The losses at Gettysburg were appalling. The estimate is 2834 killed, 13,709 wounded, 6643 missing, a total of 23,186 on the Federal side; the figures were only a trifle less on the Confederate side. But if such bloodshed carried grief into many a Northern household, at least there was not the cruel thought that life and limb, health and usefulness, had been sacrificed through incompetence and without advantage to the cause. It was true that the Northern general ought to have won, for he commanded more troops,[[45]] held a very strong defensive position, and fought a strictly defensive battle. But such had been the history of the war
that when that which ought to be done was done, the people felt that it was fair cause for rejoicing. Later there was fault-finding and criticism; but that during so many days so many troops on unfamiliar ground should be handled in such a manner that afterward no critic can suggest that something might have been done better, hardly falls among possibilities. The fact was sufficient that a most important and significant victory had been won. On the battlefield a stone now undertakes to mark the spot and to name the hour where and when the flood tide of rebellion reached its highest point, and where and when it began its slow and sure ebb. Substantially that stone tells the truth. Nevertheless the immediately succeeding days brought keen, counteracting disappointment. Expectation rose that the shattered army of Lee would never cross the Potomac; and the expectation was entirely reasonable, and ought to have been fulfilled. But Meade seemed to copy McClellan after Antietam. Spurred on by repeated admonitions from the President and General Halleck, he did, on July 10, catch up with the retreating army, which was delayed at Williamsport on the north bank of the river by the unusually high water. He camped close by it, and received strenuous telegrams urging him to attack. But he did not,[[46]] and
on the night of July 13 the Southern general successfully placed the Potomac between himself and his too tardy pursuer. Bitter then was the resentment of every loyal man at the North. For once the President became severe and sent a dispatch of such tenor that General Meade replied by an offer to resign his command. This Mr. Lincoln did not accept. Yet he was too sorely pained not to give vent to words which in fact if not in form conveyed severe censure. He was also displeased because Meade, in general orders, spoke of "driving the invaders from our soil;" as if the whole country was not "our soil"! Under the influence of so much provocation, he wrote to General Meade a letter reproduced from the manuscript by Messrs. Nicolay and Hay. It is true that on cooler reflection he refrained from sending this missive, but it is in itself sufficiently interesting to deserve reading:—"I have just seen your dispatch to General Halleck, asking to be relieved of your command because of a supposed censure of mine. I am very grateful to you for the magnificent success you gave the cause of the country at Gettysburg; and I am sorry now to be the author of the slightest pain to you. But I was in such deep distress myself that I could not restrain some expression of it. I have been oppressed nearly ever since the battle of Gettysburg by what appeared to be evidences that yourself and General Couch and General Smith were not seeking a collision with the enemy, but were trying to get him across the river without
another battle. What these evidences were, if you please, I hope to tell you at some time when we shall both feel better. The case, summarily stated, is this: You fought and beat the enemy at Gettysburg; and, of course, to say the least, his loss was as great as yours. He retreated; and you did not, as it seemed to me, pressingly pursue him; but a flood in the river detained him till, by slow degrees, you were again upon him. You had at least twenty thousand veteran troops directly with you, and as many more raw ones within supporting distance, all in addition to those who fought with you at Gettysburg, while it was not possible that he had received a single recruit; and yet you stood and let the flood run down, bridges be built, and the enemy move away at his leisure without attacking him. And Couch and Smith,—the latter left Carlisle in time, upon all ordinary calculation, to have aided you in the last battle at Gettysburg, but he did not arrive. At the end of more than ten days, I believe twelve, under constant urging, he reached Hagerstown from Carlisle, which is not an inch over fifty-five miles, if so much; and Couch's movement was very little different.
"Again, my dear general, I do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved in Lee's escape. He was within your easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection with our other late successes, have ended the war. As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely. If you could not safely attack Lee last
Monday, how can you possibly do so south of the river, when you can take with you very few more than two thirds of the force you then had in hand? It would be unreasonable to expect, and I do not expect [that] you can now effect much. Your golden opportunity is gone, and I am distressed immeasurably because of it.
"I beg you will not consider this a prosecution or persecution of yourself. As you had learned that I was dissatisfied, I have thought it best to kindly tell you why."
There was an odd coincidence during this momentous first week in July. During the preceding winter Mr. Lincoln had been exceedingly bothered by certain Democrats, notably that gentleman of unsavory repute, Fernando Wood, who had urged upon him all sorts of foolish schemes for "compromising" or "settling the difficulties,"—phrases which were euphemisms of the peace Democracy to disguise a concession of success to the South. The President endured these sterile suggestions with his wonted patience. But toward the close of June, Alexander H. Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, was seized with the notion that, if he should go to Washington on a personal mission to Mr. Lincoln, purporting to be about prisoners of war, he might then "indirectly ... turn attention to a general adjustment." Accordingly he set forth on his way to Fortress Monroe; but very inopportunely for his purposes it fell out that
the days of his journey were the very days in which General Lee was getting so roughly worsted at Gettysburg. So it happened that it was precisely on the day of the Southern retreat, July 4, that he notified the admiral in Hampton Roads that he was the "bearer of a communication in writing from Jefferson Davis, commander-in-chief of the land and naval forces of the Confederate States, to Abraham Lincoln, commander-in-chief of the land and naval forces of the United States;" and he asked for leave to proceed to Washington. But his ingenious phraseology was of no avail. Mr. Lincoln said: "The request of A.H. Stephens is inadmissible. The customary agents and channels are adequate for all needful communication and conference between the United States forces and the insurgents." Thus the shrewd instinct of the Northerner brought to naught a scheme conceived in the spirit of the old-time Southern politics, a scheme which was certainly clever, but which, without undue severity, may also be called a little artful and insidious; for Mr. Stephens himself afterward confessed that it had, for its ulterior purpose, "not so much to act upon Mr. Lincoln and the then ruling authorities at Washington as through them, when the correspondence should be published, upon the great mass of the people in the Northern States." The notion, disseminated among the people, that Mr. Lincoln would not listen to proposals for peace, would greatly help malcontents of the Fernando Wood school.