Howard's Eleventh Corps: The German Defenders of Cemetery Hill

This marker stands at the headquarters of the Eleventh Corps, commanded by Major General Oliver O. Howard at Gettysburg. The corps was sometimes called the German Corps: two of its three division commanders, Adolph von Steinwehr and Carl Schurz, were German immigrants, and Schurz had taken part in the revolutions of eighteen forty-eight.

Schurz was also a prominent Republican journalist and later a senator. The Eleventh Corps bore the hardest fighting on July first and was pushed back through Gettysburg's streets to Cemetery Hill. The corps was blamed for the retreat, partly due to anti-German prejudice in the press.

Howard, the Maine-born commander who would later found Howard University in Washington, chose Cemetery Hill as the key to the defense.