Shrouded Veterans: Buford’s Other Colonel at Gettysburg

“We’re gonna hold here in the morning. Long enough for Reynolds and the infantry to arrive. We hang onto the high ground, we have a chance to win this fight that’s comin’,” Brig. Gen. John Buford emphasized to his colonels, William Gamble and Thomas C. Devin, and their surrounding staffs.

Buford’s 2,500-man cavalry division was all that stood in the way of 20,000 Confederates gaining possession of the high ground at Gettysburg. “Post the cannon along this road, the Chambersburg Pike. The Rebs’ll hit us at dawn, but I think we can hold ’em for at least two hours.”

“Hell, General, we can hold ’em all the damn livelong day,” Devin, the impetuous commander of his 2nd Brigade, proudly stated. “At Thoroughfare Gap, you held against Longstreet. You held for six hours.”

“Yes, sir” and “He’s right,” came from nearby staff officers, affirming what Devin had said.

Gamble, Buford’s pessimistic commander of the 1st Brigade, spoiled the mood when he spoke up and muttered, “And they never came. We held for nothin’.” Buford shot him a look of disapproval, but inside, he knew Gamble was right. He just wished Gamble hadn’t said it out loud.

When Buford advised Gamble to take care of himself after the first contact with Confederate infantry the next day, the jovial colonel smiled and replied, “Don’t worry about me, sir. I’m the soul of caution.”

If you’re as obsessed with the 1993 film Gettysburg as I am, you’ve heard these lines at least a dozen or more times. But this dialogue between Buford, Devin, and Gamble never actually occurred. Still, I’ll never be able to mentally separate the real-life Gamble from the fictional one portrayed by Gunsmoke star Buck Taylor.

The real Gamble was born in Ireland and worked as a civil engineer before migrating to the United States at the age of 21. In 1839, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and served as a ranker in the 1st U.S. Dragoons until he was honorably discharged in 1843. He settled in Illinois, employed as a civil engineer and officiating as a deacon at his church.

He married Sophia Steingrandt, the daughter of George C. F. Steingrandt, who had been a sergeant in the King’s German Legion (KGL), formed from refugees of the Electorate of Hanover. The unit, well regarded by the Duke of Wellington, fought heroically to defend the walled farmhouse complex of La Haye Sainte during the battle of Waterloo. Steingrandt’s battalion suffered 50 percent casualties, the heaviest losses of any KGL unit engaged.

In September 1861, Gamble was appointed lieutenant colonel of the 8th Illinois Cavalry. On December 5, 1862, he was promoted to colonel. Ten months before the battle of Gettysburg, he was wounded during a charge at Malvern Hill.

“He came back looking very pale, but still rode his charger,” the regiment’s surgeon, Abner Hard, recalled. The rebel bullet had entered the right side of his chest, passed through his lung, and lodged in his shoulder blade. A surgeon removed the ball on the field. Even though he healed, Gamble continued to experience hemorrhaging from his lungs, caused by his wound, for the rest of his life.

“I particularly admire [Gamble],” Orderly Sgt. William C. Hazelton wrote to his wife, Francis. “He is a perfect soldier. Rough to be sure, but frank and open-hearted. A man who says what he means and means what he says. We Orderly Sergeants get some pretty severe reprimands from him occasionally, but we like him all the better for that. He was Orderly Sergeant himself for some years in the regular service and knows perfectly well what our duties are and the difficulties we have to encounter.”

When addressing the regiment, Surgeon Hard said that Gamble gave them an excellent piece of advice that then-Capt. Edwin V. Sumner, his superior, had given him when he first entered the service.

“[K]eep your eyes and ears open and your mouth shut.”

Perhaps Gamble’s direct, unpretentious style is why he never became a newspaper celebrity like his more media-savvy counterparts, Pleasonton or Custer.

Gamble was on and off medical leave after his Malvern Hill wound, returning to command Buford’s 1st Brigade at Gettysburg.

“My brigade fought well under disadvantageous circumstances against a largely superior force. Every officer and soldier did his duty,” he reported after the battle. “This brigade had the honor to commence the fight in the morning and close it in the evening.”

Maybe Gamble saw his brigade’s vital role at Gettysburg as comparable to his father-in-law’s desperate stand to hold the farmhouse at the center of Wellington’s line at Waterloo.

While Thomas C. Devin would become an important subordinate under Maj. Gen. Phil Sheridan when he assumed command of the Cavalry Corps of the Army of the Potomac in 1864, Gamble was ordered to the Department of Washington to take command of a cavalry division. When President Abraham Lincoln’s remains were placed on a catafalque in the U.S. Capitol’s rotunda, Gamble was one of the army officers who acted as a guard of honor during his funeral.

On September 25, 1865, Gamble was promoted to brigadier general and remained in the regular army after the war as a major in the 8th U.S. Cavalry. Ironically, Devin was appointed lieutenant colonel of the same regiment.

On November 20, 1866, a detachment of 350 recruits and six officers, under Gamble’s command, departed New York for San Francisco. They didn’t reach San Juan del Norte, or Greytown, Nicaragua, until December 8, after what Thomas McMillin, the detachment’s assistant surgeon, described as “a long and unpleasant voyage,” coupled with the steamer occasionally becoming disabled. Due to the rough sea, they didn’t disembark until December 15. The next day, the troopers proceeded by steamer up the San Juan River.

“No communication was allowed with the shore, and fruits of all kinds were prohibited,” McMillin reported. “Canteens were filled with coffee, and the men were not permitted to drink the water of the river.”

On the morning of the same day, McMillin was summoned to see a sick private and immediately diagnosed him with cholera. He reported it to Gamble, and they did everything in their power to prevent it from spreading among the troops.

“The efforts were fruitless,” McMillin later wrote.

The private died that afternoon. By daylight the next morning, five more had died. Four more died during the day. On the 18th, three died, and on the 19th, two more.

On the morning of the 20th, they reached Virgin Bay, or Bahía de la Virgen, a black lava beach on the southwest shore of Lake Nicaragua, 12 miles from the Pacific. They quartered there awaiting the steamer to take them to San Francisco, with McMillin establishing a makeshift hospital for the growing cholera cases. With the medical supplies exhausted, they sent a messenger to Granada to purchase more.

By December 27, McMillin had 42 patients. The total would eventually reach 115, in addition to cases of cholera, acute diarrhea, and other diseases.

“At the commencement the epidemic was the most malignant I have ever seen,” the overworked McMillin reported. “No treatment seemed to have any effect, many cases proving fatal within twelve hours.”

Gamble was among the 27 soldiers who died at Virgin Bay, and the only officer. He passed away on December 20, 1866, and was buried alongside the others. The cemetery has since been swallowed by the bay. Because Gamble lived and worked in Chicago and Evanston before the war, a government-issued memorial headstone was placed at the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood, Illinois, to honor him, with the consent provided by his descendant, Jim Gamble.

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Shrouded Veterans is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to rescuing the neglected graves of 19th-century veterans, primarily Mexican War (1846-48) and Civil War (1861-65) soldiers, by identifying, marking, and restoring them. You can view more completed grave projects at facebook/shroudedvetgraves.com.