Gettysburg (89 page)

The request was not granted by Henry Halleck. Although he had been deeply distressed by Lee’s successful withdrawal across the Potomac, Abraham Lincoln rejected pressures to replace Meade. He, more than anyone, knew that the Spanish-born Pennsylvanian was as good as they got in the East, and that if he was not utterly irreplaceable, neither were the available alternatives so superior that Meade’s ouster was even worth considering.

In a letter that he drafted but never sent to Meade, Lincoln admonished, “I do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved in Lee’s escape. He was within your easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection with our other late successes, have ended the war.” To Gideon Welles, Lincoln said of the general, “‘He has made a great mistake, but we will try him farther.’”

In time, Lincoln was able to mask his disappointment behind the outward expression of simple humor that served him so well throughout his life. Conversing with Meade many weeks later, Lincoln asked, “‘Do you know, general, what your attitude toward Lee for a week after the battle reminded me of?’” Answered Meade (warily, one imagines), “‘No, Mr. President, what is it?’” Replied Lincoln, “‘I’ll be hanged if I could think of anything else, than an old woman trying to shoo her geese across a creek.’”

T
he 50,000 or so men who returned with Lee into Virginia had differing opinions regarding their three days’ fighting at Gettysburg. “You are aware the armies met at G.,” a member of Ewell’s staff wrote in a letter on July 12, “and after whipping and driving them many miles the first day, they secured so strong a natural position, which they strengthened by works, that after two days trial we found impracticable from the scarcity of artillery ammunition and the loss of many men to attempt a further assault and consequently withdrew our forces.” “The army of Northern Virginia has not been, and will not be ‘whipped’ by yankees,” insisted a defiant North Carolina soldier at the end of this campaign. “We simply failed to take a position which no amount of courage or endurance, nor any array of numbers, could storm.” “We have voluntarily left the battle-field and abandoned a large number of wounded, but our falling back was slowly accomplished, and none followed in our rear,” reported another. “The people where we[’ve] been did not know anything of the war untill since wee came over,” a Georgian declared on July 12. “They now feel the sting of it sure.”

Others were less satisfied with the results. “There was a feeling among the
men
that
somebody
had blundered and had not done their duty,” noted one of A. P. Hill’s men. “We came here with the best army the Confederacy ever carried into the field but thousands of our brave boys are left upon the enemy’s soil and in my opinion our Army will never be made up of such material again,” a South Carolina soldier
lamented. “Our army is badly whipped,” summed up another of Hill’s men. “I was sorry when it was begun,” a Virginian in Mahone’s Brigade attested on July 30. “I am glad it is over. I never expected to wage invasive warfare and I had enough of Maryland last year to satisfy me that we could never fight seccessfully upon that soil.”

To every outward appearance, Robert E. Lee had lost none of his positive attitude. “Our noble men are cheerful and confident,” he wrote to his wife while waiting at Williamsport for the river to subside. A day after crossing it, he wrapped up the campaign for her: “The army has returned to Virginia. Its return is rather sooner than I had originally contemplated, but, having accomplished much of what I proposed on leaving the Rappahannock—namely, relieving the [Shenandoah] Valley of the presence of the enemy, and drawing his army north of the Potomac—I determined to recross the latter river.” Speaking soon afterward with a proxy sent by Jefferson Davis, he asserted, “‘Our loss was heavy at Gettysburg; but in my opinion no greater than it would have been from the series of battles I would have been compelled to fight had I remained in Virginia.’” In his final campaign report, submitted in January 1864, Lee pointed to the supplies he had confiscated and the enemy’s subsequent failure to mount a fall invasion into northern Virginia as the effort’s important results. Missing from his rhetoric was any mention of having diverted Union resources from the siege of Vicksburg.

Yet something
had
changed. Lee had staked everything—his splendid army, the fate of Richmond, and perhaps even the Confederacy itself—on a campaign aimed at destroying the Federal army. He had lost the bet, and now the prospect of an endlessly lingering war stretched before him like a dimly lit corridor lined with mirrors. Never again would his army be so powerful, or its spirit so untrammeled by weary resignation. His abrupt and very private decision to resign had manifested his deep doubt as to his usefulness to the Confederate cause. If a decisive victory, the battle of annihilation, could not be realized, what else could Lee do to satisfy his exacting personal sense of duty and honor? In time, he would fashion a new mission for himself. No longer would he and his army be the means to ultimate victory; instead they would be a thorn in the enemy’s side, delaying and embarrassing Lincoln’s generals’ designs. In this way, Lee and his men might just buy Jefferson Davis enough time to work out a political settlement that would preserve the Confederacy. This new purpose would sustain Lee throughout the dark months ahead, until the spring of 1865, when it would become frighteningly apparent to him that
Davis had discarded the option of any such settlement in favor of a war to the knife. Then indeed would Robert E. Lee face the darkest moment of the soul.

But that was all in the unforeseeable future. For the present, Lee readied himself for the trials ahead. He acknowledged, “We must now prepare for harder blows and harder work.”

Once again, Gettysburg was deluged with outsiders. This time, however, their mood was decidedly friendly, and the atmosphere, while solemn, was palpably celebratory. The date was November 19, 1863, and the occasion, the dedication of a national soldiers’ cemetery located next to the town’s burial plot on Cemetery Hill. Many notables had been invited to attend but had declined, among them Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, whose Caledonia Iron Works remained in ruins (he thought the whole affair a waste of his time), and George Meade, then busy directing the Army of the Potomac’s operations along the Rappahannock River. To everyone’s relief, the famous American orator Edward Everett had consented to address the crowd. To everyone’s surprise, Abraham Lincoln had also agreed to come and say a few words.

