There are words in the world’s history whose very sound is like a sigh or a groan; places which are branded “accursed” by the moaning lips of mothers, wives, sisters, and orphans. Shadowy figures, gigantic and draped in mourning, seem to hover above these spots: skeleton arms with bony fingers point to the soil beneath, crowded with graves: from the eyes, dim and hollow, glare unutterable things: and the grin of the fleshless lips is the gibbering mirth of the corpse torn from its cerements, and erect, as though the last trump had sounded, and the dead had arisen. No fresh flowers bloom in these dreary spots; no merry birds twitter there; no streamlets lapse sweetly with musical murmurs beneath the waterflags or the drooping boughs of trees. See! the blighted and withered plants are like the deadly nightshade--true flowers of war, blooming, or trying to bloom, on graves! Hear the voices of the few birds--they are sad and discordant! See the trees--they are gnarled, spectral, and torn by cannon-balls. Listen! The stream yonder is not limpid and mirthful like other streams. You would say that it is sighing as it steals away, soiled and ashamed. The images it has mirrored arouse its horror and make it sad. The serene surface has not given back the bright forms of children, laughing and gathering the summer flowers on its banks. As it sneaks like a culprit through the scarred fields of battle, it washes bare the bones of the dead in crumbling uniforms--bringing, stark and staring, to the upper air once more, the blanched skeleton and the grinning skull. Names of woe, at whose utterance the heart shudders, the blood curdles! Accursed localities where the traveller draws back, turning away in horror! All the world is dotted with them; everywhere they make the sunlight black. Among them, none is gloomier, or instinct with a more nameless horror, than the once insignificant village of Gettysburg. I reached it on the morning of July 2, 1863. The immense drama was in full progress. The adversaries had clashed together. Riding across the extensive fields north of the town, I saw the traces of the combat of the preceding day--and among the dying I remember still a poor Federal soldier, who looked at me with his stony and half-glazed eye as I passed; he was an enemy, but he was dying and I pitied him. A few words will describe the situation of affairs at that moment. Lee had pressed on northward through the valley of the Cumberland, when news came that General Meade, who had succeeded Hooker, was advancing to deliver battle to the invaders. At that intelligence Lee arrested his march. Meade menaced his communications, and it was necessary to check him. Hill’s corps was, therefore, sent across the South Mountain, toward Gettysburg; Ewell, who had reached York, was ordered back; and Lee made his preparations to fight his adversary as soon as he appeared.