Refined gold
Here's the finished (but not final) draft of the speech portion of my presentation. Feel free to give me your feedback on it as you wish; I will warn you, though, that it's six pages long.
It seemed like dress parade to the men of the Second Corps, watching the soldiers to their left leave their position on Cemetery Ridge and Little Round Top for a ridge nearly a mile in the distance with straight lines and unfurled flags. General Hancock surely did not know of any order for the Third Corps to advance. Turning to a member of his staff, he said, “Just wait, they’ll come tumbling back in a moment.”
Indeed, much like Meade only a few minutes later, Hancock’s prediction would ring true. By the late afternoon of July 2nd, 1863, the line to his left was quickly falling apart. The seemingly endless tide of charging Confederates was proving much too powerful for Sickles’s Third Corps, and the line was beginning to collapse. Reinforcements were needed, and Meade was quick to give Hancock orders to help save the end of the line. His first choice for the job was his old command, the First Division, now commanded by General Caldwell.
Leading the line was a brigade commander named Edward Ephraim Cross, only 31 years old and still a colonel. Hancock rode to him and told him, “Colonel, this day will give you a star.” This, without a doubt, meant a great deal to Cross; he had been fighting for a promotion for nearly a year. However, the colonel simply looked back at him and replied, “No, General, this will be my last battle.” Hancock said nothing else; his presence was needed elsewhere on the field. Colonel Cross ordered the men his brigade head the line for a wheatfield off in the distance.
It is a story that many of you have probably heard before, of a man from New Hampshire who had a premonition of his own demise during the Gettysburg campaign. But, like many stories of men who fell before the war ended, the recognition that this fascinating man truly does deserve has long been lost to the pages of history. Edward Cross was born in Lancaster, New Hampshire, on April 22, 1832, and began work as a printer at the age of 15. He stayed in New Hampshire only long enough to become an adult; then, at the age of 18, he moved to settle elsewhere. For the next ten years he would travel extensively, from as far west as Arizona and San Francisco to as far south as South Carolina and Mexico, working with various newspapers wherever he went.
Cross was actively involved in politics, joining the American Party early in his travels. He had a hatred for Catholics and abolitionists that he felt no need to hide. For this reason, when the Know-Nothings disbanded over the issue of slavery, he turned his support to the Democratic Party. Cross’s bluntness and belligerence often got him into trouble with those of a higher status, with one rivalry ending in a duel that might have killed him.
From Arizona he continued traveling, joining Captain Richard Ewell (later General Ewell) in 1860 on an expedition for Apaches and later serving as a garrison commander in Mexico. After the firing on Fort Sumter, however, the call of his country would not be ignored for long; he returned home to New Hampshire, where he was offered the colonelcy of the 5th New Hampshire volunteers. He accepted under the condition that he would be allowed to choose his own officers. He crafted the regiment in his own image, molding civilians into true soldiers with the expertise of an experienced officer. The 5th was officially mustered into service by October 23, 1861, with a grand total of 1,012 men in the ranks. By the time they returned home for rest and recruitment in the months that followed Gettysburg, their numbers had been reduced to 165.
At their first battle, Fair Oaks, Cross and his regiment behaved coolly and calmly both before and after the heat of battle. The first of their brigade to report ready for battle, it prompted General Howard to state, “As usual, the 5th is always first!”
Cross would later write of the battle, “The Fifth fired the first and last shot in the great battle of June 1, and alone met and drove back a strong column of the enemy - fighting them at thirty yards range and, although outflanked by greatly superior numbers of the Rebels, caused them to break and retire.” The bravery the Fifth displayed in their first battle was, indeed, admirable; the bravery, however, would show up in what they left behind. Their casualties by the end would be 41 killed and 129 wounded. It was here that Cross received his first wounds, shot through the thigh and nicked in the temple by buckshot. “A ball passed through my hat, and one through the sleeve of my blouse - in all seven balls hit my person,” he wrote in his journal. He was sent home to recuperate; the Fifth went on to participate in the Seven Days with only minimal combat and casualties. Cross would rejoin the regiment late in August with 70 new recruits.
