"with what was left of mained in that position while the attack lasted. After the attack was over, an officer came with some troops, and said he had been ordered to occupy that position. After some parleying between you, and some hesitation on your part, you finally retired them-left of the six hundred." to move to the right there were between us and the mound. them I don't know, but suppose they had collected on this mound and around this grove. There was a great mass of them there in perfect confusion. advanced they kept swaying back, and I tried to get them to move up and hold their ground, but it was no use. It struck me as being, to say the least, very ridiculous. The 20th stood, firing on the brow of the hill away in their advance, and they were huddling around this point like a flock of sheep. As the rebs I recollect that we took a number of prisoners, and also about the Eagle. My recollection about this is, that some of our men saw a party taking the Eagle to headquarters, and recognized it as the Eagle off our color-lance, which was missing. They informed you of it, and you went to headquarters to see about it. Very truly yours, J. B. HARDENBURGH. Eagle, to which General The circumstance of the Hardenburgh refers, was this. in the afternoon of the 3d, the gilt eagle had been shot off the top of the color-staff of the "Ulster Guard," but it had not been missed until the regiment moved back from the line, after the battle. Then some men were sent to recover it, but were unable to find it. The next morning it was reported to me that a body of the troops who had relieved us the night before had recently marched by our bivouac in direction of General 1863.] EAGLE FROM COLOR-STAFF. 473 Meade's headquarters with a rebel color and our Eagle. I proceeded at once to headquarters to reclaim the Eagle. I found that a conference was being held between General Meade and his corps commanders, and I could not obtain an interview. Col. Sanderson informed me that a party of officers and men from the Second corps had recently paraded before headquarters and turned in as some of the trophies of their valor and victory over the enemy a rebel color and our Eagle. As the enemy did not carry Eagles it was self-evident that their claim was fraudulent as to that, and it probably was as to the flag, in so far as their capture was concerned. They probably picked it up from the ground in front of where we had fought, as they did the Eagle, and upon the strength of these proofs, to support the claim of their presence there and their desperate and successful bravery. Mr. Bachelder gives them the place in his map, and historians give the Second corps the credit for repulsing Pickett's men at this particular point. Colonel Saunderson, who was the only staff officer of General Meade who was disengaged on the occasion of my visit to headquarters, promised me the matter should be investigated as soon as time could be found for it; but time was never found. The mound of which General Hardenburgh speaks was covered with Union guns, and was the highest point on our left between Cemetery Hill and Little Round Top, and its possession by the enemy would have greatly endangered our lines. With the fullest measure of praise to the gallant Vermonters, under the brave Stannard, who fought on our left, and to the men of the Second corps who really stood up to their work on the line and fought on our right, we claim for the 151st Pennsylvania and the 20th New York Militia only this, that at the point in our front line which I have described they met the onset of Pickett's attack—that they broke his line and killed and wounded a large number of his troops and that hundreds surrendered to them. That after the fighting was over, other troops relieved these two regiments-probably the same of which General Hardenburgh speaks, and who then set up a claim for having held the position during the battle. Whether they are the same troops whom Mr. Bachelder gives the place to on his map, I do not know, but I would be glad to see the official list of killed and wounded of this particular command at that particular time and place. On the fourth of July General Doubleday issued the following Order: HEADQUARTERS THIRD DIVISION, FIRST CORPS, GENERAL ORDERS. The Major-General commanding the division desires to return his thanks to the Vermont Brigade, the One Hundred and Fifty-first Pennsylvania Volunteers, and the Twentieth New York State Militia, for their gallant conduct in resisting in the front line the main attack of the enemy upon this position, after sustaining a terrific fire from seventy-five to a hundred pieces of artillery. He congratulates them upon contributing so essentially to the glorious, and it is to be hoped, final victory yesterday. By command of MAJOR-GENERAL DOUBLEDAY. (Signed) EDWARD C. BAIRD, T Captain and A. A. G. CHAPTER XXXV. THE RETREAT FROM GETTYSBURG-UNION LOSSES-CONFEDERATE LOSSES OF UNION ARMY-LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT-A NEW SYSTEM TO MEADE'S ORDER-ARMY CUTS LOOSE FROM ITS BASE-FROM THE RAPI- WILDERNESS-WADSWORTH KILLED SPOTTSYLVANIA COURT HOUSE-SHERIDAN'S OPERATIONS- IF, as General Lee says in his official report, "It became a matter of difficulty to withdraw through the mountains with our large trains," because he found the Army of the Potomac within a day or two days' march of him, it would seem that the difficulty ought to have been greatly increased after the concentration of the Army of the Potomac in his immediate front, and after his own army had been weakened and demoralized by a terrible defeat. But the tardy tactics of which we have before spoken as distinguishing both sides, characterized General Meade's operations after the battle; and the Confederate Army, moving off under cover of the night of the fourth of July, reached the west side of the Potomac with little difficulty. The losses during the three days' fighting were very great on both sides. General Meade reports his to have been 2,834 killed, 13,709 wounded, and 6,643 missing— making a grand total of 23,186. The loss among officers of high rank was unusually large. On the Union side, Major-General Reynolds and Brigadier-Generals Vincent, Weed and Zook were killed. Major-Generals Sickles (losing a leg), Hancock, Doubleday, Gibbon, Barlow, Warren, and Butterfield, and Brigadier-Gener als Graham, Paul (losing both eyes), Stone, Barnes and Brooke were wounded. Field and line officers almost without number were killed and wounded. In the "Ulster Guard" two field and one staff officer were wounded, two captains and one lieutenant killed, five captains and eight lieutenants wounded. [See List of Killed and Wounded in Chronological Record, end of Volume.] As usual, in the Confederate Army, General Lee says: "It is not in my power to give a correct statement of our casualties, which were severe, including many brave men, and an unusual proportion of distinguished and valuable officers." Mr. Samuel Weaver, who superintended the removal of the Union dead to the National Cemetery, says: "In searching for the remains of our fallen heroes, we examined more than 3,000 rebel graves. * * * I have been making a careful estimate, from time to time, as I went over the field, of rebel bodies on the battle-field and at the hospitals, and I place the number at not less than 7,000 bodies.” Mr. A. H. Guernsey, author of "Harper's Pictorial History of the War," investigated the subject of the Rebel loss at Gettysburg, and puts it at 36,000 men. This includes the prisoners, whose numbers General Meade reported at 13,621. Mr. Guernsey says: "The entire loss to this army during the six weeks from the middle of June, when it set forth from Culpepper to invade the North, to the close of July, when it returned to the starting point, was about 60,000." The Federals captured three cannon, forty-one battle flags, and 25,000 small arms. Among the Confederates of high rank, there were wounded Major-Generals Hood, Trimble, Heth and Pender, the latter mortally; Brigadier-Generals Barksdale and Garnett were killed; Semmes mortally wounded, and Kemper, Armistead, Scales, Anderson, Hampton, Jones and Jenkins wounded; Archer |