e peninsula
below Richmond. The series of five battles had already begun when
Carleton arrived in Baltimore, July 2d. A peremptory order from
Washington having stopped every one from reaching Fortress Monroe, he
had therefore to do the next best thing as collector and reviser of
news. After studying the whole situation, he wrote a long and detailed
letter from Baltimore.

Spending most of the summer at home, he was able to rejoin the army
early in September, when Lee began his daring invasion of the
North,--a political even more than a military move. Then Confederate
audacity was fully matched by Pennsylvania's patriotism. Although the
State had already one hundred and fifty regiments in service, Governor
Andrew D. Curtin called for fifty thousand more men. Within ten days
that number of militia were armed and equipped, and in the field.
Millionaires and wage-earners, professors and students, ministers and
their congregations were in line guarding the Cumberland Valley.
Neither disasters nor the incapacity of generals chilled the fierce
resolve of Pennsylvania's sons, who were determined to show that the
North could not be successfully invaded, even by veterans led by the
bravest and most competent generals of the age.

Carleton was in the saddle as soon as he learned that Lee had moved.
From Parkton to Hanover Junction, to Westminster, to Harrisburg, to
Green Castle, to Hagerstown, to Keitisville he rode, and at these
places he wrote, hoping to be in at the mightiest battle which, until
this time, had ever been fought on American soil. For many days it was
a mystery to the Washington authorities, and to the Army of the
Potomac, where Lee and his divisions were; but, with his usual good
fortune, Carleton was but nine miles distant, at Hagerstown, when the
booming of the cannon at Antietam roused him from his sleep. It was
not many minutes before he was in saddle and away. Instead of the ride
down the Sharpsburg pike that would have brought him in rear of the
enemy, he rode down the Boonsboro road, reaching the right wing of the
Union army just as Hooker was pushing his columns into position.
Striking off from the main road, through fields and farms, he came to
Antietam creek. He found a ford, and reached a pathway where a line of
wagons loaded with the wounded was winding down the slope. On the
fields above was a squadron of cavalry to hold back stragglers. In the
first ambulance he descried a silver star, and saw the