Strategically, the position at Gettysburg was of supreme importance to Lee; for it was the first point in his eastward march across the South Mountain that gave command of direct lines of retreat towards the Potomac : but it was not of the same moment to Meade, especially if a defensive rather than an offensive battle was to be fought; and the topographical features of Gettysburg, that make it so advantageous for the defence, were then wholly unknown to him. While, therefore, the left wing, under Reynolds, was thus thrown forward in advance of the rest of the army as far as Gettysburg, it was not with any predetermined purpose of taking up position there; but rather to serve as a mask while the line of Pipe Creek was assumed.

But while, in war, commanders propose, fate or accident (so-called) often disposes; and at the time these movements were in execution, events were occurring that were to lift the obscure and insignificant hamlet of Gettysburg into a historic immortality as the scene of the mightiest encounter of modern days.

While the army was marching northward, Buford's division of cavalry was thrown out well on the left flank; and moving from near Middleburg on the 29th of June, it occupied Gettysburg at noon of the following day-the day before Reynolds was directed on that point. Passing through Gettysburg, Buford pushed out in reconnoissances west and north, over the routes on which it was supposed Lee's army was moving. Now, Lee had that morning put his columns in motion towards Gettysburg-Hill and Longstreet moving due eastward from Chambersburg and Fayetteville, and Ewell southward from Carlisle. Hill's corps had the advance on the great road from Chambersburg to Baltimore, which passes through Gettysburg. The march was made with much deliberation : so that night found only two divisions through the South Mountain; while the remaining division and Longstreet's corps remained west of the mountains. The advance divisions of Hill's command bivouacked, on the night of the 30th June, within six or seven miles of Gettysburg; while Ewell, march

ing on a line perpendicular with the route of Hill and Longstreet, encamped at Heildersburg, distant nine miles. Of the Union force, Buford's cavalry division alone was at Gettysburg that night; and Reynolds, with the First and Eleventh corps, bivouacked on the right bank of Marsh Creek, distant four miles, under orders to make Gettysburg the next morning. The corps of Sickles (Third) and Slocum (Twelfth) were within call. The remaining corps were further off.

It is easy to see, from the relative situations of the hostile armies, that unless one or the other should fall back, a battle was inevitable in the vicinity of. Gettysburg. But these facts were unknown to both the opposing commanders; and I shall in the next chapter relate how, contrary to the expectations of each, the action was precipitated.

VI.

GETTYSBURG-FIRST DAY.

On the morning of Wednesday, the 1st of July, the two Confederate columns continued their march towards Gettysburg; and Buford, holding position on the Chambersburg road, by which Hill and Longstreet were advancing, suddenly found himself engaged, a little past nine in the morning, with Hill's van, about a mile west of the town. As he knew that Reynolds was moving up to join him, he made dispositions to retard the enemy, holding back Hill's column by skilful deployments and the use of his horse-artillery. Reynolds, who (with his own First Corps and the Eleventh Corps, under General Howard) was then en route from his place of bivouac at Marsh Creek, hearing Buford's guns, pressed forward with all haste. At ten o'clock he came upon the field with the leading division of the First Corps, under General Wadsworth. While

yet forming line, Wadsworth's troops were assailed; and they had to be thrown quickly into battle array under fire.

Looking westward from Gettysburg the horizon of vision is bounded at a distance of ten miles by the mountain range known as the South Mountain, which running north and south forms the eastern wall of the Cumberland Valley. When the force which folded and raised up the strata that form the South Mountain was in action, it produced fissures in the strata of red shale which cover the surface of this region of country, permitting the fused material from beneath to rise and fill them on cooling with trap-dykes or greenstone and syenitic greenstone. The rock, being for the most part very hard, remained as the axes and crests of hills and ridges when the softer shale in the intervening spaces was excavated by great water-currents into valleys and plains.* These ridges run in a direction nearly parallel with the South Mountain range, and give a rolling and diversified surface to the landscape. The town of Gettysburg nestles at the base of one of these ranges. At the distance of half a mile to the west of the town is another ridge, called, from the theological seminary that stands thereon, Seminary Ridge, and a mile further west run two other parallel swells of ground separated by Willoughby Run. It was in the plain between these two latter ridges, the westernmost of which was occupied by the Confederates and the nearer by the Union troops, that the action of July 1st opened; for Buford's deployments had succeeded in detaining the hostile column on the thither side of the run till Wadsworth's division came on the ground. As this force arrived, Reynolds hurried its two brigades into action, placing Cutler's brigade, with the battery of Hallthe only battery in the division-on the right and left of the Chambersburg road and across an old railroad grading (part of it in deep cut and part in embankment) near by and parallel with the road; while he directed General Doubleday

* Professor Jacobs: "Later Rambles over the Field of Gettysburg;" United States Service Magazine, 1864.