Wright was awakened by his captain the next morning, July 2, and was told to get the men ready for the march. All around him the second corps, of which the regiment was a part, was moving. Author Brian Leehan later wrote that the men moved so early that morning that its skirmishers, a small group of men sent out during the night to guard the camp, did not have time to catch up. The regiment finally reached the battlefield and took their place in reserve on Cemetery Ridge, a slight incline overlooking the boulder strewn ground and small creek bed called Plum Run on the left flank of the Union line. Wright wrote, “We had a deep interest in the results and great curiosity to know what had really happened the day before. And we could not have been without some anxiety as to what might happen to the army, the regiment, or ourselves during the day that was soon to dawn.” Taylor noted in his diary an order given by their division commander General John Gibbon: “Order from Gen. Gibbon read to us in which he says this is to be the great battle of the war & that any soldier leaving the ranks without leave will be instantly put to death.” Years later, Wright would look back on this moment with a bit of skepticism, writing, “If anyone had a premonition that we had reached the culminating battle of the war and that the day was to be the saddest, bloodiest, grandest, and the most glorious day in the history of the regiment, I do not recall it being suggested.” Around this time the regiment got a welcome surprise as Colonel Colvill arrived and announced to great cheers that he was retaking command.
In the Confederate camp that morning, Lee was putting his final touches on his battle plan for the day. He had decided that he would send most of his men to attack the Union left flank with the objective of taking Little Round Top and the nearby hills, allowing his men to get behind the Union Army. Lee would send the rest of his men to Union Right flank to attack Culp's Hill It took much longer to get his men into position than he originally thought and the attack did not start until the afternoon. As the Confederates moved toward Cemetery Ridge and Little Round Top they suddenly ran into General Daniel Sickles’ third Corps which was originally supposed to be on Cemetery Ridge along with the Minnesotans, but at the last-minute Sickles had decided the ground to his front looked much better. In the bloody fighting that followed, Confederate forces were able to push Sickles back to Cemetery Ridge at very heavy cost. Sickles’ move had badly delayed Lee's plan and by the time they reached Cemetery Ridge, many men in the original advance had been killed, wounded and the rest were exhausted. As a result the Confederate line was in much confusion. On Little Round Top, Confederate forces attempted to go up to the summit, but found the men of the Twentieth Maine waiting for them.
As the First Minnesota hugged the ground, it shook from the sound of battle as Confederate and Union shells flew overhead. Watching the fighting below him, Wright wrote, “It was a wonderful scene we were witnessing. And it left no desire to have it repeated, for it is a fearful thing to see an army corps crushed in the collision of battle. It was a scene not easily effaced from the memory and exceeding difficult to describe.” He continued, “All along the lines of the contending forces, there was a whirling tempest of fire and smoke, and about them gathered clouds of sulphurous vapor – into which the reinforcements plunged and were lost sight of and out of which came streams of wounded and the fragments of broken regiments.” Leehan wrote, “The smoke, coupled with light and shadow on that part of the battlefield, made all of the combatants in the distance seem exceedingly tall. It was as if the men on the battle line along Cemetery Ridge were watching a struggle between giants on the distant forward line.” In addition to the fight they could see, the men on the ground could hear the volleys of gunfire coming from Little Round Top to their left. Wright’s Company was ordered to move away from the rest of the regiment and form a skirmish line to prevent or at least delay a Confederate attack from that direction and were quickly engaged and eventually had to fall back. Sickles’ men could no longer hold their position and were overwhelmed. Sickles himself had a cannon ball nearly rip off his leg. He was carried off the field calmly puffing a cigar.
As he watched the Union line break, Minnesotan John Plummer remembered, “I never felt so bad in all my life. I thought sure the day was gone for us, I felt that I would prefer to die there, rather than live and suffer the disgrace and humiliation of a defeat.” On the left of the Minnesotans Confederate General William Barksdale smelled victory and ordered his men to keep moving forward even though they were becoming disorganized. Winfield Scott Hancock commander of the second corps, riding along the ridge saw the dangerous gap that Sickles move had created, and that a thousand Confederates were racing through it, up toward the top of the ridge. At that moment he rode past Minnesotans laying on the ground, and he said, “My God! Are these all the men we have here?” He then looked at Colvill and said “What regiment is this?” Colvill replied, “First Minnesota.” Out of options, and badly needing at least five minutes to get more men on Cemetery Ridge, Hancock yelled back “Charge those lines!” William Lochren later wrote, “Every man realized in an instant what that order meant – death or wounds to us all.”
