Coffin considered. “I see what you mean. They are a little alike.... Three Oaks!”
“I used to think,” said Billy, “that I’d be right happy if I could kill you. That was before Port Republic. Then I used to think I’d be right happy when Allan Gold had beat spelling into me and I’d be made sergeant. And after Chancellorsville I thought I’d be right happy if General Jackson got well. But I’ve thought right along, ever since White Oak Swamp, that I’d be right happy if the Sixty-fifth had back the only colonel I’ve ever cared much for, and that air Richard Cleave!”
In the afternoon the Sixty-fifth came to the town of Greencastle. It looked a thriving place, and it had shops and stores filled with the most beautiful and tempting goods. Back home, the goods were all gone from the stores, the old stock assimilated and the new never appearing. The shop windows of Greencastle looked like fairyland, a hundred Christmases all in one. “Look-a-there! Look at that ironware!”—“Look at them shirts and suspenders! Coloured handkerchiefs.”—“Fancy soap and cologne and toothbrushes!”—“I wish I might send Sally that pink calico and some ribbons, and a hoop.”—“Look at that plough—that’s something new!”—“Figured velvet waistcoats.”—“Lord have mercy! this is the sinfullest town of plutocrats!”—“Try them with Confederate money.“—“Sure Old Dick said we mightn’t take just a little?”—“Oh, me! oh, me! there’s a shoe-store and a hat-store and a drug-store.”—“Say, Mr. Storekeeper, would you take for that pair of shoes a brand-new fifty-dollar Richmond Virginia bank note with George Washington and a train of cars on it?”—“He won’t sell. This gilded town’s got so much money it doesn’t want any more—tired of money.”—“Disgusting Vanity Fair kind of a place! Glad the colonel isn’t going to halt us!”—Don’t straggle, men!—“No, sir; we aren’t!”
Camp was clean beyond Greencastle—a lovely camp quite removed from Vanity Fair. Apparently the quartermasters had been able to buy. There was coffee for supper, real coffee, real sugar; there were light biscuits and butter and roast lamb. A crystal stream purled through the meadows; upon the hilltops wheat, partly shocked, stood against the rosy sky. The evening was cool and sweet and the camp-fires for a long way, up and down and on either side the road, burned with a steady flame. The men lay upon the earth like dusty acorns shaken from invisible branches. At the foot of the hills the battery and wagon horses cropped the sweet grass. The good horses!—their ribs did not show as they did on the Virginia side of the Potomac. They were faring well in Pennsylvania. Rank and file, men and horses, guns and wagon train, the Second Corps, Rodes and Jubal Early and “Alleghany” Johnson, and “Dear Dick Ewell” at the head,—the Second Corps was in spirits. To-night it was as buoyant as a cork or a rubber ball. Where there were bands the bands played, played the sprightliest airs in their repertory. Harry Hays’s Creoles danced, leaping like fauns in the dying sunset and the firelight, in a trodden space beneath beech trees.
The next morning Rodes and Johnson pursued the road to Chambersburg, but Early’s division took the Gettysburg and York road, having orders to cut the Northern Central Railroad running from Baltimore to Harrisburg, and to destroy the bridge across the Susquehanna at Wrightsville and rejoin at Carlisle. Ahead went Gordon’s Georgia brigade and White’s battalion of cavalry.
The town of Gettysburg, where they made boots and shoes, lay among orchards and gardens at the foot of the South Mountain. It numbered four thousand inhabitants, a large place for those days. It lay between the waters that drain into the Susquehanna and the waters that drain into the Potomac and commanded all the country roads. On the outskirts of this place, a place not marked out on that day from other places on the map, White’s cavalry encountered a regiment of militia. The militia did not stand, but fled to either side the macadamized road, through the midsummer fields. A hundred and seventy-five were taken prisoner. On through Gettysburg marched Gordon and the cavalry, the people watching from the windows, and took the pike to York. Behind them came “Old Jube,” marching in light order, having sent his trains to Chambersburg, “excepting the ambulances, one medical wagon for a brigade, the regimental ordnance wagons, one wagon with cooking-utensils for each regiment, and fifteen empty wagons to gather supplies with.”
It came on to rain. The troops bivouacked somewhat comfortlessly a mile or two out on the York road. Two thousand rations were found in a train of cars. When they had been removed the cars were set afire, and in addition a railroad bridge hard by. These burned with no cheer in the flames seen through a thick veil of chilly rain. “I don’t care if I never see Gettysburg again!” said the division.
At dawn rang the bugles. The rain was over, the sun came up, breakfast was good, the country smiled, the division had a light heart. All this day they made a good march, through a pleasant country, leading to York. The cavalry was on ahead toward Hanover Junction, destroying railroad bridges. Gordon and his Georgians acted vanguard for the infantry. Of the main body, Brigadier-General William Smith with the Thirty-first, Forty-ninth, and Fifty-second Virginia headed the column. By reaped wheat and waving corn, by rich woods and murmuring streams, under blue sky and to the song of birds, through a land of plenty and prosperity, the grey column moved pleasantly on to York, and at sunset bivouacked within a mile or two of that place.
Out to Gordon’s camp-fire came a deputation—the mayor of York and prominent citizens. Gordon, handsome and gallant, received them with his accustomed courtesy. “Their object,” he reports, “being to make a peaceable surrender, and ask for protection to life and property. They returned, I think, with a feeling of assured safety.”
The next day was Sunday—a clear midsummer Sunday, the serene air filled with church bells. Gordon’s men, occupying York, found well-dressed throngs upon the sidewalks, in the doorways, leaning from the windows. Confederate soldiers had always to hope that the inner man could not be hidden, but shone excellently forth from the bizarrest ragged apparel. Sunburnt, with longish hair, gaunt yet, despite a fortnight with the flesh pots of this Egypt, creature of shred and patches and all covered with the whitish dust of a macadamized road—it needed some insight to read how sweet and sound, on the whole, was the kernel within so weather-beaten a shell. Now Gordon was the Southern gentleman at his best. “Confederate pride, to say nothing of Southern gallantry,” reports Gordon, “was subjected to the sorest trial by the consternation produced among the ladies of York.... I assured these ladies that the troops behind me, though ill-clad and travel-stained, were good men and brave; that beneath their rough exteriors were hearts as loyal to women as ever beat in the breasts of honourable men; that their own experience and the experience of their mothers, wives, and sisters at home had taught them how painful must be the sight of a hostile army in their town; that under the orders of the Confederate Commander-in-Chief both private property and noncombatants were safe; that the spirit of vengeance and rapine had no place in the bosoms of these dust-covered but knightly men; and I closed by pledging to York the head of any soldier under my command who destroyed private property, disturbed the repose of a single home, or insulted a woman.”