Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg by James M. McPherson Page B

of the road was culled, it was impossible to visualize how cavalry could operate in this area. Now, happily, we can understandthe tactics of Kilpatrick's attack—faulty and foolhardy though it proved to be.
    Next day—the Fourth of July—Union infantry from the Fifth and Sixth Corps moved out from the vicinity of the Round Tops to probe Confederate positions in that area. Was this the beginning of a Union counterattack? Impossible to say, for in late morning a drenching rain began to fall and continued intermittently for several days, bringing operations to a halt. Lee had already decided to retreat, and that evening his army started to pull out and head for Virginia. The rain hindered both the retreat and Meade's snaillike pursuit.
    Heavy rain fell after several Civil War battles. A widespread theory at the time held that the thunder of artillery somehow caused clouds to let loose their own thunder and moisture. I am unable to say whether this theory holds water.

Epilogue
    T HE CONFEDERATE RETREAT from Gettysburg turned into a nightmare. An ambulance train several miles long jounced over rutted roads and bogged down axle-deep in mud, causing untold agony for the ten thousand wounded men that the Army of Northern Virginia managed to take along on the retreat. They had to leave behind at least seven thousand wounded to be treated by Union surgeons, who had their hands full with fourteen thousand Union wounded. As well as farmhouses and barns on the battlefield, virtually every public building and many homes in town became hospitals. The medical corps set up numerous tent hospitals as well. Hundreds of volunteers flocked to Gettysburg to help care for the wounded. Burial details hastily interred more than three thousand dead Union soldiers and many of the almost four thousand dead Confederates. Fourthousand of the wounded, about evenly divided between the two sides, subsequently died of their wounds. Five thousand dead horses were doused with coal oil and burned. For months the stench of hospitals, and of corpses unburied or buried in shallow graves, hung over the town and countryside.
    Meanwhile the Army of the Potomac, prodded by President Lincoln and General-in-Chief Halleck, plodded through the mud in pursuit of Lee. Union cavalry captured the Confederate wagon train carrying the pontoons necessary to bridge the Potomac. Swollen by rain, the river was unfordable. Lincoln urged Meade to attack the Rebels while they were trapped north of the Potomac. Lee fortified a defensive perimeter at Williamsport, Maryland (forty miles southwest of Gettysburg), with both flanks on the river. There he awaited attack while his engineer corps frantically tore down buildings to construct a new set of pontoons to bridge the raging Potomac.
    When news reached Washington of Vicksburg's surrender to Grant on the Fourth of July, and of other Union victories in Tennessee and Louisiana, Lincoln was jubilant. “If General Meade can complete his work by the literal or substantial destruction of Lee's army,” said the Union president on July 7, “the rebellion will be over.” Lincoln hovered around the War Department telegraph office “anxious andimpatient” for news from Meade. But the Union commander and his men were exhausted from lack of sleep and endless slogging through quagmires called roads. The Confederate earthworks at Williamsport were formidable, even though Lee had only 45,000 tired men to defend them while reinforcements had brought Meade's strength back up to 85,000. Meade's famous temper grew short as messages from Halleck pressed him to attack. Lincoln's temper also grew short. When Meade finally telegraphed on July 12 that he intended “to attack them tomorrow, unless something intervenes,” Lincoln commented acidly, “They will be ready to fight a magnificent battle when there is no enemy to fight.”
    Events proved Lincoln right. Meade delayed another day, and when the Army of the Potomac went forward on July 14 they