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ess of their cause. Prior to this battle the Confederates had warred upon the North aggressively; thenceforward they were compelled to act upon the defensive. During the progress of this great and (so far as the ultimate fate of the Confederacy was concerned) decisive battle, the cavalry, including the brigade to which our subject was attached, performed brilliant service. They held Stuart's force effectually at bay, and while the retreat of the rebel army was in progress their services were in constant requisition. On the first day of the battle, General John Buford, commanding the Third Cavalry Division, was in position on the Chambersburg Pike, about two miles west of the village. Early in the forenoon the vanguard of the rebel army appeared in front of them, and our dauntless troopers charged the enemy vigorously, and drove them back upon their reserves. The second day of the battle was spent by the cavalry in hard, bold and bloody work, in collision with their old antagonists, Stuart, Lee and Hampton. Charge succeeded charge; the carbine, pistol and sabre were used by turns; the artillery thundering long after the infantry around Gettysburg had sunk to rest exhausted with the carnage of the weary day. Stuart, however, was driven back on his supports, and badly beaten. Upon the third day the sun rose bright and warm upon the bleached forms of the dead strewn over the sanguinary field; upon the wounded, and upon long, glistening lines of armed men ready to renew the conflict. Each antagonist, rousing every element of power, seemed resolved upon victory or death. Finally victory saluted the Union banners, and with great loss the rebel army sounded the retreat. "Thus," says Glazier in his "Battles for the Union"--"the Battle of Gettysburg ended--the bloody turning-point of the rebellion--the bloody baptism of the redeemed republic. Nearly twenty thousand men from the Union ranks had been killed and wounded, and a larger number of the rebels, making the enormous aggregate of at least forty thousand, whose blood was shed to fertilize the Tree of Liberty." During this sanguinary battle; the cavalry were in daily and hourly conflict with the enemy's well-trained horse under their respective dashing leaders. The sabre was no "useless ornament," but a deadly weapon, and "dead cavalrymen" and their dead chargers, were sufficiently numerous to have drawn forth an exclamation of approval from even so exacting a commander
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