Gettysburg Campaign
On June 25, the brigade was assigned as the 3rd Brigade, 3rd Division, I Corps, and ordered to follow the rest of the Army of the Potomac north. The 12th and 15th regiments were detached at Westminster, Maryland, on July 1, to guard supply trains, and the remaining regiments arrived on the battlefield late that evening, and camped to the rear of Cemetery Hill.
On the morning of July 2, the brigade remained massed in the rear of Cemetery Hill. In the afternoon, Stannard was given command of the infantry supporting batteries on the left flank. The brigade was moved forward some, and the 14th and 16th regiments engaged to check advancing Confederates and help close up the Union line on the left flank of Cemetery Hill. The 13th regiment engaged some Georgian troops who were trying to capture a battery, approaching the Emmitsburg road. Members of the regiment, led by Captain John Lonergan, approached and surrounded the Codori farm house, and captured 80 soldiers from an Alabama regiment. Colonel Wheelock G. Veazey of the 16th regiment was detailed as the division field officer of the day.
On the morning of July 3, members of the 16th regiment were stationed as pickets forward of Cemetery Hill. In the afternoon, after a two hour artillery duel, Confederate General Robert E. Lee launched what has become known Pickett's Charge. The Vermont pickets were withdrawn, and as the Confederates approached Cemetery Hill, the three Vermont regiments flanked the Confederate troops first flanking Pickett's division by wheeling two units to the right and then doing the same to two detached Confederate brigades by wheeling two regiments to the left. Stannard's brigade inflicted severe casualties on the advancing Confederate regiments and forcing some of Pickett's men to redeploy covering their right flank. History recalls this battle as the high-water mark of the Confederacy. Three years later, at St. Albans, Vermont, General George G. Meade, commanding the Army of the Potomac at Gettysburg, said "there was no individual body of men who rendered greater service at a critical moment than the comparatively raw troops commanded by General Stannard."
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