Lincoln revealed how important this event was to him in a number of ways. More often than not, he declined such invitations, but this one he kept on his calendar, even though his son Tad was ill and he was feeling poorly himself. He had also rearranged his travel plans on learning that his visit had been set up as a one-day trip, because he knew that any delay could cause him to miss the ceremony. Instead of traveling on November 19, therefore, Lincoln arrived in Gettysburg shortly before dinnertime the evening before.

The few remarks he had been asked to make had assumed an importance in his own thinking well out of proportion to their length. Contrary to later legend that had him scribbling out his speech during the train ride to Gettysburg, Lincoln spent some time working on it in advance. He even spoke with the cemetery’s designer beforehand, the better to understand its physical layout. It was
this
battle that he felt he must commemorate, for it had claimed a special place in his thinking about the war. Lincoln had waited fretfully at the War Department’s telegraph office for news from the battle front before Gettysburg, and he would do so after it. Yet this dedication offered him a public opportunity to state clearly and plainly his feelings about the larger meaning of the war.

The town that Lincoln saw this morning could scarcely be said to have recovered from the unprecedented civic catastrophe visited upon its citizens by the great battle. The physical damage to Gettysburg was remarkably minor; there were many other places—in the North and South—that would endure far greater destruction in the course of the war. In human terms, though, the battle’s impact beggared comprehension. In a span of three days, a municipality of some 2,500 residents had been confronted with more than 20,000 wounded, suffering men in need of comfort, care, and housing. And then, too, there were the bodies: some 7,000 soldiers killed, plus perhaps as many as 5,000 horses and mules. The armies did what they could to bury the human remains, but far too many corpses, and most of the dead animals, were left to decompose in the July sun when the opposing sides marched away.

Some outside help had arrived by then, and more was on its way, but an operation of this magnitude so far exceeded anyone’s experience that the assistance was slow to get started and often horribly inefficient when it was in place. For weeks, recollected Albertus McCreary, “the stench was so bad … that everyone went around with a bottle of pennyroyal or peppermint oil.” Chloride of lime was spread and respread to disinfect the streets and alleys and to discourage—or try to—the hordes of flies that feasted on the dead and the living.

Much that was good about Americans had shown itself. From Emmitsburg came the skilled nurses of the Sisters of Charity, and from the East representatives of the United States Sanitary Commission as well as the Christian Commission, bringing supplies and organizing skills. From cities, towns, and villages throughout the North, a steady procession of individuals converged on the crossroads, much as had the two armies before them. Many were seeking loved ones or at least confirmation of their fate. Some of those many hundreds came to help, among them a small brigade of women: Cornelia Hancock, Georgeanna Woolsey, Charlotte Elizabeth Johnson McKay, and many others. Often untrained in the tasks they were asked to perform, and unprepared for what they saw around them, they were nevertheless determined to do their part.

There had been conflicts among the different administrative groups, frustrations imposed upon family members desperate for news, problems with food and housing, and the inevitable presence of profiteers. Yet there was something healing, too, in the dull, comforting routines of the time before the battle, routines that slowly but inexorably began to reassert themselves after it. Almost all of those who had lived through
July’s bloody days found ways to cope and even return to some semblance of normalcy.

Most of the wounded had been transferred to established medical facilities by early August, and even though bodies would continue to be discovered in out-of-the way locations for some while to come, the great majority were underground, either here or elsewhere, by the time Lincoln came. The battle would never leave the memory of Gettysburg’s citizens. When Nellie Aughinbaugh’s mother chided her grandmother for referring to the Battle of Gettysburg as the “war,” she was told: “It is all the war
I
ever want to see.”

Most of the battle veterans in Gettysburg when Lincoln arrived were civilians who had been present during those three days. Albertus McCreary, who had predicted that the Eleventh Corps would “whip all the ‘Rebs’ in the South” on July 1, got a good view of the president as he made his way to the ceremony. “He seemed very tall and gaunt to me, but his face was wonderful to look upon. It was such a sad face and so full of kindly feeling that one felt at home with him at once,” McCreary recalled. Daniel Skelly, a ubiquitous presence the previous July, was everywhere in Gettysburg on November 19 as well. He later described how the procession formed in the town square, with feeder columns coming in from York and Carlisle Streets. The military-style formation headed south along Baltimore Street, covering about a mile before reaching the cemetery. There Skelly managed to wrangle a spot that let him see and hear all the speakers.

Everett went first. It was a fine speech, and a long one. The well-practiced orator had done his homework, consulting with several soldiers who had participated in the battle and whose accounts endowed his description of the action with the power of primary sources. When Everett was finished, the band played a number. Then it was Lincoln’s turn.

Remembered Skelly, “He spoke in a quiet, forcible and earnest manner with no attempt at oratory.” Also in the audience this day were representatives from many of the newspapers whose correspondents had covered the battle. Those invaluable combat reporters were elsewhere this day, as their particular skills were not needed here; rather, what was required was the ability to take accurate shorthand notes, especially important on this occasion because no advance copy of Lincoln’s text had been released. Afterward, a slightly polished version of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address would be widely disseminated and become rightly famous.
The nimble fingers of the ablest “phonographers” of the day, however, likely recorded the words actually spoken on this historic occasion: