Chapter VII: Glimpses of the Great Northwest, 447 (4)

The great memory of Richmond for all time will be of the Civil War, when for three years battles raged around it. The first movement against the city was McClellan's siege in 1862, and the environs show abundant remains of the forts, redoubts and long lines of earthworks by which the Confederate Capital was so gallantly defended. The earliest attack was by Union gunboats in May, 1862, against the batteries defending Drewry's Bluff on James River, seven miles below the town, the defensive works being so strong that little impression was made, but enough was learned to prevent any subsequent naval attack there. McClellan came up the Peninsula between James and York Rivers, approached Richmond from the east, and extended his army around to the north, enveloping it upon a line which was the arc of a circle, from seven miles east to five miles north of the city. The Chickahominy flows through a broad and swampy depression in the table-land north and east of Richmond, bordered by meadows, fens and thickets of underbrush. It thus divided McClellan's investing army, and the first great battle near Richmond was begun by the Confederates, who took advantage of a heavy rain late in May which had swollen the river and swamps. They fell upon the Union left wing on May 31st, and the indecisive battle of Fair Oaks, in which the losses were ten thousand men, was fought southwest of the Chickahominy. General Joseph E. Johnston, the Confederate Commander, was badly wounded, and General Lee succeeded him, continuing in command until the war closed. Extensive cemeteries now mark this battlefield among the swamps. During June the heat and malaria filled McClellan's hospitals with fever cases, and he had to move the greater portion of his army to higher ground north of the Chickahominy, where he erected protective earthworks. These still exist, with the formidable ranges of opposing Confederate works on the south side of the river.

One of the most brilliant Confederate movements of the war followed. McClellan's right wing stretched around to the village of Mechanicsville, five miles north of Richmond, and Lee determined to overwhelm this wing. Stonewall Jackson had been driving the Union troops out of the Shenandoah Valley northwest of Richmond, and late in June began a combined movement with Lee's army at Richmond. Longstreet and Hill crossed the Chickahominy above Mechanicsville and attacked the Union right, beginning the "Seven Days' Battles," lasting from June 25 to July 1, 1862. Jackson was to have got down the same day from the Shenandoah Valley, but his march was delayed, and this gave time for McClellan to withdraw his wing and extensive baggage trains across the swamps below, the stubborn defense by his rear guards making the fierce conflict of Gaines' Mill, on the second day, during which Jackson, coming from the northward and joining the others, compelled the Union lines to change front, the contest thus turning into the first battle of Cold Harbor, in which the rear held their ground until the retreat was completed across the Chickahominy, and withdrew, destroying roads and bridges behind them. McClellan then made a further retreat, for which these obstructive tactics gave time, across the White Oak Swamp down the river, moving on a single road, leading to higher ground, which was held by hasty defenses. The Confederate attacks upon this new line made the battles of Savage Station, Charles City Cross Roads, and Frazier's Farm, the pursuit being checked long enough to permit another retreat and the formation of lines of defense on Malvern Hill, fifteen miles southeast of Richmond, adjoining James River. The Confederates again attacked, but met a disastrous check; and, wearied by a week of battles and marches, they then desisted, closing the seven days' fighting, in which both sides were worn out, and the losses were forty thousand men. McClellan's army, having retreated from around Richmond, afterwards withdrew farther down James River to Harrison's Landing, and here they rested. Subsequently they were removed by vessels to Washington for the later campaign which resulted in the second battle of Bull Run, McClellan being superseded for a brief period by Pope. This brilliant Confederate movement against McClellan raised the siege and relieved Richmond, emboldening them to make their subsequent aggressive campaigns across the Potomac, which were checked at Antietam and at Gettysburg.

GRANT'S SIEGE OF RICHMOND.

There were no Union attacks directly against Richmond in 1863. The second great movement upon the Confederate Capital began in June, 1864, when Grant came down through the Wilderness, as already described, and attacked the Confederates at Cold Harbor. Lee was entrenched there in almost the same defensive position occupied by McClellan's rear when protecting his retreat across the Chickahominy two years before. Grant made little impression, but in a brief and bloody battle lost fifteen thousand men. He then turned aside from this almost impregnable position to the northeast of Richmond, went south to the James River, and, crossing over, started a new attack from a different quarter. This removed the seat of war to the south of Richmond, and in September, 1864, General Butler's Unionist troops from Bermuda Hundred captured Fort Harrison, a strong work on the northeast side of the James, opposite Drewry's Bluff, and not far from Malvern Hill. The campaign then became one of stubborn persistence. Throughout the autumn and winter Grant gradually spread his lines westward around Petersburg, so that the later movements were more a siege of that city than of Richmond. City Point, at the mouth of the Appomattox, flowing out from Petersburg to the James, became his base of supplies. As the Union lines were extended steadily westward, one railway after another, leading from the far South up to Petersburg and Richmond, was cut off, and Lee was ultimately starved out, forcing the abandonment of Petersburg in the early spring of 1865, and the evacuation of Richmond on April 3d, with the retreat of Lee westward, and the final surrender at Appomattox six days later, causing the downfall of the Confederacy, and ending the war.

