The Union Army

Civil War History

The Battle of Gettysburg was nearing a climax on July 3,1863 — the Civil War would hinge on its outcome. On the previous day, 262 men of the 1st Minnesota Infantry had rallied to their colors in a suicidal bayonet charge against General Cadmus M. Wilcox's 1500-strong Alabamans that were storming Cemetery Ridge. Their heroism had bought five minutes of precious time for regrouping Union defenses, and saved Cemetery Ridge — at the cost of 82 percent casualties. Now Robert E. Lee ordered a final all-out assault on Cemetery Ridge — Pickett's Charge. The remnants of the ravaged 1st Minnesota braced for the attack, bolstered to just 150 men with companies that had been behind the lines.

General George Pickett's division aimed for a breakthrough at a clump of trees on Cemetery Ridge, not far from the 1st Minnesota's position. A Minnesota veteran would describe Pickett's force as an "avalanche of bayonets." Union shells and bullets crashed into the Southern assault wave, but on they came. When the first rebels struck Union lines, the 1st Minnesota again moved to stem the tide with a breakneck bayonet charge into their flank. Rebel fire tattered the flag of the 1st and cut its staff in two, but Corporal Henry O'Brien grabbed the broken staff and impetuously rushed the enemy. "The effect was electrical," said a sergeant. "Every man of the 1st Minnesota sprang to protect its flag, and the rest rushed with them upon the enemy." The Minnesotans hurled into the Confederate flank to break their forward motion. "Our muskets became so heated we could no longer handle them. We dropped them and picked up those of the wounded," said one veteran. "We pushed on; they fired till we reached the muzzles of their guns, but they could not stand the bayonet, and broke before the cold steel, in disorder and dismay," remembered another Minnesotan. In the fierce struggle, Private Marshall Sherman captured the colors of the 28th Virginia Regiment — both he and the wounded O'Brien would win the Congressional Medal of Honor for their heroism. As Pickett's spent division fell back, the 1st Minnesota had sustained 55 casualties. Its total losses for both days were the highest proportion ever suffered by a Union regiment in any battle of the war.

The legendary 1st Minnesota Infantry has the distinction of being the first regiment accepted for Federal Service after the Civil War broke out. The regiment mustered in at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, on April 29,1861, with over 900 men in its ranks. Recruitment was heaviest from St. Paul and Minneapolis, and areas such as Faribault, Hastings, Winona and Wabasha. A number of able writers served with the 1st Minnesota, such as the Irish lawyer William Lochren and the Taylor brothers, Isaac and Patrick. Their accounts vividly recapture what the war was like for the 1st Minnesota. It is said that no Union regiment saw more ferocious fighting, or performed its duty more determinedly.

Highest Casualty Rate at First Bull Run and Gettysburg

The 1st Minnesota received its baptism of fire at the First Battle of Bull Run in July, 1861, where the 180 casualties it sustained were the greatest of any Union regiment. Led by Colonel Willis Gorman, they held an exposed position on Henry Hill under brutally close shelling from General Stonewall Jackson's batteries, and repulsed an attack by the 33rd Virginia in which the Minnesota colors were riddled with bullets. "Our boys-loaded and fired with as much coolness as though they were shooting chickens," said a sergeant. After beating back three infantry attacks, during which Sergeant John Merritt captured a rebel flag, the 1st Minnesota withstood several charges of Virginia's elite Black Horse Cavalry, as other Federal troops retreated.
At Antietam in September, 1862, the 1st Minnesota was again cited for steadiness under heavy fire, sustaining 118 casualties. The 1st also saw action in the battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, and virtually every other major battle of the eastern front in the first three years of the war. Its greatest glory and tragedy was at Gettysburg, where its ranks were devastated in two magnificent charges crucial to the Union victory. Of their spirit of supreme sacrifice, General Winfield Scott Hancock, who ordered their immortal counterattack on the second day at Gettysburg, wrote, "No soldiers, on any field, in this or any other country, ever displayed grander heroism."