This was the greatest force ever surrendered in America, though it was only about one-sixth of that of Marshal Bazaine and his army at Metz seven years afterward. Thousands of small arms, hundreds of cannon, and all the remaining ammunition and stores of the Confederates were the other fruits of this great Union victory, by which the prospect of ultimate success to the Confederacy was either destroyed or long postponed, and by which in particular the great central river of the United States was permitted once more to flow unvexed from the confluence of the Missouri to the Gulf.
GETTYSBURG.
The battle of Gettysburg is properly included among the great battles of the world. It was the greatest conflict that has thus far occurred in America. The losses relative to the numbers engaged were not as great as those at Antietam, Spottsylvania, and a few other bloody struggles of our war; but in the aggregate the losses were greatest. Gettysburg was in truth the high tide of the American Civil War. Never before and never afterward was there a crisis such as that which broke in the dreadful struggle for the mastery of Cemetery Ridge.
The invasion of the Northern States by General Lee had been undertaken at the close of the previous summer. That invasion had ended disastrously at the battle of Antietam. Once more the Confederate commander would make the trial. So well had he been able to beat back every invasion of Virginia by the Union forces that he now thought to end the war by turning its tide of devastation into Pennsylvania.
Doubtless Lee realized that he was placing everything upon the cast of a die. He undertook the campaign with a measure of confidence. He, almost as much as Grant, was a taciturn man, not much given to revelations of his purposes and hopes. No doubt he was somewhat surprised at the successful rising of the Union forces against him. Besides the Army of the Potomac, Pennsylvania seemed to rise for the emergency.
It has not generally been observed that before the great battle General Meade was in a position seriously to threaten the Confederate rear. Armies in the field rarely meet each other at the place and time expected. There is always something obscure and uncertain in the oncoming of the actual conflict. The fact is that General Lee was receding somewhat at the time of the crisis. Then it was that he determined to fight a great battle, and if successful then march on Washington. Should he not be successful, he would keep a way open by direct route for retreat into Virginia.
By the first of July, 1863, a situation had been prepared which signified a decisive battle with far-reaching consequences to the one side or the other, accordingly as victory should incline to this or to that. By this date General Reynolds, who commanded the advance line of the Union army, met the corresponding line of the Confederates at the village of Gettysburg, and the rest followed as if by logical necessity.
On July 1 and 2, the great body of the Union and Confederate armies came up to the position where battle had already begun between the advance divisions and the pressure of the one side upon the other became greater and greater with each hour. At the first the Confederate impact was strongest. General Reynolds was killed. Reinforcements were hurried up on both sides. General Howard, who succeeded Reynolds, selected Cemetery Hill, south of the town of Gettysburg, and there established the Union line.
General Meade arrived on the field on the afternoon of the first, and the two armies were thrown rapidly into position. That of the Federals extended in the form of a fishhook from Little Round Top by way of Round Top and along Cemetery Ridge through the cemetery itself, by the way of the gate, and then bending to the right, formed the bowl of the hook, which extended around as far as Culp's Hill and Wolf Creek. The ground was elevated and the convexity was toward the enemy.