Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/39

 Ewell) in hot haste, and said to him within the Captain's hearing that General Lee wished him, General Ewell, forthwith to proceed to attack the Federals on Cemetery Hill, whereupon General Ewell replied in a low voice, but audible to Captain Irsch, that if General Lee knew the condition of his, Ewell's, troops, after their long march and the fight that had just taken place, he would not think of such an order, and that the attack could not be risked. This story, which I have from Captain Irsch himself and which is corroborated by other evidence, would seem to show that by continuing as long as we did, our fight in the afternoon, in spite of the losses we suffered, we rendered the enemy unable, or at least disinclined, to undertake a later attack upon Cemetery Hill, which might have had much more serious results.  There is, therefore, very good reason for concluding that General Howard rendered valuable service in not ordering the retreat as early as General Doubleday thought he ought to have ordered it.

I remember a picturesque scene that happened that night in a lower room of the gate house of the Gettysburg Cemetery. In the center of the room a barrel set upright, with a burning tallow candle stuck in the neck of a bottle on top of it; around the walls six or seven generals accidentally gathered together, sitting some on boxes but most on the floor, listening to the accounts of those who had been in the battle of the day, then making critical comments and discussing what might have been and finally all agreeing in the hope that General Meade had decided or would decide to fight the battle of the morrow on the ground on which we then were. There was nothing of extraordinary solemnity in the “good-night” we gave one another when we parted. It was rather a commonplace, business-like “good-night,” as that of an ordinary occasion. We of the Eleventh Corps, occupying the cemetery, lay down,