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rendered Burnside's and Hooker's movements abortive in several instances, now were propitious. The Potomac was rising, and the rain was still falling. On the morning of the 13th I rode to General Meade's head-quarters. General Seth Williams, the ever-courteous Adjutant-General of the army, was in General Meade's tent. He said that Meade was taking a look at the Rebels.

"Do you think that Lee can get across the Potomac?" I asked.

"Impossible! The people resident here say that it cannot be forded at this stage of the water. He has no pontoons. We have got him in a tight place. We shall have reinforcements to-morrow, and a great battle will be fought. Lee is encumbered with his teams, and he is short of ammunition."

General Meade came in dripping with rain, from a reconnoissance. His countenance was unusually animated. He had ever been courteous to me, and while usually very reticent of all his intentions or of what was going on, as an officer should be, yet in this instance he broke over his habitual silence, and said, "We shall have a great battle to-morrow. The reinforcements are coming up, and as soon as they come we shall pitch in."

I rode along the lines with Howard in the afternoon. The Rebels were in sight. The pickets were firing at each other. There was some movement of columns.

"I fear that Lee is getting away," said Howard.

He sent an aide to Meade, with a request that he might attack.

“I can double them up," he said, meaning that, as he was on Lee's flank, he could strike an effective blow.

Kilpatrick was beyond Howard, well up towards Williamsport. "Lee is getting across the river, I think," said through a messenger.

It was nearly night. The attack was to be made early in the morning.

The morning dawned and Lee was south of the Potomac. That officer says:

"The army, after an arduous march, rendered more difficult by the rains, reached Hagerstown on the afternoon of the 6th and morning of the 7th July.

"The Potomac was found to be so much swollen by the rains that had fallen almost incessantly since our entrance into Maryland, as to be unfordable. Our communications with the south side were thus interrupted, and it was difficult to procure either ammunition or subsistence, the latter difficulty being enhanced by the high waters impeding the working of the neighboring mills. The trains with the wounded and prisoners were compelled to await at Williamsport the subsiding of the river and the construction of boats, as the pontoon bridge, left at Falling Waters, had been partially destroyed. The enemy had not yet made his appearance; but, as he was in condition to obtain large reinforcements, and our situation, for the reasons above mentioned, was becoming daily more embarrassing, it was deemed advisable to recross the river. Part of the pontoon bridge was recovered, and new boats built, so that by the 13th a good bridge was thrown over the river at Falling Waters.

"The enemy in force reached our front on the 12th. A position had been previously selected to cover the Potomac from Williamsport to Falling Waters, and an attack was awaited during that and the succeed ing day. This did not take place, though the two armies were in close proximity, the enemy being occupied in fortifying his own lines. Our preparations being completed, and the river, though still deep, being pronounced fordable, the army commenced to withdraw to the south the night of the 13th.

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"Ewell's corps forded the river at Williamsport, those of Longstreet and Hill crossed upon the bridge. Owing to the condition of the roads, the troops did not reach the bridge until after daylight of the 14th, and the crossing was not completed until 1 P. M., when the bridge was removed. The enemy offered no serious interruption, and the morement was attended with no loss of material except a few disabled wagons and two pieces of artillery, which the horses were unable to move through the deep mud. Before fresh horses could be sent back for them, the rear of the column had passed."

Kilpatrick was astir at daybreak; he moved into Williamsport. I accompanied his column. The Rebels were on the Virginia hills, jubilant at their escape. There were wagons in the river, floating down with the current, which had been capsized in the crossing. Kilpatrick pushed on to Falling Waters, fell upon Pettigrew's brigade, guarding the pontoons, captured two cannon and eight hundred men, in one of the most daring

Lee's Report.

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dashes of the war. It was poor satisfaction, however, when contrasted with what might have been done. The army was chagrined. Loud were the denunciations of Meade.

"Another campaign on the Rappahannock, boys," said one officer in my hearing.

"We shall be in our old quarters in a few days," said another.

