The Union army was for the first time fighting a great battle on Union soil. The homes of many who were engaged stood within sound of the Gettysburg cannon. As the Confederates did in many other engagements, the Federals here felt that they were repelling an invader, and they fought accordingly, with a grim iron resisting power which they had never displayed before. Great praise was due to General Hancock, and perhaps still more to General Howard, for early perceiving the strength of Cemetery Hill as a defensible position. On the first day, after General Reynolds had fallen at his post of duty with the First Corps, General Doubleday, next in command, was on the point of ordering a retreat, the attack seeming too fearful to be withstood. But Howard, coming up with the Eleventh Corps and assuming command of the field, overruled Doubleday, and, by enforcing a most stubborn resistance against Hill's and Ewell's desperate onsets, probably saved Cemetery Hill from capture that evening. So far as has ever yet been made apparent, every plan which Lee formed for the battle of Gettysburg, every order which he gave, was wise and right. We do not except even his management on the third day. It is easy to find fault with dispositions when they have failed of happy results. Men have said that instead of attacking in front on that day Lee should have drawn Ewell from the left and thrown him to Longstreet's right, manoeuvring Meade out of his position. But in this matter, too, Lee's judgment was probably good. Changing his plan of attack would have been a partial confession of defeat, to some extent disheartening his men. The Union Sixth Corps, fresh and free, General John Sedgwick at its head, was sure to have pounced on any troops seeking to trouble Meade's left, and, had Meade been successfully flanked and forced back, he would have retired to Pipe Creek and been stronger than ever. Of course, Pickett should never have been sent forward alone. You could wade the Atlantic as easily as he, unsupported, could go beyond that stone wall. But, from all one can learn, Lee was in fact not responsible for Pickett's lack of support, although in almost guilty nobleness of spirit he assumed the responsibility, and silently rested under the imputation of it till his death. Had Lee's great subordinates, Ewell at nightfall on the first day, and Longstreet on the other two days, seconded him with the alacrity and devotion usually displayed by them, or had Stonewall Jackson been still alive and in the place of either of these generals, the issue of the battle would almost to a certainty have been very different from what it was. A soldier who had often followed to victory the enterprising Graham of Claverhouse, but, under a weaker leader, saw a battle wavering, cried out, "O for one hour of Dundee!" So must Lee often have sighed for Stonewall, the loss of whom at Chancellorsville made that, for the Confederacy, a sort of Pyrrhic victory.