Oliver Otis Howard, Autobiography of Oliver Otis Howard, major general , United States army : volume 1

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[424] upon us unawares. Before sunrise I rode with General Meade along our lines toward the left. These lines, much extended, with long intervals, did not appear very favorable; a sleeping army, at best, suggests weakness; the general saw the needs. He sat upon his horse as the sun was rising, and with his field glass took a survey of the Cemetery Ridge and its environments. We were upon the highest ground within the cemetery inclosure.

The Confederate artillery was occasionally firing. The skirmishing at intervals was a restless, nervous fusillade near the town and off to the right in the woods. I stood at that same point of observation during the most exciting epoch of the great battle. I was there when the cornerstone of the soldier's monument was laid. I stood at the same center some years later amid a group of friends and explained some of the varied scenes of the conflict, and never without emotion; but the impression of that beautiful morning is ineffaceable. The glorious landscape, with its remarkable variety of aspect, in the fresh morning light, like a panorama was spread before our eyes. I need not rehearse its pictorial summary, for I hardly think Meade was considering the panorama at all-the mountains, the groves and the valleys, with their variety of productions, or the streams of waterexcept in their evident relationship to his military plans.

What he soon did, after he had ridden away slowly and thoughtfully, is the true key to his thought. For, by his direction, Slocum's entire corps went quickly to the right to hold the rough-wooded slopes from Culp's Hill to McAllister's Mill. Ames, Steinwehr, Schurz, Robinson, and Doubleday, with their respective divisions,