General Meade has been severely censured for not attacking on the 13th. Lee had lost thirty thousand men. He had suffered a crushing defeat at Gettysburg. Enthusiasm had died out. His soldiers were less confident than they had been. His ammunition was nearly exhausted. He was in a critical situation.

Those were reasons why he should be attacked; but there were also reasons, which to Meade were conclusive, that the attack should not be made till the 14th: the swollen river,the belief that Lee had no means of crossing the Potomac,and the expected reinforcements. The delay was not from lack of spirit or over caution; but with the expectation of striking a blow which would destroy the Rebel army.

Lee went up the valley, while Meade pushed rapidly down the base of the Blue Ridge to Culpepper. But he was not in condition to take the offensive, so far from his base; and the two armies sat down upon the banks of the Rapidan, to rest after the bloody campaign.

20

CHAPTER XIX.

FROM THE RAPIDAN TO COLD HARBOR.

THERE are few months in the calendar of centuries that will have a more conspicuous place in history than the month of May, 1864. It will be remembered on account of the momentous events which took place in one of the greatest military campaigns of history. We are amazed, not by its magnitude merely, for there have been larger armies, heavier trains of artillery, greater preparations, in European warfare, but by a succession of events unparalleled for rapidity. We cannot fully comprehend the amount of endurance, the persistency, the hard marching, the harder fighting, the unwearied, cheerful energy and effort which carried the Army of the Potomac from the Rappahannock to the James in forty days, against the stubborn opposition of an army of almost equal numbers. There was not a day of rest, scarcely an hour of quiet. Morning, noon, and midnight, the booming of cannon and the rattling of musketry echoed unceasingly through the Wilderness, around the hillocks of Spottsylvania, along the banks of the North Anna, and among the groves of Bethesda Church and Cold Harbor.

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There were individual acts of valor, as heroic and soul-stirring as those of the old Cavaliers renowned in story and song, where all the energies of life were centred in one moment. There was the spirited advance of regiments, the onset of brigades, and the resistless charges of divisions, scenes which stir the blood and fire the soul; the hardihood, the endurance, the cool, collected, reserved force, abiding the time, the calm facing of death; the swift advance, the rush, the plunge into the thickest of the fight, where hundreds of cannon, where fifty thousand muskets, filled the air with iron hail and leaden rain.

The army wintered between the Rappahannock and the Rapidan. There had been a reduction and reconstruction of its corps, an incorporation of the First and Third with the

Fifth and Sixth, with reinforcements added to the Second. The Second was commanded by Major-General Hancock, the Fifth by Major-General Warren, the Sixth by Major-General Sedgwick.

These three corps, with three divisions of cavalry commanded by General Sheridan, composed the Army of the Potomac, commanded by Major-General Meade. The Ninth Corps, commanded by Major-General Burnside, was added when the army took up its line of march.

Lee was behind Mine Run, with his head-quarters at Orange Court-House, covering the advance to Richmond from that direction.

General Gillmore,

There was concentration everywhere. with what troops could be spared from the Department of the South, joined his forces to those on the Peninsula and at Suffolk under General Butler; Sigel commanded several thousand in the Shenandoah; Crook and Averell had a small army in Western Virginia; at Chattanooga, under Sherman and Thomas, was gathered a large army of Western troops; while Banks was up the Red River, moving towards Shreveport.

The dramatis persona were known to the public, but the part assigned to each was kept profoundly secret. There was discussion and speculation whether Burnside, from his encampment at Annapolis, would suddenly take transports and go to Wilmington, or up the Rappahannock, or the James, or the York. Would Meade move directly across the Rapidan and attack Lee in front, with every passage, every hill and ravine enfiladed by Rebel cannon? Or would he move his right flank along the Blue Ridge, crowding Lee to the seaboard? Would he not make, rather, a sudden change of base to Fredericksburg? None of the wise men, military or civil, in their speculations, indicated the line which General Grant adopted. The public accepted the disaster at Chancellorsville and the failure at Mine Run as conclusive evidence that a successful advance across the Rapidan by the middle fords was impossible, or at least improbable. So well was the secret kept, that, aside from the corps commanders, none in or out of the army, except the President and Secretary of War, had information of the line of march intended.

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