The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide by Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander) Altsheler
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page 21 of 362 (05%)
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adventure and battle. General Lee wasn't just sure what McClellan meant
to do, and he ordered General Stuart to pick his men and go see. "The general took six hundred of us, and four light guns, and we crossed the Potomac at dawn. Then we rode straight toward the north, exchanging shots here and there with Northern pickets. We went across Maryland and clear up into Pennsylvania, a hundred miles it must have been, I think, and at a town called Chambersburg we got a great supply of Yankee stores, including five hundred horses, which came in mighty handy, I can tell you. I got Bucephalus there. He's a fine steed, too, I can tell you. He was intended to carry some fat Pennsylvania colonel or major, and instead he has me for a rider, a thinner and consequently a lighter man. I haven't heard him expressing any sorrow over the exchange." "What did you do after you got the remounts?" asked Harry. "We began to curve then. We passed a town called Gettysburg, and we went squarely behind the Union army. Mountainous and hilly country up there, but good and cultivated beautifully. Those Pennsylvania Germans, Harry, beat us all hollow at farming. I'm beginning to think that slaves are not worth owning. They ruin our land." "Which may be so," interrupted Langdon, "but we're not the kind of people to give them up because a lot of other people order us to do it." "Shut up, Tom," exclaimed Harry. "Let the captain go on with his story." "We went on around the Union rear, rode another hundred miles after leaving Chambersburg, coming to a place called Hyattstown, near which we cut across McClellan's communications with Washington. Things grew warm, |
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