One hundred wagons and seventy-four men were thus quietly cut out from the Rebel trains.
I saw the prisoners as they entered Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. There were several negroes among them.
"As soon as I heard dat we was in de hands of de Yankees, I was mighty glad, sir, 'cause we darkees want to get to de Norf," he said.
"Why do you want to get to the North?"
"'Cause we be free up here. We don't get much to eat in the Souf," he said.
At the head of this company of prisoners marched a man with downcast eyes, sunburned, dusty, dressed in gray, with a black feather in his hat. His name was Fitz Hugh Miller. He was a Pennsylvanian. It was he who arrested Cook, one of John Brown's accomplices, and delivered him over to Governor Wise. Cook was tried, found guilty, and hung. When the war broke out, Miller went South, and was a captain in Lee's army. The people of Chambersburg knew him. He was a traitor.
"Hang him!" they shouted. "A rope!" "Get a rope!" There was a rush of men and women towards him. They were greatly excited. Some picked up stones to hurl at him, some shook their fists in his face, but the guards closed round him, and hurried the pale and trembling wretch off to prison as quickly as possible, and saved him from a violent death.
General Lee had been successful in taking Harper's Ferry, but he was not in position to spring upon the North. The eastern gates were wide open. Burnside had pushed D. H. Hill and Longstreet down the Mountain, and the whole Yankee army which he intended to keep out of the Antietam and Cumberland valleys was pouring upon him. He had been successful in most of his battles. He had driven McClellan from Richmond to the gunboats, had defeated Pope at Groveton, had taken eleven thousand prisoners and immense supplies at Harper's Ferry. All that he had to do now was to defeat the new Army of the Potomac in a great pitched battle; then he could move on to Philadelphia and dictate terms of peace.
He resolved to concentrate his army, choose his ground, and give battle to McClellan. He must do that before he could move on. The advance of the Rebel army towards Pennsylvania roused the citizens of that Commonwealth to take active measures for its defense.