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Union rifleman from Erie County never recovered from injuries suffered at Little Round Top

Sunday, July 06, 2003

By Cindi Lash, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Hunkering behind a boulder 300 feet above a swirling inferno of hand-to-hand combat, Warren W. Jordan wiped the sweat of a 90-degree July afternoon from his eyes and waited for the enemy charge he knew was surging his way.

Finding positions around him were 294 grim comrades from the 83rd Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry Regiment, the U.S. Army unit he'd joined nearly two years earlier in Erie. Over the course of four years, the 83rd Pennsylvania would fight at many of the war's bloodiest battles, suffering the second-highest number of deaths of all Union regiments.

But today, atop a knob of granite jutting from the midst of rural Pennsylvania farmland, Jordan and the 83rd's riflemen would face their most critical test of the war.

They, as well as three other regiments arrayed beside them on the rocky hill known as Little Round Top, were all that stood in front of the horde of crack Confederate troops that was determined to overrun the rest of the Union Army. For 90 minutes, the four regiments shot off thousands of rounds, holding off five charges by tough, battle-seasoned Confederates who spewed their own deadly fire.

For the warring armies, it was a clash that changed the course of battle on that second day at Gettysburg, setting the stage for a Union victory the next day and the eventual defeat of the Confederacy.

For 19-year-old Warren Jordan, it was a day of triumph and a day of loss -- of boyhood friends, of the beloved leader who'd led them from Erie to Gettysburg and, over the next decade, of his hearing.

Jordan and the 83rd "helped to turn the tide of the battle," said George E. Deutsch, 48, an Erie mortgage banker and historian whose great-great-grandfather was Warren Jordan's cousin. "This would be a much different country today if they hadn't. They made a difference."

Jordan was born Sept. 7, 1843, and raised on his grandfather's farm in Harborcreek, Erie County. He was single and working as a shoemaker in Erie when war broke out in 1861.

Originally from New England, Jordan's family hated slavery, supported women's suffrage and believed passionately in the freedoms granted by the U.S. Constitution. Like his uncles and cousins, Jordan joined the Army because he believed the United States must not dissolve, said Deutsch, who is writing a book about the 83rd Pennsylvania regiment.

When the blue-eyed, brown-haired 17-year-old enlisted with the 83rd Pa. in August 1861, it was one of three Union Army units mustered from Erie County. The unit's lieutenant colonel was Strong Vincent, a handsome, Harvard-educated lawyer who'd already served in a 90-day regiment and who'd won respect from troops and commanding officers for his discipline and bravery.

Nearly a year later, Jordan was wounded for the first time while fighting in the Seven Days battles in Virginia. On July 1, 1862, during the Battle of Malvern Hill, a bullet tore off his left forefinger, then lodged in his shoulder.

After months in Army hospitals, he returned to fight in December at Fredericksburg, Va., where a fragment of exploding artillery shell struck him in the stomach.

Jordan rejoined the 83rd early in 1863. By then, the regiment's first commander, Col. John McLane, had been killed and the charismatic Vincent had replaced him. In May, Vincent would again be promoted to command a brigade containing the 83rd, the 20th Maine, the 44th New York and the 16th Michigan regiments.

The brigade, part of the Union Army's Fifth Corps, arrived in Gettysburg on July 2, on the second afternoon of fighting. Vincent and his men were waiting in reserve, near a large piece of open ground that would become known simply as the Wheatfield, when the Army's chief engineer, Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren, discovered that another general had shifted troops and left the rocky hills known as Little Round Top and Big Round Top undefended.

Confederates saw the undefended hills and pushed forward frantically to try to take these perfect vantage points to shell and storm into the rest of the Union Army. Vincent and his brigade hastily climbed Little Round Top and took what cover they could find behind boulders and trees. They were told to hold the position at all costs, and barely 10 minutes later came the first of the Confederate charges.

From 4:30 to 6 p.m., whooping, determined Rebels mauled Vincent's men again and again. More than 40,000 rounds of ammunition were fired, sometimes at face-to-face range. Gunfire concussion was so damaging that Jordan's hearing began to fade.

Fifty-five men from the 83rd fell during the fighting, 10 of them fatally. Vincent, too, was mortally wounded while exhorting the tiring men of the 16th Michigan to stand fast.

Ammunition ran short, prompting them to snatch up guns and paw through cartridge boxes from the dead. The 20th Maine won its place in history when its ammunition ran out, prompting its leader, Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, to mount a desperate bayonet charge that panicked the flagging Confederates and sent them running the other way.

"It must have been desperate up there," said Deutsch, who has visited the battlefield more than 100 times. "But when you're fighting with your neighbor on one side and your cousin on the other, you don't want to show yourself as a coward or to let them down. They didn't run because they had a camaraderie and a duty to each other."

After Gettysburg, Jordan remained with the 83rd until his hitch ended Feb. 16, 1864. He re-enlisted the next day and was wounded for a third time, shot in the left leg at the Battle of the Wilderness.

Again he recuperated, and returned to his unit in March 1865, in time for the final campaign that, a month later, led to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox. Jordan was discharged in June.

Back home in Erie, he married his sweetheart, Matilda. He couldn't go back to shoemaking because of his maimed hand, so he and his wife, whom he described as "rugged and strong," opened a boardinghouse.

The couple had several children, but Jordan's war disabilities made it increasingly hard for him to support them.

By 1873, he was totally deaf, prompting him to petition the Army for a $30 monthly pension, which would be about $430 in today's dollars.

In his application, Jordan cited the "great gun firing" at Gettysburg as the cause of his deafness and said his other injuries had left him unsuited to manual labor.

Later, in pension paperwork, he would complain about how long the process was taking, writing that he needed money for medical treatment so that he could work and "obtain bread for his children."

Despite his difficulties after the war, Jordan remained proud of his service and held several leadership offices in Erie's Strong Vincent No. 67 post of the Grand Army of the Republic veterans' organization.

He was 86 when he died in 1928.

Cindi Lash can be reached at clash@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1973.