[341] had one flank securely posted on the Emmettsburg road, so that he was really between the Army of the Potomac and Washington; and by marching towards Frederick could undoubtedly have manoeuvred Meade out of the Gettysburg position. This operation General Longstreet, who foreboded the worst from an attack on the army in position, and was anxious to hold General Lee to his promise, begged in vain to be allowed to execute.1
What really compelled Lee, contrary to his original intent and promise, to give battle, was the animus and inspiration of the invasion; for, to the end, such were the ‘exsufflicate and blown surmises’ of the army, and such was the contempt of its opponent engendered by Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, that there was not in his ranks a barefoot soldier in tattered gray but believed Lee would lead him and the Confederate army into Baltimore and Washington, if not into Philadelphia and New York.2 To have withdrawn, therefore, without a battle, though materially easy, was morally impossible; for to have recrossed the Potomac without a blow, and abandoned the invasion on which such towering hopes had been built, would have been a shock beyond endurance to his army and the South. Such were the causes that, under providential ordainment, resulted in the mighty shock of arms that hurled the invading force from the soil of the loyal States, and dealt the army of Lee a blow from which it never afterwards recovered. To the events of this action I now return.
By morning of the 2d of July the entire Union army, saving the corps of Sedgwick, had reached Gettysburg; and the whole Southern force, with the exception of Pickett's division of Longstreet's corps, had come up.