From the top of Libby Hill in Richmond the route is still pointed out by which the swiftly moving Union troops, after that fateful Sunday of the evacuation, advanced over the level lands from Petersburg towards the burning city. The bridges across the James were burnt, and acres of buildings in the business section were in flames when they came to the river bank and found that the greater portion of the affrighted people had fled. The Yankees quickly laid a pontoon bridge, crossed to Shockoe Hill, rushed up to the Capitol, and raised the Union "Stars and Stripes" on the roof, replacing the Confederate "Stars and Bars." Then they went vigorously to work putting out the fires, and the new infusion of life given the city by its baptism of blood imparted an energy which has not only restored it, but has given it an era of great prosperity. It is a curious fact that the nearest approach any Northern troops made to Richmond during the progress of the war was in March, 1864. A precursor to Grant's march through the Wilderness was a dashing cavalry raid from the northward, the troopers crossing the Chickahominy, then unguarded, and advancing to a point about one mile from the city limits. Here they met some resistance, and, learning of defensive works farther ahead, General Kilpatrick, who commanded the raiders, retreated. General Lee's troops were then fifty miles away from Richmond, guarding the lines along the Rappahannock.

PIEDMONT AND THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY.

In the great strategic movements of the opposing armies of the Civil War they repeatedly traversed a large part of Virginia and Maryland to the northwest of the route between Washington and Richmond. Like the general coastal formation east of the Alleghenies, Virginia rises into successive ridges parallel with the mountains. The first range of low broken hills stretching southwest from the Potomac are called in different parts the Kittoctin, Bull Run and other mountains extending down to the Carolina boundary. From these, what is known as the Piedmont district stretches all across the State, and has a width of about twenty-five miles to the base of the Blue Ridge, being a succession of picturesque valleys and rolling lands, the general elevation gradually increasing towards the northwest, where it is bordered by the towering Blue Ridge and its many spurs and plateaus, with passages through at various gaps. The Blue Ridge is elevated about fifteen hundred feet at the Potomac, but Mount Marshall, at Front Royal, rises nearly thirty-four hundred feet, and the Peaks of Otter, farther southwest, are much higher. Beyond this is the great Appalachian Valley, which stretches from New England to Alabama, the section here being known as the "Valley of Virginia," and its northern portion as the Shenandoah Valley. This is a belt of rolling country, with many hills and vales, diversified by streams that wind among the hillsides, and having a varying breadth of ten to fifty miles in different parts. Beyond it, to the northwest, are the main Allegheny Mountain ranges. The opposing troops marched and fought over all this country in connection with the greater military movements, and here was the special theatre of Stonewall Jackson's exploits and his wonderful marches and quick manoeuvres which made his troops proudly style themselves his "foot cavalry." The memory of Jackson is cherished by the Southern people more than that of any other of their leaders in the Civil War, and his brilliant exploits and inopportune death have made him their special hero.

In the Piedmont region, to the southeast and in front of the Blue Ridge, are the towns of Leesburg, Manassas, Warrenton, Culpepper, Orange and Charlottesville, all well known in connection with the opposing military movements. Charlottesville, about sixty-five miles northwest of Richmond, in a beautiful situation, was an important Confederate base of supplies. Here are now about six thousand people, and the town has its chief fame as the seat of the University of Virginia and the home of Thomas Jefferson. The University was founded mainly through the exertions of Jefferson, and has some five hundred students. Its buildings are a mile out of town, and the original ones were constructed from Jefferson's designs and under his supervision, the chief being the Rotunda, recently rebuilt, and the modern structures for a Museum of Natural History and an Observatory. Jefferson was proud of this institution, and in the inscription which he prepared for his tomb described himself as the "author of the Declaration of Independence, and of the statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and father of the University of Virginia." Among its most famous students was Edgar Allan Poe, and a fine bronze bust of him was unveiled at the University in 1899, on the fiftieth anniversary of his death. Thomas Jefferson lived at Monticello, the old house being an interesting specimen of early Virginia architecture, and standing on a hill southeast of the town. Here he died just fifty years after the Declaration was promulgated, July 4, 1826, and he is buried in the family graveyard near the house. Monticello is now celebrated for its native wines.

The Shenandoah Valley during the war was noted for the way in which the opposing forces chased each other up and down, with repeated severe battles. Here was fought, in June, 1862, the battle of Cross Keys, near the forks of the Shenandoah. Jackson had previously retreated up the Valley, but by a series of brilliant movements, begun after the battle of Fair Oaks before Richmond, he was able to meet and defeat in detail the various armies under Banks, Fremont, McDowell and Shields, thus managing to foil or hold in check seventy thousand men, while his own troops were never more than twenty thousand. Then coming southward out of the Valley, he joined in turning McClellan's right wing before Richmond at the end of June, afterwards following up Banks in August, and defeating him at Cedar Mountain, near Culpepper; then joining in the defeat of Pope at the second battle of Bull Run; then capturing Harper's Ferry and eleven thousand men September 15th, and finally taking part in the battle of Antietam two days later. When Grant began his siege of Richmond after the second battle of Cold Harbor, in 1864, he made General Sheridan commander of the troops in the Shenandoah Valley, and fortune turned. Sheridan opposed Early, and in September and October had a series of brilliant victories, the last one at Cedar Creek, where he turned a rout into a victory by his prompt movements. Sheridan had been in Washington, and came to Winchester, "twenty miles away," where he heard "the terrible grumble and rumble and roar" of the battle, and made his noted ride, the exploit being so conspicuous that he received the thanks of Congress. Early in 1865 he made a cavalry raid from Winchester, in the Valley, down to the westward of Richmond, around Lee's lines, and rejoined the army at Petersburg, having destroyed the James River and Kanawha Canal and cut various important railway connections in the Confederate rear. The Shenandoah Valley to-day is very much in its primitive condition of agriculture, but has been opened up by railway connections which develop its resources, and its great present attraction is the Cave of Luray. This cavern is about five miles from the Blue Ridge, and some distance southwest of Front Royal. It is a compact cavern, well lighted by electricity, and is more completely and profusely decorated with stalactites and stalagmites than any other in the world. Some of the chambers are very imposing, and all the more important formations have been appropriately named. The scenery of the neighborhood is picturesque, and the cavern has many visitors.

