Once more the Union commander was changed. Upon the modest shoulders of General George Gordon Meade fell the heavy responsibility of saving the riches of the Middle States and the cause of the Union, for all felt that a Confederate victory in the heart of the North would bring the tragedy to a close. Lee was so bold and confident that he was hardly more cautious in the disposition of his troops than he had been when fighting on his own soil. Meade secured a strong position on the hills about the since famous village of Gettysburg, and awaited attack; he had somewhat more than 90,000 men, who were, however, still laboring under the delusion that Lee was invincible and that their commanders were unequal to those of the adversary. Without waiting for the return of his cavalry and without trying, like Napoleon at Austerlitz, to entice the Federals away from their fortifications, General Lee pressed forward. On July 1 the Confederates gained some advantage in the fighting; on the second day they held their own; but on the third day they attempted, somewhat after the manner of Burnside at Fredericksburg, the impossible, and the best army the South ever had was hopelessly beaten. About 30,000 of their brave men were dead, wounded, or missing. Meade had not suffered so great a loss, and he had saved the cause of his Government. After a day of waiting the Confederate army took up its march unmolested toward northern Virginia. While the people of the North rejoiced at their deliverance, the news came that Grant had captured Vicksburg and all the 30,000 men who had defended that important point. The Mississippi went on its way “unvexed to the sea,” as Lincoln said, for New Orleans had long since fallen and the upper river had been cleared of all resistance. At only one point on the long line from Washington to Vicksburg had the Confederates held their own—Chattanooga, whence Bragg had retreated earlier in the year and where the next great battle was to be fought.
Hastily Davis ordered his available regiments to Bragg, who held the mountain ridges south of Chattanooga. Lee, who felt strong enough to hold Meade in check in northern Virginia, sent away Longstreet with his veterans. September 19, Rosecrans attacked Bragg on his impregnable hills, and after two days of heroic fighting and appalling losses he retired to the city. Bragg had won a victory similar in every respect to that which crowned Meade's efforts at Gettysburg. Though slow, unpopular with officers and men, and unimaginative, he soon seized the strong points on the river above and below the city, and Rosecrans was surrounded, besieged, for the single, almost impassable road to Nashville and the North would not bear the burden of necessary supplies. If Bragg had proved watchful and alert, it would have been only a matter of time when the Federals would have been driven by famine to surrender.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Mr. Gamaliel Bradford has published some extremely interesting studies of the war-time leaders, of which, Lee, the American (1912) is by far the most important, though his Confederate Portraits (1914) including character sketches of most of the eminent Southern generals, offer a great deal that is suggestive. In volume IV of Mr. Rhodes's History there are two chapters which treat of the life of the people of North and South in the most interesting manner. In addition to the more general works already cited, one may turn to George C. Gorham's Life and Public Services of Edwin M. Stanton (1889); George H. Haynes's Charles Sumner in American Crises biographies; Henry Cleveland's Alexander H. Stephens in Public and in Private (1866); A. B. Hart's Salmon Portland Chase in American Statesmen series; Frederic Bancroft's The Life of William H. Seward (1900); and Carl Schurz's Reminiscences (1907-08); H. A. Wise's Seven Decades of the American Union (1876); and J. W. DuBose's The Life and Times of William L. Yancey (1892).
The diplomatic history of the war will be found in J. M. Callahan's Diplomatic History of the Southern Confederacy (1901); J. W. Foster's A Century of American Diplomacy (1900); Charles Francis Adams's Charles Francis Adams (1900), in American Statesmen series; Charles Francis Adams's Lee at Appomatox (1909); and Transatlantic Solidarity (1913); and Pierce Butler's Judah P. Benjamin, in American Crises biographies.
Of contemporary accounts to be added to those already mentioned are W. T. Sherman's Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman (1875), and especially the Home Letters of General Sherman, edited by M. A. DeWolfe Howe (1909); G. B. McClellan's McClellan's Own Story (1887); E. A. Pollard's A Southern History of the War (1866); Horace Greeley's The American Conflict (1864-67); and Jefferson Davis's Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (1881).