It is not easy for the historian, 10, 50, or 500 years away from an event, to put aside for a moment the large concepts of currents and forces, or the mechanical aids of statistics, charts, maps, neat plans and diagrams in which the migration of men, women and children is indicated by an arrow, or a brigade of half-terrified, half-heroic men becomes a neat little rectangle. It is not easy to see behind source material, to visualize state papers, reports, letters, diaries as written by men who spent most of their lives sleeping, eating, yawning, eliminating, squeezing blackheads, lusting, looking out of windows, or talking about nothing in general with no one in particular. We are too impressed with the pattern revealed to us—or which we think has been revealed to us—to remember that for the participants history is a haphazard affair, apparently aimless, produced by human beings whose concern is essentially with the trivial and irrelevent. The historian is always conscious of destiny. The participants rarely—or mistakenly.
So to be set down in the midst of crisis, to be at once involved and apart, is to experience a constant series of shocks against which there is no anesthetic. The soldiers, the stragglers, the refugees, the farm boys shouting at horses, the tophatted gentlemen cursing the teamsters, the teamsters cursing back; the looters, pimps, gamblers, whores, nurses and newspapermen were indisputably what they appeared: vitally important to themselves, of little interest to anyone else. Yet at the same time they were a paragraph, a page, a chapter, a whole series of volumes.
I’m sure I was faithful to the spirit if not the letter of Barbara’s warnings, and that none of the hundreds whom I passed or who passed me noted my presence. I, on the other hand, had to repress the constant temptation to peer into every face for signs which could not tell me what fortune or misfortune the decision of the next three days would bring to it.
A few miles from town the crowded confusion became even worse, for the scouts from Ewell’s Corps, guarding the Confederate left flank on the York Road, acted like a cork in a bottle. Because I, unlike the other travelers, knew this, I cut sharply south to get back on the circuitous Hanover road I had left shortly after midnight, and crossing the bridge over Rock Creek, stumbled into Gettysburg.
The two and a half storey brick houses with their purplish slate roofs were placid and charming in the hot July sun. A valiant rooster pecked at horsedung in the middle of the street, heedless of the swarming soldiers, any of whom might take a notion for roast chicken. Privates in the black hats of the Army of the Potomac, cavalrymen with wide yellow stripes and cannoneers with red ones on the seams of their pants, swaggered importantly. Lieutenants with hands resting gracefully on sword hilts, captains with arms thrust in unbuttoned tunics, colonels smoking cigars, generals on horseback, all moved back and forth across the street, out of and into houses and stores, each clearly intent on some business which would affect the course of the war. Soldiers spat, leered at an occasional woman, sat dolefully on handy stoops, or marched smartly toward an unknown destination. On the courthouse staff the flag hung doubtfully in the limp summer air. Every so often there was a noise like poorly organized thunder.
Imitating the adaptable infantrymen, I found an unoccupied stoop and sat down, after a curious glance at the house, wondering whether it contained someone whose letters or diaries I had read. Drawing out my packet of dried beef, I munched away without taking any of my attention from the sights and sounds and smells around me. Only I knew how desperately these soldiers would fight this afternoon and all day to-morrow. I alone knew how they would be caught in the inescapable trap on July Third and finally routed, to begin the last act of the war. That major, I thought, so proud of his new-won golden oak leaves, may have an arm or leg shot off vainly defending Culp’s Hill; that sergeant over there may lie faceless under an apple tree before nightfall.
Soon these men would be swept away from the illusory shelter of the houses and out onto the ridges where they would be pounded into defeat and rout. There was nothing for me now in Gettysburg itself—though I could have spent days absorbing the color and feeling. Already I had tempted fate by my casual appearance in the heart of town. At any moment someone might speak to me; an ill considered word or action of mine might change, with ever-widening consequences, the course of the future. I had been foolish enough and long enough; it was time for me to go to the vantage point I had decided upon and observe without peril of being observed.
I rose and stretched, my bones protesting. But a couple of miles more would see me clear of all danger of chance encounter with a too friendly or inquisitive soldier or civilian. I gave a last look, endeavoring to impress every detail on my memory, and turned south on the Emmitsburg Road.
This was no haphazard choice. I knew where and when the crucial, the decisive move upon which all the other moves depended would take place. While thousands of men were struggling and dying on other parts of the field, a Confederate advance force, unnoticed, disregarded, would occupy the position which would eventually dominate the field and win the battle—and the war—for the South. Heavy with knowledge no one else possessed I made my way toward a farm on which there was a field and a peach orchard.
A GREAT BATTLE in its first stages is as tentative, uncertain and indefinite as a courtship just begun. At the beginning the ground was there for either side to take without protest; the other felt no surge of possessive jealousy. I walked unscathed along the Emmitsburg Road; on my left I knew there were Union forces concealed, on my right the Southrons maneuvered. In a few hours, to walk between the lines would mean instant death, but now the declaration had not been made, the vows had not been finally exchanged. It was still possible for either party to withdraw; no furious heat bound the two indissolubly together. I heard the occasional shell and the whine of a minie bullet; mere flirtatious gestures so far.
Despite the hot sun the grass was cool and lush. The shade in the orchard was velvety. From a low branch I picked a near-ripe peach and sucked the wry juice. I sprawled on the ground and waited. For miles around, men from Maine and Wisconsin, from Georgia and North Carolina, assumed the same attitude. But I knew for what I was waiting; they could only guess.
Some acoustical freak dimmed the noises in the air to little more than amplification of the normal summer sounds. Did the ground really tremble faintly, or was I translating my mental picture of the marching armies, the great wagon trains, the heavy cannon, the iron-shod horses into an imagined physical effect? I don’t think I dozed, but certainly my attention withdrew from the rows of trees with their runneled and scarred bark, curving branches and graceful leaves, so that I was taken unaware by the unmistakable clump and creak of mounted men.
The blue-uniformed cavalry rode slowly through the peach orchard. They seemed like a group of aimless hunters returning from the futile pursuit of a fox; they chatted, shouted at each other, walked their horses abstractedly. One or two had their sabres out; they cut at the branches overhead and alongside in pure, pointless mischief.
Behind them came the infantrymen, sweating and swearing, more serious. Some few had wounds, others were without their muskets. Their dark blue tunics were carelessly unbuttoned, their lighter pants were stained with mud and dust and grass. They trampled and thrashed around like men long tired out. Quarrels rose among them swiftly and swiftly petered out. No one could mistake them for anything but troops in retreat.