THE BATTLEFIELD OF GETTYSBURG.

In considering the great theatre of the Civil War, attention is naturally directed to the chief contest of all, and the turning-point of the rebellion, the battle of Gettysburg, fought at the beginning of July, 1863. After the victory at Chancellorsville in May the Confederates determined to carry the war northward into the enemy's country. Gettysburg is seven miles north of the southern boundary of Pennsylvania, and over forty miles from the Potomac River. To the westward is the long curving range of the South Mountain, and beyond this the great Appalachian Valley, a continuation of the Shenandoah Valley, crossing Central Pennsylvania in a curve, and here called the Cumberland Valley. In the latter are two prominent towns, Chambersburg in Pennsylvania, and Hagerstown in Maryland, on the Potomac. General Lee, in preparation for the march northward, gathered nearly ninety thousand men at Culpepper in Virginia, including Stuart's cavalry force of ten thousand. General Hooker's Union army, which had withdrawn across the Rappahannock after Chancellorsville, was then encamped opposite Fredericksburg, and one hundred and fifty miles south of Gettysburg. Lee started northward across the Potomac, but Hooker did not discover it for some days, and then rapidly followed. The Confederates crossed between June 22d and 25th, and concentrated at Hagerstown, in the Cumberland Valley, up which they made a rapid march, overrunning the entire valley to the Susquehanna River, and appearing opposite Harrisburg and Columbia. Hooker, being late in movement, crossed the Potomac lower down than Lee, on June 28th, thus making a northern race, up the curving valleys, with Lee in advance, but on the longer route of the outer circle. There was a garrison of ten thousand men at Harper's Ferry on the Potomac, and Hooker asked that they be added to his army; but the War Department declined, and Hooker immediately resigned, being succeeded by General George G. Meade, who thus on the eve of the battle became the Union commander.

There are two parallel ridges bordering the plain on which Gettysburg stands. The long Seminary Ridge, stretching from north to south about a mile west of the town, gets its name from the Lutheran Theological Seminary standing upon it; and the Cemetery Ridge to the south of the town, which partly stretches up its slopes, has on its northern flat-topped hill the village cemetery, wherein the principal grave then was that of James Gettys, after whom the place was named. There is an outlying eminence called Culp's Hill farther to the east, making, with the Cemetery Ridge, a formation bent around much like a fish-hook, with the graveyard at the bend and Culp's Hill at the barb, while far down at the southern end of the long straight shank, as the ridge extends for two miles away, with an intervening rocky gorge called the Devil's Den, there are two peaks, formed of tree-covered crags, known as the Little Round Top and the Big Round Top. These long parallel ridges, with the intervale and the country immediately around them, are the battlefield, which the topographical configuration well displays. It covers about twenty-five square miles, and lies mainly southwest of the town.

It was on June 28th that General Meade unexpectedly assumed command of the Union army, and he was then near the Potomac. General Ewell with the Confederate advance guard had gone up the Cumberland Valley as far as Carlisle, and his troopers were threatening Harrisburg. Nobody had opposed them, and the Confederate main body, which had got much ahead of Hooker, was at Chambersburg. Lee being far from his base, and hearing of the Union pursuit, then determined to face about and cripple his pursuers, fixing upon Gettysburg as the point of concentration. He ordered Ewell to march south from Carlisle, and the other commanders east from Chambersburg through the mountain passes. The Union cavalry advance under General Buford reached Gettysburg on June 30th, ahead of the Confederates, and Meade's army was then stretched over the ground for more than forty miles back to the Potomac, all coming forward by forced marches. As soon as Meade became aware of Lee's changed tactics he concluded that this extended formation was too risky, and decided to concentrate in a strong position upon the Pipe Creek hills in Maryland, about fifteen miles south of Gettysburg, and issued the necessary orders. Thus the battle opened, with each army executing a movement for concentration.

THE GREAT BATTLE.

The battle began on July 1st, the Union Cavalry, which had gone out to the west and north of Gettysburg, becoming engaged with the Confederate advance approaching the town from the passes through the South Mountain. The cavalry, at first victorious, was soon overwhelmed by superior numbers, and infantry supports arrived, under General Reynolds; but he was killed, and they were all driven back and through Gettysburg to the cemetery and Culp's Hill, which were manned by fresh troops that had come up. Meade was then at Pipe Creek, laying out a defensive line, but when he heard of Reynolds' death and the defeat, he sent General Hancock forward to take command, who decided that the Cemetery Ridge was the place to give battle. Ewell had in the meantime extended the Confederate left wing around to the east of Culp's Hill and held Gettysburg, but active operations were suspended, and the night was availed of by both sides to get their forces up and into position, which was mainly accomplished by morning.

