Excerpt from Did General Meade Desire to Retreat, at the Battle of Gettysburg?
I Did not see or hear of the letter of General Abner Doubleday, published in the "New York Times" of April 1st, until my attention was called to it. nearly a month afterward. But, in view of the fact of my previous silence, when General Doubleday has discussed the same topic, that does not account for my noticing it now or at all. I begin, therefore, with an apology for breaking that long silence, induced by the conviction that he had manifestly to the world failed to substantiate the assertions made in bis history of the battle of Gettysburg. I have been actuated, heretofore, by the belief that "no man was ever written out of reputation but by himself," and the belief that I might safely commit that task to General Doubleday. But there comes a time when, in the individual case, it becomes a debatable question whether this view may not he pushed too far, when for instance, as at present, the living, as being alive, has to that extent a signal advantage over the dead. This I hold to be a good and sufficient reason for breaking a silence which has been maintained in deference to a general belief among friends, in which I no longer share, that it was simply not worth while to take notice of these attacks. They shall no longer have the benefit of the doubt of being harmless. If they be not harmless, it were well worth while to prove them groundless, which I proceed to do from undisputed facts, and from the enormously preponderating weight of testimony against them.
That the reader may have a clear idea of the question at issue, it is well to premise that it is asserted by a little clique of dissatisfied spirits, who find in General Doubleday a convenient and willing instrument. that General Meade desired and intended to retreat from the field of Gettysburg throughout nearly the whole of the 2d of July, 1863. It has been attempted to prove this in various ways, in face of General Meade"s well-known conduct on that day, of his official orders and despatches, and of bis solemn protestation to the contrary before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, in 1804, where the charge of his having intended to retreat was first distinctly formulated.
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