unavoidable under the circumstances, had impaired the energies of even his superb physical constitution.  As the bulk of the rear-guard of the army safely passed over the shaky bridge, which Lee had looked at with some anxiety as it swayed to and fro, lashed by the current, he uttered a sigh of relief, and a great weight seemed taken from his shoulders.  Seeing his fatigue and exhaustion.  General Stuart gave him some coffee; he drank it with avidity, and declared, as he handed back the cup, that nothing had ever refreshed him so much.

When General Meade, who is said to have resolved on an attack, in spite of the opposition of his officers, looked, on the morning of the 14th, toward the position held on the previous evening by the Southern army, he saw that the works were deserted.  The Army of Northern Virginia had vanished from the hills on which it had been posted, and was at that moment crossing the Potomac.  Pressing on its track toward Falling Waters, the Federal cavalry came up with the rear, and in the skirmish which ensued fell the brave Pettigrew, who had supported Pickett in the great charge at Gettysburg, where he had waved his hat in front of his men, and, in spite of a painful wound, done all in his power to rally his troops.  With this exception, and a few captures resulting from accident, the army sustained no losses.  The movement across the Potomac had been effected, in face of the whole Federal army, as successfully as though that army had been a hundred miles distant.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Upon this point different statements were subsequently made by Generals Lee and Meade, and Lee’s reply to the statements of his opponent is here given: 

HEADQUARTERS ARMY NORTHERN VIRGINIA,

July 21, 1863.

General S. Cooper, Adjutant and Inspector-General C.S.A., Richmond, Va.: 

GENERAL:  I have seen in Northern papers what purported to be an official dispatch from General Meade, stating that he had captured a brigade of Infantry, two pieces of artillery, two caissons, and a large number of small-arms, as this army retired to the south bank of the Potomac, on the 13th and 14th inst.

This dispatch has been copied into the Richmond papers, and, as its official character may cause it to be believed, I desire to state that it is incorrect.  The enemy did not capture any organized body of men on that occasion, but only stragglers, and such as were left asleep on the road, exhausted by the fatigue and exposure of one of the most inclement nights I have ever known at this season of the year.  It rained without cessation, rendering the road by which our troops marched to the bridge at Falling Waters very difficult to pass, and causing so much delay that the last of the troops did not cross the river at the bridge until 1 P.M. on the 14th.  While the column was thus detained on the road a number of men, worn down by fatigue, lay down in barns, and by the roadside, and though officers were sent back