When the second day, July 2d, opened, the armies confronted each other in line of battle. The Union troops were along the Cemetery Ridge and the Confederates upon the Seminary Ridge, across the intervale to the west, their lines also stretching around through Gettysburg to the north of the cemetery, and two miles east along the base of Culp's Hill. In the long intervening valley, and in the ravines and upon the slopes of the Cemetery Ridge and Culp's Hill, the main battle was fought. The attack began by General Longstreet advancing against the two Round Tops, but after a bloody contest he was repulsed. General Sickles, who held the line to the south of the Little Round Top, then thought he could improve his position by advancing a half-mile into the valley towards the Seminary Ridge, thus making a broken Union line, with a portion dangerously thrust forward. The enemy soon took advantage of this, and fell upon Sickles, front and flank, almost overwhelming his line in the "Peach Orchard," and driving it back to the adjacent "Wheat Field." Reinforcements were quickly poured in, and there was a hot conflict, Sickles being seriously wounded and his troops almost cut to pieces. About the same time Ewell made a terrific charge out of Gettysburg upon the Cemetery and Culp's Hill, with the "Louisiana Tigers" and other troops, effecting a lodgement, although the defending soldiers wrought great havoc by a heavy cannonade. The Union gunners on Little Round Top ultimately cleared the "Wheat Field," and then the combatants rested. Lee was much inspirited by his successes, and determined to renew the attack next morning.

Upon the third and last day, July 3d, General Meade opened the combat early in the morning by driving out Ewell's forces, who had effected a lodgement on Culp's Hill. General Lee did not learn of this, but he was full of the idea that both the Union centre and right wing had been weakened the previous day, and during the night he planned an attack in front, to be accompanied by a cavalry movement around the Union right to assail the rear, thus following up Ewell's supposed advantage. To give Stuart with the cavalry time to get around to the rear, the front attack was not made until afternoon. During the morning each side got cannon into position, Lee having one hundred and twenty guns along Seminary Ridge, and Meade eighty in the Cemetery and southward, along a low, irregular stone pile, forming a sort of rude wall bordering the road leading from Gettysburg south to Taneytown, in Maryland. The action began about one o'clock in the afternoon, when the Confederates opened fire, and the most terrific artillery duel of the war took place across the intervening valley, six guns being discharged every second. The troops suffered little, as they kept down in the ground, but several Union guns were dismounted. After two hours deafening cannonade Lee ordered his grand attack, the celebrated charge by General Pickett, a force of fourteen thousand men with brigade front advancing across the valley. They marched swiftly, and had a mile to go, but before they were half-way across all the available Union guns had been trained upon them. Their attack was directed at an umbrella-shaped clump of trees on the Cemetery Ridge at a low place where the rude stone wall made an angle, with its point outside. General Hancock commanded this portion of the Union line. The grape and canister of the Union cannonade ploughed furrows through Pickett's ranks, and when his column got within three hundred yards, Hancock opened musketry fire with terrible effect. Thousands fell, and the brigades broke in disorder; but the advance, headed by General Armistead on foot, continued, and about one hundred and fifty men leaped over the stone piles at the angle to capture the Union guns. Lieutenant Cushing, mortally wounded in both thighs, ran his last serviceable gun towards the wall, and shouting to his commander, "Webb, I will give them one more shot!" he fired the gun and died. Armistead put his hand on the cannon, waved his sword, and called out, "Give them the cold steel, boys!" then, pierced by bullets, he fell dead alongside of Cushing. Both lay near the clump of trees, about thirty yards inside the wall, their corpses marking the farthest point to which Pickett's advance penetrated. There was a hand to hand conflict; Webb was wounded, and also Hancock, and the slaughter was dreadful. The Confederates were overwhelmed, and not one-fourth of the gallant charging column, composed of the flower of the Virginia troops, escaped, the remnant retreating in disorder. Stuart's cavalry failed to coöperate as intended, having met the Union cavalry about four miles to the east of Gettysburg, and the conflict ensuing prevented their attacking the Union rear. After Pickett's retreat there was a general Union advance, closing the combat.

The point within the angle of the stone wall where Cushing and Armistead fell has been commemorated by what is known as the "High-Water Mark Monument," for it was placed at the point reached by the top of the flood-tide of the rebellion, as afterwards there was a steady ebb. During the night of July 3d Lee began a retreat, and aided by heavy rains, usually following great battles, the Confederates next day withdrew through the mountain passes towards Hagerstown, and afterwards escaped across the Potomac. Upon the day of Lee's retreat, Vicksburg surrendered to General Grant, and these two events began the Confederacy's downfall. There were engaged in the battle of Gettysburg about eighty thousand men on each side, the Union army having three hundred and thirty-nine cannon and the Confederates two hundred and ninety-three. It was the largest battle of the Civil War in the actual numbers engaged, and one of the most hotly contested. The Union loss was twenty-three thousand and three killed, wounded and prisoners, and the Confederate loss twenty-three thousand seven hundred and sixty-eight.

THE GETTYSBURG MONUMENTS.

The battlefield of Gettysburg is better marked, both topographically and by monuments, than probably any other battlefield in the world. Over a million dollars have been expended on the grounds and monuments. The "Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association," representing the soldiers engaged, has marked all the important points, and the tracts along the lines, over four hundred and fifty acres, have been acquired, so as to thoroughly preserve all the landmarks where the most important movements were executed. There are some five hundred monuments upon the field, placed with the utmost care in the exact localities, and standing in woods or on open ground, by the roadsides, on stony heights and ridges in gardens, and of all designs, executed in bronze, marble, granite, on boulders and otherwise. Marking-posts also designate the positions of the various organizations in the opposing armies. To the north and west of Gettysburg is the scene of the first day's contest, but the more interesting part is to the southward. Ascending the Cemetery Hill, there is passed, by the roadside, the house of Jenny Wade, the only woman killed in the battle, accidentally shot while baking bread. The rounded Cemetery Hill is an elevated and strong position having many monuments, and here, alongside the little village graveyard, the Government established a National Cemetery of seventeen acres, where thirty-five hundred and seventy-two soldiers are buried, over a thousand being the unknown dead. A magnificent battle monument is here erected, surmounted by a statue of Liberty, and at the base of the shaft having figures of War, History, Peace and Plenty. This charming spot was the centre of the Union line, then a rough, rocky hill. The cemetery was dedicated in November, 1863, Edward Everett delivering the oration, and the monument on July 1, 1869. At the cemetery dedication President Lincoln made the famous "twenty-line address" which is regarded as the most immortal utterance of the martyr President, and has become an American classic. The British _Westminster Review_ described it as an oration having but one equal, in that pronounced upon those who fell during the first year of the Peloponnesian War, and as being its superior, because "natural, fuller of feeling, more touching and pathetic, and we know with an absolute certainty that it was really delivered." The President was requested to say a few words by way of dedication, and drawing from his pocket a crumpled piece of paper on which he had written some notes, he spoke as follows:

