HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF POTOMAC

Saturday Night, July 4.

Who can write the history of a battle whose eyes are immovably fastened upon a central figure of transcendently absorbing interest — the dead body of an oldest born, crashed by a shell in a position where a battery should never have been sent, and abandoned to death in a building where surgeons dared not to stay?

The battle of Gettysburgh, I am told that it commenced, on the lst of July, a mile north of the town, between two weak brigades of infantry and some doomed artillery and the whole force of the rebel army. Among other costs of this error was the death of REYNOLDS. Its value was priceless; however, though priceless was the young and the old blood with which it was bought. The error put us on the defensive, and gave as the choice of position. From the moment that our artillery and infantry rolled back through the main street of Gettysburgh and rolled out of the town to the circle of eminences south of it. We were not to attack but to be attacked. The risks, the difficulties and the disadvantages of the coming battle were the enemy’s. Our[s] were the heights for artillery; ours the short, inside lines for maneuvering and reinforcing; ours the cover of stonewalls, fences and the crests of hills. The ground upon which we were driven to accept battle was wonderfully favorable to us. . . .

And the time [of the Confederate artillery’s preparatory artillery barrage on July 3rd] measured on the sluggish watches was one hour and forty minutes Then there was a lull, and we knew that the rebel Infantry was charging. And splendidly they did this work — the highest and severest test of the stuff that soldiers are made of. HILL’s division, in line of battle, came first on the double quick. Their muskets at the “right-shoulder-shift.” LONGSTREET’s came as the support, at the usual distance, with war cries and a savage insolence as yet untutored by defeat. They rushed in perfect order across the open field up to the very muzzles of the guns, which tore lanes through them as they came. But they met men who were their equals in spirit, and their superiors in tenacity. There never was better fighting since Thermopylae than was done yesterday by our infantry and artillery. The rebels were over our defences. They bad cleaned cannoniers and horses from one of the guns, and were whirling it around to use upon us. The bayonet drove them back. But so hard pressed was this brave infantry that at one time, from the exhaustion of their ammunition, every battery upon the principal crest of attack was silent, except CROWEN’s. His service of grape and canister was awful. It enabled our line, outnumbered two to one, first to beat back LONGSTREET, and then to charge upon him, and take a great number of his men and himself prisoners. Strange sight! So terrible was our musketry and artillery fire, that when ARMSTEAD’s brigade was checked in its charge, and stood reeling, all of its men dropped their muskets and crawled on their hands and knees underneath the stream of shot till close to our troops, where they made signs of surrendering. . . . Rebel officers with whom I have conversed frankly admit that the result of the last two days has been most disastrous to their cause, which depended, they say, upon the success of LEE’s attempt to transfer the seat of war from Virginia to the Northern Border States. A wounded rebel Colonel told me that in the first and second days fight, the rebel losses were between ten and eleven thousand. Yesterday they were greater still. In one part of the field, in a space not more than twenty feet in circumference, in front of Gen. GIBBONS division, I counted seven dead rebels, three of whom were piled on top of each other. And close by in a spot not more than fifteen fleet square lay fifteen “graybacks,” stretched in death. These were the adventurous spirits, who in the face of the horrible stream of canister, shell and musketry, scaled the fence wall in their attempt upon our batteries. Very large numbers of wounded were also strewn around, not to mention more who bad crawled away or been taken away. The field in front of the stonewall was literally covered with dead and wounded, a large proportion of whom were rebels. Where our musketry and artillery took effect they lay in swaths, as if mown down by a scythe. This field presented a horrible sight — such as has never yet been witnessed during the war. Not less than one thousand dead and wounded laid in a space of less than four acres in extent, and that, too, after numbers had crawled away to places of shelter. The enemy’s infantry, saving a small force of sharpshooters, was wholly out of sight at daylight on Saturday morning. There was talk on Friday night, after the battle, of organizing a column of pursuit. Before the fighting was over before sunset, considerably — the Signal Officers reported that an immense train of army wagon was going out of Gettysburgh northwest, on the road to Cashtown. Oh! that they could have run against the stonewall of the Harrisburgh army.

S. WILKESON.

Source: Samuel Wilkeson, “Details from Our Special Correspondence,” New York Times, July 6, 1863.