THE CIVIL WAR. 499 



over, it may have been Sanmel H. Hall, a sailor upon the 

 Crusader. 



The task of tracing out the records of our brave men 

 must be monotonous, but the making of records was in- 

 finitely more so. The whole business of the war was 

 wearisome and worrisome, and the future looked dark in- 

 deed at the beginning of summer, 1863. 



During June Lee's army was sweeping up into Pennsyl- 

 vania and no one knew whether our Union forces could 

 stop the invasion. The situation was desperate, for no 

 decisive break in the Rebellion had yet been accomplished, 

 though for more than two years rivers of men and money 

 had been poured into the nation's defense. It is true that 

 General Grant was at this very time besieging Vicksburg, 

 in which the Confederate general, J. C. Pemberton, with 

 thirty thousand men, was cooped up ; but no one was sure 

 that this western wing of the army could succeed any 

 more than the Army of the Potomac had done. 



On the first day of July, 1863, Robert E. Lee's uncon- 

 quered army of one hundred and eight thousand men* had 

 pressed through every barrier of our Union forces, through 

 Virginia up into Maryland, on into Pennsylvania, where 

 the whole scattered army of defense was scarcely equal in 

 number to the invaders. At this critical moment another 

 call for soldiers to defend the country was issued ; not, as 

 before, an invitation to noble patriots to volunteer nor even 

 to engage in consideration of a bounty of two hundred 

 dollars, but by a draft which compelled men to go to the 

 front or else to procure substitutes. Several of our men 

 living to-day remember paying for their release three hun- 

 dred dollars or furnishing substitutes to be shot at. Our 

 town mustered twelve men under the draft ; but before 

 any men could be sent, the terrible suspense was broken. 

 It was done by the battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 

 where the head of the Army of Virginia plunged into the 

 Army of the Potomac. 



* According to Gen. O. O. Howard's count. 