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new Nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting-place of those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work that they have thus far so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain--that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

A mile across the valley the Lutheran Seminary is seen, the most conspicuous landmark of the Confederate line. To the southeast from the cemetery is Culp's Hill, strewn with rocks and boulders and covered with trees. The Emmettsburg road goes southward down the valley, gradually diverging from the Union line, and crossing the fields that were the battleground on the second and third days. It is bordered by numerous monuments, some of great merit, and leads to the "Peach Orchard," where the line bends sharply back. Peach trees are replanted here as the old ones fall. The "Wheat Field" is alongside, now grass-grown. Beyond it the surface goes down among the crags and broken stones of the "Devil's Den," a ravine through which flows a stream, coming from the orchard and wheat field, and separating them from the rocky "Round Tops," the sandstone cliffs of the "Little Round Top" rising high above the ravine. The fields sloping to the stream above the Den are known as the "Valley of Death." Among these rocks there are many monuments, made of the boulders that are so numerous. A toilsome path mounts the "Big Round Top" beyond, and an Observatory on the summit gives a good view over almost the entire battlefield. This summit, more than three miles south of Gettysburg, has tall timber, preserved as it was in the battle. There are cannon surmounting the "Round Tops," representing the batteries in action. Across the valley to the west is the long fringe of timber that masked the Confederate position on Seminary Ridge. A picnic-ground, with access by railway, is located alongside the "Round Tops." The lines of breastworks are maintained, and upon the lower ground, not far away, are preserved the rough stone walls, and to the northward is the little umbrella-shaped grove of trees at which Pickett's charge was directed. The Twentieth Massachusetts regiment brought here a huge conglomerate boulder from New England and set it up as their monument, their Colonel, Paul Revere, being killed in the battle.

There was no fighting along the Confederate line on Seminary Ridge until the scene of the first day's conflict is reached, to the northwest of Gettysburg. Here is marked where General Reynolds fell, just within a grove of trees, and a fine equestrian statue of him has been erected on the field. From his untimely death, Reynolds is regarded as the special Union hero of the battle, as Armistead was the Southern. Nearby a spirited statue, the "Massachusetts Color-Bearer," holds aloft the flag of the Thirteenth Massachusetts regiment, standing upon a slope, thus marking the spot where he fell at the opening of the conflict. Such is the broad and impressive scene of one of the leading battles of the world, and the greatest ever fought in America. But happily the passions which caused it have been stilled, and the combatants are now again united in their patriotic devotion to a common country. As Longfellow solemnly sounds his invocation in the _Building of the Ship_, so now do all the people in the reunited Union:

"Thus too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!"

THE VALLEY OF THE DELAWARE.

III.

THE VALLEY OF THE DELAWARE.

Delaware Bay--Cape May--Cape Henlopen--Delaware
Breakwater--Maurice River Cove--The Pea Patch--Newcastle
--Mason and Dixon's Line--Fort Christina--Wilmington--
The Duponts--Brandywine--William Penn--West Jersey--
Pennsylvania--Upland--The Ship "Welcome"--Philadelphia
--Shackamaxon--The Lenni Lenapes--The City Hall--
Independence Hall--Benjamin Franklin--Betsy Ross and the
American Flag--Stephen Girard--Girard College--Notable
Charities and Buildings--Christ Church--Old Swedes' Church
--Longfellow's Evangeline--Cathedral of St. Peter and St.
Paul--University of Pennsylvania--City of Homes--John
Bartram and his Garden--Fairmount Park--Laurel Hill--
Wissahickon Creek--Germantown--Johannes Kelpius--The
Schuylkill River--Tom Moore--Pennsylvania Dutch--Valley
Forge--Reading--Port Clinton--Pottsville--Anthracite
Coal-fields--New Jersey Coast Resorts--Atlantic City--
Ocean Grove--Asbury Park--Long Branch--St. Tammany--
Poquessing--Rancocas--The Neshaminy--The Log College--
Bristol--Burlington--Pennsbury Manor--Bordentown--
Admiral Stewart--Joseph Bonaparte--Camden and Amboy
Railroad--Delaware and Raritan Canal--Trenton Gravel--
Trenton, its Potteries, Crackers and Battle--The Swamp Angel
--Morrisville--General Moreau--Princeton and its Battle
--General Mercer--Princeton University--Jonathan Edwards
--Marshall's Walk--Pennsylvania Palisades--Forks of the
Delaware--Easton--Lafayette College--Ario Pardee--
Phillipsburg--Morris Canal--Lake Hopatcong--Lehigh River
--Bethlehem--Lehigh University--The Moravians--Count
Zinzendorf--Teedyuscung--Allentown--Lehigh Gap--Mauch
Chunk--Asa Packer--Coal Mining--Summit Hill--The
Switchback--Nescopec Mountain--Wyoming Valley--
Wilkesbarre--Harvey's Lake--Scranton--Wyoming Massacre
--The Foul Rift--The Terminal Moraine--The Great Glacier
--Belvidere--Delaware Water Gap--The Wind Gap--Minsi
and Tammany--The Minisink--The Buried Valleys--Nicholas
Depui--George La Bar--Stroudsburg--Pocono Knob--
Bushkill--Walpack Bend--Pike County--Dingman's Choice--
Waterfalls--Milford--Tom Quick, the Indian Killer--
Tri-States Corner--Neversink River--Port Jervis--
Delaware and Hudson Canal--High Point--The Catskill Flags
--Hawk's Nest--Shohola--The Lackawaxen and its Battle--
The Sylvania Society--Horace Greeley--Blooming Grove--
Pocono High Knob--Hawley--The Wallenpaupack--The Indian
Orchard--Honesdale--Washington Irving--The Gravity
Railroad--Carbondale--Mast Hope--Narrowsburg--
Cochecton--Hancock--Delaware Headwaters--Popacton River
--Mohock River--Deposit--Oquaga Creek and Lake--Lake
Utsyanthia--Ote-se-on-teo, Source of the Delaware.