Weeks passed; the action moved, and soon the two armies were set on a collision course in northwestern Maryland. Originally, the Fifth marched at the back of Richardson’s line; but suddenly the column stopped and they were called to the front. They were told by the general that he had no cavalry and needed scouts that could move rapidly and do their duty effectively; the Fifth New Hampshire eagerly deployed to do the job. From then on they became known as “Richardson’s Foot Cavalry”, and they led the Army of the Potomac to the battlefield at Antietam. One of their men became the first casualty of the bloodiest day of the war.
The Fifth, of Caldwell’s brigade, followed the Irish to the Sunken Road, and it was here they fought. Cross was wounded again, and, although it was painful, this time it was minor; he countered it by tying a red bandana around his forehead and continuing on. Holding the end of the line as they drove the Rebels into the field beyond Bloody Lane, they came close to being flanked; swinging around to face this new threat, they saw they could advance no further and retired back to the road, holding their position for the rest of the day.
Again, the army moved, commanders were replaced, and a new campaign launched. Soon they found themselves staring up Marye’s Heights at Fredericksburg, and the Colonel could already see the bloody mistake that would be made. “General Caldwell then stated the plan of the battle… as God as my witness it seemed to my heart that it was a failure.” And indeed it was climbing up this hill that they would meet disaster. The Fifth New Hampshire lost every member of the color guard killed or wounded, as well as most of the officers. Major Sturtevant, who had been New Hampshire’s very first volunteer, disappeared behind a screaming Rebel shell as they charged up the heights. His body would never be recovered.
Colonel Cross himself was nearly killed. “A shell from the Washington battery burst in front of me. One fragment struck me just below the heart, making a bad wound. Another blew off my hat; another (small bit) entered my mouth and broke out three of my best jaw teeth, while gravel, bits of frozen earth and minute fragments of shell covered my face with bruises. I fell insensible, and lay for some time when another fragment of shell striking me on the left leg below my knee, brought me to my senses.”
Without their leader, the Fifth New Hampshire made it all the way to the Stratton House, and some even beyond that, although they never returned. They are credited by the Confederates who pillaged from the bodies after the battle as being one of three regiments to come closest to the wall, and they paid a terrible price for it. 57 were dead on the battlefield, another 100 wounded. They had gone into the town with 249 men and 19 officers; after the retreat back to it, only 63 men and 3 officers could report for duty, with a company captain taking the remnants of the regiment back down Marye’s Heights.
Much to Cross’s relief, his wounds were less severe than those he had suffered at Fair Oaks. He returned home to New Hampshire once more to recuperate, and while there was invited to attend the Republican State Convention on New Year’s Day, 1863. His guests for the evening were the flags of the Fifth as well as the colors of the 4th North Carolina, captured by the regiment on the Peninsula campaign. He would return to his brave boys on March 16, 1863, and upon his arrival he found only 150 men fit for duty.
From the comfort of their winter quarters, they watched the infamous Mud March and Burnside’s replacement with Hooker. Cross, in particular, had no fondness for either; he was a one of McClellan’s biggest supporters, and he made the fact well-known. This was, perhaps, yet another reason why generalship continued to avoid him in favor of less worthy yet more conservative individuals. Despite nearly six months of hard campaigning for a general’s star and recommendation from eleven generals for such a position, Congress continued to pass him by. While shifts in command eventually brought him up to the command of a brigade during and after Chancellorsville, he would never see the star that he tried so hard to win.
Cross’s role in the Chancellorsville campaign was minimal, holding off the Confederates while the rest of the army retreated. They returned to Falmouth, where they stayed until Lee’s army suddenly disappeared from the heights above Fredericksburg. They were headed north, but General Hancock, for the time being, had other plans for the colonel. Of all the brigade commanders in the Second Corps, Hancock chose Cross to command a group of 300 men to reinforce the cavalry stationed around Culpeper, Virginia. Cross, in turn, chose many men from the Fifth to accompany him. They would rejoin the rest of the army as witnesses of the fighting at Brandy Station.
As the armies converged on Gettysburg, Colonel Cross seemed to know his days were numbered. He told one of the captains of the Fifth New Hampshire, “It will be my last battle. After the campaign is over, get [my books and papers] at once... and turn it over to my brother Richard.” They arrived on the afternoon of July 2nd after marching over 60 miles in just two days, and when the chaos began to unfold in the late afternoon hours, their division was closest to the action and sent to the front. Cross went with a black bandana tied around his head instead of the usual red one.
