Lee's New Position.

Thrice had the sun gone down on that ensanguined field, where one hundred and fifty thousand men had striven for the mastery and forty thousand sealed their devotion with their blood. Exhausted by their efforts, the Confederates thought only of making good their retreat. Gettysburg was immediately evacuated and both wings drawn back on the main body, so that, as now re-formed and contracted, Lee's army stretched from Oak Hill to the peach orchard. Behind this line, and under cover of its woods, he was now getting ready to retreat.

Such plain indications could hardly be overlooked.[75] A reconnoisance from the Union left found the Confederates retiring. During the night the Union troops went forward to the battlefield of the 2d.

Lee's lost opportunity on the 1st was as nothing to Meade's on the 3d. It came when the Confederates were in the confusion resulting from their repulse. It was lost, however, because the great captain was not there. Meade was unequal to exacting a supreme effort at this moment, either from his army or himself. To let slip this opportunity was to tempt fortune itself, and it never came again.

But if from any of the many causes alleged,[76] or all of them put together, the one chance out of a thousand, for which all this marching and fighting had been going on, had eluded Meade's grasp, or if it be conceded that he found Lee's new position so strong as to hold out no hope of a successful assault, history will still demand to know why this beaten army, short of ammunition, encumbered with its wounded, its prisoners, and its wagons, thirty to forty miles from the Potomac, with a mountain defile to pass and a wide river to cross, was suffered to march off unmolested with all its immense spoil, and not only to do that, but to remain eleven days between Gettysburg and the Potomac without being once seriously attacked.

That Lee could not long remain on Seminary Ridge, let his position be ever so strong, was a self-evident proposition. He had exhausted his means of attack, his army was cut down by more than twenty thousand men, his ammunition was nearly expended, nor could it be replenished short of Virginia. His means of defence were therefore extremely limited. If it had been possible to detain Lee where he was, even for a few days longer, his surrender was a foregone conclusion without firing another shot. But taking the situation as we find it, we do not see how he could have been more critically placed, if in the presence of an enterprising opponent. Lee's attitude after the battle savors far more of bravado than a desire to be attacked. To block his retreat it would have been necessary to seize the Monterey Pass immediately after the battle.[77] Meade had the shorter line. His cavalry would have kept Lee at bay until the infantry could come up. He should never have suffered Lee to put South Mountain between them without making an energetic effort to prevent it. As the Union army remained immovable until this was done, we have only to chronicle in brief the inglorious ending of an otherwise glorious campaign.

All the 4th the two armies lay in the positions just now described. Lee's direct line of retreat to the Potomac was by the Fairfield and Hagerstown road, which crossed the mountain below and behind him through the Monterey defile. To withdraw his army and trains by this one road was altogether impracticable. The trains and wounded were therefore started off during the afternoon of the 4th, in a drenching rain, by the Chambersburg road, under a strong escort of cavalry and artillery, but no infantry.[78] When stretched out on the road this train was seventeen miles long.

Being ordered to push on to the Potomac without halting, the sufferings of the wounded were horrible beyond description. Travelling all night and avoiding Chambersburg, this column struck across the country to Greencastle, and after fighting its way all day against detachments of Union cavalry, finally got to the Potomac at Williamsport, on the afternoon of the 5th, with the loss of a few wagons. After the escort had passed through Greencastle, the citizens turned out and attacked the wagons in the rear with axes, so disabling some and delaying the rest.

When the wagon train got there, the Potomac was found too high to be forded. The bridges were gone, and the trains could not get across that way.[79] So there Lee met his first check.

After giving his trains a twelve hours' start, Lee put his army in motion for the Potomac by way of Fairfield and Hagerstown, by daylight of the 5th.

The road being unencumbered by trains,[80] the Confederates were able to move with celerity and silence. As soon as his departure was discovered, the Fifth and Sixth Corps moved out in pursuit. But it was then too late. Lee had stolen a march on his pursuers. An officer of this force says of its tardy operations:—

"As we moved, a small rear-guard of the enemy retreated. We followed it up to Fairfield, in a gorge of the mountains. There we again waited for them to go on. Then only one brigade, with the cavalry, continued to follow them, while the rest of the corps turned off to the left, toward Boonsboro," to which point the main body was now directing its march. Lee had got the short road and left Meade the long one.

Lee's army was thus safe back again in the Cumberland Valley before Meade was ready to pursue.[81] Having abandoned the idea of forcing the Monterey Pass, and so following up and harassing the enemy's rear, we have just seen the infantry turning off to the south, on the Gettysburg side of South Mountain, as if to head off Lee from the Potomac by this roundabout way, or, in short, by a march of fifty miles to his thirty, and after giving him a start of ten. This was to force the Union army to efforts which had just proved so exhausting. Nothing could exceed the impotence of this pursuit. In reality, the march up to Gettysburg to find and attack Lee was now being repeated. But fate, not Meade, was so checking Lee at every point that but for the weakness or delays of his adversary the Confederate general could never have saved his army as he did.

Even before Lee could reach Fairfield, General French[82] had reoccupied Harper's Ferry, destroyed the enemy's pontoon train at Williamsport and Falling Waters, and captured the guards. Finding his means of crossing gone, nothing remained for Lee but to show a bold front until they could be restored. And the long dÉtour the Union army was making left him ample time in which to render his new position between Hagerstown and Williamsport so strong that when Meade[83] finally got his army up before it he again hesitated to attack. The tables were now fairly turned on him. His generals mostly shared in this feeling of respectful fear. Stung by the President's censure, Meade at last bestirred himself. Again he was too late. How often during this campaign have we been obliged to repeat those ill-omened words! In the language of the general-in-chief, Halleck:—

"Instead of attacking Lee in this position, with the swollen waters of the Potomac in his rear, without any means of crossing his artillery, and when a defeat must have caused the surrender of his entire army, he was allowed time to construct a pontoon bridge with lumber collected from canal-boats and the ruins of wooden houses, and on the morning of the 14th his army had crossed to the south side of the river. His rear-guard, however, was attacked by our cavalry and suffered considerable loss. Thus ended the rebel campaign north of the Potomac, from which important political and military results had been expected. Our own loss in this short campaign had been very severe; namely, 2,834 killed, 13,709 wounded, and 6,643 missing—in all, 23,182. We captured 3 guns, 41 standards, 13,621 prisoners, 28,178 small-arms."

The Confederate losses, considering that they were always the assailants, must have exceeded these figures.[84] As it is well known that Pickett's losses were suppressed by Lee's order, any compilation must be necessarily incomplete.

Ten whole days thus elapsed from the time Lee fell back defeated from Cemetery Ridge until he recrossed the Potomac. He had brought off his army, his plunder, with upward of four thousand Union prisoners, by his opponent's leave, as one might say. There is a saying that a British army may be gleaned in a retreat, but not reaped. So far, in this war, barren victories had been the rule, and fruitful ones the rare exception.

We do not find much to say in praise of a retreat that was nowhere seriously molested. It has, we know, been lauded as a marvel of skill. Lee's patience alone was severely tested. The crossing of the Potomac was effected without hinderance in the presence of Meade's whole army, partly by the bridge at Falling Waters, partly by the fords at Williamsport. True, the Union cavalry did a great deal of hard riding and scouting; but it, too, failed to destroy Lee's trains on the 6th, when it was in its power to have done so, and, in all probability, compelled his surrender.

FOOTNOTES:

---