“Show Them Your Colors!”: The 1st Delaware Volunteers and the Gettysburg Campaign

The 1st Delaware Volunteers department posts and briefl y led a brigade in the Twelft h Corps during the fi ght on Culp’s Hill. Th e Delaware regiment’s opportunity to prove its loyalty would come as George McClellan cobbled together a fi ghting force to pursue the Army of Northern Virginia as it crossed the Potomac following the defeat of John Pope’s army at Second Bull Run. Recalled from garrison duty at Suff olk, Virginia, on September 9, the regiment was attached to the Army of the Potomac’s Second Corps, commanded by William “Bull” Sumner. On September 17, 1862, during the regiment’s baptism under fi re, the 1st Delaware was on the right fl ank of William French’s fi rst line of attack on the Sunken Road at Antietam. Ordered to advance with fi xed bayonets and without the cover of skirmishers, the regiment was devastated from a welltimed volley from Confederate arms at a distance of only fi ft y yards. Fire coming from the rear from an inexperienced Connecticut regiment and from the front by Col. John B. Gordon’s Georgia regiment hidden behind the natural trench of a dugout farm lane, the 1st Delaware soldiers were nearly destroyed in a hailstorm of fi re from all directions. Aft er the hairbreadth recovery of their regimental colors, a handful of survivors under the leadership of thirdincommand Maj. Th omas Smyth managed to regain some semblance of order and to support a nearby Rhode Island battery pounding away at the Confederates in the Sunken Road. Th e 1st Delaware’s fi rst battlefi eld experience was shocking; the killed and mortally wounded equaled fi ft ysix with over 40 percent total casualties.1 Th e regiment fared little better three months lat-