They marched rapidly for the Wheatfield, the Fifth holding the extreme left of the line, which took them deep into a stand of woods just near the field. Cross came toward them to organize an attack against the enemy when a Rebel marksman from only forty yards away spotted him. The colonel fell when a bullet tore through his abdomen; his killer was shot by Sergeant Charles Phelps, who would die during the retreat with a bullet in his back. This time, Cross would not walk away from his wound; his thirteenth wound would become his last wound.
Cross was carried to a field hospital behind the lines, where he lingered well into the night. His final words were, “I did hope I would live to see peace and our country restored. I think the boys will miss me. Say goodbye to all.”
Edward Cross died at half past twelve on July 3rd, 1863.
As Captain Thomas Livermore stated in the regiment’s history, “With Cross’s death the glory of our regiment came to a halt.” The Fifth New Hampshire would never be the same without their commander. They served until the end of the war, fighting at Cold Harbor and Farmville, where they lost seventy men and their colors as prisoners of war that would be regained two days later with Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.
William Child, the regiment’s doctor, celebrated the end of the war in Washington D. C. He was in Ford’s Theater on the night of Lincoln’s assassination. He offered his assistance, but the president was already cared for; he returned to his hotel room and wrote to his wife, “Wild dreams and real facts are but brothers. This night I have seen the murder of the President of the United States.”
Edward Cross and the Fifth New Hampshire alike, although deserving so much more recognition than they have received, suffer the fate of being lost to the pages of history, although he is not truly forgotten. Cross appears briefly in several Gettysburg books to tell the story of his own premonition. He appears as a name in many other books as well, but only as a name. In April of 2004, on Cross’s 172nd birthday, he was finally given the general’s star he campaigned so hard for 140 years prior.
Edward Cross was known for many things. He was a fierce commander who “frightened men into obedience… He drove some officers harder than they could stand, while inspiring others and indulging those who were his favorites. He defied his superiors to see that his men were well fed… His pointed views and severe temper hurt his prospects for promotion even as the Fifth’s performance in battle commanded recognition.”
Or, as Winfield Scott Hancock offered simply at the end of the war, “What a magnificent fighter Cross was.”
It seemed like dress parade to the men of the Second Corps, watching the soldiers to their left leave their position on Cemetery Ridge and Little Round Top for a ridge nearly a mile in the distance with straight lines and unfurled flags. General Hancock surely did not know of any order for the Third Corps to advance. Turning to a member of his staff, he said, “Just wait, they’ll come tumbling back in a moment.”
Indeed, much like Meade only a few minutes later, Hancock’s prediction would ring true. By the late afternoon of July 2nd, 1863, the line to his left was quickly falling apart. The seemingly endless tide of charging Confederates was proving much too powerful for Sickles’s Third Corps, and the line was beginning to collapse. Reinforcements were needed, and Meade was quick to give Hancock orders to help save the end of the line. His first choice for the job was his old command, the First Division, now commanded by General Caldwell.
Leading the line was a brigade commander named Edward Ephraim Cross, only 31 years old and still a colonel. Hancock rode to him and told him, “Colonel, this day will give you a star.” This, without a doubt, meant a great deal to Cross; he had been fighting for a promotion for nearly a year. However, the colonel simply looked back at him and replied, “No, General, this will be my last battle.” Hancock said nothing else; his presence was needed elsewhere on the field. Colonel Cross ordered the men his brigade head the line for a wheatfield off in the distance.
It is a story that many of you have probably heard before, of a man from New Hampshire who had a premonition of his own demise during the Gettysburg campaign. But, like many stories of men who fell before the war ended, the recognition that this fascinating man truly does deserve has long been lost to the pages of history. Edward Cross was born in Lancaster, New Hampshire, on April 22, 1832, and began work as a printer at the age of 15. He stayed in New Hampshire only long enough to become an adult; then, at the age of 18, he moved to settle elsewhere. For the next ten years he would travel extensively, from as far west as Arizona and San Francisco to as far south as South Carolina and Mexico, working with various newspapers wherever he went.
