I happen to know that General Meade felt keenly President Lincoln's severe criticism, though it was uttered in his usual, joking way. The General was an exceedingly sensitive man, and when he got to hear that the President compared him and his pursuit of Lee over the Potomac to an old woman shooing her geese over the river, he actually wanted to resign.
General Meade was every inch a soldier, as well as a gentleman, by birth and training.
In camp he was the most unpretentious looking of the General officers. His spectacled face, rather quiet, scholarly bearing, reminds me of professors or doctors whom we frequently see; they resemble him in appearance.
He always wore a slouch hat, and around his neck was invariably worn the old-fashioned leather stock, used in the Regular Army on recruits to keep their heads checked up.
He usually slept in an ambulance attached to Headquarters.
We learned that Lee had retreated the night before the impending battle, and early in the morning the cavalry were astir, in pursuit. I rode from Hagerstown to Williamsport, Md., with General Kilpatrick, following precisely the same road I had footed it when scouting, just before Bull Run. We passed through the deserted camps, in which the fires were still burning. The Rebels had so hurriedly left them that in many places their camp equipages were left behind.
Kilpatrick was mad. He was very mad—on seeing the enemy had all gotten away, and, putting spurs to his own horse, dashed ahead of his advance guard, and rode so recklessly that those of us not so well mounted had difficulty in keeping up.
He instinctively saw that there was no force in his immediate front, and, without paying any attention to the hundreds of Rebel stragglers who were on the road, he gave order to his command to hurry on to the river after him.
On reaching Williamsport, we made a little haul of stragglers, but Kilpatrick sat on his horse sideways, looking over the river into Virginia with an expression of disgust on his face that I shall never forget.
Some of the colored residents of the town told Kilpatrick of the enemy's manner of retreat. Not a Rebel was in sight, but they also notified him of a Rebel battery that was slyly masked in the woods over the river, intended as a deadly ambuscade for any troop that should precipitately follow too close.