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By Root 6983 0

the cavalryman was fifty-five miles away, his progress slowed by 125 captured wagons. He was rather pleased with his expedition; on June 28 he had come within six miles of Washington, sending tremors down Pennsylvania Avenue. Lord Lyons ordered his staff to pack their bags in case they needed to make a hasty departure. Since being hustled back into duty, Sir Percy Wyndham had succeeded in rounding up three thousand riders. But he had found horses for only two-thirds of them. (In his search for more, some of his actions had bordered on outright theft, earning him powerful enemies in the capital.)

Lee had no means of sending a message to Stuart, but he dispatched hurried instructions to his generals, who were spread out in a forty-five-mile radius, to collect their scattered corps and meet outside the village of Cashtown, eight miles west of Gettysburg. On June 30, Lee heard that “Fighting Joe” Hooker had resigned after a petty quarrel with General-in-Chief Henry Halleck and been replaced by George Gordon Meade. Lee was not happy with the change: Hooker would have been a far weaker opponent. Meade was a Mexican War veteran, a no-nonsense professional soldier whose hair-trigger temper had earned him the nickname “the Old Snapping Turtle.” Fremantle traveled with Longstreet to join Lee, who was in the midst of moving his headquarters closer to Gettysburg. Ten different roads went through the town, making it a useful launch site for a confrontation with the Federal army. The general betrayed no sign of anxiety to Fremantle, who thought him “the handsomest man of his age I ever saw.” He was wearing his customary long gray jacket and Wellington boots, both of which were surprisingly clean.

One of the Confederate brigades had spotted Union cavalrymen lurking around Gettysburg. When Lee received the news, all knew that a battle was imminent. Still elated by the recent victory at Chancellorsville, Lee’s officers had no doubt about the outcome. Lawley was equally optimistic. Though weak, he had managed to eat breakfast in the hotel dining room in Chambersburg with Captain Ross on July 1. The complaints and anti-Southern comments of the other diners, all locals, so irritated Lawley that, to Ross’s acute embarrassment, he held a twenty-dollar Confederate bill aloft and declared “in a month it would be worth more than all their greenbacks in the North put together.”13

As Lawley and Ross were eating their breakfast, four Confederate infantry brigades set off in search of a warehouse reported to be full of shoes. Three miles from Gettysburg they stumbled into the 1st Cavalry Division of the Union army. Thus began the Battle of Gettysburg, without the orders or knowledge of the two commanders. It was eleven o’clock when the faint echoes of artillery fire alerted Lee to the battle taking place. He was furious at this unexpected development, which added to the difficulties forced upon him by not knowing where his enemy lay or how many he faced. At this moment there were in fact more Confederates than Federals at Gettysburg—a massed attack by the Southerners could have captured the town.

An hour later, at noon, Longstreet was marching at the head of his corps toward Gettysburg. Fremantle followed on horseback while Lawley and Captain Ross traveled at the back of the wagon line. “At 2 P.M. firing became distinctly audible in our front,” wrote Fremantle. Soon they passed a ghastly parade of stretchers and the walking wounded coming the other way. The soldiers were so accustomed to such scenes that they barely glanced at them. Finally, at 4:30 P.M., the travelers found General Lee on the top of Seminary Ridge, observing the battle below.

Fremantle climbed to the top of an oak tree in order to obtain a better view of the Federal defense. The town lay within an undulating basin, surrounded by ridges and boulder-strewn hills. Lee had realized that control of these ridges was paramount; as at Fredericksburg, whoever held the high ground outside the town had the advantage. General Ewell’s orders were to drive the Federals from Cemetery Ridge