Day after day the adversaries remained in line of battle facing each other.
Lee neither invited nor declined battle.
At last the Potomac subsided: Lee put his army in motion, and crossing on a pontoon at Falling Waters took up his position on the south bank of the river.
Stuart followed, bringing up the rear with his cavalry column; and the whole army was once more on the soil of Virginia.
They had come back after a great march and a great battle.
The march carried their flags to the south bank of the Susquehanna; the battle resulted in their retreat to the south bank of the Potomac. Thus nothing had been gained, and nothing lost. But alas! the South had counted on a great and decisive victory. When Lee failed to snatch that from the bloody heights of Gettysburg—when, for want of ammunition, and to guard his communications, he returned to the Potomac—then the people began to lose heart, and say that, since the death of Jackson, the cause was lost.
Gettysburg in fact is the turning point of the struggle. From that day dated the decadence of the Southern arms.
At Chancellorsville, the ascending steps of victory culminated—and stopped.
At Gettysburg, the steps began to descend into the valley of defeat, and the shadow of death.
What I shall show the reader in this final series of my memoirs, is Lee and his paladins—officers and privates of the old army of Northern Virginia—fighting on to the end, true in defeat as in victory, in the dark days as in the bright—closing up the thin ranks, and standing by the colors to the last.