When I saw so indisputably that everybody else was going to leave town, I concluded that I might as well go too, and I stood not on the order of my going, but went at once.
On the occasion of President Cleveland's visit to Gettysburg, it was my pleasure, as well as my business as a newspaper man, to accompany that party. I heard then one of the old residents—one of the "reliable old liars"—tell a distinguished party that the Rebel band played "Dixie" on the square of the town at 1 P. M. on that day.
I want to say that is not true. There was lots of music at 1 P. M., but there were no bands playing that day that I ever heard of. It was late in the afternoon when we had our parade through the streets of Gettysburg to the music of booming cannon, screeching shell, and the sharp notes of musketry.
This music was in the air all around us, accompanied by the groans and cries of the wounded and dying men, who were being piled into the court house and churches of the old burg.
I managed to crowd my frenzied horse through the dense mass of soldiers, wagons, etc., who were surging up the main street toward Cemetery Hill.
I got there just as soon as I could, too.
On reaching the brow of the hill, I was gratified and surprised to see General Howard sitting on his horse, quite alone, in the lot to the right of the cemetery gate, or across the road from it.
All of this time, the men of the Eleventh Corps, which, in the retreat led the way, had been coming steadily up the hill from town and kept on going down over the hill on the other side, like so many sheep that follow a leader blindly over a fence.
It never occurred to me that there would be any halt then, and I assert here, bluntly, my opinion, as being unprejudiced and based solely on the events as they actually occurred to me at that day, that General Howard had not, at that hour, any other expectation than to retreat further back. He certainly had not made any effort whatever to stop the rushing to the rear of his men of the Eleventh Corps. They not only swarmed up the one road, but came straggling through the by-ways and fields, skipping over the stone fence, and, unmolested, kept going on farther back, as if it were a matter of course.
I stopped on the side of the road, near General Howard that I might look around from this elevation.