James Levi Roush

He Charged a Log House Full of Sharpshooters

James Levi Roush was born on February 11, 1838, in Bedford County, Pennsylvania. He came of age in a nation moving toward civil war, and when that conflict divided the United States, he entered Union service and became a soldier in Company D of the 6th Pennsylvania Reserves. By the summer of 1863, he held the rank of Corporal in the United States Army and was serving with a regiment that would soon be drawn into the enormous struggle at Gettysburg.

The 6th Pennsylvania Reserves formed part of the Union forces fighting to defend Pennsylvania during the Gettysburg Campaign. The Battle of Gettysburg began on July 1, 1863, and by the following day both armies had concentrated around the town. On July 2, Confederate attacks struck the Union left in some of the battlefield’s most violently contested terrain, including the Peach Orchard, the Wheatfield, Devil’s Den, and the heights around Little Round Top.

Roush and the 6th Pennsylvania Reserves entered this dangerous landscape as fighting surged across the Union left. The regiment became involved in the struggle around the Wheatfield and the ground later known as the Valley of Death. Amid that larger battle, Roush took part in a much smaller action that would ultimately define his military legacy.

Near Devil’s Den stood a log house being used as shelter by Confederate sharpshooters. Their position presented a direct threat to Union troops operating in the area. Rather than leaving the enemy detachment undisturbed, six Union soldiers volunteered to move against the position. Corporal Roush was one of them.

On July 2, 1863, the six volunteers charged the log house. The official account of the action is brief but powerful: the men advanced against the structure where the Confederate sharpshooters were sheltered and compelled them to surrender. The surviving citation does not depend on elaborate battlefield storytelling. Its significance lies in the simple fact that six soldiers voluntarily moved against an occupied enemy position during one of the Civil War’s greatest battles and successfully forced its defenders to give themselves up.

For Roush, the charge near Devil’s Den became the defining event of his service. It occurred while the wider battlefield around him was being transformed by repeated attacks and counterattacks. Devil’s Den and the nearby Wheatfield became scenes of severe fighting on July 2 as Confederate forces attempted to break the Union left and Union troops struggled to regain and hold critical ground. Within that chaos, Roush’s small-group action stood out as a distinct example of offensive courage and initiative.

The Battle of Gettysburg continued through July 3 and ended as a major Union victory. The Confederate Army of Northern Virginia eventually withdrew from Pennsylvania, while the battle became one of the central turning points of the American Civil War. Thousands of individual acts of endurance and courage occurred during those three days, but only some were formally preserved through the nation’s highest military decoration.

Roush’s recognition did not come immediately after the battle. More than three decades passed before his actions at Gettysburg were formally honored with the Medal of Honor. On August 3, 1897, he was presented with the decoration for what he had done as a Corporal in Company D of the 6th Pennsylvania Reserves on July 2, 1863.

The Medal of Honor represented the highest military recognition the United States could bestow for valor. Roush’s citation focused specifically on the charge against the log house near Devil’s Den. It identified him as one of six volunteers who attacked the position where enemy sharpshooters had taken shelter and compelled their surrender. The award therefore preserved a remarkably specific episode within the enormous scale of Gettysburg: six soldiers, one defended structure, and a voluntary assault that ended with the enemy position overcome.

The long interval between the battle and the presentation of the medal did not diminish the significance of the action. By 1897, Gettysburg had already become deeply embedded in American national memory, and veterans of both armies were increasingly recognized for individual episodes of service that had taken place decades earlier. Roush lived long enough to receive his Medal of Honor personally; it was not a posthumous award.

His later life was spent far from the battlefield that had made his name part of American military history. The surviving record of his civilian years is less detailed than the documentation surrounding his Gettysburg service, and his historical reputation rests primarily on his wartime role and the action for which he was decorated.

James Levi Roush died on February 12, 1906, at McKee’s Gap, Pennsylvania, one day after his sixty-eighth birthday. He was buried at New St. Patrick’s Cemetery in Newry, Pennsylvania.

Roush’s legacy remains inseparable from the second day at Gettysburg. He was not a general commanding thousands of troops or an officer directing the movement of an army. He was a Corporal who, at a critical moment, joined five other volunteers and moved directly against an enemy-held position. Their success was only one small episode within a battle involving tens of thousands of soldiers, yet it demonstrated how individual initiative could shape events at the most immediate level of combat.

More than thirty years later, the Medal of Honor ensured that the charge near Devil’s Den would not disappear into the vast history of Gettysburg. Roush is remembered today for a documented act of courage: stepping forward as a volunteer, advancing with five comrades against Confederate sharpshooters, and helping compel their surrender during one of the defining battles of the American Civil War.