In the same month followed the engagements of Middleburg and Upperville, in each of which the "Harris Light" participated with great éclat, charging in face of the enemy's guns, forming in platoon under fire, and routing him in splendid style. At Upperville, Kilpatrick received orders to charge the town. With drawn sabres and shouts which made the mountains and plains resound, they rushed upon the foe. The encounter was terrific. The enemy's horse were driven through the village of Paris, and finally through Ashby's Gap upon their own infantry columns in the Shenandoah Valley. At Rector's Cross-Roads, where Kilpatrick ordered the "Harris Light" to charge the enemy's battery, as they were forming, a fatal bullet pierced Glazier's horse, and it fell dead under him. Fortunately he was not dragged down in the fall, and as he struck the ground a riderless horse belonging to an Indiana company came up. Its owner, a sergeant, had been shot dead, and, rapidly mounting, Lieutenant Glazier rode forward with his regiment as they valiantly charged the enemy's position.
These actions were succeeded by the battle of Gettysburg (July first, second and third), in which the disasters of Chancelorsville and Fredericksburg were fully retrieved, and the rebel army, under Lee, received a blow so staggering in its effects as to result in a loss of prestige, and all hope in the ultimate success of their cause. Prior to this battle the Confederates had warred upon the North aggressively; thenceforward they were compelled to act upon the defensive. During the progress of this great and (so far as the ultimate fate of the Confederacy was concerned) decisive battle, the cavalry, including the brigade to which our subject was attached, performed brilliant service. They held Stuart's force effectually at bay, and while the retreat of the rebel army was in progress their services were in constant requisition. On the first day of the battle, General John Buford, commanding the Third Cavalry Division, was in position on the Chambersburg Pike, about two miles west of the village. Early in the forenoon the vanguard of the rebel army appeared in front of them, and our dauntless troopers charged the enemy vigorously, and drove them back upon their reserves.
The second day of the battle was spent by the cavalry in hard, bold and bloody work, in collision with their old antagonists, Stuart, Lee and Hampton. Charge succeeded charge; the carbine, pistol and sabre were used by turns; the artillery thundering long after the infantry around Gettysburg had sunk to rest exhausted with the carnage of the weary day. Stuart, however, was driven back on his supports, and badly beaten.
Upon the third day the sun rose bright and warm upon the bleached forms of the dead strewn over the sanguinary field; upon the wounded, and upon long, glistening lines of armed men ready to renew the conflict. Each antagonist, rousing every element of power, seemed resolved upon victory or death. Finally victory saluted the Union banners, and with great loss the rebel army sounded the retreat. "Thus," says Glazier in his "Battles for the Union"—"the Battle of Gettysburg ended—the bloody turning-point of the rebellion—the bloody baptism of the redeemed republic. Nearly twenty thousand men from the Union ranks had been killed and wounded, and a larger number of the rebels, making the enormous aggregate of at least forty thousand, whose blood was shed to fertilize the Tree of Liberty."
During this sanguinary battle; the cavalry were in daily and hourly conflict with the enemy's well-trained horse under their respective dashing leaders. The sabre was no "useless ornament," but a deadly weapon, and "dead cavalrymen" and their dead chargers, were sufficiently numerous to have drawn forth an exclamation of approval from even so exacting a commander as "Fighting Joe Hooker." Haggerstown, Boonsboro', Williamsport and Falling Waters, all attested the great efficiency of the cavalry arm, and at the end of the month it was an assured, confident and capable body of dragoons, that, according to Captain Glazier, "crossed the Rapidan for, as they believed, the purpose of a continued advance movement against the enemy."
And here, parenthetically, we may observe, that he, and other recent writers (Mr. Lossing being an exception), are scarcely accurate in so designating the river crossed by them as the Rapidan. It was the chief tributary of the Rappahannock, while two sister streams, which together form the Pamunkey, are known to local topography as the North and South Rapid Anna rivers.
It was a pleasant locality, and the "Harris Light" encamped there for several weeks, having no occupation more exciting or belligerent than picket duty. Duties of a more stirring character, were, however, awaiting them, and as these are intimately associated with the career of the subject of this biography, the delineation of whose life is the purpose of the writer, we will give them something more than a cursory notice.
We will first, however, take the opportunity of introducing a letter from our young cavalryman to his parents, illustrative in some measure of his intelligence and soldierly qualities, while it is no less so of his sense of filial duty:
Headquarters Harris Lgt. Cavalry,
Near Hartwood Church, Virginia,