XXVIII. — UNSHAKEN.
The sun was sinking red and baleful, when I reached Stuart, beyond the left wing of the army.
From the afternoon of the second to this night of the third of July, the cavalry had met that of the enemy in stubborn conflict. The columns had hurled together. General Hampton had been severely wounded in a hand-to-hand encounter with sabres, while leading his men. Stuart had narrowly escaped death or capture in the mêlée; and Fitz Lee had fought hilt to hilt with the Federal horsemen, repulsing them, and coming back laughing, as was his wont.
All these scenes I have passed over, however. The greater drama absorbed me. The gray horsemen were fighting heroically; but what was that encounter of sabres, when the fate of Gettysburg was being decided at Cemetery Hill?
So I pass over all that, and hasten on now to the sequel. Memory finds few scenes to attract it in the days that followed Gettysburg.
But I beg the reader to observe that I should have no scenes of a humiliating character to draw. Never was army less “whipped” than that of Lee after this fight! Do you doubt that statement, reader? Do you think that the Southerners were a disordered rabble, flying before the Federal bayonets? a flock of panic-stricken sheep, hurrying back to the Potomac, with the bay of the Federal war-dogs in their ears?
That idea—entertained by a number of our Northern friends—is entirely fanciful.
Lee’s army was not even shaken. It was fagged, hungry, out of ammunition, and it retired,—but not until it had remained for twenty-four hours in line of battle in front of the enemy, perfectly careless of, even inviting, attack.
“I should have liked nothing better than to have been attacked,” said Longstreet, “and have no doubt I should have given those who tried, as bad a reception as Pickett received."{1}
{Footnote 1: His words.}