GETTYSBURG: HIGH TIDE AND EBB.
When Lee and his army, leaving the front of the Union army and
becoming invisible, when President and people, general and chief and
privates, Cabinet officers and correspondents, were wondering what had
become of the rebel hosts, and when the one question in the North was,
"Where is General Lee?" Carleton, divining the state of affairs, took
the railway to Harrisburg. Once more he was an observer in the field.
His first letter is dated June 16th, and illuminates the darkness like
an electric search-light.
General Lee, showing statesmanship as well as military ability, had
chosen a good time. The Federal army was losing its two years' and
nine months' men. Vicksburg was about to fall. Something must be done
to counterbalance this certain loss to the Confederates. Paper money
in the South was worth but ten per cent. of its face value.
Recognition from Europe must be won soon, or the high tide of
opportunity would ebb, nevermore to return. Like a great wave coming
to its flood, the armed host of the Confederacy was moving to break at
Gettysburg and recede.
Yet, at that time, who had ever thought of, or who, except the farmers
and townsmen and students in the vicinity, had ever seen Gettysburg?
At first Carleton supposed that Harper's Ferry might be the scene of
the coming battle. Again he imagined it possible for Lee to move down
the Kanawha, and fall upon defenceless Ohio. He wrote from Harrisburg,
from Washington, from Baltimore, from Washington again, from Baltimore
once more, from Frederick, where he learned that Hooker had been
superseded, and Meade, the Pennsylvanian, put in command. On June
30th, writing from Westminster, Md., he described the rapid marching
of the footsore and hungry Confederates, and the equally rapid
pedestrianism of the Federals. He revels in the splendors of nature in
Southern Pennsylvania, which the Germans once hailed as a holy land of
comfort and liberty, and which, by their industry, they had made
"fair as the garden of the Lord." As Carleton rode with the second
corps from Frederick to Union Town, and thence to Westminster, he
penned prose poems in description of the glorious sight, so different
from his native and stony New Hampshire.
"The march yesterday was almost like passing through paradise. Such
broad acres of grain rustling in the breeze; the hills and valleys,
bathed in alternate sunlight and shade; the trees so green; the air so
scented with clover-blossoms and new-made hay; the cherry-trees ruby
with ripened fruit, lining the roadway; the hospitality of the people,
made it pleasant marching."
Thus like the great forces of the universe, which make the ocean's
breast heave to and fro, and send the tides in ebb and flood, were the
great energies which were now to bring two hundred thousand men in
arms, on the field of Gettysburg, in Adams County, Pennsylvania. Forty
years before, as it is said, a British officer surveying the great
plain with the ranges of hills confronting each other from opposite
sides, with many highroads converging at this point, declared with
admiration that this would be a superb site for a great battle. Now
the vision of possibility was to become reality, and Carleton was to
be witness of it all. Since mid-June he had been on the rail or in the
saddle. He was now to spend sleepless nights and laborious days that
were to tax his physical resources to their utmost.
With his engineer's eye, and from the heights overlooking the main
field, he took in the whole situation. From various points he saw the
awful battles of July 2d and 3d, which he described in two letters,
written each time after merciful night came down upon the field of
slaughter. He saw the charges and defeats, the counter-charges and the
continued carnage, and the final cavalry onset made by the rebels. He
was often under fire. An impression that lasted all his life, and to
which he often referred, was the result of that great movement of
Pickett's division across the field, after the long bombardment of the
Federal forces by the Confederate artillery. Retiring before the heavy
cannonade, Carleton had remained in the rear, until, hearing the
cheers of the Union soldiers, he reached the slope in time to see the
gray and brown masses in the distance.
As the great wave of human life receded, that for a moment had pierced
the centre of the Union forces, only to be hurled back and broken,
Carleton rode out down the hill and on the plain into the wheat field.
Then and there, seeing the awful debris, came the conviction that the
rebellion had seen its highest tide, and that henceforth it would be
only ebb.
When is a battle over, and how can one know it? That night, Friday,
and the next day, Saturday, Carleton felt satisfied that Lee was in
full retreat, though General Meade did not seem to think so.
Carleton's face was now set Bostonwards. Not being able to use the
army telegraph, he gave his first thought to reaching the railroad.
The nearest point was at Westminster, twenty-eight miles distant, from
which a freight-train was to leave at 4 P. M.
