27th of June and the 2nd of July, if true, would furnish a curious commentary on the "loyalty" and patriotism of the North, and on the morale of the soldiers who had rallied to the "Standard of the Union" in order to "save the life of the nation." Equally as preposterous is the statement of Doubleday that there were only 14,000 men on the Federal side on the 1st of July to oppose 60,000 on our side.
We know that we got as many as 6,000 prisoners, including the wounded left on the field and in the hospitals in Gettysburg from the First and Eleventh corps, and there must have been a loss of as many more in killed and wounded; in fact, Bates puts the loss in those two corps at about 10,000. Butterfield says that on the 4th their commanders reported, respectively, in the First corps, 5,000, and in the Eleventh, 5,500 left after all the fighting of the 2nd and 3rd, which does not accord, by any means, with Doubleday's statement.
It is a little strange that Northern writers grope in the dark, and resort to conjecture to ascertain the strength of Meade's army at Gettysburg, when the official returns on file in the Adjutant-General's office should settle the question. They always persist in putting our force far beyond that shown by any official returns of ours, and the Federal force greatly under that shown by their own returns. This applies to all the battles.
The assumption that the Confederate Government, with at best only a population of 5,000,000 of whites to draw from when it was hard pressed on all sides, and a large portion of its population beyond its reach, could furnish more troops for the invasion of Pennsylvania than the Federal Government, with a population of 20,000,000 to draw from, besides its foreign recruits, could furnish to defend the soil of the "loyal North" and the national capital, and that, while the soil of Pennsylvania rebounded with the tread of the "rebel horde," "the defenders of the Union" were availing themselves of the expiration of their terms of service to go home, and otherwise abandoning the standard to which they had rallied with "patriotic ardor," furnishes food for curious reflection.
I will now come to a consideration of the points, to notice which is the main object of this paper.
General Fitz. Lee, after paying a very just tribute to the memory of General Ewell, says, in reference to the first day's fight:
