"Perry’s Brigade"
The Forgotten Floridians at Gettysburg

History has not been kind to the legacy of Florida’s Confederate soldiers. Too often they appear as little more than a footnote in accounts of the American Civil War. Nevertheless, Florida troops were present at Gettysburg and they fought bravely along side their comrades from Alabama and Georgia on July 2 and 3, 1863.

Florida was represented at Gettysburg by a brigade of three infantry regiments in Major General R. H. Anderson’s Division of A. P. Hill’s III Army Corps. By the summer of 1863, these soldiers were seasoned veterans of the Army of Northern Virginia. The 2^nd Florida Infantry had experienced heavy combat in several battles during the Peninsular Campaign of 1862. The regiment fought at Yorktown, followed by a delaying action at Williamsburg where the regiment's first colonel was killed. At a swampy Virginia crossroads called Seven Pines, the 2^nd, then attached to Brigadier General Samuel Garland's brigade, fought a brutal contest through mud, heavy vegetation and waist deep water. There, the 2^nd Florida gained everlasting glory when it charged and captured a battery of Federal artillery while sustaining over 50% casualties. After the Seven Days battles, the battered 2^nd was joined by the 5^th and 8^th Florida Infantry regiments. The Floridians bravely fought at Second Manassas, Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, and continually proved themselves to be tough soldiers full of courage and fight. Following the battle of Sharpsburg, Maryland, in September 1862, the three regiments were consolidated into a single Florida brigade under Brigadier General Edward Aylesworth Perry of Pensacola.

Colonel David Lang Valentine Museum, Richmond, VA

Perry’s Brigade marched towards Gettysburg on July 1, the first day of the battle, and was not engaged. Anderson’s Division was assigned a position along Seminary Ridge. Cadmus Wilcox’s Alabama Brigade was on the Floridians’ right and Rans Wright’s Georgia Brigade occupied the ground on its left. Early the next morning, Colonel Lang placed his men behind a stone wall on the east edge of the woods on Abraham Spangler’s farm (the remnants of this wall can be seen today). About 1:00 P.M. on July 2, Union General Daniel E. Sickles advanced a small reconnaissance force consisting of the 3^rd Maine and an elite unit, the 1^st U.S. Sharpshooters. These troops crossed the Emmitsburg Road and probed the woods to Perry's Brigade's right. There, they encountered Wilcox’s Brigade's 11^th Alabama and were repulsed after a rather brisk fight. Lang was instructed to aid Wilcox if he requested support. Although this proved unnecessary, stray shots from the skirmish wounded a few men in Perry's Brigade.

A few hours later, a cannonade erupted along the line south of the Floridians’ position. Confederate cannon dueled with Federal artillery occupying the high ground in the Peach Orchard. Colonel Lang received orders that an attack would be made en echelon from right to left all along the Confederate line. The Floridians were to advance when Wilcox’s Brigade, on their right, was underway. After the battle, Lang wrote to the recuperating General Perry describing his brigade’s part in the action:

At the Emmitsburg Road, Perry's Brigade engaged the 1^st Massachusetts, who was acting as skirmishers for Carr’s Brigade, the rightmost unit of Union General A. A. Humphrey’s Division. Behind them, along the main line, Lang’s men fought and outflanked the 26^th Pennsylvania and 11^th Massachusetts, repulsing them and inflicting terrible losses. The Florida Brigade crashed through the field beyond the Emmitsburg Road and down a gentle slope to the bottom of a ravine through which the upper branch of Plum Run flowed. Here Lang paused his battle-worn men and attempted to re-form the brigade’s line. Shells and grapes from Federal cannon ceaselessly pounded their ranks. Ahead, Cemetery Ridge loomed up and directly in front. It was seemingly theirs for the taking, but Lang and his boys still had one more force to contend with, the 19^th Maine Infantry regiment.

The charge of Perry and Wilcox on July 2 at Gettysburg. (National Park Service)

1st Lt. George D. Raysor Co. G, 5th Florida Infantry Gettysburg NMP

A fresh battery of Federal artillery unlimbered on Cemetery Ridge, sending shotgun-like blasts of canister fire into the Florida Brigade. It was then that Colonel Lang was notified that a Federal force had pushed back the Confederate brigade on his right and was threatening to cut off his line of escape. Fearing his force was about to be surrounded, Lang ordered his three regiments to retreat to the Emmitsburg Road. Finding no safe place to re-form there, the brigade retired to its original position. In the hasty retreat the colors of the 8^th Florida were left on the field and picked up by Sgt. Thomas Horan of the 72^nd New York, who later would receive the Medal of Honor for the capture. This flag survives and is preserved at the Museum of Florida History in Tallahassee.

