Everyone knew what the Yankees had done in Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. Even small children could recite with hate and fear the horrors the Yankees had inflicted upon the conquered territory. Already Atlanta was full of refugees from east Tennessee, and the town had heard firsthand stories from them of what suffering they had gone through. In that section, the Confederate sympathizers were in the minority and the hand of war fell heavily upon them, as it did on all the border states, neighbor informing against neighbor and brother killing brother. These refugees cried out to see Pennsylvania one solid sheet of flame, and even the gentlest of old ladies wore expressions of grim pleasure.
But when the news trickled back that Lee had issued orders that no private property in Pennsylvania should be touched, that looting would be punished by death and that the army would pay for every article it requisitioned—then it needed all the reverence the General had earned to save his popularity. Not turn the men loose in the rich storehouses of that prosperous state? What was General Lee thinking of? And our boys so hungry and needing shoes and clothes and horses!
A hasty note from Darcy Meade to the doctor, the only first-hand information Atlanta received during those first days of July, was passed from hand to hand, with mounting indignation.
“Pa, could you manage to get me a pair of boots? I’ve been barefooted for two weeks now and I don’t see any prospects of getting another pair. If I didn’t have such big feet I could get them off dead Yankees like the other boys, but I’ve never yet found a Yankee whose feet were near as big as mine. If you can get me some, don’t mail them. Somebody would steal them on the way and I wouldn’t blame them. Put Phil on the train and send him up with them. I’ll write you soon, where we’ll be. Right now I don’t know, except that we’re marching north. We’re in Maryland now and everybody says we’re going on into Pennsylvania. …“Pa, I thought that we’d give the Yanks a taste of their own medicine but the General says No, and personally I don’t care to get shot just for the pleasure of burning some Yank’s house. Pa, today we marched through the grandest cornfields you ever saw. We don’t have corn like this down home. Well, I must admit we did a bit of private looting in that corn, for we were all pretty hungry and what the General don’t know won’t hurt him. But that green corn didn’t do us a bit of good. All the boys have got dysentery anyway, and that corn made it worse. It’s easier to walk with a leg wound than with dysentery. Pa, do try to manage some boots for me. I’m a captain now and a captain ought to have boots, even if be hasn’t got a new uniform or epaulets.”
But the army was in Pennsylvania—that was all that mattered. One more victory and the war would be over, and then Darcy Meade could have all the boots he wanted, and the boys would come marching home and everybody would be happy again. Mrs. Meade’s eyes grew wet as she pictured her soldier son home at last, home to stay.
On the third of July, a sudden silence fell on the wires from the north, a silence that lasted till midday of the fourth when fragmentary and garbled reports began to trickle into headquarters in Atlanta. There had been hard fighting in Pennsylvania, near a little town named Gettysburg, a great battle with all Lee’s army massed. The news was uncertain, slow in coming, for the battle had been fought in the enemy’s territory and the reports came first through Maryland, were relayed to Richmond and then to Atlanta.
Suspense grew and the beginnings of dread slowly crawled over the town. Nothing was so bad as not knowing what was happening. Families with sons at the front prayed fervently that their boys were not in Pennsylvania, but those who knew their relatives were in the same regiment with Darcy Meade clamped their teeth and said it was an honor for them to be in the big fight that would lick the Yankees for good and all.
In Aunt Pitty’s house, the three women looked into one another’s eyes with fear they could not conceal. Ashley was in Darcy’s regiment.
On the fifth came evil tidings, not from the North but from the West. Vicksburg had fallen, fallen after a long and bitter siege, and practically all the Mississippi River, from St. Louis to New Orleans was in the hands of the Yankees. The Confederacy had been cut in two. At any other time, the news of this disaster would have brought fear and lamentation to Atlanta. But now they could give little thought to Vicksburg. They were thinking of Lee in Pennsylvania, forcing battle. Vicksburg’s loss would be no catastrophe if Lee won in the East. There lay Philadelphia, New York, Washington. Their capture would paralyze the North and more than cancel off the defeat on the Mississippi.
The hours dragged by and the black shadow of calamity brooded over the town, obscuring the hot sun until people looked up startled into the sky as if incredulous that it was clear and blue instead of murky and heavy with scudding clouds. Everywhere, women gathered in knots, huddled in groups on front porches, on sidewalks, even in the middle of the streets, telling each other that no news is good news, trying to comfort each other, trying to present a brave appearance. But hideous rumors that Lee was killed, the battle lost, and enormous casualty lists coming in, fled up and down the quiet streets like darting bats. Though they tried not to believe, whole neighborhoods, swayed by panic, rushed to town, to the newspapers, to headquarters, pleading for news, any news, even bad news.