HARRISON.
The Confederate scout who brought to General Lee the first news of Meade’s assignment
to command, and the positions of the Corps of the Army of the Potomac.
There were seven corps of the Army of the Potomac afield. We were informed on the 28th of the approximate positions of five of them,—three near Frederick and two near the base of South Mountain. The others, of which we had no definite information, we now know were the Sixth (Sedgwick’s), south of Frederick and east of the Monocacy, and the Twelfth, towards Harper’s Ferry.
On the 26th, General Hooker thought to use the Twelfth Corps and the garrison of Harper’s Ferry to strike the line of our communication, but General Halleck forbade the use of the troops of that post, when General Hooker asked to be relieved of the responsibility of command, and was succeeded by General Meade on the night of the 27th.
If General Hooker had been granted the authority for which he applied, he would have struck our trains, exposed from Chambersburg to the Potomac without a cavalryman to ride and report the trouble. General Stuart was riding around Hooker’s army, General Robertson was in Virginia, General Imboden at Hancock, and Jenkins’s cavalry was at our front with General Ewell.
By the report of the scout we found that the march of Ewell’s east wing had failed of execution and of the effect designed, and that heavy columns of the enemy were hovering along the east base of the mountain. To remove this pressure towards our rear, General Lee concluded to make a more serious demonstration and force the enemy to look eastward. With this view he changed direction of the proposed march north, by counter-orders on the night of the 28th, calling concentration east of the mountains at Cashtown, and his troops began their march under the last orders on the 29th.
It seems that General Hill misconstrued the orders of the day, or was confused by the change of orders, and was under the impression that he was to march by York and cross the Susquehanna towards Philadelphia or Harrisburg. He ordered his leading division under Heth to Cashtown, however, and followed with Pender’s division on the 30th, leaving orders for the division of R. H. Anderson to follow on the 1st. The purpose of General Lee’s march east was only preliminary,—a concentration about Cashtown.
General Ewell was ready to march for Harrisburg on the 29th, when orders reached him of the intended concentration at Cashtown. He was at Carlisle with Rodes’s and E. Johnson’s divisions and the reserve artillery; his other division under Early was at York. On the 30th, Rodes was at Heidlersburg, Early near by, and Johnson, with the reserve artillery, near Green Village.
Pettigrew’s brigade of Heth’s division, advancing towards Gettysburg on the 30th, encountered Buford’s cavalry and returned to Cashtown.
On the 29th, General Meade wired General Halleck,—
“If Lee is moving for Baltimore, I expect to get between his main army and that place. If he is crossing the Susquehanna, I shall rely upon General Couch, with his force, holding him, until I can fall upon his rear and give him battle, which I shall endeavor to do.... My endeavor will be, in my movements, to hold my force well together, with the hope of falling upon some portion of Lee’s army in detail.”[123]