Rain was falling heavily, but with Whitelaw Reid as companion,
Carleton rode the twenty-eight miles in two hours and a half. Covered
with mud from head to foot, and soused to the skin, the two riders
reached Westminster at 3.55 P. M. As the train did not immediately
start, Carleton arranged for the care of his beast, and laying his
blanket on the engine's boiler, dried it. He then made his bed on the
floor of the bumping car, getting some sleep of an uncertain quality
before the train rolled into Baltimore.
At the hotel on Sunday morning he was seized by his friend, E. B.
Washburn, Grant's indefatigable supporter and afterwards Minister to
France, who asked for news. Carleton told him of victory and the
retreat of Lee. "You lie," was the impulsive answer. Washburn's nerves
had for days been under a strain. Then, after telling more, Carleton
telegraphed a half-column of news to the _Journal_ in Boston. This
message, sent thence to Washington, was the first news which President
Lincoln and the Cabinet had of Gettysburg. After a bath and hoped-for
rest, Carleton was not allowed to keep silence. All day, and until the
train was entered at night for New York, he was kept busy in telling
the good news.
The rest of the story of this famous "beat," as newspaper men call it,
is given in Carleton's own words to a Boston reporter, a day or two
before the celebration of his golden wedding in February, 1896:
"Monday I travelled by train to Boston, writing some of my story as I
rode along, and wiring ahead to the paper what they might expect from
me. When I reached the office I found Newspaper Row packed with
people, just as you will see it now on election night, and every one
more than anxious for details.
"It was too late, however, for anything but the morning edition of
Tuesday, but the paper wired all over New England the story it would
have, and the edition finally run off was a large one.
"I locked myself in a room and wrote steadily until the paper went to
press, seeing no one but the men handling the copy, and, when the last
sheet was done, threw myself on a pile of papers, thoroughly
exhausted, and got a few hours' sleep. I went to my home in the
suburbs, the next day, but my townspeople wouldn't let me rest. They
came after me with a band and wagon, and I had to get out and tell the
story in public again.
"The next day I left for the front again, riding forward from
Westminster, where I had left my horse, and thus covering about 100
miles on horseback, and 800 miles by rail, from the time I left the
army until I got back again.
"Coffee was all that kept me up during that time, but my nerves did
not recover from it for a long time. In fact, I don't think I could
have gone through the war as I did, had I not made it a practice to
take as long a rest as possible after a big battle or engagement."
In his letter written after the decisive event of 1863, Carleton pays
a strong tribute of praise to the orderly retreat which Lee made from
Pennsylvania. He was bitterly disappointed that the defeated army
should have been allowed to escape. With the soldiers, he looked
forward with dread to another Virginia campaign. Nevertheless, he was
all ready for duty. Having found his horse and resumed his saddle, he
spent a day revisiting the Antietam battle-field. It was still strewn
with the debris of the fight: old boots, shoes, knapsacks, belts,
clothes all mouldy in the dampness of the woods. He found flattened
bullets among the leaves, fragments of shells, and, sickening to the
sight, here and there a skull protruding from the ground, the
bleaching bones of horses and men. The Dunkers' church and the houses
were rent, shattered, pierced, and pitted with the marks of war.
Even until July 15th, when he sent despatches from Sharpsburg, he
nourished the hope that Lee's army could still be destroyed before
reaching Richmond. This was not to be. Like salt on a sore, and rubbed
in hard, Carleton's sensibilities were cut to the quick, when, on
again coming home, he found the people in Boston and vicinity debating
the question whether the battle of Gettysburg had been a victory for
the Union army or not. Some were even inclined to consider it a
defeat. Carleton's letter of July 24th, written in Boston, fairly
fumes with indignation at the blind critics and in defence of the hard
work of the ever faithful old Army of the Potomac, "which has had hard
fighting,--terrible fighting, and little praise." He lost patience
with those staying at home depreciating the army and finding fault
with General Meade. He wrote: "Frankly and bluntly, I cannot
appreciate such stupidity. Why not as well ask if the sun rose this
morning? That battle was the greatest of the war. It was a repulse
which became a disastrous defeat to General Lee." He sarcastically
invited critics, "instead of staying at home to weaken the army by
finding fault, to step into the ranks and help do the 'bagging,' the
'cutting up,' and the 'routing' which they thought ought to have been
done."