{"id":37067,"date":"2013-07-02T12:57:28","date_gmt":"2013-07-02T17:57:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=37067"},"modified":"2020-09-20T21:37:50","modified_gmt":"2020-09-21T02:37:50","slug":"uncommon-valor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=37067","title":{"rendered":"Uncommon Valor"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was 150 years ago today, as the Battle of Gettysburg wound into its second day, that General Winfield Scott Hancock, commander of the Union II Corps, saw that the neighboring III Corps\u00a0under flamboyant General Daniel Sickles <\/a>had moved forward\u00a0without communicating Sickles’ intentions to Hancock,\u00a0leaving a yawning gap in the lines between II and III Corps as a Confederate force was moving toward the area.\u00a0 Left open (and it would be left open; Sickles’ corps, exposed in open ground, was mauled and rendered nearly combat-ineffective in a matter of minutes), the gap gave the Confederates a wide-open shot at taking Cemetary Ridge, which would break the Union defensive line.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hancock knew reinforcements –\u00a0 20,000 men from V and VI Corps – were on the way, hoofing it in from the north and east.\u00a0 But he needed to buy time.<\/p>\n

He ordered the nearby First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment to charge into the gap and drive off the encroaching Confederate brigade until help could arrive.<\/p>\n

We’ll come back to that.<\/p>\n

———-<\/p>\n

To people whose understanding of the US military comes from its post-Spanish-American-war form, the Army before about 1914 is a confusing enigma that reflects American political sentiments that started after the Revolution.<\/p>\n

The “United States Army” in 1861 was a\u00a0 relatively tiny regular force of long-service career soldiers.\u00a0 Confoundingly, the “US Army” as a whole played very little role in the Civil War; it mostly guarded major federal installations, Washington, and the frontier (including a garrison at Fort Snelling).\u00a0 With the exception of artillery units and a few specialist units (signallers, telegraphists, some logistics units, and a couple of elite “Sharpshooter” regiments<\/a>, who were analogous to today’s Airborne Rangers and which were very active in the early years of the war), the US Army played little part in the Civil War.<\/p>\n

The bulk of the Union Army (and, likewise, the Confederate Army, which was organized on similar principles) was made up of the mass of “volunteer” units raised by the states, and then tendered to the Federal government for periods spelled out in the various units’ terms of enlistment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One of those units – the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment – put together from ten companies, each of around 100 volunteers from towns around sparsely-settled frontier Minnesota.\u00a0 The companies were:<\/p>\n