Cross was actively involved in politics, joining the American Party early in his travels. He had a hatred for Catholics and abolitionists that he felt no need to hide. For this reason, when the Know-Nothings disbanded over the issue of slavery, he turned his support to the Democratic Party. Cross’s bluntness and belligerence often got him into trouble with those of a higher status, with one rivalry ending in a duel that might have killed him.
From Arizona he continued traveling, joining Captain Richard Ewell (later General Ewell) in 1860 on an expedition for Apaches and later serving as a garrison commander in Mexico. After the firing on Fort Sumter, however, the call of his country would not be ignored for long; he returned home to New Hampshire, where he was offered the colonelcy of the 5th New Hampshire volunteers. He accepted under the condition that he would be allowed to choose his own officers. He crafted the regiment in his own image, molding civilians into true soldiers with the expertise of an experienced officer. The 5th was officially mustered into service by October 23, 1861, with a grand total of 1,012 men in the ranks. By the time they returned home for rest and recruitment in the months that followed Gettysburg, their numbers had been reduced to 165.
At their first battle, Fair Oaks, Cross and his regiment behaved coolly and calmly both before and after the heat of battle. The first of their brigade to report ready for battle, it prompted General Howard to state, “As usual, the 5th is always first!”
Cross would later write of the battle, “The Fifth fired the first and last shot in the great battle of June 1, and alone met and drove back a strong column of the enemy - fighting them at thirty yards range and, although outflanked by greatly superior numbers of the Rebels, caused them to break and retire.” The bravery the Fifth displayed in their first battle was, indeed, admirable; the bravery, however, would show up in what they left behind. Their casualties by the end would be 41 killed and 129 wounded. It was here that Cross received his first wounds, shot through the thigh and nicked in the temple by buckshot. “A ball passed through my hat, and one through the sleeve of my blouse - in all seven balls hit my person,” he wrote in his journal. He was sent home to recuperate; the Fifth went on to participate in the Seven Days with only minimal combat and casualties. Cross would rejoin the regiment late in August with 70 new recruits.
Weeks passed; the action moved, and soon the two armies were set on a collision course in northwestern Maryland. Originally, the Fifth marched at the back of Richardson’s line; but suddenly the column stopped and they were called to the front. They were told by the general that he had no cavalry and needed scouts that could move rapidly and do their duty effectively; the Fifth New Hampshire eagerly deployed to do the job. From then on they became known as “Richardson’s Foot Cavalry”, and they led the Army of the Potomac to the battlefield at Antietam. One of their men became the first casualty of the bloodiest day of the war.
The Fifth, of Caldwell’s brigade, followed the Irish to the Sunken Road, and it was here they fought. Cross was wounded again, and, although it was painful, this time it was minor; he countered it by tying a red bandana around his forehead and continuing on. Holding the end of the line as they drove the Rebels into the field beyond Bloody Lane, they came close to being flanked; swinging around to face this new threat, they saw they could advance no further and retired back to the road, holding their position for the rest of the day.
Again, the army moved, commanders were replaced, and a new campaign launched. Soon they found themselves staring up Marye’s Heights at Fredericksburg, and the Colonel could already see the bloody mistake that would be made. “General Caldwell then stated the plan of the battle… as God as my witness it seemed to my heart that it was a failure.” And indeed it was climbing up this hill that they would meet disaster. The Fifth New Hampshire lost every member of the color guard killed or wounded, as well as most of the officers. Major Sturtevant, who had been New Hampshire’s very first volunteer, disappeared behind a screaming Rebel shell as they charged up the heights. His body would never be recovered.
Colonel Cross himself was nearly killed. “A shell from the Washington battery burst in front of me. One fragment struck me just below the heart, making a bad wound. Another blew off my hat; another (small bit) entered my mouth and broke out three of my best jaw teeth, while gravel, bits of frozen earth and minute fragments of shell covered my face with bruises. I fell insensible, and lay for some time when another fragment of shell striking me on the left leg below my knee, brought me to my senses.”
Without their leader, the Fifth New Hampshire made it all the way to the Stratton House, and some even beyond that, although they never returned. They are credited by the Confederates who pillaged from the bodies after the battle as being one of three regiments to come closest to the wall, and they paid a terrible price for it. 57 were dead on the battlefield, another 100 wounded. They had gone into the town with 249 men and 19 officers; after the retreat back to it, only 63 men and 3 officers could report for duty, with a company captain taking the remnants of the regiment back down Marye’s Heights.
