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

now owned by Wesley's cousin Henry Culp. As a boy, Wesley had splashed in the local swimming hole in Rock Creek; now as a soldier he was taking potshots at Yankees along the creek; one of them took a shot at him and the bullet went home. No monument marks the spot where Wesley Culp was killed; no one recorded where he was buried; it may have been in land owned by his cousin.
    Wesley Culp was not the only native of Gettysburg killed on July 3. In the town itself, Confederates had barricaded Baltimore Street three blocks south of the square. From there and from houses nearby, sharpshooters traded shots with Union skirmishers on Cemetery Hill. Most residents of Gettysburg hid in their cellars to get out of the line of fire. One who did not was Mary Virginia Wade, known as Jenny, a comely twenty-year-old lass who was at her sister'shouse on Baltimore Street that day to help take care of her sister's newborn baby. Jenny Wade was engaged to Corporal Johnston Skelly of the Eighty-seventh Pennsylvania, which she knew was somewhere in Virginia. She too wanted to do her part for the war effort, so, despite warnings, she went to the kitchen that morning to bake biscuits for Union skirmishers. Suddenly a bullet from a Confederate rifle smashed through two doors and lodged in Jenny's back. She died not knowing that a few days earlier her fiance had also died of a wound he received in the battle of Winchester on June 15—a battle in which Wesley Culp had fought as his regiment was moving north toward Pennsylvania. Jenny Wade was the only civilian death in the battle of Gettysburg. The house where she was killed is still there to be visited, immediately south of the Holiday Inn.
    The exchange of sniper fire between Rebels in Gettysburg and Yankees behind stone walls on Cemetery Hill never ceased during daylight hours. But on Culp's Hill the firing died away about 11:00 A.M. The Confederates pulled back to count their killed and wounded, which were at least double those of the two Union divisions defending the hill. If the Army of Northern Virginia was to win the battle of Gettysburg, it would not do so at Culp's Hill. One part of Lee's three-pronged effort on July 3 had failed. The second part was about to begin.
    Early that morning, Jeb Stuart rode east from Gettysburg at the head of six thousand Confederate cavalry. He intended to circle south about three miles east of Gettysburg, and then turn west to come in on the Union rear along Cemetery Ridge. We will follow the route of Stuart's troopers to what is today called East Cavalry Field. Returning from Culp's Hill to Baltimore Street, we turn north to the traffic circle in downtown Gettysburg, then turn right on York Street (U.S. Route 30) and proceed almost three miles to a right turn onto Cavalry Field Road. Another mile brings us to a sharp right along a ridgeline (Confederate Cavalry Avenue) from which we gaze southward over open, rolling farmland with the historic Rummel farm in the near distance. At about 1:00 P.M. the Confederate horsemen advanced south along this ridge, dismounted skirmishers leading the way. So far they had spotted no enemy. The way to the Union rear seemed open.
    They soon encountered plenty of Yankees, however, about five thousand of them in three brigades. One was a Michigan brigade commanded by Brigadier General George Armstrong Custer, who had been jumped several grades to that rank only four days earlier. Having graduated last in his West Point class, Custer had proven in the war's first two years that there was no necessary correlation between class rank and fighting ability. Custer is remembered today mainlyfor his foolhardy decision at the Little Bighorn in 1876 that led to his death and that of all the men with him. But he should be remembered also for his successful hell-for-leather record as a cavalry commander during the last two years of the Civil War, starting on this hot afternoon at Gettysburg.
    For two hours—the same two hours of the artillery