The next day General Lee planned to attack again. This time, he would head straight for the Union center ("The Angle"), which he felt might be weak because the Federals had moved troops to re-enforce the flanks of their line. Major General George E. Pickett's all-Virginia division spearheaded the main assault. Attached to Wilcox’s Brigade, Lang's command was to advance as supports to Pickett's column. At about 1:00 P.M., the great cannonade intended to soften up the Federal center began. The Floridians were forced to lay prostrate for hours under the hot summer sun, surrounded by booming artillery pieces, while tons of lead flew through the air only inches above their heads. At last, the artillery fire slackened and the Virginians advanced, over Lang’s prostrate men, disappearing into the noise, smoke and fight on Cemetery Ridge.

About 20 minutes after Pickett advanced, the order arrived for Wilcox’s command to advance. The Floridians went over the wall and once again moved eastward at quick step. From the start, the brigade was subjected to long range artillery fire from both Little Round Top and Cemetery Ridge. The fire turned to canister and musketry as the Confederates crossed the Emmitsburg Road and approached the main Union battle line. A dense pall of smoke clung to the ridge, and the brigade drifted away from its intended direction. Instead of following Pickett’s men, the supporting column marched to its right, just slightly south of the place the Floridians had fought the previous day.

Archibald Graham Morrison Co. D, 2nd Florida Infantry Gettysburg NMP

After Lee’s army had begun the withdrawal from Gettysburg and was in retreat towards the Potomac River, Colonel Lang tallied his losses and recorded that 455 out of the 700 men of Perry’s Brigade were killed, wounded or missing. This represents the highest casualty rate (65%) sustained by any brigade of the Army of Northern Virginia at Gettysburg. The 26th North Carolina Infantry, however, suffered 80% casualties which is the highest casualty rate of any regiment (North or South) at Gettysburg. Perry’s "intrepid little band of Floridians" never fully recovered from the harsh handling it received in Pennsylvania. The brigade received additional losses at Bristoe Station in October 1863. General Perry was severely wounded at the Wilderness during the Overland Campaign of 1864 and sent to the Confederate Invalid Corps in Alabama. The brigade was consolidated with other troops from Florida and the independent unit that had been Perry’s Brigade ceased to exist. Most of the men of the 5^th and 8^th Florida were captured at Sailor's Creek (aka Saylor's Creek) the following year, and Florida was represented by a mere fraction of its original fighting force at the surrender at Appomattox Court House.

Among those Floridians captured at Gettysburg was Lewis Powell of Company I, 2^nd Florida Infantry. Powell was wounded in the hand and exchanged later in the war. He joined the famous 53^rd Virginia Cavalry, Mosby’s Partisan Rangers, and served for a time in the Shenandoah Valley. He then left the army and moved to Baltimore, Maryland. There he assumed the name Lewis Paine and took his place in history with the likes of Mary Surratt and John Wilkes Booth as a member of the Lincoln assassination conspiracy. On the night of April 14, 1865, Paine viciously attacked U.S. Secretary of State William Seward. Paine had rushed into Seward's home and stabbed the secretary repeatedly as he lay sick in his bed. Seward survived though the attack left him terribly scarred. Paine tried to escape but was caught, tried for his part in the conspiracy and hanged on July 7, 1865. After his execution, no relatives arrived to claim his body. In 1992, his skull surfaced at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and was released to a descendant in 1994. It was buried next to the grave of his mother in Live Oak, Florida.

Two brothers, Francis and C. Seton Fleming, were members of the 2^nd Florida Infantry. So many officers in the 2^nd became casualties at Gettysburg that by the end of the battle Seton, a captain, commanded the regiment. Seton was also one of the bravest and most popular members of the regiment. He was killed the following year at Cold Harbor while attempting to carry out a suicidal order to counter-charge. After the war, Francis served as Governor of Florida (as did Brigadier General E. A. Perry, who returned to lead his brigade after Gettysburg) and wrote a memoir about Seton recounting their service in the 2^nd. After Appomattox, Colonel Lang became a civil engineer and worked closely with Governors Perry and Fleming in the 1880s. Lang and two other officers from Perry’s Brigade returned to Gettysburg in the 1890s and staked out the positions where the Floridians had fought. They marveled over the fact that any of them had survived after advancing so far against such heavy artillery and musket fire. Soon after, several tablets representing Perry’s Brigade’s participation in the battle were erected on the battlefield by the United States War Department.