Reynolds Has Been Killed

Meade, whose headquarters is near Taneytown, Maryland, issues the Pipe Creek Circular on the early afternoon of July 1, informing each corps commander precisely where each corps was to fall back to the Pipe Creek line if attacked. Meade was then notified by a courier that General Reynolds is killed or badly wounded. He first called for General Warren, his chief engineer, to ride to Gettysburg to assess the situation. He then called for General Winfield S. Hancock, commander of the Second Corps that had just arrived at Taneytown from Uniontown, to turn over command of his corps to General John Gibbon and proceed to Gettysburg, eleven miles north, to determine the situation there and advise the army commander as to whether he should move the whole army to Gettysburg. What Hancock found as he neared Gettysburg, was that the First and Eleventh Corps had been routed after suffering tremendous casualties, and their refugees, had fled to a defense line that had been previously established by General Howard along Cemetery Hill and Culp’s Hill, using one of his divisions and three batteries of artillery.