a. He reached home just in time to hear of the great
conflict at Chancellorsville. Rushing to Washington, and gathering up
from all sources news of the disaster, he presented to the readers of
the _Journal_ a clear and connected story of the battle. During the
latter part of May and until the middle of June, the previous weeks
having been times of inaction in the military world, Carleton
recruited his strength at home. Like a falcon on its perch, he awaited
the opportunity to swoop on the quarry.

CHAPTER XII.

GETTYSBURG: HIGH TIDE AND EBB.

When Lee and his army, leaving the front of the Union army and
becoming invisible, when President and people, general and chief and
privates, Cabinet officers and correspondents, were wondering what had
become of the rebel hosts, and when the one question in the North was,
"Where is General Lee?" Carleton, divining the state of affairs, took
the railway to Harrisburg. Once more he was an observer in the field.
His first letter is dated June 16th, and illuminates the darkness like
an electric search-light.

General Lee, showing statesmanship as well as military ability, had
chosen a good time. The Federal army was losing its two years' and
nine months' men. Vicksburg was about to fall. Something must be done
to counterbalance this certain loss to the Confederates. Paper money
in the South was worth but ten per cent. of its face value.
Recognition from Europe must be won soon, or the high tide of
opportunity would ebb, nevermore to return. Like a great wave coming
to its flood, the armed host of the Confederacy was moving to break at
Gettysburg and recede.

Yet, at that time, who had ever thought of, or who, except the farmers
and townsmen and students in the vicinity, had ever seen Gettysburg?
At first Carleton supposed that Harper's Ferry might be the scene of
the coming battle. Again he imagined it possible for Lee to move down
the Kanawha, and fall upon defenceless Ohio. He wrote from Harrisburg,
from Washington, from Baltimore, from Washington again, from Baltimore
once more, from Frederick, where he learned that Hooker had been
superseded, and Meade, the Pennsylvanian, put in command. On June
30th, writing from Westminster, Md., he described the rapid marching
of the footsore and hungry Confederates, and the equally rapid
pedestrianism of the Federals. He revels in the splendors of nature in
Southern Pennsylvania, which the Germans once hailed as a holy land of
c