DELAWARE BAY.

The famous navigator of the Dutch East India Company, Hendrick Hudson, was the first white man who entered Delaware Bay. He discovered it on August 28, 1609, two weeks before he entered Sandy Hook Bay and found the Hudson River. When Thomas West, Lord De La Warr, Governor of Virginia, was driven by stress of weather into the bay in 1611, his name was given the river. In 1614 another redoubtable old skipper of the Dutch East India Company, Captain Carolis Jacobsen Mey, searching, like all the rest of the navigators of those days, for the northwest passage to Asia and the Indies, came along there with a small fleet of sixty-ton frigates, and tried to give the river and its capes his names; but only one of these has survived, Cape May. The southern portal at the entrance, which he wished to make Cape Carolis, was named a few years afterwards, by the Swedes, Cape Henlopen. The Indians called the river "Lenape-wihituck," or the "river of the Lenapes," meaning "the original people," or, as sometimes translated, the "manly men," the name of the aboriginal confederation that dwelt upon its banks. It had various other names, for when the Swedes came, the Indians about the bay called it "Pantoxet." In an early deed to William Penn it is called "Mackeriskickon," and in another document the "Zunikoway." Some of the tribes up the river named it "Kithanue," meaning the "main stem," as distinguished from its tributaries, and those on the upper waters called it the "Lemasepose," or the "Fish River," for the Upper Delaware was then a famous salmon stream, and its early Dutch explorers thus came to calling it the "Fish River" also. The Delaware, from its source in the Catskills to the sea, is about three hundred and sixty miles in length.

The estuary of Delaware Bay is about sixty miles long and thirty miles broad in the widest part, contracting towards the north to less than five miles. The capes at the entrance are about fifteen miles apart. As a protection to shipping, the Government began, on the Cape Henlopen side, in 1829, the construction of the famous Delaware Breakwater. It consists of a stone breakwater about twenty-six hundred feet long facing the northeast, and an icebreaker about fourteen hundred feet long, at right angles, facing the upper bay. These were completed in 1870, there being an opening between them of about sixteen hundred feet width, which was afterwards filled up. The surface protected covers three hundred and sixty acres, and the whole work cost about $3,500,000. It was estimated in 1871 that fully twenty thousand vessels every year availed of the protection of this breakwater, the depth of water being twenty-four feet behind it--sufficient for most of the shipping of that day. But as vessels have become larger and of deeper draft, they have not been able to use it, and the Government has recently begun the construction of another and larger breakwater for a harbor of refuge in deeper water adjoining the regular ship channel, some distance to the northward. Delaware Bay divides the States of Delaware and New Jersey. The first settlement in Delaware was made by the Dutch near Lewes in 1630, but the Indians destroyed the colony; and in 1638 a colony of Swedes and Finns came out under the auspices of the Swedish West India Company, landed and named Cape Henlopen, and purchased from the Indians all the land from there up to the falls at Trenton, finally locating their fort near the mouth of Christiana Creek, and naming the country Nya Sveriga, or New Sweden. The Swedes and Dutch quarrelled about their respective rights until New York was taken by the English in 1664, after which England controlled. The first settlement in New Jersey was made by Captains Mey and Jorisz in 1623, who built the Dutch Fort Nassau a short distance below Philadelphia; but it did not last.

Delaware Bay is an expansive inland sea, subject to fierce storms, and broadening on its eastern side into Maurice River Cove, noted for its oysters. A deep ship channel conducts commerce through the centre of the bay, marked by lighthouses built out on mid-bay shoals, and, as the shores approach, by range lights on the banks, the Delaware Bay and River being regarded as the best marked and lighted stream in the country. Up at the head of the bay, years ago, a ship loaded with peas and beans sank, and this in time made at first a shoal, and afterwards an island, since known as the "Pea Patch." Here and on the adjacent shores the Government has lately erected formidable forts, which make, with their torpedo stations in the channel, a complete system of defensive works in the Delaware, first put into active occupation during the Spanish War of 1898, as a protection against a hostile fleet entering the river. Over in the "Diamond State" of Delaware, near here, on the river shore, is the aged town of Newcastle, quiet and yet attractive, having in operation, and evidently to the popular satisfaction, the whipping-post and stocks, a method of punishment which is a terror to all evil-doers, and is said to be most successful in preventing crime, as thieves and marauders give Newcastle a wide berth. This was originally a Swedish settlement, the standard of the great Gustavus Adolphus being unfurled there in 1640, when it was called Sandhuken, or Sandy Hook, it being a point of land jutting out between two little creeks. The Dutch soon captured it, changing the name to New Amstel; and about 1670 the settlement, then containing nearly a hundred houses, became New Castle, under English auspices. The northern boundary of the State of Delaware, dividing it from Pennsylvania, is an arc of a circle, made by a radius of twelve miles described around the old Court House at Newcastle, which still has in its tower the bell presented by Queen Anne.

