17. Next followed the cavalry raid of General Stoneman. On the 29th of April he crossed the Rappahannock with ten thousand men, tore up the Virginia Central Railroad, cut General Lee's communications, swept around within a few miles of Richmond, and then recrossed the Rappahannock in safety.
Lee Invades Pennsylvania.
18. General Lee now determined to carry the war into the North. In the first week of June he crossed the Potomac, and captured Hagerstown. On the 22d he entered Chambersburg, and then pressed on through Carlisle to within a few miles of Harrisburg. The militia of Pennsylvania was called out, and volunteers came pouring in from other States. General Hooker pushed forward to strike his antagonist. General Lee rapidly concentrated his forces near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. On the eve of battle the command of the Union army was transferred to General George G. Meade, who took up a position on the hills around Gettysburg. Here the two armies, each numbering about eighty thousand men, were brought face to face.
Battle of Gettysburg.
19. On the 1st of July the struggle began, and for three days the conflict raged. The battle reached its climax on the 3d, when a Confederate column, three miles long, headed by the Virginians under General Pickett, made a final charge on the Union center. But the onset was in vain, and the men who made it were mowed down with terrible slaughter. The victory remained with the National army, and Lee was obliged to turn back to the Potomac. The entire Confederate loss was nearly thirty thousand; that of the Federals twenty-three thousand one hundred and eighty-six. General Lee withdrew his forces into Virginia, and the Union army resumed its position on the Potomac.
Conscription in the North.
20. The administration of President Lincoln was beset with many difficulties. The last calls for volunteers had not been fully met. The anti-war party of the North denounced the measures of the government. On the 3d of March the Conscription Act was passed by Congress, and the President ordered a draft of three hundred thousand men. The measure was bitterly opposed, and in many places the draft-officers were resisted. On the 13th of July, in the city of New York, a mob rose in arms, demolished buildings, burned the colored orphan asylum, and killed about a hundred people. For three days the authorities were set at defiance; but a force of regulars and volunteers gathered at the scene, and the riot was suppressed.
21. Only about fifty thousand men were obtained by the draft. But volunteering was quickened by the measure, and the employment of substitutes soon filled the ranks. In October the President issued another call for three hundred thousand men. By these measures the columns of the Union army were made more powerful than ever. In the armies of the South, on the other hand, there were already symptoms of exhaustion. On the 20th of June in this year West Virginia was separated from the Old Dominion and admitted as the thirty-fifth State of the Union.