The 28th Pennsylvania was a seasoned regiment by the spring of 1863.  They had buried their dead at Thoroughfare Gap, Antietam, and Chancellorsville, and had marched many miles.  On June 3, Captain Thomas J. Ahl was placed in command of the 28th and became their third commanding officer.  Days later many of the 370 men of the regiment exchanged their war weary Enfield rifle muskets for new 1861 Springfields.  With new arms and a new commander the regiment was ready for summer campaigning, come what may.

        The 28th belonged to the Twelfth Corps, commanded by Major General Henry W. Slocum.  At Chancellorsville this corps had played a key part in holding the line during the withdrawal of Federal forces.  A Union rout was thus avoided and not one banner or artillery piece was lost.  If spirits in the Army of the Potomac were low, morale in the Twelfth Corps was justifiably high.

        On June 13, the men began the long march towards Gettysburg with the white star corps badge displayed prominently on their forage caps.  This signified their assignment to the second division of the Twelfth Corps, which was commanded by the founding father of the 28th, General John W. Geary.  The 28th was assigned to the first brigade of this division commanded by Col. Charles Candy.  At some point the command of the regiment fell to Captain John Flynn, a native of Waterford, Ireland..

        On June 30, the regiment marched at the quick time passing through Taneytown and crossing the Pennsylvania border.  When their feet stepped onto the soil of their native state, hurrahs filled the air as each regiment of the corps crossed the line.  One member of the regiment exclaimed, "We are on our own dung hill now!”.  The men of the 28th marched on with new determination to defend their homes and families from the forces of the Confederacy.

        At nine in the morning on July first Geary’s White Star Division followed Alpheus William’s first division up the Baltimore Pike toward Gettysburg, which lay some ten miles distant.  General Slocum could hear distant gun shots which he determined to be cavalry carbines. Some of the men heard the distant boom of artillery fire, but the march maintained a leisurely pace as they bought bread and cheese from local farmers.  Some of the men found the odor of the cheese overpowering and commenced to throw balls of the stuff up and down the column.  At eleven in the morning, the Twelfth Corps reached Two Taverns, a hamlet, which stood six miles from Gettysburg.  Here Slocum had his troops set up camp for the night according to General Meade’s orders.  When a civilian report of a great battle at Gettysburg was confirmed, camp was broken at one P.M. and the march resumed. In the heat of the day many men collapsed, and in preparation for battle many others disposed of their “sinful” playing cards.  Along the way General Slocum was informed of the death of General Reynolds of the first Corps.

        General Geary pushed ahead of his division and found General Hancock who ordered him to deploy his division along the left of the Union line to occupy a range of hills south and west of town.  Sources became confused concerning the position of the 28th on the first night of the battle. Brevet Captain John Foering wrote in his dedication of the White Star Monument that the 28th formed line of battle to the left of the Baltimore Pike and to the rear of Cemetery Hill.  From this position they could support the Eleventh Corps.  Lt. John Mitchell of the 66th Ohio claimed that Candy's entire brigade- stacked arms near Little Round Top and were in support of no troops.  Another source takes this a step further and states that the 28th sent skirmishers through the Wheatfield and Trostle Woods to the Emmitsburg Road.  Here the skirmishers met Bufford's cavalry in the Sherfy Peach Orchard.  This source states that Company B was detached as a provost guard leaving the regiment with 3O3 effectives.  In any case orders were received at eight in the morning on July second to move with the corps to the right of the Baltimore Pike to form line of Battle on Culp's Hill facing Rock Creek.  The Twelfth Corps formed the extreme right of the Union line.  On arrival at the new position Geary ordered the 28th forward to Rock Creek as Skirmishers where we now stand.  H.E.Brown of the 28th recalled,  “We were scarcely deployed and had advanced but a short distance when we discovered the Johnies advancing through the field quite leisurely and but about 800 yards distant.  The discovery was apparently mutual.”   Here the two sides exchanged shots at each other for several hours, enduring an artillery duel and losing three men wounded in the midst of the skirmish.

          The Twelfth Corps was the smallest in the Army of the Potomac. This realization no doubt prompted General Greene of the third brigade to suggest to Geary that formidable breastworks could be built with the plentiful building materials to be found in the surrounding terrain.  At first Geary protested believing that it would be detrimental to the fighting spirit of the division to build such a barrier.  Greene must have been a very convincing man as Geary finally relented and the men were soon hard at work constructing log breast-works.   On the second division's line they were formidable indeed, built neck high with a head log on top.  Cordwood and mud were piled in front of the wall to make it impervious to bullets.  Only a mans head was exposed in the act of firing his musket.  Abatis was placed in front to impede enemy assaults and hide the fortifications.  The 28th did not participate in this labor as they were on skirmish duty.  On the next morning they would benefit from their comrades labor in no small measure.