MASON AND DIXON'S LINE.

In coming over by railroad from the Chesapeake to the Delaware, the train, after crossing the broad Susquehanna and the head of Elk, and rounding in Maryland the Northeast Arm of Chesapeake Bay, soon enters the State of Delaware near the northeastern corner of the former State. This corner is at the termination of the crescent-shaped northern boundary of Delaware. The northern boundary of Maryland here beginning and laid down due west, to separate it from Pennsylvania, is the famous "Mason and Dixon's Line," surveyed by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, two noted English mathematicians and astronomers in the eighteenth century. This boundary gained great notoriety because it so long marked the northern limit of slavery in the United States. For almost a century there were conflicts about their respective limits between the rival proprietaries of the two States, producing sometimes riot and bloodshed, until, in 1763, these men were brought over from England, and in December began laying out the line on the parallel of latitude 39° 43' 26.3" North. They were at the work several years, surveying the line two hundred and forty-four miles west from the Delaware River, and within thirty-six miles of the entire distance to be run, when the French and Indian troubles began, and they were attacked and driven off, returning to Philadelphia in December, 1767. At the end of every fifth mile a stone was planted, graven with the arms of the Penn family on one side and of Lord Baltimore on the other. The intermediate miles were marked by smaller stones, having a P on one side and an M on the other, all the stones thus used for monuments being sent out from England. After the Revolution, in 1782, the remainder of the line was laid down, and in 1849 the original surveys were revised and found substantially correct.

When the little colony of Swedes and Finns under Peter Minuet came into Christiana Creek in April, 1638, and established their fort, they began the first permanent settlement in the valley of the Delaware. It was built upon a small rocky promontory, and they named it Christina, in honor of the daughter of Gustavus Adolphus. The Dutch afterwards captured it and called it Fort Altena; but the town retained part of the original name in Christinaham, and the creek also retained the name, the English taking possession in 1664. The Swedes, however, regardless of the flag that might wave over them, still remained; and their old stone church, built in 1698, still stands, down near the promontory by the waterside, in a yard filled with time-worn gravestones. This old Swedes' Church of the Holy Trinity, the oldest now on the Delaware, was dedicated on Trinity Sunday, 1699, and Rev. Ericus Tobias Biorck came out from Sweden to take charge as rector. It was sixty by thirty feet and twenty feet high, and a little bell tower was afterwards added. The ancient church was recently thoroughly restored to its original condition, with brick floor, oaken benches, and stout rafters supporting the roof. This interesting church building is in a factory district which is now part of Wilmington, the chief city of Delaware, a busy manufacturing community of sixty-five thousand people, built on the Christiana and Brandywine Creeks, which unite about a mile from the Delaware. This active city was laid out above the old settlement, in 1731, by William Shipley, who came from Leicestershire, England. Ships, railway cars and gunpowder are the chief manufactures of Wilmington. The Brandywine Creek, in a distance of four miles, terminating in the city, falls one hundred and twenty feet, providing a great water power. Up this stream are the extensive Dupont powder-mills, among the largest in the world, founded by the French statesman and economist, Pierre Samuel Du Pont De Nemours, who, after the vicissitudes of the French Revolution, migrated with his family to the United States in 1799, and was received with distinguished consideration. He afterwards was instrumental in securing the treaty of 1803 by which France ceded Louisiana, and was in the service of Napoleon, but finally returned to America, where his sons were conducting the powder-works, and he died near Wilmington in 1817. Admiral Samuel Francis Dupont, of the American Navy, was his grandson. Farther up the Brandywine Creek, at Chadd's Ford and vicinity, was fought, in September, 1777, the battle of the Brandywine, where the English victory enabled them to subsequently take possession of Philadelphia.

WILLIAM PENN.

Above Wilmington, the Delaware River is a noble tidal stream of about a mile wide, flowing between gently sloping shores, and carrying an extensive commerce. The great river soon brings us to the famous Quaker settlements of Pennsylvania. William Penn, who had become a member of the Society of Friends, was bequeathed by his father, Admiral Sir William Penn, an estate of £1500 a year and large claims against the British Government. Fenwick and Byllinge, both Quakers, who had proprietary rights in New Jersey, disputed in 1674, and submitted their difference to Penn's arbitration. He decided in favor of Byllinge, who subsequently became embarrassed, and made over his property to Penn and two creditors as trustees. This seems to have turned Penn's attention to America as a place of settlement for the persecuted Quakers, and he engaged with zeal in the work of colonization, and in 1681 obtained from the king, for himself and heirs, in payment of a debt of £16,000 due his father, a patent for the territory now forming Pennsylvania, on the fealty of the annual payment of two beaver skins. He wanted to call his territory New Wales, as many of the colonists came from there, and afterwards suggested Sylvania as specially applicable to a land covered with forests; but the king ordered the name Pennsylvania inserted in the grant, in honor, as he said, of his late friend the Admiral. In February, 1682, Penn, with eleven others, purchased West Jersey, already colonized to some extent. Tradition says that some of these West Jersey colonists sent Penn a sod in which was planted a green twig, to show that he owned the land and all that grew upon it. Next they presented him with a dish full of water, because he was master of the seas and rivers; and then they gave him the keys, to show he was in command and had all the power.

