, the flower of Southern manhood, into Pennsylvania and clothe
and feed them on her boundless resources he couldn't doubt. Virginia was
swept bare, and the demoralization of Hooker's army with the profound
depression of the North left his way open.

To say that Lee's invasion, as it rapidly developed under such
conditions, struck terror to the Capital of the Republic is to mildly
express it. The movement of his army from Culpepper in June indicated
clearly that his objective point was Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. If the
Capital of the State fell, nothing could withstand the onward triumphant
rush of his army into Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington.

To meet the extraordinary danger the President called for one hundred
thousand militia for six months' emergency service from the five States
clustering around Pennsylvania. And yet as the two armies drew near to
each other, General George Meade, the new Union Commander who had
succeeded Hooker, had but one hundred and five thousand against Lee's
sixty-two thousand. So terrible had been the depression following
Chancellorsville, so rapid the desertions, so numerous the leaves of
absence, that the combined forces of the Army of the Potomac with the
State troops under the new call reached only this pitiful total.

Lee's swift column penetrated almost to the gates of Harrisburg before
Meade's advance division of twenty-five thousand men had caught up with
his rear at Gettysburg on July 1st.

Seeing that a battle was inevitable, Lee drew in his advance lines and
made ready for the clash. The Northern army was going into this fight
with the smallest number of men relatively which he had ever met--though
outnumbering him nearly two to one. The difference was that here the
North was defending her own soil.

It was not surprising that on the eve of such a battle in the light of
the frightful experiences of the past two years that Washington should
be in a condition of panic. A single defeat now with Lee's victorious
army north of the Capital meant its fall, the inevitable dismemberment
of the Union, and the bankruptcy and ruin of the remaining Northern
States.

Brave men in Congress who had fought heroically with their mouths
inveighing with bitter invective against the weak and vacillating policy
of the President in temporizing with the South were busy packing their
goods and chattels to fly at a moment's notice.

The President realized, as no other man could, the deep trag