- Joined
- Jan 16, 2015
Brigadier General George Pierce Doles, taken between 1861 and 1864
Brig. Gen. George Doles left an intriguing description of his brigade's movements on the late afternoon of July 1. After having defeated the flank attack by the 157th New York, he writes of heading toward the Theological Seminary to assist his division's efforts against the Union First Corps, which lay in a southwest direction from his position.
Fortunately we have a corroborating account from C. D. Grace of Bonham, Texas that appeared in Confederate Veteran magazine, vol. 5, p. 614. The author is, without doubt, Charles D. Grace, a Private in Company B, 4th Georgia. Grace said that his brigade front was changed sharply to the southwest owing to Brig. Gen. John B. Gordon's brigade having moved in front of his brigade. That is a plausible explanation, but in addition, Doles may have been eager to rejoin his division, from which he had been separated, and the impetus could have been a great volume of fire emanating from Seminary Ridge at that time, coinciding with the attack by the brigades of Scales and Perrin, which I judge to have been just minutes before 4 p.m.
But by the time Doles was about half-way to the Seminary, or nearly due west of the College, at about 4:10 p.m., it became clear that the Federals were in full retreat from right to left, in front of him, moving along the Chambersburg Pike and railroad bed. Doles then moved by the left flank, in a southeasterly direction, to try to head off the Federals, but they moved too quickly for him, by and large just escaping his grasp, as he closed in on the town from the northwest between the college and the railroad bed.
Had Doles simply moved forward (south) at the outset, guiding on the Carlisle Road, he could have joined the right of Hays' brigade as it swept in from the northeast, and handily beat the Union First Corps into town. Such is fate.
C. D. Grace also provides us with the location of his brigade's encounter with the 157th New York, which he thought was an entire brigade. He notes that Gordon had halted his brigade in a hollow (which I believe to be the creek bed just south of the Alms House buildings, running generally west-east). Grace writes that "a Federal brigade was discovered in the little valley made by the creek" (same creek), and at that moment his regiment was ordered to the right to meet them. All of this accords with information from other sources regarding the entire brigade's attention being devoted to the 157th New York.
Before any of this occurred, as Doles was driving back Kryzanowski's brigade, Grace described a ludicrous scene involving Gen. Doles that is recorded in no other account, so far as I know. "Gen. Doles was riding a very powerful sorrel horse, and before he could realize it the horse had seized the bit between his teeth and made straight for the Federal line as a bullet, and going at full speed. We thought the General was gone, but when in about fifty yards of the line he fell off in the wheat. The Federals, being in a wavering condition, did not seem to pay any attention to him. The horse ran up apparently to within ten or fifteen feet of the Federal line, wheeled, and came back around our brigade; and, strange to state, he had no sign of a wound about him."
Charles D. Grace died in Bonham, Texas in 1906:
http://www.mulberrytx.com/MulberryTX.com/Removing_Clouds.html
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