        For some reason the artillery duel mentioned earlier was not regarded as a prelude to a Confederate.  Other matters were to take precedence.  General Slocum, commander of the Twelfth Corps, apparently designated himself as commander of the army, and gave command of the Twelfth to General Alpheus Williams.  Williams passed his division on to General Thomas Ruger.  At about five p.m., General Slocum received an order to send all of the troops that he could spare to the aid of the Third Corps which was under attack by the divisions of Hood and McLaws.  Slocum sent Williams an order to send one division to the left.  Williams protested the order on the basis that the Rebels would take his position as soon as he vacated it. Slocum agreed that Geary's division would expand his line to the right in order to hold Ruger's position.  Slocum quickly changed his mind.  At 7 p.m. the 28th was pulled from the picket line.  Geary had been ordered to follow Williams with his first and second brigades. Only his third brigade under George Sears Greene was left to hold the Twelfth Corps line.  Williams turned west on the Granite Schoolhouse Lane from the Baltimore Pike.  He did so in order to “follow the sound of the guns.”  Geary found it difficult to follow the first division as Williams had a half-hour head start, and it was already dusk.  Perhaps the gunfire had begun to diminish by this time.  Later Geary wrote of the incident.  "I received no specific instructions as to the object of the move, the direction to be taken, or the point to be reached, beyond the order to move by the right flank and to follow the first division."  Geary passed the Granite Schoolhouse Lane and continued to head south on the Baltimore Pike.  He halted after crossing a bridge over Rock Creek.  Geary was out of the fight.  Candy’s brigade formed a defensive line that was really of no use at all.  There he remained for several hours.

        Somewhere around midnight a courier brought orders to Geary.  Greene’s brigade was under heavy attack, as the Twelfth Corps division commanders had feared.  With the aid of the breast works and reinforcements from the First and Eleventh Corps the attack was repulsed with heavy Confederate losses despite three to one odds in their favor. Geary was to retake the breastworks that he had recently vacated.  His brigades retraced their steps in almost total darkness.  It was a difficult march over rough terrain, and the men were weary from constant marching and lack of sleep.  At last Candy’s brigade took up a position in a hollow to the right and rear of Greene’s brigade which extended the Union line to the Baltimore Pike.  In this position units in reserve could clean their muskets and replenish their ammunition.  This would allow Federal forces to maintain a terrific rate of fire.

        During this relatively quite period the Confederates were not idle. General Lee reinforced Johnson’s division by returning the Stonewall brigade.  He also sent help from Rhodes’ and Early’s divisions.  This doubled the force facing the Twelfth Corps.  Johnson planned to attack at daybreak.  He had orders to advance as far as he could.   The Baltimore Pike was in his path.  This road was the primary supply route for the Federal army, and Lee knew it.

         Williams ruined Johnson' plans at 4:30 A.M. by ordering 26 guns of the Twelfth Corps batteries to open fire.   This barrage continued intermittently for four hours.  Lt. Muhlenberg, commanding the Twelfth Corps artillery wrote that his fire, “was of essential service, and did excellent execution."  At the same time Geary's troops advanced with fixed bayonets on the captured breastworks, driving confederates out of the works facing his line.  He quickly opened a rapid fire. Confederate forces positioned below the breastworks found themselves in the midst of swarms of musket balls, artillery shells and large chunks of shattered trees all around them.  These men quickly dashed to more sheltered positions downhill.  Johnson’s men recovered quickly and organized the first of three assaults against the Federal line.  Geary’s division lay directly in their path.

        The 28th lay in reserve until 8 A.M.  They moved forward with a cheer to relieve the 29th Ohio.  Rebel troops perched in trees and behind mammoth boulders fired on them as they advanced.  Once they gained cover behind the works they watched for puffs of smoke and directed their fire towards the hidden sharpshooters.  While on the line the 28th was present to receive at least one major assault.  H.E. Brown complemented the bravery of their foes when he wrote, “Brave boys indeed, were they, gallantly did they respond to the orders of their commanders.”  Urged on time and time again, and as often beaten back with frightful loss, until the hillside was slippery from human blood, and the ravine was strewn with their dead and dying, and yet nothing daunted, on they came.  The 28th was relieved at some point to clean their rifles and pick up another 80 rounds.  The men did not relish leaving the works, as that was the only time the confederates had a clean shot at them.  All of the 28th’s six fatalities were as a result of the fighting on the morning of the third.  At 11:30 they were relieved for the second time by a New York regiment.  By now the assaults on Culp’s Hill had sputtered put.  For the third time they cleaned their muskets and collected another 80 rounds.  They sat in Henry Spangler’s orchard beside the Baltimore Pike.  They had not been there long when the massive barrage that preceded Pickett’s charge erupted.  Their position was seen at once to be untenable, and Geary ordered the men to take shelter behind the barn.  They no doubt would have entered the barn had it not been in use as the Twelfth Corps hospital at the time.  Soon they reentered the works and remained there throughout the night.

         As dawn broke on the morning of July 4th, a soldier of the 28th jumped onto the breastworks and crowed like a rooster.  He called to his comrades for his rifle and hopped to the other side.  Confederate dead and wounded lay thickly across the entire front.  Following his lead, soldiers from all of the regiments in the division vaulted over the wall.  H.E. Brown reported that southern corpses were piled in heaps, shot in all conceivable ways.  He was glad that heavy rain arrived to wash away the blood.  Trees lay shattered and barkless, and many would die after the battle.

        General Johnson lost nearly as many men as Pickett in this battle.  Col. Candy claimed that 1,500 rifle muskets, mostly Enfield, were retrieved from his front.  The 28th lost six killed or mortally wounded, 21 wounded, and two missing.  As a whole, the Twelfth Corps suffered less than one third the loss of Johnson’s command.  This was mostly due to General Greene’s insistence that the division should fight behind breastworks.  There would be no hesitation to use them in the future.

        Soon after the battle, Culp’s Hill became a major tourist attraction.  Here the battered trees and breastworks graphically told the story of what had happened there.  As farmers pulled apart breastworks to rebuild fences, and as trees died and rotted away, Culp’s Hill came to be ignored.  The old veterans were aware that we might not recall their difficult service.  These men would be pleased to know that we make an annual pilgrimage to this place to remember their brave deeds and their sacrifices.  They will live on in our hearts.