Much to Cross’s relief, his wounds were less severe than those he had suffered at Fair Oaks. He returned home to New Hampshire once more to recuperate, and while there was invited to attend the Republican State Convention on New Year’s Day, 1863. His guests for the evening were the flags of the Fifth as well as the colors of the 4th North Carolina, captured by the regiment on the Peninsula campaign. He would return to his brave boys on March 16, 1863, and upon his arrival he found only 150 men fit for duty.
From the comfort of their winter quarters, they watched the infamous Mud March and Burnside’s replacement with Hooker. Cross, in particular, had no fondness for either; he was a one of McClellan’s biggest supporters, and he made the fact well-known. This was, perhaps, yet another reason why generalship continued to avoid him in favor of less worthy yet more conservative individuals. Despite nearly six months of hard campaigning for a general’s star and recommendation from eleven generals for such a position, Congress continued to pass him by. While shifts in command eventually brought him up to the command of a brigade during and after Chancellorsville, he would never see the star that he tried so hard to win.
Cross’s role in the Chancellorsville campaign was minimal, holding off the Confederates while the rest of the army retreated. They returned to Falmouth, where they stayed until Lee’s army suddenly disappeared from the heights above Fredericksburg. They were headed north, but General Hancock, for the time being, had other plans for the colonel. Of all the brigade commanders in the Second Corps, Hancock chose Cross to command a group of 300 men to reinforce the cavalry stationed around Culpeper, Virginia. Cross, in turn, chose many men from the Fifth to accompany him. They would rejoin the rest of the army as witnesses of the fighting at Brandy Station.
As the armies converged on Gettysburg, Colonel Cross seemed to know his days were numbered. He told one of the captains of the Fifth New Hampshire, “It will be my last battle. After the campaign is over, get [my books and papers] at once... and turn it over to my brother Richard.” They arrived on the afternoon of July 2nd after marching over 60 miles in just two days, and when the chaos began to unfold in the late afternoon hours, their division was closest to the action and sent to the front. Cross went with a black bandana tied around his head instead of the usual red one.
They marched rapidly for the Wheatfield, the Fifth holding the extreme left of the line, which took them deep into a stand of woods just near the field. Cross came toward them to organize an attack against the enemy when a Rebel marksman from only forty yards away spotted him. The colonel fell when a bullet tore through his abdomen; his killer was shot by Sergeant Charles Phelps, who would die during the retreat with a bullet in his back. This time, Cross would not walk away from his wound; his thirteenth wound would become his last wound.
Cross was carried to a field hospital behind the lines, where he lingered well into the night. His final words were, “I did hope I would live to see peace and our country restored. I think the boys will miss me. Say goodbye to all.”
Edward Cross died at half past twelve on July 3rd, 1863.
As Captain Thomas Livermore stated in the regiment’s history, “With Cross’s death the glory of our regiment came to a halt.” The Fifth New Hampshire would never be the same without their commander. They served until the end of the war, fighting at Cold Harbor and Farmville, where they lost seventy men and their colors as prisoners of war that would be regained two days later with Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.
William Child, the regiment’s doctor, celebrated the end of the war in Washington D. C. He was in Ford’s Theater on the night of Lincoln’s assassination. He offered his assistance, but the president was already cared for; he returned to his hotel room and wrote to his wife, “Wild dreams and real facts are but brothers. This night I have seen the murder of the President of the United States.”
Edward Cross and the Fifth New Hampshire alike, although deserving so much more recognition than they have received, suffer the fate of being lost to the pages of history, although he is not truly forgotten. Cross appears briefly in several Gettysburg books to tell the story of his own premonition. He appears as a name in many other books as well, but only as a name. In April of 2004, on Cross’s 172nd birthday, he was finally given the general’s star he campaigned so hard for 140 years prior.
Edward Cross was known for many things. He was a fierce commander who “frightened men into obedience… He drove some officers harder than they could stand, while inspiring others and indulging those who were his favorites. He defied his superiors to see that his men were well fed… His pointed views and severe temper hurt his prospects for promotion even as the Fifth’s performance in battle commanded recognition.”
Or, as Winfield Scott Hancock offered simply at the end of the war, “What a magnificent fighter Cross was.”