XIX
GETTYSBURG, JULY 1–3, 1863
In the Eastern field of operations in the American Civil War, McClellan’s organization of the Army of the Potomac had given him a well-disciplined force, with which he was facing General Joseph Johnston at the opening of 1862. But the Peninsular Campaign which McClellan entered upon early in the year, with the bloody fighting at Fair Oaks in May, and the Seven Days’ Battles in May and June, resulted in the withdrawal of the Northern forces. There followed Pope’s defeat near Bull Run. The forward movement was a failure. The Northern forces, only four miles from Richmond in June, were practically defending Washington in September. The desperate battle of Antietam checked Lee’s movement into Maryland, but was not decisive. Burnside’s costly defeat at Fredericksburg in December closed a gloomy year in the East, which to many seemed to show that the South could more than hold its own. The new year brought a renewal of disaster to the Northern arms in Hooker’s defeat in the hard-fought battle of Chancellorsville. But the tide was to be turned by one of the crucial events of military history, which was close at hand.—Editor.
The fall of Vicksburg, though a terrible blow to the South, was not a sudden one: to all intelligent eyes it had for some weeks been impending; but that Lee could be defeated seemed a thing impossible. Because so long unconquered, it had come to be accepted that he was unconquerable.
Hooker soon recovered from the daze into which he had been thrown at Chancellorsville. His confidence in himself was not broken by his misfortune. Instead of, like Burnside, manfully shouldering most of the responsibility of his failure, Hooker vehemently accused his lieutenants of misconduct, and faced the new situation with as much resolution as if he had the prestige of a victor. The Army of the Potomac, never down in heart except for a moment, plucked up courage forthwith and girded itself for new encounters.
The South, meanwhile, was still rejoicing over Chancellorsville, for the cloud on the southwestern horizon was at first no bigger than a man’s hand. Longstreet joined Lee from Suffolk with two divisions, swelling the Army of Northern Virginia to eighty thousand or more. Never before had it been so numerous, so well appointed, or in such good heart. The numerical advantage which the Federals had heretofore enjoyed was at this time nearly gone, because thousands of enlistments expired which could not immediately be made good; volunteering had nearly ceased, and the new schemes for recruiting were not yet effective.
Lee took the initiative early in June,[243] full of the sense of the advantage to be gained from a campaign on Northern soil. War-worn Virginia was to receive a respite; Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, as well as Washington, might be terrorized, and perhaps captured. If only the good-fortune so far enjoyed would continue, the Union’s military strength might be completely wrecked, hesitating Europe won over to recognition, and the cause of the South made secure.
With these fine and not at all extravagant anticipations, Lee put in motion his three great corps under the lieutenant-generals Ewell (Jackson’s successor), Longstreet, and A. P. Hill. Longstreet was ill at ease. Vicksburg, now in great danger, he thought could only be saved by reinforcing Bragg and advancing rapidly on Cincinnati, in which case Grant might be drawn north. Notwithstanding Longstreet’s urgency, Lee persisted.[244] Ewell, pouring suddenly down the Shenandoah Valley, “gobbled up,” as Lincoln put it, Milroy and his whole command of some four thousand, June 13th, and presently from Maryland invaded Pennsylvania. Longstreet was close behind: while the head of Ewell’s column had been nearing the Potomac, A. P. Hill, who had remained at Fredericksburg to watch Hooker, as yet inactive on Stafford Heights, broke camp and followed northwestward. Ewell seized Chambersburg a few days later, then appeared at Carlisle, and even shook Harrisburg with his cannon. The North had, indeed, cause for alarm; the farmers of the invaded region were in a panic. “Emergency men,” enlisted for three months, gathered from New York, Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania to the threatened points. The great coast cities were face to face with a menace hitherto unexperienced. Were they really about to be sacked? What was to be done?
There was no indecision either at Washington or in the Army of the Potomac. Lincoln’s horse-sense, sometimes tripping, but oftener adequate to deal with unparalleled burdens, homely, terse, and unerring in its expression, was at its best in these days. To Hooker, meditating movements along and across the Rappahannock, he wrote: “I would not take any risk of being entangled upon the river like an ox jumped half over a fence, and liable to be torn by dogs in front and rear without a fair chance to gore one way or kick the other.”[245] And again: “If the head of Lee’s army is at Martinsburg (near the Potomac), and the tail of it on the plank-road between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the animal must be very slim somewhere. Could you not break him?” “Fret him and fret him,” was the President’s injunction to Hooker, regarding the advance of Lee. Well-poised, good-humored, constant, Lincoln gave no counsel to Hooker in these days that was not sound.
Indeed, at this time, Hooker needed little admonition. Alert and resourceful, he no sooner detected the movement of Lee than he suggested an advance upon Richmond, which was thus left unguarded. Lee, of course, had contemplated the possibility of such a move, and, with a nod toward Washington, had joked about “swapping queens.” The idea, which Hooker did not press, being disapproved, Hooker, turning toward Lee, proceeded to “fret him and fret him,” his conduct comparing well with his brilliant management at the opening of the campaign of Chancellorsville. The cavalry, greatly improved by him, under Pleasonton, with divisions commanded by Buford, Duffie, and Gregg, was serviceable as never before, matching well the troopers of Stuart at Brandy Station, Aldie, and Middleburg. Screened on his left flank by his cavalry, as, on the other hand, Lee was screened by a similar body on his right, Hooker marched in columns parallel to those of his foe and farther east, yet always interposing between the enemy and Washington. As June drew to its end the Confederate advance was near Harrisburg, but the Federals were not caught napping. Hooker stood at Frederick, in Maryland, his corps stretched on either hand to cover Washington and Baltimore, touching hands one with the other, and all confronting the foe.
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