Colvill ordered his men, who without Wright's company and several others, now numbered around only 262 to 280, to their feet. They shouldered their rifles and began moving down the ridge at the double quick. In front of them were upwards of 1,100 Confederates, who were only three hundred yards away and closing. Halfway down the ridge, Colvill ordered his men to into a full charge. Nearly on top of the enemy, the Minnesotans still at a run, opened fire at point blank range. It was later reported by some that a whole row of Confederates fell. Lochren recalled the Confederates’ “supporting lines, confused and excited, commenced firing through the mass in front, slaughtering their own men by the hundreds and throwing the whole column into confusion, while their artillery from the rear fired on friend and foe alike.” Colvill himself ran behind the man carrying the regimental flag. When he reached Plum Run, he crouched down. Suddenly he felt something slam into his back with such force as to spin him around. A bullet had hit his right shoulder, nicked his spin and lodged in his left shoulder. As Colvill attempted to steady himself, another bullet hit his right ankle. In agony, he fell to the ground and rolled into a ditch. Within moments, more officers went down. With the Confederate line stopped, the Minnesotans attempted to push them back even further, but multiple attempts failed to move them. Many men threw themselves to the ground or hid behind boulders and fired at the Confederates. On the right flank of the regiment, hand to hand fighting broke out and the Confederate forces pushed that part of the Union line backward, folding it upon itself and exposing the backs of men to the left of it, but the left flank held firm.
By now, the charge had stalled the Confederate advance and bought Hancock a priceless ten minutes to bring up reinforcements. While the First Minnesota fought it out at Plum Run, other Union forces attacked to the left, driving back Barksdale’s division fatally hitting the general himself. Other Confederate units were brought up but found they could not get through Plum Run and so moved around it. More Union forces arrived and drove back all the units to the left and right of the Minnesotans. Colvill, still laying in the ditch, gave the order to fall back. The right side of the line, which by now had arguably taken the worst of the fight, needed no encouragement to retreat. The left side did not immediately hear the order and only fell back when it was pointed out that others were leaving. Issac Taylor, who had amazingly survived the charge and the fighting down on Plum Run, began retreating to Cemetery Ridge, one soldier would later tell Henry that his brother had just fired his gun for final time turned, smiled and was hit and killed by a shell fragment. By now it was around 7:30 and darkness was quickly falling over the field. From the moment Colvill had given the order to stand up to when he called retreat only twenty minutes had passed.
After he helped Colvill to a barn which had been turned into a hospital. Henry Taylor spent the next several hours looking for his brother before realizing that he that he must of have been killed. A little while later, Wright, who had spent the afternoon fighting to the left of the regiment in a skirmish line, and had missed the charge, still had not made it back to the regiment and was waiting for news. He remembered one officer who said he had “found only a few men of the regiment, and it was believed the rest were killed or captured. This was indeed depressing news, and at first almost stunned us, though we were expecting bad news. Then there was a general expression of belief that ‘it could not be quite so bad as that.’” When the numbers were finally tallied, only forty seven men were still standing. For the rest of the night, what remained of the regiment, searched the field. Some men managed to crawl or lump back to Union lines, others like Colvill required help, with some the men they could only record their last words. Years later men of the regiment would still remember the cries and moans that came from Plum Run after the battle. When firing was again heard far to the north at Culp's Hill on the Union right flank Plummer recalled “We made up our minds that we were whipped, and expected before morning to see the whole army routed, flying for Baltimore.” The attack would turn out to be the last of the day as the Confederates made one final attempt to take the hill that partly succeeded in taking some positions. Many like Wright were too exhausted to fight anymore and simply decided to fall asleep with the guns still rumbling the distance.
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