A Daughter of Maryland — page 182: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

- A DAUGHTER OF MARYLAND. 159 bread. Along streams that rippled as merrily as if the dark banner of war cast no shadow on their silvery current, marched the soldierly hosts, day after day, the steady hum | of water wheels and the buzz of machinery keeping time to their measured tread. These steadily moving columns of gray and dust-brown men must have been an awe-inspiring sight to the quiet inhabitants all along the route, and it will be better if they never see their counterpart. Passing through Chambersburg on the 27th of June, that division of Longstreet’s corps to which Pickett’s men belonged, after spending the intervening time in destroy- ing the railroad depots and other public property, camped on the night of July 1st on the York turnpike. That night at two o’clock the summons to resume march caused them to hastily break camp and move on toward the front, where fighting had already begun. Crossing the chain of South Mountain in the forenoon, by mid-afternoon Pickett’s men were within three miles of the fated village. of Gettysburg. The sound of heavy firing now rang inces- santly on the air, and the troops tired and parched with their march of twenty-three miles over a dusty road, expected to be called into the battle at once. But the word soon came for ‘‘General Pickett’s men to rest until word should come for them to move.’’ The men turned in for a brief rest before that deadly struggle which every man knew was surely coming. It does not come within my province to depict in detail the great battle of Gettysburg only so far as it is necessary to describe the pivotal scene in that Waterloo of the Great Rebellion and the all-important part the heroes of Sylvania acted at that terrible moment when the high-water mark of the floodtide of war was reached. Unknown to each other all of those who had left Sylvania were engaged in that deadly combat. There was Colonel Lancier of the Army of Virginia, already thrice wounded but as tenacious as ever, while pitted almost squarely against him was the Seventy- Comic 900 cS com.