Wrightsville Engagement

Wrightsville Engagement. Fight for the Bridge. , After a stunning victory at Chancellorsville in May 1863, Confederate General Robert E. Lee led the Army of Northern Virginia through Maryland into Pennsylvania, marching east to threaten Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. The Army of the Potomac marched north from the capital, searching for Lee. On July 1-3, the armies collided at Gettysburg in one of the pivotal battles of the Civil War. Three days later, after a bloody defeat, the Confederates began retracing their steps to Virginia., At 6:57 P.M. on June 28, 1863, the crack of a cannon sent a shell hurtling over the heads of the 27th Pennsylvania Volunteer Militia entrenched just behind you. Confederate General John B. Gordon's hardened veterans had deployed in these fields "to move rapidly …to the bridge, seize it, and cross to the Columbia side," as he later wrote. His objective was Harrisburg. Union Col. Jacob G. Frick's men had thrown up earthworks to protect the town and stop the Confederates., The Pennsylvanians had been issued muskets only six days earlier, during what was called the "Emergency of 1863." Another "emergency" regiment supported their right flank, while a company of African Americans from nearby Columbia held the left. The 31st Georgia Infantry deployed skirmishers in the fields across from you, and Gordon's artillery moved closer. Two guns unlimbered in the Huber farmhouse (Hybla) yard. Half an hour after the first shot, as shells and bullets unnerved Frick's men, he saw a Confederate regiment approaching the river on the right and ordered a retreat that quickly disintegrated into a panicked flight. The Georgians swept past here in pursuit. Twenty-year-old Sgt. Francis Hudgins, 38th Georgia Infantry, wrote, "We drove them pell-mell through the streets of Wrightsville." Frick's men raced across the mile-long railroad bridge, which had been mined. When the charges failed to blow it up, Frick ordered it burnt. As the fire spread from the bridge into town, Gordon's men formed a bucket brigade and worked through midnight with townspeople to extinguish the flames.,

"Colonel Frick …exposed to the fire of the Confederate sharpshooters …whispered an order to the captains …to fall back to the bridge." , Miner's Journal, Pottsville, Pa., July 4, 1863

, [Sidebar:] , Col. Jacob G. Frick saw action at the Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia, on December 13, 1862, and the next spring at the Battle of Chancellorsville on May 3, 1863. In each battle he saved the regimental colors, the second time engaging in hand-to-hand combat with the Confederate soldier who had seized them. In 1892 he was awarded the Medal of Honor for his bravery.