Then ensued a famous and most bloody fight!  During three long, hot days of midsummer those two great armies struggled in a desperate grapple, and with not unequal valor, the Confederates fiercely assailing, the Federals stubbornly holding, those historic ridges, and both alike, whether attacking or defending, whether gaining or losing ground, always falling in an awful carnage of dead and wounded.  It was the most determined fighting that had yet taken place at the East, and the names of Cemetery Ridge, Little Round Top, and Culp’s Hill are written deep in blood in American memories.  When the last magnificent charge of the Southerners was hurled back in the afternoon of July 3, the victory was decided.  The next day Lee began to send away his trains, his wounded and prisoners.  It is indeed true that during the day he held his army in position on Seminary Ridge, hoping that Meade would attack, and that, with an exchange of their relative parts of assailants and defenders, a change of result also might come about.  But Meade made no advance, and with the first hours of darkness on the evening of July 4 the Southern host began its retreat.

The losses at Gettysburg were appalling.  The estimate is 2834 killed, 13,709 wounded, 6643 missing, a total of 23,186 on the Federal side; the figures were only a trifle less on the Confederate side.  But if such bloodshed carried grief into many a Northern household, at least there was not the cruel thought that life and limb, health and usefulness, had been sacrificed through incompetence and without advantage to the cause.  It was true that the Northern general ought to have won, for he commanded more troops,[45] held a very strong defensive position, and fought a strictly defensive battle.  But such had been the history of the war that when that which ought to be done was done, the people felt that it was fair cause for rejoicing.  Later there was fault-finding and criticism; but that during so many days so many troops on unfamiliar ground should be handled in such a manner that afterward no critic can suggest that something might have been done better, hardly falls among possibilities.  The fact was sufficient that a most important and significant victory had been won.  On the battlefield a stone now undertakes to mark the spot and to name the hour where and when the flood tide of rebellion reached its highest point, and where and when it began its slow and sure ebb.  Substantially that stone tells the truth.  Nevertheless the immediately succeeding days brought keen, counteracting disappointment.  Expectation rose that the shattered army of Lee would never cross the Potomac; and the expectation was entirely reasonable, and ought to have been fulfilled.  But Meade seemed to copy McClellan after Antietam.  Spurred on by repeated admonitions from the President and General Halleck, he did, on July 10, catch up with the retreating army, which was delayed at Williamsport on the north