To General Hunt, chief of artillery, "Have your limbers filled. Lee may be up to something in the morning, and we must be ready for him."
A band came up and played "Hail to the Chief!" the "Star-spangled Banner," and "Yankee Doodle." Soul-stirring the strains. The soldiers, lying on their arms, where they had fought, heard it, and responded with a cheer. Not all: for thousands were deaf and inanimate evermore.
No accurate statement of the number engaged in this great, decisive battle of the war can ever be given. Meade's march to Gettysburg was made with great rapidity. The Provost Marshal of the army, General Patrick, committed the great error of having no rear guard to bring up the stragglers, which were left behind in thousands, and who found it much more convenient to live on the excellent fare furnished by the farmers than to face the enemy. Meade's entire force on the field numbered probably from sixty to seventy thousand. The Rebel army had made slower marches, and the soldiers could not straggle; they were in an enemy's country. Lee, therefore, had fuller ranks than Meade. His force may be estimated at ninety thousand men.
The people of the North expressed their gratitude to the heroes who had won this battle, by pouring out their contributions for the relief of the wounded. The agents of the Christian and Sanitary Commissions were quickly on the ground, and hundreds of warm-hearted men and women hastened to the spot to render aid. The morning after the battle I saw a stout Pennsylvania farmer driving his two-horse farm wagon up the Baltimore pike, loaded down with loaves of soft bread which his wife and daughters had baked.
Tender and affecting are some of the incidents of the battle-field. A delegate of the Christian Commission passing among the wounded, came to an officer from South Carolina.
"Can I do anything for you?" he asked.
"No!" was the surly reply.
He passed on, but upon his return repeated the question, and received the same answer. The day was hot, the air offensive, from putrefying wounds, and the delegate was putting cologne on the handkerchiefs of the patients.
"Colonel, let me put some of this on your handkerchief."
The wounded man burst into tears. "I have no handkerchief."