Then suddenly the whole slope was wreathed in smoke and flame, accompanied with a noise like the roar of a thousand cataracts.
Was it a huge volcanic eruption? No. The Blue and the Gray had met. The smoke rose higher and higher, and spread wider and wider, hiding the sun, and then gently dropping back, hid from human eyes the dreadful tragedy.
But the battle went on and on, and the roar of the guns continued. After a while, when the sun was sinking to rest, there was a hush. The noise died away. The winds came creeping back from the west, and gently lifting the coverlet of smoke, revealed a strange sight.
The fields were all carpeted, a beautiful carpet, a costly carpet, more costly than axminster or velvet. The figures were horses and men all matted and woven together with skeins of scarlet thread.
The battle is over and Gettysburg has passed into history.
The moon and the stars come out, and the surgeons with their attendants appear with their knives and saws, and when morning came there were stacks of legs and arms standing in the fields like shocks of corn.
The two armies confronted each other all day long, but not a shot was fired. Up to noon that day, I think I can safely say there was not a man in either army, from the commanders-in-chief to the humblest private in the ranks, that knew how the battle had gone save one, and that one was Gen. Robert E. Lee.
About 4 o'clock in the afternoon, while the cavalrymen were grazing their horses in the rear of the infantry, a low, rumbling sound was heard resembling distant thunder, except that it was continuous. A private (one of my company) standing near me stood up and pointing toward the battlefield said, "Look at that, will you?" A number of us rose to our feet and saw a long line of wagons with their white covers moving toward us along the road leading to Chambersburg.
Then he used this strange expression: "That looks like a mice." A slang phrase often used at that time. He meant nothing more nor less than this: "We are beaten and our army is retreating."
The wagons going back over the same road that had brought us to Gettysburg told the story, and soon the whole army knew the fact. This is the first time Lee's army had ever met defeat.