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.
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