Hallowed Ground - James M. McPherson [34]
These black people had good reason to flee. Although most of them, including Brian and another black farmer who lived on the battlefield, James Warfield, had always been free, some were former slaves who had escaped from Maryland or Virginia. In the previous Confederate invasion of Union territory, in September 1862, Southern cavalry had made little distinction between free blacks and escaped slaves, driving dozens of them back to Virginia and slavery. They were doing the same thing again in Pennsylvania. In Chambersburg, two local residents wrote in their diaries that when Confederates entered the town in June, “one of the revolting features of this day was the scouring of the fields about the town and searching of houses in portions of the place for Negroes.” “O! How it grated on our hearts to have to sit quietly & look at such brutal deeds—I saw no men among the contrabands—all women and children. Some of the colored people who were raised here were taken along.”
The Chambersburg newspaper estimated that the Rebels sent at least fifty local blacks back to Virginia. A diarist raised the estimate to 250 from Franklin County. Blacks in Gettysburg had plenty of warning, and cleared out. Some never returned. Abraham Brian did return. He repaired his house and tided his family over until the next season by exhuming the bodies of Union soldiers at a dollar each for reinterment in the soldiers’ cemetery dedicated in November. Brian submitted a claim of more than a thousand dollars to the federal government for damages to his farm. He received forty-five dollars.
As the walking wounded and unwounded survivors of the Pickett-Pettigrew attack reached their own lines, they found Lee and Longstreet working vigorously to patch together a defense against an expected counterattack. “General Pickett,” said Lee to a slumped figure from whom all thoughts of glory had fled, “place your division in the rear of this hill, and be ready to repel the advance of the enemy should they follow up their advantage.” “General Lee,” replied Pickett despairingly, “I have no division now.” According to later recollections by Confederate soldiers, Lee rode among his men to buck up their spirits. “It's all my fault,” he reportedly said. “It is I who have lost this fight, and you must help me out of it the best way you can. All good men must rally.”
Rally they did, after a fashion. But Meade did not order a counterattack. It was not for lack of urging by at least some of his subordinates, including Hancock. Wounded at the height of the action by a bullet that drove a bent nail from his saddle into his thigh, Hancock—misinterpreting the source of the nail—said, “They must be hard up for ammunition if they throw such a shot as that.”
The Confederates were short of artillery ammunition. And they had lost at least 23,000—perhaps as many as 28,000—killed, wounded, and captured men during these three days. But Meade, who knew that his own army had been hurt—23,000 casualties altogether—could not know just how badly off his adversary was. The Union commander's failure to follow up his victory with a counterthrust during the nearly four hours of remaining daylight on July 3 provoked criticism at the time and through the years. He had kept the 13,000 fresh troops of the Sixth Corps in reserve; most of them had not fired a shot in the battle. Eight thousand of them were on