Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/520

 488 Battle of Gettysburg. [ises proclamation calling into service for six months 120,000 militia from those and the contiguous States. Lee's advance was somewhat slow after his whole force crossed the Potomac. He pushed two advance detach- ments well toward the Susquehanna, but kept his main army at and near Chambersburg until, on the night of June 28, the same day on which the change of command had occurred in the Union army, a scout brought information to Lee that his antagonist had reached Frederick and seized the passes of South Mountain. Up to this time Lee had made his preparations to march upon Harrisburg; but now, seeing his communications menaced, he turned his course abruptly to the right and issued orders to concentrate his whole army at Gettysburg, east of the mountains. Meade, having no certain information of the enemy's plans, ordered a continuation of the northward march which Hooker had begun. Within the next two days he learned the enemy's movements more accurately, and correctly divined that a collision must necessarily soon occur. Having reached Taneytown, he, on July 1, carefully selected a battle-field behind the line of Pipe Creek, whither he expected to retire and receive Lee's attack. But on that morning the advance guards of the two armies, moving at right angles to each other, had already met and engaged in conflict at Gettysburg, and that place became the principal battle-field of the war. Meade had sent Reynolds, his second in command, with three corps forward to Gettysburg to observe the enemy and mask the intended retrograde movement to Pipe Creek. Arriving early on the morning of July 1, Reynolds found two brigades of Federal cavalry skirmishing with the enemy's advance two miles west of that town. His advance division was not yet on the ground, but he hurried it up to support the Federal cavalry ; and the fight thus begun grew in strength and importance on the arrival of additional forces from both armies. It continued throughout the day with fluctuating results, until heavy Con- federate reinforcements, coming by converging roads from the north and north-east as well as from the north-west, and outnumbering the Federals by two to one, drove back the Unionist troops, first into Gettysburg, and then through and southward out of the town to a line of hills called Cemetery Ridge. Cemetery Ridge is an irregular curved ridge which has aptly been compared with a fish-hook, lying in general direction north and south, with the barb toward the north and east. At its southern extremity is an elevation called Round Top, 400 feet high, and some distance north of it a lower elevation, called Little Round Top. From these the ridge extends northward two miles, to within half a mile of Gettysburg, and curving eastward, terminates abruptly in Gulp's Hill. Posted on this ridge, the Union army found itself in a kind of natural fortress, the broken and rocky crest of which the troops immediately strengthened by