Hallowed Ground - James M. McPherson [5]
All that remained was to find the Army of the Potomac and whip it. Despite the troubling absence of Stuart, which left him without accurate intelligence about the enemy's whereabouts, Lee exuded confidence. According to one of his subordinates, Lee said that when he located the Army of the Potomac, “I shall throw an overwhelming force on their advance, crush it, follow up the success, drive one corps back on another, and by successive repulses and surprises create a panic and virtually destroy the army. [Then] the war will be over and we shall achieve the recognition of our independence.”
This turned out to be the pride that goeth before a fall. The Army of the Potomac was coming, with more speed and elan than Lee realized. That army had a new commander. When the Confederates entered Pennsylvania, Lincoln saw an opportunity as well as a threat, an opportunity to cut off and cripple the enemy far from his home base. The president told Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles that “we cannot help beating them, if we have the man.” But Lincoln became convinced that Hooker was not the man. The general had begun to fret that the enemy outnumbered him, that he needed reinforcements, that the government was not supporting him. To Lincoln these complaints sounded as though Hooker was looking for an excuse not to fight. When the general submitted his resignation over a dispute about the Union garrison at Harpers Ferry, Lincoln accepted it on June 28 and promoted a surprised Major General George Gordon Meade to command.
Meade was the fourth commander of the Army of the Potomac. He had compiled a solid if not brilliant record as a division commander, and he had not taken part in the cliquish internecine rivalries that had plagued the officer corps of that army. Meade's testy temper and large, piercing eyes crowned by a high forehead caused one soldier to describe him as “a God-damned old goggle-eyed snapping turtle.” But Meade's tactical skills, including the effective use of terrain and reserves, would play a large part in the coming battle.
As the Army of the Potomac moved north to confront the invaders, its morale rose with the latitude. Civilians in western Maryland and southern Pennsylvania cheered them, in contrast to the hostile curses they were accustomed to hearing in Virginia. “Our men are three times as enthusiastic as they have been in Virginia,” wrote a Union surgeon. “The idea that Pennsylvania is invaded and that we are fighting on our own soil, proper, influences them strongly. They are more determined than I have ever before seen them.”
These soldiers had been toughened to a flinty self-reliance in earlier campaigns under bumbling leaders. They “have something of the English bull-dog in them,” wrote a Massachusetts officer. “You can whip them time and again, but the next fight they go into, they are as full of pluck as ever.… Some day or other we shall have our turn.”
That day was coming soon. On the night of June 28, a civilian spy employed by General Longstreet brought word to Lee and Longstreet in Chambers-burg that the Army of the Potomac was concentrated just south of the Pennsylvania border and was moving north. Chagrined that he had not learned this