Part 80 (2/2)

Fifteen thousand cavalry were reviewed at Brandy Station led by Stuart's waving plume--Stuart, the matchless leader who had twice ridden round a hostile army of a hundred thousand men. Crowds of cheering women watched this wonderful pageant and waved their handkerchiefs to the handsome young cavalier as he pa.s.sed on his magnificent horse draped with garlands of flowers.

It required an entire week to review the cavalry, infantry, and artillery.

On June the first, the advance began.

Ewell's corps, once commanded by Jackson, led the way. They swung rapidly through the Blue Ridge Mountains, into the Valley and suddenly pounced on General Milroy at Winchester. Milroy with a few of his officers escaped through the Confederate lines at night and succeeded in crossing the Potomac at Harper's Ferry. Ewell captured three thousand prisoners, thirty pieces of artillery, a hundred wagons and great stores. Seven hundred more men were taken at Martinsburg.

On June twenty-seventh, the whole of Lee's army was encamped at Chambersburg in Pennsylvania in striking distance of the Capital of the State.

The execution of this march had been a remarkable piece of strategy. He had completely baffled the Northern Commanders, spread terror through the North and precipitated the wildest panic in Was.h.i.+ngton.

Within twenty-odd days the Southern General had brought his forces from Fredericksburg, Virginia, confronted by an army of one hundred thousand men, through the Blue Ridge, and the Shenandoah Valley into Pennsylvania. He had done this in the face of one of the most powerful and best equipped armies the North had put into the field. He had swept the hostile garrisons at Winchester, Martinsburg and Harper's Ferry into his prisons and camped in Pennsylvania without his progress being once arrested or a serious battle forced upon him. He had cleared Virginia of the army which threatened Richmond and they were rus.h.i.+ng breathlessly after him in a desperate effort to save the Capital of Pennsylvania.

So far Lee had made good every prediction on which he had based his plan of campaign.

Davis felt so sure that he would make good his promised victory that he hurriedly dispatched Stephens to Fortress Monroe under a flag of truce and asked for a safe conduct for his Commissioner to Was.h.i.+ngton.

In alarm the Governors of Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, and West Virginia called out their militia. Lee was not deterred by their panic. He knew that those raw troops would cut no figure in the swift and terrible drama which was being staged among the ragged crags around Gettysburg. The veteran armies of the North and South would decide the issue. If he won, he would brush aside the militia as so many school boys and march into Was.h.i.+ngton.

Meade was rus.h.i.+ng his army after his antagonist with feverish haste. His advance guard struck Lee before the town of Gettysburg on July first, 1863. A desperate struggle ensued. Neither Meade nor Lee had yet reached the field.

Within a mile of the town the Confederates made a sudden and united charge and smashed the Federal line into atoms. General Reynolds, their Commander, was killed and his army driven headlong into the streets of Gettysburg. Ewell, charging through the town, swept all before him and took five thousand prisoners.

The crowded ma.s.ses of fugitives, fleeing for their lives, pa.s.sed out of the town and rushed up the slopes of the hills beyond.

At five o'clock Lee halted his men until the rest of his army should reach the field.

During the night General Meade rallied his disorganized men, poured his fresh troops among them and entrenched his army on the heights where his defeated advance guard had taken refuge.

Had Lee withdrawn the next morning when he scanned those hills which looked down on him through bristling brows of bra.s.s and iron the history of the Confederacy might have been longer. It could not have been more ill.u.s.trious.

His reasons for a.s.sault were sound. To his council of war he was explicit.

”I had not intended, gentlemen,” he said, ”to fight a general battle at such distance from our base, unless attacked by the enemy. We find ourselves confronted by the Federal army. It is difficult to withdraw through the mountains with our large trains. The country is unfavorable for collecting supplies while in the presence of the main body of the enemy as he can restrain our foraging parties by occupying the mountain pa.s.ses. The battle is in a measure unavoidable. We have won a great victory to-day. We can defeat Meade's army in spite of these hills.”

When Lee surveyed the heights of Gettysburg again on the morning of the second of July, he saw that the Northerners held a position of extraordinary power. Yet his men were flushed with victory after victory. They had swept their foe before them in the first encounter as chaff before a storm. They were equal to anything short of a miracle.

He ordered Longstreet to hurl his corps against Cemetery Ridge and drive the enemy from his key position before the entrenchments could be completed.

Longstreet was slow. Jackson would have struck with the rapidity of lightning. On this swift action Lee had counted. The blow should have been delivered before eight o'clock. It was two o'clock in the afternoon before Longstreet made the attack and Meade's position had been made stronger each hour.

From two o'clock until dark the long lines of gray rolled and dashed against the heights and broke in red pools of blood on their rocky slopes.

Three hundred pieces of artillery thundered their message in an Oratorio of Death. The earth shook. Hills and rocks danced and reeled before the excited vision of the onrus.h.i.+ng men. For two hours the guns roared and thundered without pause. The shriek of sh.e.l.l, the crash of falling trees, the showers of flying rocks ripped from cliffs by solid shot, the shouts of charging hosts, the splash of bursting shrapnel, the neighing of torn and mangled horses, transformed the green hills of Pennsylvania into a smoke-wreathed, flaming h.e.l.l. The living lay down that night to sleep with their heads pillowed on the dead.

On this second day Lee's men had gained a slight advantage. They had taken Round Top and held it for two hours. They had at least proven that it could be done. They had driven in the lines on the Federal left. The Southern Commander still believed his men could do the impossible.

Longstreet begged his Chief that night to withdraw and choose another field. Lee ordered the third day's fight. On his gray horse he watched Pickett lead his immortal charge and fall back down the hill.

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