The B of Gettysburg.
The Yankees here distinguished themselves in this war as the great liars of the Universe. They seem to have received from their master, the "Prince of Liars," a double portion of his infernal spirit. They have no rivals upon the face of the earth. "It is Eclipse first, and the rest nowhere," At the beginning of the war, Halleck advised Lincoln to claim a victory always, no matter how badly he might be beaten. The Yankees have persistently acted upon that advice.Our people know this propensity of the Yankees perfectly well. Yet there is something so pleasant in bad news, something so delightful in having a subject to creak upon, that all last week they were moaning and groaning over the most flagrant batch of lies that ever issued from the Yankee press, as though that press had never put forth anything but Gospel. The truth begins at last to make its appearance. It is proverbially slow; it halts in its gait, but it never stops in its march, and it always overtakes falsehood, though the latter fly on the wings of the wind. We have no official account of the battle of Gettysburg, although, we should think the authorities must surely have received one before this. But many wounded officers — some of them men of great intelligence — have arrived, and from a comparison of their statements we are enabled to make out the following facts:
The battle of Gettysburg was on our part, a triumphant success — an overwhelming victory. We beat the enemy on all three of the days. On Friday we drove him five miles, assaulted his fortifications, and carried these He was utterly beaten and discomfited at all points. That Gen. Lee did not continue to hold those fortifications was solely due to the fact that they were in that mountainous country, overlooked by a lofty range of heights which entirely commanded them. To these heights the Yankees fled for protection precisely as they did to their gunboats at Malvern bill, and Gen. Lee withdrew his army for the same reason that he withdrew from the range of the gunboats fire. That he was repulsed in his attack on the entrenchments — that he fled on disorder — that his army was demoralized — are Yankee lies of the first magnitude. They were not believed at Washington, however they might have been here, for that city was in a state of uncontrollable terror on Sunday night. That Lincoln did not believe them is evident from his calling off all the troops from the neighborhood of Old Point, save a mere handful. The slaughter of the Yankees was terrible beyond all former example, and the telegraph operator was not so far wrong when he said we had 40,000 prisoners, as has been supposed. We brought away 13,000, and thousands were allowed to escape. Every house in Gettysburg was filled with Yankee soldiers, who had been left behind when our troops entered. The soldiers finding out that they were within, (generally in concealment,) rushed in and dragged them out of their hiding places. The enormous encumbrance inflicted by these prisoners was one cause of Gen. Lee's retrograde match. Every officer who has spoken on the subject says that this movement was not determined by anything the Yankees had done or could do. Gen. Lee had won the ground and could have held it, but he chose, for military reasons, to fall back, after having utterly broken the backbone of the Yankee army. Apparently, he has no intention to recross the Potomac, and Washington is nearer to Hagerstown than it is to Gettysburg.
It is stated, upon good authority, that our loss, in killed, wounded, and missing, did not exceed 10,000. If, as the Yankees assert, we lost 4,000 prisoners, then our loss in killed and wounded was only 6,000--a very small loss, considering the number of combatants and the length of the battle. The Yankees took no cannon, although they claim to have taken five. Two pieces were abandoned because they were disabled and the horses attached to them were killed. There fell into their hands, and form the sole dismal trophies of what they pretend to consider a great triumph. Our army is in splendid order, and ready for another conflict. They have not been pursued, as the Yankees falsely stated, for they were in no condition to pursue, and it was, in fact, the very thing that General Lee most of all desired. Meade seems to have gone to paris unknown.
