Civil War Journal - War Comes to Gettysburg

Civilians recall the aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg. This is the fifth and final article about the Battle of Gettysburg through the eyes of the civilians who experienced it.

 

The aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg brought devastation, hardship, suffering and compassion to the civilian population. The human wreckage was beyond belief and comprehension.

Hugh M. Ziegler, whose father was the steward at the Lutheran Theological Seminary, recalled the aftermath: “On the morning of July 4th, we all got in a farm wagon and started back to the town and home, but had gone but a short distance when we were turned back on account of the danger of unexploded shells coming in contact with the feet of our team or the steel tires of our wagon. On July 5th we made another effort to get back to our home, walking all the way, passing many dead horses that had been shot down and were badly bloated from [lying] in the hot sun. Frequently we would see a dead soldier by the road side covered by a blanket. I looked under one of them and my curiosity was quenched. They were in the same condition as the dead horses.

“We succeeded in getting back to our home (the Seminary), but it was in use as a hospital, all the space in the large building was filled up with wounded soldiers. The doctors in charge, learning it was our home, cleared two of the rooms and we moved in and got busy helping care for the wounded. My mother took charge of the kitchen and did the cooking, and [was] hailed by the wounded and others connected with the hospital as mother. There was one of the large rooms of the building used as a clinic, where many arms and legs were amputated and several times I was called on to carry one to the rear of the hospital and deposit with many others, that had been placed in a pile. There had been an accumulation of several days before they were taken away and buried. The pile would have filled a wagon bed.”

Albertus McCreary, who lived on the southwest corner of Baltimore and High streets, recounted: “There were a number of hospitals within a block of us. The Presbyterian church just across the street, the Catholic church a few doors above, the United Presbyterian church back of our lot, and the German Reformed at the end of High street, were used as hospitals. Two school-houses, half a block up High street and the court-house a short distance down Baltimore street, and many private residences near by were all turned to the same account. We were saved much annoyance by having a red flag put up at our door, to show our house was a hospital. All of our beds were occupied and we boys slept on the floor and ate at the Sanitary Commission for weeks. We thought hard-tack and bacon fried together a great treat. The provisions we had in the house were soon consumed, and had it not been for the Commission, we should have starved to death.”

Oliver F. Benner, born on the Christian Benner farm east of Rock Creek and south of the Hanover road, described Saturday, July 4: “We had found two dead Rebels lying back of our barn, and no one came to bury [them] till late the next day. They [had] been left with a blanket spread over [them].

“At the house next to ours on the road to town a Rebel sharpshooter had climbed up in a tree in the yard and buckled himself fast to a limb with his belt. He was picking off our men, and of course it wasn’t easy for them to make out where he was because the thick leaves hid him. But at last they noticed a puff of smoke, when he [had] sent a bullet in among [them], and don’t you forget it – that was the last shot he fired. They aimed at the place the smoke came from and killed him, and after the battle, I’ll be dog-goned if he wasn’t still in the tree hanging by the belt.

“I went over to Culp’s Hill Sunday. They were burying the dead there in long narrow ditches about two feet deep. They [would] lay in a man at the end of the trench and put in the next man with the upper half of his body on the first man’s legs, and so on. They got [them] in as thick as they could and only covered [them] enough to prevent their breeding disease.”

At the time his account was written, Benner was nearly 80. He included a brief commentary on the senselessness and futility of war. He wrote: “That was awful, wasn’t it? Well, the whole fighting business is awful; and I’m a-goin’ to tell you this—war is a reflection on Christianity and civilization. It seem to me, in the case of nearly every war, after each side has done its worst and perhaps fought to the point of exhaustion and bankruptcy, they go back to the original question and begin to settle it by reason, good sense, and so on. Really, they might as well have done that in the first place without the terrible slaughter.”

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