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It is only for the moment. Up from the rear advance the re-enforcements which the news of adverse fortunes has drawn over from the right. Meade, Hancock, Morgan, and Mitchell direct them to the positions which they are to fill. Doubleday's division of the First Corps comes to the support of the Second; farther to the left McGilvray's artillery brigade forms behind Sickles's broken troops; and Lockwood's Maryland brigade, supported by Williams's division of the Twelfth Corps, charges forward almost to the Emmittsburg road and finally restores our line in this part of the field. From Little Round Top, too, Crawford's division of the Pennsylvania Reserves advances over ground which had been lost; while the Sixth Corps, just come in from its long march, joins in the movement or forms in support behind the left. Before the stern array of the arriving troops the men of Longstreet and Hill, worn out by the desperate struggles of the afternoon, give way surlily and in good order.

springs up on the right

But though the great battle of the left, with all its thrilling episodes, with all its tremendous possibilities, with all its terrific losses, is over, the day's work is not yet at an end. Just as the fighting dies down on the Union left it and right center, where Ewell finally gets to work to do what he should have done hours before. The brigades of Hays and Hoke, supported by Gordon, advance upon Cemetery Hill from the north,

drive Howard's troops from their works and their guns, and establish themselves upon the crest. But their triumph is soon past. Hancock, hearing the

outburst and knowing the danger that lies in the enfeebled condition of the Eleventh Corps, has promptly and without waiting for orders sent Carroll's long-legged Western brigade rapidly by the right flank to come up behind Cemetery Hill. That gallant command, right gallantly led, arrives in the nick of time, pushes its way through the disordered troops and, throwing itself furiously upon the enemy, drives them down the slope, recovers Howard's batteries and restores his line. But still all is not over. Farther around to our right Johnson's Confederate division pushes its way into a portion of the works abandoned by the troops of the Twelfth Corps which had been sent late in the afternoon to the support of Sickles, though it is beaten back from the portion of the corps line which is held by that stout old soldier, General George S. Greene. And now from right to left the clamor of voices, the thunder of guns dies down; and the second day of Gettysburg passes into history.

After night had fallen the corps commanders of the Army of the Potomac were called to the headquarters of General Meade to deliberate upon the morrow. The outlook was indeed gloomy. On the first day the Eleventh Corps had been put nearly hors de combat, and the First Corps had been reduced

to the size of a division. During the afternoon of the day just closed the Third Corps had been almost literally "cut to pieces." Two divisions of the Fifth Corps and one of the Second had lost half their men in the contests in the Wheat Field and around the base of Little Round Top. In all, twenty thousand men had gone out of the forces that on the 1st of July had been directed upon Gettysburg, to meet the columns which Lee had so unexpectedly turned upon that town of fate. Moreover, upon our extreme right the enemy were in possession of a portion of the breastworks abandoned by the Twelfth Corps when it marched to the left, and had almost laid hands upon the Baltimore pike.

Yet the spirit of the army was high and martial. Alike commanding officers and men in the ranks felt that the battle was still to be fought, and on this very ground; and from that encounter, however protracted and however severe, they did not shrink. Malicious tongues and pens have asserted that in the council of war on Thursday night General Meade's disposition was to retreat from the field to the line of Pipe Creek; but this slander, with which the military fortunes of several important persons had been intimately connected, has fallen dead before the calm and dignified assertions of Meade and the corroborative testimony of Sedgwick, Howard, Williams, and Gibbon. When the council of war broke up, the order for the day was that the Army of

the Potomac should stand in its place and receive whatever blows the Army of Northern Virginia might deliver; and as the news of this resolution ran through the ranks, from Culp's Hill to Round Top, every soldier's heart responded with a fervent Amen!

CHAPTER VIII.

GETTYSBURG.-THE THIRD DAY.

WHEN day broke upon the 3d of July it found the Army of the Potomac in the identical positions to which Hancock had directed the broken brigades of the First and Eleventh Corps and the first reenforcements arriving upon the field in the afternoon of Wednesday. While, in general, the plan of battle was strictly defensive, it was imperative that Johnson should at once be driven out of the breastworks upon the right which had been captured by him late in the previous evening. To this task the Twelfth Corps, under Slocum, supported by Shaler's brigade from the Sixth, promptly and gallantly addressed itself. Johnson had been heavily re-enforced, and the nature of the country made combinations for the attack upon him exceedingly difficult; but the Union troops would not be denied and, after a bloody fight, the enemy were driven out and our line became through all its length complete. And now the Army of the Potomac awaits in silence, in suspense, in anxiety, but not in dread, the attack which it is known to all, from the

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