Thomas's Right

The 47th Pennsylvania's position was at the far right of Thomas's line.

NPS Photo

Quick Facts

Location:

Frederick County, Va.

Significance:

Part of Cedar Creek Battlefield

The 160th New York, commanded by Capt. Henry P. Underhill, followed the 8th Vermont and formed its battle line to their right. They met the same heavy Confederate fire that had greeted their comrades to the left. With 250 men, the New Yorkers put up a stiff fight for a time but their line soon collapsed. The survivors fled to the rear. Their retreat left a gaping hole in Thomas’s line, one that the Confederates soon exploited. The regiment suffered 66 casualties that day.

Lt. Col. Lewis’s 12th Connecticut numbered 300 men as they formed into battle line to the right of the 160th New York. The men from the Nutmeg State fired three quick volleys at the enemy. They were soon hit on the right, when the regiment on that side, the 47th Pennsylvania, gave way. One soldier wrote later, “...in the mist and underbrush and in the flurry of close fighting, there was small chance to reload and there was some hand-to-hand work.” 

At one point the regiment took fire from its left. One Connecticut soldier, thinking it was coming from his New York comrades, yelled out: “What the devil are you firing this way for?” The reply was: “Surrender, you damn Yankee!” followed by more bullets. The 160th New York had already fled the field. The regiment held, “until both regiments on our flanks were driven back and we were flanked right and left. There was nothing to do but run the gauntlet.” The 12th Connecticut suffered 172 casualties that day. 

The 47th Pennsylvania had the misfortune of being the last regiment to reach this ridge and form into line of battle. Almost immediately, they were hit by Confederate forces on their right and front. The 47th’s commander, Maj. Shindell Gobin, tried to “refuse his right,” meaning he pulled back the right of his regiment, so it faced the new onslaught in the shape of an inverted V. The regiment could not hold, and it disintegrated almost immediately. 

One Confederate later described the scene as he and his fellow soldiers pursued to the edge of the ravine: 

“... we found the whole force we’d been fighting down at the bottom of it to escape our fire. Poor fellows! It looked like murder to kill them huddled up there where they could not defend themselves and while we had nothing to do but load and shoot. At the first volley, the most of those who were not killed or wounded began a scramble to ascend the steep side of the ravine, catching to bushes and any object that offered help. Their knapsacks on their backs presented a conspicuous target for our rifles”

Of 300 men in the 47th Pennsylvania, 174 became casualties, including 40 killed outright. The next day one member of the regiment “went out to the woods where the 47th had stood, and the dead bodies strewn thickly over the ground showed that this had been a hot place.” 

Over 500 members of Stephen Thomas’s brigade were killed, wounded or captured that day, about fifty percent of his strength. Most of those casualties occurred along this ridgeline.