The skirmishing in front of Cemetery Hill was
deadly, but that along the Hanover Road at Brinkerhoff's Ridge on 2 July
might well have been decisive. On the east slope of Brinkerhoff's Ridge,
two and a half miles east of Gettysburg, infantrymen of the Stonewall Bri-
gade guarded the left of the Army of Northern Virginia. They sparred with
a series of units of the Army of the Potomac--troops of the Twelfth and
the Fifth corps and finally squadrons of Brig. Gen. David McM. Gregg's
division of the Cavalry Corps.

The skirmishing began at daybreak when troops of the Stonewall Bri-
gade exchanged shots with Hoosiers of the 27th Indiana Regiment from
Ruger's brigade of the Twelfth Corps. Ruger's brigade, now under the
temporary command of Col. Silas Colgrove of the 27th Indiana Regiment,
had spent the night south of Wolf Hill near the Baltimore Pike. It returned
to the fields near the Hanover Road early in the morning behind a screen
formed by Company F of the 27th Indiana. When the Indiana soldiers
reached the north slope of Wolf Hill, they found elements of the Stonewall
Brigade in the woods in their front and in a stone house and its barn to
their right. The Virginians attempted to seize another house and barn to
Colgrove's left, but the Hoosiers beat them to it. The Rebels shot from the
cover of the buildings on Colgrove's right and the woods, and the Twelfth
Corps men replied from the buildings just seized and from the open fields
to their right. ¹

Not long after this fighting began, the Fifth Corps filed into the area
by way of the Hanover Road from the east. The First and Second divi-
sions of the corps massed briefly south of the road behind a screen of their

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