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| The high-water mark of the Confederacy: the little town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania Just as we see it here, the Confederates first saw Gettysburg. Down these roads and past these houses they marched to the high-water mark of their invasion of the North. It was quite by accident that the little town became the theater of the crucial contest of the Civil War. On the morning of June 30th Heth's division of General D. H. Hill's Corps was marching upon the town from the west. It came on confidently, expecting no resistance, meaning only to seize a supply of shoes much needed by the footsore Army of Northern Virginia, which had marched triumphantly from Culpeper to the heart of Pennsylvania. Between Heth's men and their goal lay two brigades of Federal cavalry under Buford. Riding into the town from the opposite direction came Major Kress, sent by General Wadsworth to get these same shoes for his division of the Federals. Before the tavern Kress found Buford and explained his errand. “You had better return immediately to your command,” said Buford. “Why, what is the matter, General?” asked Kress. At that instant a single gun boomed in the distance, and Buford, mounting, replied as he spurred his horse to the gallop, “That's the matter.” The world had never seen a finer body of fighting men than Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, then massing rapidly toward Gettysburg. More than seventy-three thousand five hundred strong they came, every man a veteran, contemptuous of adversaries whose superior numbers had never yet been made to count completely against them. In the center of the panorama rises Cemetery Ridge, where the defeated First and Eleventh Federal Corps slept on their arms on the night of July 1st, after having been driven back through the town by the superior forces of Hill and Ewell. The lower eminence to the right of it is Culp's Hill. At the extreme right of the picture stands Round Top. |
