On the night of the 28th, orders were given to charge the enemy's works the next morning at 8 o'clock, and by daylight the Army was in line, awaiting the order to advance. It was well the order of execution was not given. The slaughter that would have ensued would have been without its fellow in the tales of the War.
Pickett at Gettysburg was a thing of Parade compared with what this would have been.
The troops would have gone over a space which thereafter would have been noted as the Field of Death.
Meade thought one way; Warren the other.
Warren was right, and Meade saw, in time, that he, himself, was wrong.
This act of Warren did not call for what was done him at Five Forks.
Back at Brandy Station.
The day passed, and in the night, the pickets cautioned to keep the fires going and then left to take care of themselves, Meade had his Army quietly slip away from out of sight of the defences they had only looked upon, and then, without hurry, back to the old camp at Brandy Station, where from the 2d of December, 1863, to May 3d, 1864, the camp life of Winter was unbroken, save for a day or two, taken up by the march to the Rapidan on February 6th, as a caution to Lee, who was somewhat restless to learn what the Army in front of him was doing.
Veteran Re-Enlistments.
Also the re-enlistments for the Veteran three years, accompanied by the furlough for thirty days.