When William Penn was granted his province, he wrote that "after many waitings, watchings, solicitings and disputes in council, this day my country was confirmed to me under the great seal of England." He had great hopes for its future, for he subsequently wrote: "God will bless and make it the seed of a nation; I shall have a tender care of the government that it will be well laid at first." Some of the Swedes from Christina had come up the river in 1643 and settled at the mouth of Chester Creek, at a place called Upland. The site was an eligible one, and the first parties of Quakers, coming out in three ships, settled there, living in caves which they dug in the river bank, these caves remaining for many years after they had built houses. Penn drew up a liberal scheme of government and laws for his colony, in which he is said to have had the aid of Henry, the brother of Algernon Sidney, and of Sir William Jones. He was not satisfied with Upland, however, as his permanent place of settlement, but directed that another site be chosen higher up the Delaware, at some point where "it is most navigable, high, dry and healthy; that is, where most ships can best ride, of deepest draught of water, if possible, to load or unload, at the bank or key-side, without boating or lightening of it." This site being selected between the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers, and the city laid out, Penn, with about a hundred companions, mostly Welsh Quakers, in September, 1682, embarked for the Delaware on the ship "Welcome," arriving at Upland after a six weeks' voyage, and then going up to his city site, which he named Philadelphia, the "City of Brotherly Love."

The first explorers of the Delaware River found located upon the site of Philadelphia the Indian settlement of Coquanock, or "the grove of long pine trees," a sort of capital city for the Lenni Lenapes. Their great chief was Tamanend, and the primeval forest, largely composed of noble pine trees, then covered all the shores of the river. The ship "Shield," from England, with Quaker colonists for Burlington, in West Jersey, higher up the river, sailed past Coquanock in 1679, and a note was made that "part of the tackling struck the trees, whereupon some on board remarked that 'it was a fine spot for a town.'" When Penn sent out his advance agent and Deputy Governor, Captain William Markham, of the British army, in his scarlet uniform, to lay out the plan of his projected city, he wrote him to "be tender of offending the Indians," and gave instructions that the houses should have open grounds around them, as he wished the new settlement to be "a green country town," and at the same time to be healthy, and free from the danger of extensive conflagrations. Penn bought the land farther down the Delaware from the Swedes, who had originally bought it from the Indians, and the site for his city he bought from the Indians direct. They called him Mignon, and the Iroquois, who subsequently made treaties with him, called him Onas, both words signifying a quill pen, as they recognized the meaning of his name. Out on the Delaware, in what is now the Kensington shipbuilding district, is the "neutral land of Shackamaxon." This word means, in the Indian dialect, the "place of eels." Here, for centuries before Penn's arrival, the Indian tribes from all the region east of the Alleghenies, between the Great Lakes, the Hudson River and the Potomac, had been accustomed to kindle their council fires, smoke the pipe of deliberation, exchange the wampum belts of explanation and treaty, and make bargains. Some came by long trails hundreds of miles overland through the woods, and some in their birch canoes by water and portage. It was on this "neutral ground" by the riverside that Penn, soon after his arrival, held his solemn council with the Indians, sealing mutual faith and securing their lifelong friendship for his infant colony. This treaty, embalmed in history and on canvas, was probably made in November, 1682, under the "Treaty Elm" at Shackamaxon, which was blown down in 1810, the place where it stood by the river being now preserved as a park. Its location is marked by a monument bearing the significant inscription: "Treaty Ground of William Penn and the Indian Nation, 1682--Unbroken Faith." Thus began Penn's City of Brotherly Love, based on a compact which, in the words of Voltaire, was "never sworn to and never broken." It is no wonder that Penn, after he had seen his city site, and had made his treaty, was so abundantly pleased that he wrote:

"As to outward things, we are satisfied, the land good, the air clear and sweet, the springs plentiful, and provision good and easy to come at, an innumerable quantity of wild fowl and fish; in fine, here is what an Abraham, Isaac and Jacob would be well contented with, and service enough for God, for the fields here are white for harvest. O, how sweet is the quiet of these parts, freed from the anxious and troublesome solicitations, harries and perplexities of woeful Europe."

The Lenni Lenapes, it is stated, told Penn and his people that they often spoke of themselves as the Wapanachki, or the "men of the morning," in allusion to their supposed origin in the lands to the eastward, towards the rising sun. Their tradition was that at the time America was discovered, their nation lived on the island of New York. They called it Manahatouh, "the place where timber is got for bows and arrows." At the lower end of the island was a grove of hickory trees of peculiar strength and toughness. This timber was highly esteemed for constructing bows, arrows, war-clubs, etc. When they migrated westward they divided into two bands. One, going to the upper Delaware, among the mountains, was termed Minsi, or "the great stone;" and the other band, seeking the bay and lower river, was called Wenawmien, or "down the river." These Indians originated the name of the Allegheny Mountains, which they called the Allickewany, the word meaning "He leaves us and may never return"--it is supposed in reference to departing hunters or warriors who went into the mountain passes.

THE QUAKER CITY.