[543]
our cruel enemy.1 It has been lost upon the Yankees, however, as so far from appreciating the forbearance shown, I am informed that it has been actually charged by some of their papers that Gordon's command fired the town of Wrightsville, whereas the exertions of his men saved the place from utter destruction.2 On the afternoon of the 29th I received through Captain Elliott Johnson, Aide to General Ewell, a copy of a note from General Lee, and also verbal instructions, which required me to move back and rejoin the rest of the corps on the western side of the South Mountain; and accordingly at daylight, on the morning of the 30th, I put my whole command in motion, taking the route with the main body through Weigalstown and East Berlin, in the direction of Heidlersburg, from which place I could move either to Shippensburg or Greenwood by the way of Arendtsburg, as circumstances might require.
I, at the same time, sent Colonel White's cavalry on the turnpike from York towards Gettysburg, to ascertain if any force of the enemy was on that road.
At East Berlin a small squad of
This text is part of:
1 Before leaving York I wrote and had printed the following address to the citizens, and I think they will bear me out in the assertion that my troops preserved the most perfect order, and that they themselves were deprived of nothing, except what was furnished on the requisition made upon the town authorities. It was well that my demands were complied with, as otherwise I would have been compelled to have resorted to measures that would not have been agreeable either to them or to me. The balance of the money, however, is still unpaid.
2 The houses that were burned adjoined the toll-house, which was connected with the bridge, and their destruction was thus inevitable from the burning of the bridge.
Richmond, VA. 1882.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.