18th Mass. Infantry Regiment (Col. Joseph Hayes)
First Brigade (Col. WILLIAM S. TILTON)
FIRST DIVISION (Brig. Gen. JAMES BARNES)
FIFTH ARMY CORPS (Maj. Gen. GEORGE SYKES)
Army of the Potomac (Maj. Gen. GEORGE G. MEADE)
Gettysburg, 1863
For this figure I used the HS of the Confederate officer from SST. Added more facial hair and repainted all the hair. Added some washes as usual.
The trousers, backpack, waist belt, cap pouch, 1861 Springfield Rifle and tin cup is from SST, everything else is from BGT.
It is a typical Union soldier of 1863. Bugle in cap is for infantry. Maltese cross is insignia of Fifth Corps and red color is of the corp’s First Division.
The movement northward which was to end with the battle of Gettysburg began for the Eighteenth on the 14th of June, when the regiment marched to Catlett’s Stations. It reached Aldie on the 19th and two days later moved to Ashby’s Gap in support of the cavalry engagement at Upperville, returning to Aldie the next day and on the 26th advancing to Edward’s Ferry; thence by way of Frederick, Liberty, Unionville and Hanover to Gettysburg, Pa., which it reached on the morning of the 2d of July. During this time much change had occurred in the make-up of the Fifth Corps, now commanded by General Sykes. General Barnes had been promoted to the command of the First Division, Colonel Tilton of the Twenty-second Massachusetts commanded the brigade, which had been reduced to the two Massachusetts regiments, the One Hundred and Eighteenth Pennsylvania and the First Michigan. The part taken in the battle of Gettysburg by the Eighteenth was like that at Chancellorsville, not important, and by a coincidence the loss on the two fields was the same – one killed and 13 wounded. This loss occurred when two brigades of the First Division attempted the assistance of De Trobriand’s Brigade, which had been flanked from its position near the “wheat-field.” Tilton’s Brigade was itself speedily flanked and obliged to fall back, General Barnes, the division commander, being severely wounded at that time. Position was then taken by the brigade near Little Round Top, where it remained during the following day, and till the army moved from the field.
