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