Falling Waters

Falling Waters. "Just charge it to Jeff Davis". The Potomac River trapped Gen. Robert E. Lee and his Confederate army during the retreat from Gettysburg. Flooded by torrential rains on July 4, 1863, the Potomac raged for more than a week, preventing Lee from crossing into present-day West Virginia. Complicating matters, on July 3, Union cavalry operating behind Lee's army had destroyed the pontoon bridge located here, severing his umbilical cord to the Confederacy., Finally, on July 10, the Confederates completed a pontoon bridge, but it took two days for the ambulances and hundreds of ordnance and artillery wagons to cross. By the early evening of July 13, during another downpour, Gen. James Longstreet's infantry corps began tramping across, guided by bonfires on both shores and signal torches on the bridge. Gen. A.P. Hill's corps followed, and by mid-morning the next day, 30,000 Confederates we across., Lee's army had escaped., (sidebar) , Quartermaster John Harman, who previously had served as Stonewall Jackson's chief quartermaster, built 16 pontoon boats in two days from dismantled sheds and warehouses and wood from a Williamsport lumberyard. When the lumberyard manager complained, the Confederates retorted: "Just charge it to Jeff Davis. Our army is worth more than all your lumber in gold.", (sidebar) , "An hour after dark we took up the line of march.... The night being so dark and rainy, we could not see farther than "the noses on our faces," while at every step we went nearly up to our knees in slush and mud. Men would stand and sleep - would march (if this could be called marching) and sleep. The soldiers could not fall out of ranks for fear of being hopelessly lost.... Thus we would be for one hour moving the distance of a hundred paces, and any soldier who has ever had to undergo such marching, can well understand its laboriousness." - Augustus Dickert, Kershaw's South Carolina brigade, (captions) , Wagon toppling off bridge. - Courtesy Library of Congress , Wooden Federal pontoon boats of the type that Harman constructed. - Courtesy Library of Congress , Augustus Dickert