OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 255 



Henceforth it is with Virginia and the Army of the Potomac tliat his 

 name is identified. He was in tlie thick of the fighting during McClel- 

 lan's Peninsular Campaign, wliere he was severely wounded at Glen- 

 dale, June 30, 1862, while covering' the retreat of the army. At 

 South Mountain, he commanded a division of the first corps in its 

 successful attack ; and, in the following battle of Antietam, he had his 

 horse shot under him, and received a severe contusion from a canister 

 ball. His division made, near Fredericksburg, the flank attack, which, 

 •if strongly supported, might have changed the face of the day. Thus 

 he became an officer of conspicuous merit, and received command of 

 the fifth corps, with which, after the disastrous battle of Chancellors- 

 ville, he skilfully covered the army as it recrossed the Rappahannock. 

 When the disagreement of General Hooker with the war department 

 made his displacement inevitable, the choice of his successor, lying 

 between Reynolds and Meade, fell on the latter. And it is a touching 

 circumstance that General Reynolds, by the sacrifice of his life, con- 

 tributed afterwards to the glory of his near friend and companion in 

 arms. He came, with the advanced guard, to the ridge beyond Gettys- 

 burg ; and, seeing with his quick military eye that the position must 

 not be given up, he held stubbornly there, and fell at the head of his 

 men. The main body of the army, pushing rapidly on, arrived in 

 time to form on the horseshoe ridge, now celebrated in history. That 

 night. General Meade, accompanied by a captain of engineers, exam- 

 ined in person the whole position, and made his final dispositions. The 

 battle that followed is too familiar to be told again. When night fell 

 after the last day, the flower of the Army of Northern Virginia lay 

 dead on the field, or were gathered as helpless prisoners. There 

 turned the tide of rebellion ; and though, as it ebbed, the waves again 

 and again came fiercely back, they each time retreated farther, and at 

 last they were still. General Meade commanded the Army of the 

 Potomac in this crowning battle of the war. Had defeat come of it, 

 on him would have fallen the disgrace ; but it was victory, therefore 

 let no one divide his glory ! 



Nothing shows more clearly the weakness of popular judgment in 

 matters military than the common charge made against the victor, that 

 he failed to capture Lee's army, which was stopped at Williamsport by 

 the rise of the Potomac. Nor was it till the other day — nine years 

 after the event — that this fallacy was laid open by a few simple 

 sentences from the mouth of General Humphreys.* Any beaten 



* Address at the Meade Memorial Meeting, November 18, 1872. 



