Lee sat on his horse on the side of a dirt road, watching a column of infantry go by as he pondered this latest development. Another general to face. Lee knew Meade, who was to be next in command, the latest in the line that had taken command of the opposing army. Lee absentmindedly returned the enthusiastic greetings of the soldiers as they filed past He did note that it was Pickett’s division, a relatively new unit overall, most of the men untested in battle. They were Virginians, every single man, and they straightened their backs and lengthened their steps when they saw Lee on the side of the road.
“General.”
Lee turned, surprised to see Longstreet sitting solidly on his horse, like a sack of potatoes. Longstreet had never been an imposing figure in the saddle and out of deference, Lee dismounted. Longstreet did the same.
“How goes the march?” Lee asked Longstreet.
The corps commander tugged on his long beard. “The men are well fed. This is good country for commandeering provisions. They have not seen war here.”
Lee nodded. He’d issued strict orders for his men regarding appropriating supplies. Civilians were to be paid for everything taken-the fact that the pay was in the AA form of Confederate script, practically worthless even in the South, was not a concern to him.
Longstreet let out a long sigh from deep in his barrel chest, and Lee waited. He knew Longstreet was working himself up to discussing something unpleasant, and Lee had found waiting to be the only way to allow the other man to do it. Prodding Longstreet only made him more reluctant to speak.
“Meade’s taken over the Army of the Potomac,” Longstreet finally said.
“I know.”
“Meade’s a solid man. I served with him before.” There was no need for Longstreet to say before what, as they both knew. The days of wearing blue in the regular army of the United States seemed forever ago to Lee. “He’ll move,” Longstreet said. “And Lincoln will be on him to move.”
“Yes.”
Longstreet straightened and looked his commanding officer in the eyes. “Do we know where the Anny of the Potomac is at the moment?”
So that was it. Lee was not surprised. He empathized with Longstreet’s concern because it was his own. “No. general, we do not.”
“And Stuart? Our cavalry?”
“I fear that General Stuart is off on one of his long rides,” Lee said. “I have sent couriers to find him, but none has returned with news. So I must assume he has ranged a bit farther afield than I had wanted.” Or ordered, lee thought, but refrained from saying.
Both remembered the last time Stuart had gone off with the cavalry on a long ride, completely encircling the Union Army. It was spectacular and daring but also militarily unsound as the cavalry was Lee’s eyes. Without Stuart’s men pulling reconnaissance for the army, the Confederates were operating almost blindly.
“If Meade is moving quickly — ” Longstreet left the rest of the sentence unsaid.
“The Army of the Potomac has never moved quickly,” Lee said, realizing even as they came out the danger in such words. “But,” he added quickly, before Longstreet could also point out the same realization, “I am tightening the column. I’ve ordered Ewell’s corps to pull back from York.”
“To where?” Longstreet asked, somewhat relieved to hear the advance was halting, even if only for a day or so.
“A small town called Gettysburg. I’ve received a report that there is a warehouse of shoes there.”
“The men need shoes,” Longstreet said approvingly.
Both men turned as a dashing figure galloped up to them. General Pickett was mounted on a sleek black horse and wore a small blue cap, buff gauntlets, and matching blue cuffs on the sleeves of his uniform jacket. He held an elegant riding crop in one band. Oddest of all, he wore his hair in long ringlets that dangled about his shoulders, and he perfumed his hair each morning before taking to the field, something Lee found distasteful but had refrained from commenting on, especially as, for some strange reason, Longstreet was very fond of his youngest division commander.
Pickett brought his horse to a halt and dismounted with a flourish. “Generals.” Pickett bowed at the waist, which brought a slight smile to lee’s face and a frown to Longstreet’s.
“Magnificent, aren’t they,” Pickett said, indicating his men marching by. “They are ready, sir, most ready to join the fray.”
“The fray will come,” Lee said. He found Pickett too eager to throw his men into the fray. Pickett had seen combat in the War with Mexico where he had been the first American to scale the walls of Chapultepec, a feat for which he had been widely praised. Pickett had graduated West Point with an undistinguished record in the same class as McClellan, the first commander of the Army of the Potomac, and as Stonewall Jackson. Pickett had been wounded in the shoulder at Gaines Mill, which kept him out of the war for a considerable period of time — too long some whispered. Lee had held Pickett’s division in reserve at Fredericksburg as it was filling out with new soldiers after earlier losses when Pickett had not been in command. Both those latter two issues had gotten under Pickett’s skin and he was determined that in the next fray his division would be in the forefront. Lee knew such a thing was more determined by fate than decision, but he refrained from telling Pickett that.
Pickett lifted a gauntleted hand and idly stroked one of his locks, apparently unaware that he had interrupted the two senior officers. “Do you think the Yankees will fight?”
“Those people”-a ten Lee often used to describe the Union Army — “will have to fight now that we are on their soil.”
“Good,” Pickett said.
A sudden feeling of weariness passed through Lee, draining him. He still had a touch of the soldier’s curse and this was not the place to be so afflicted. He threw a boot into a stirrup and pulled himself onto his horse, taking Longstreet by surprise. The corps commander obviously still had something on his mind, perhaps a more vocal complaint about Jeb Stuart and the cavalry being missing, but Lee had not the energy for it nor did he wish to discuss such with Pickett present.
“Good day, gentlemen,” Lee said, as he pressed spur to horse flank and rode off.
Meade inherited an army that had known only defeat, not the most comfortable situation. Indeed, so startled had he been to be awoken at three in the morning with the orders putting him in command, that at first he though the courier had come to arrest him and he had racked his brain-trying o remember what infraction he might have been guilty of. There were other corps commanders senior to him, so he was uncertain why this task had fallen to him.
Regardless, he knew two things: one was that he had to stay between Lee’s army and the Washington/Baltimore area, and then, second, he had to fix and fight the Army of Northern Virginia. To accomplish the first, he immediately issued orders pulling in the bulk of his army North out of Virginia. Hooker might not have been the most aggressive commander, but he had trained the staff and the army well, and he was cooperating fully with Meade. To work on the second, Meade decided to ignore the Confederate cavalry force to his rear and send the bulk of his own cavalry to the northwest to see if they could pinpoint Lee’s exact deployment. He knew it exposed his supply line, but he felt his men had enough provisions and ammunition to fight at least one major engagement. Besides, they would be in Pennsylvania, on Union soil, where he could count on some local replenishment of his supplies.