any active
operations on my part_, but that he was fearful that a force would be
sent to Harper's Ferry to cut off his communications.... That was what
caused him to retire."

When asked the question, "Did you discover, after the battle of
Gettysburg, any symptoms of demoralization in Lee's army?" General
Meade replied, "No, sir; I saw nothing of that kind."[1]

[Footnote 1: Report of Committee on Conduct of War, Part I., page
337.]

There was indeed no good reason why General Lee should feel any
extreme solicitude for the safety of his army, which, after all its
losses, still numbered more than fifty thousand troops; and, with that
force of veteran combatants, experience told him, he could count upon
holding at bay almost any force which the enemy could bring against
him. At Chancellorsville, with a less number, he had nearly routed a
larger army than General Meade's. If the _morale_ of the men remained
unbroken, he had the right to feel secure now; and we have shown that
the troops were as full of fight as ever. The exclamations of the
ragged infantry, overheard by Colonel Freemantle, expressed the
sentiment of the whole army. Recoiling from the fatal charge on
Cemetery Hill, and still followed by the terrible fire, they had heart
to shout defiantly: "We've not lost confidence in the old man! This
day's work won't do him no harm! Uncle Robert will get us into
Washington yet--you bet he will!"

Lee's reasons for retiring toward the Potomac were unconnected with
the _morale_ of his army. "The difficulty of procuring supplies," he
says, "rendered it impossible to continue longer where we were." What
he especially needed was ammunition, his supply of which had been
nearly exhausted by the three days' fighting, and it was impossible to
count upon new supplies of these essential stores now that the enemy
were in a condition to interrupt his communications in the direction
of Harper's Ferry and Williamsport. The danger to which the army was
thus exposed was soon shown not to have been overrated. General Meade
promptly sent a force to occupy Harper's Ferry, and a body of his
cavalry, hastening across the South Mountain, reached the Potomac near
Falling Waters, where they destroyed a pontoon bridge laid there for
the passage of the Southern army.

Lee accordingly resolved to retire, and, after remaining in line of
battle on Seminary Ridge throughout the evening and night of the 3d
and the whole of the 4th, during which