The First Shot

The battle began here, about three miles west of Gettysburg, at roughly half past seven on the morning of 1 July 1863. Lieutenant Marcellus Jones of the 8th Illinois Cavalry was on picket at the Ephraim Wisler house, where the Chambersburg Pike crosses Knoxlyn Ridge, when Confederate infantry appeared on the road ahead. By his own account he borrowed a carbine from his sergeant, rested it on a fence rail for steadiness, and fired at a mounted officer at long range. There is no record that it hit anything. The two armies then spent three days and some fifty one thousand casualties on the consequences. Jones came back in 1886 and set a small stone here at his own expense, which is why the marker exists at all, and cut two comrades' names into it beside his own. It is a private monument, not a government one, and it makes a claim other men disputed for the rest of their lives. A corporal of the 9th New York Cavalry was firing on this road at about five that morning. The honest position is that a cavalry picket line trading shots at dawn produces no single first shot anybody could have timed. What makes the spot worth stopping at is not the claim but the geography. Three ridges stand between here and the town. The Confederate column coming up this road did not yet know how much Union cavalry was in front of it, and the cavalry did not know how much was behind.