artillery. Their comrades closed the ranks, stepping over the fallen men.<\/p>\n “The bullets were coming like hailstones, and whittling our boys like grain before the sickle,” Sgt. Plummer would recall. “It seemed as if every step was over some fallen comrade,” Lochren wrote. “Yet no man wavers, every gap is closed up … the boys … with silent, desperate determination, step firmly forward in unbroken line.”<\/p>\n “Every faculty was absorbed in the one thought of whipping the enemy,” an anonymous “Sergeant” wrote later, telling his story in the Pioneer Press. “We fire away three, four, five irregular volleys … the enemy seemed to sink into the ground.”<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_3″][et_pb_testimonial admin_label=”Testimonial” author=”- Sgt. Alfred P. Carpenter” job_title=”First Minnesota Volunteers, 1863″ url_new_window=”off” quote_icon=”on” use_background_color=”on” background_color=”#ddddc7″ background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”left”]<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [\/et_pb_testimonial][et_pb_divider admin_label=”Divider” color=”#ffffff” show_divider=”off” height=”500″ \/][et_pb_image admin_label=”First MN insignia” src=”http:\/\/www.probonopress.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Screenshot-2014-10-03-11.17.41.png” show_in_lightbox=”off” url_new_window=”off” animation=”left” sticky=”off” \/][et_pb_blurb admin_label=”Trefoil” title=”The Insignia of the First Minnesota” url=”http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/1st_Minnesota_Volunteer_Infantry#mediaviewer\/File:MHS_1st_Minnesota_Insignia.jpg” url_new_window=”off” use_icon=”off” icon_color=”#7EBEC5″ use_circle=”off” circle_color=”#7EBEC5″ use_circle_border=”off” circle_border_color=”#7EBEC5″ icon_placement=”top” animation=”top” background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”left”]United States Army infantry corps badge worn during the Civil War by Sergeant Chesley Billings Tirrell of the 1st Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment, Company C. Tirrell participated in all of the 1st Minnesota’s battles. From the collection held by the Minnesota Historical Society.<\/a>[\/et_pb_blurb][et_pb_divider admin_label=”Divider” color=”#ffffff” show_divider=”off” height=”500″ \/][et_pb_testimonial admin_label=”Lochren testimonial” author=”Lt. William Lochren, First Minnesota Volunteers” url_new_window=”off” quote_icon=”on” use_background_color=”on” background_color=”#ddddc7″ background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”left”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_testimonial][et_pb_divider admin_label=”Divider” color=”#ffffff” show_divider=”off” height=”500″ \/][et_pb_blurb admin_label=”Colvill blurb” title=”William Colvill” url_new_window=”off” use_icon=”off” icon_color=”#7EBEC5″ use_circle=”off” circle_color=”#7EBEC5″ use_circle_border=”off” circle_border_color=”#7EBEC5″ image=”http:\/\/www.probonopress.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Screenshot-2014-10-03-14.58.51.png” icon_placement=”top” animation=”top” background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”center”]<\/p>\nGettysburg and the First Minnesota remain a profoundly moving story. You can read about all the grand strategies and everything, but the extraordinary thing about the First Minnesota is that when they stood on Cemetery Ridge that day and heard the order to charge, they knew exactly what that meant, and yet they didn\u2019t hesitate. They knew most of them would not survive, and yet they went forward.<\/h2>\n
There is no more gallant deed in recorded history. I ordered those men in there because I saw I must gain five minutes\u2019 time. I would have ordered that regiment in if I knew that every man would be killed. It had to be done, and I was glad to find such a gallant body of men at hand willing to make the terrible sacrifice.<\/h2>\n
No More Gallant Deed<\/h2>\n
Morning came early for the men of the First Minnesota Volunteers on July 2, 1863.<\/h2>\n
\nLogistical nightmare<\/strong><\/p>\nWe advanced down the slope till we neared the ravine, and ‘Charge!’ rang along the line, and with a rush and a yell we went. Bullets whistled past us, shells screeched over us, canister and grape fell about us. Comrade after comrade dropped from the ranks, but on the line went. No one took a second look at his fallen companion. We had no time to weep.<\/h2>\n
The First Minnesota rushed through the storm of bullets \u2013 with nothing but death to look for, and no hope or chance for any other success than to gain the brief time needed to save that battlefield. And not a man wavered.<\/h2>\n