The Star of Gettysburg: A Story of Southern High TideAltsheler, Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander)
History
The Star of Gettysburg: A Story of Southern High Tide
Altsheler, Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander)
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Juvenile fiction
Ewell, too, stumped in on his crutches, vigorous, enthusiastic, but
never using profane language where Lee was. And there was A. P. Hill,
of soldierly slenderness and of fine, pleasing manner; McLaws, who had
done so well at Antietam; Pickett, not yet dreaming of the one marvelous
achievement that was to be his; Old Jubal Early, as he was familiarly
called, bald, bearded, rheumatic, profane, but brave and able; Hood,
tall, yellow-haired; Pender, the North Carolinian, not yet thirty,
religious like Jackson, and doomed like him to fall soon in battle;
Tieth, Edward Johnson, Anderson, Trimble, Stuart, as gay and dandyish as
ever; Ramseur, Jones, Daniel, young Fitzhugh Lee; Pendleton, Armistead,
and a host of others whose names remained memorable to him. They were
all tanned and sun-burned men. Few had reached early middle age,
and the shadows of death were already gathering for many of them.
But the high spirits of the Southern army merely became higher as they
began to make rapid but secret preparation for departure. The soldiers
did not know where they were going, except that it was into the North,
and they began to discuss the nature of the country they would find
there. Harry took the message to the Invincibles to pack and march.
Colonel Talbot and Lieutenant-Colonel St. Hilaire reluctantly dropped
their unfinished game, put up the chessmen, and in an hour the
Invincibles--few, but trim and strong--were marching to a position
farther up the river.
The corps of Longstreet was to lead the way, and it would march the
next morning. Harry now knew that the army would advance by way of the
Shenandoah valley. The Northern troops had been raiding in the great
valley and again had retaken Winchester, the pleasant little city so
beloved of Jackson. Harry shared the anger at this news that Jackson
would have felt had he been alive to hear it.
Harry was well aware, however, that the army could not slip away from
its opponent. Hooker, still in command, was watching on the heights
across the river, and there were the captive balloons hovering again in
the sky. But the spirit of the troops was such that they did not care
whether their march was known or not.
Harry and Dalton were awake early on the morning of the third of June,
and they saw the corps of Longstreet file silently by, the bugle
that called them away being the first note of the great and decisive
Gettysburg campaign. They were better clothed and in better trim than
they had been in a long time. They walked with an easy, springy gait,
and the big guns rumbled at the heels of the horses, fat from long rest
and the spring grass. They were to march north and west to Culpeper,
fifty miles away, and there await the rest of the army.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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