ck
and getting his column on to the road northward. Fortunately, the army
of the Potomac for once has the advantage of the interior line so that
Meade is able to place his army in a position that protects at once
Washington on the south-west, Baltimore on the east, and Philadelphia on
the north-east. We can, however, picture to ourselves the anxiety that
must have rested upon the Commander-in-chief in Washington during the
weeks of the campaign and during the three days of the great battle
which was fought on Northern soil and miles to the north of the Northern
capital. If, on that critical third day of July, the Federal lines had
been broken and the army disorganised, there was nothing that could
prevent the national capital from coming into the control of Lee's army.
The surrender of Washington meant the intervention of France and
England, meant the failure of the attempt to preserve the nation's
existence, meant that Abraham Lincoln would go down to history as the
last President of the United States, the President under whose
leadership the national history had come to a close. But the Federal
lines were not broken. The third day of Gettysburg made clear that with
equality of position and with substantial equality in numbers there was
no better fighting material in the army of the grey than in the army of
the blue. The advance of Pickett's division to the crest of Cemetery
Ridge marked the high tide of the Confederate cause. Longstreet's men
were not able to prevail against the sturdy defence of Hancock's second
corps and when, on the Fourth of July, Lee's army took up its line of
retreat to the Potomac, leaving behind it thousands of dead and wounded,
the calm judgment of Lee and his associates must have made clear to them
that the cause of the Confederacy was lost. The army of Northern
Virginia had shattered itself against the defences of the North, and
there was for Lee no reserve line. For a long series of months to come,
Lee, magnificent engineer officer that he was, and with a sturdy
persistency which withstood all disaster, was able to maintain defensive
lines in the Wilderness, at Cold Harbor, and in front of Petersburg, but
as his brigades crumbled away under the persistent and unceasing attacks
of the army of the Potomac, he must have realised long before the day
of Appomattox that his task was impossible. What Gettysburg decided in
the East was confirmed with equal emphasis by the fall of Vicksburg in
the W