Colonel Edward E. Cross :: Death of a Hero

Stepping hastily back the Colonel said, and it was the only time that I ever heard him use a familiar term to subordinate officers while on duty, "Boys:- instruct the commanders to be ready to charge when the order is given; wait here for the command, or, if you hear the bugles of the Fifth New Hampshire on the left, move forward on the run." Then he strode alone into the woods where the r ight-wing of the one hundred and forty-eighth Pennsylvania and the Fifth New Hampshire, to judge by the sound were tearing things all to pieces. Standing by my prisoners, I looked after him sort of regretfully as he vanished among the trees, and---it was the last glimpse; he never came back, for in less than five minutes he had a mortal wound right there in the woods near by his own regiment, and we who were anxiously waiting for him on the right never knew of it.

Cross never had a chance to advance his brigade. As he stood in the rear of the line of the 5th New Hampshire, where the monument to the regimental marker now stands, he was shot in the abdomen by a musket ball that struck him in the navel and exited near the spine. The Confederate sniper who brought Cross down had hidden behind a ten foot cleft rock still visible at Gettysburg about forty five yards from where Cross fell. Lt. Col. Hapgood, commanding the Fifth New Hampshire, ordered Sergeant Charles Phelps to shoot the sniper.

Phelps shot rang true, but Phelps would be one of 27 men killed in the "Bloodless Fifth" this fateful day. Hale lamented the loss of his chief, "The tawny-bearded, lion-hearted commander who in the morning and at noon was pacing the ground so restlessly, had been carried back from the blazing front line where he had fallen, and was suffering untold agonies from a bullet wound through the body that was mortal."

Cross was carried to a field hospital behind Culp's Hill where the regimental surgeons, including Dr. Child who would later write the history of the regiment, did their best for him, trying to make him comfortable on a bed of sheaves of wheat. Many members of the regiment came to speak to him. Cross, conscious throughout this final struggle, died shortly after midnight July 3. His last words were recorded as "I wished that I would live to see the rebellion suppressed and peace restored...I think the boys will miss me. Say good-bye to all."

Livermore remembered the fallen commander,

He was a brave man and clear headed in a fight; he took the most excellent care of his men in a sanitary way and was a good disciplinarian. He taught us by rough measures, to be sure, that the implicit obedience to orders was one of the cardinal virtues in a soldier. He taught us to ignore the idea of retreating. Beside this he clothed and fed us well, taught us to build good quarters and camped us on good ground and in short did everything well to keep us well drilled and always ready to meet the enemy.

A soldier could not want a better epithet.

Hale would record a final eulogy that appeared in his old newspaper in Cincinnati that befits the red bearded and tough commander,

Foremost on the fiery battle-lines in front of the hills that evening fell our Ed. E. Cross, Colonel of the Fifth New Hampshire Volunteers, formerly City Editor of the "Times."---He died unpromoted, a lasting disgrace to the Washington people who slighted him after his valor on the battlefields in Virginia and Maryland.----But the faded eagles on his shoulders will shine with greater luster in the history of that mighty conflict, than though he had borne the insignia of his merited rank, the stars of a Major General.

Cross never did get a death bed star like Colonel Strong Vincent did.

However, the redbearded commander from the 5th New Hampshire embodied much of the fighting spirit of the Army of the Potomac, an Army of strong willed and brave men in the lower ranks like Cross who, when given a chance by their generals, proved their mettle and far more.