Monday evening a troop of independent cavalry from Two Taverns came clattering into Gettysburg to report to Major Haller. They were farm boys, mostly—mounted on shaggy farm horses which squealed at all the clanking and hullabaloo around them … All day, piled-up wagons of refugees had been grinding in from Fairfield, from Greenwood and the hills beyond. The drivers crouched in voluble terror, staring wildly over their shoulders at the rainy horizon behind.

Ja, men declared, the rebels had come through Hagerstown. Johannes Merckenburg saw them; Frederick Sturtz had a sister living there, who had sent him word. Mrs. Henry Kreck had fled from their wrath, with her five children packed in a New Rochelle wagon; she had driven all night, and one of the children sick with scarlet fever … Ja, there was a terrible old general with one leg, who had stolen a fine brougham somewhere; he drove with his good leg propped on the seat before him, and only the idiots of the countryside would stay to be eaten alive. Soldiers spread out on every road, they spotted the pastures with their fires, they burned Adolph Schilling’s fences, they took every horse from the Hamms. Ach, they would pay, but their great rolls of dingy paper were not money. The wild men with long hair, the men who talked as no human beings had ever talked, were dark and patched and very, very hungry. Chickens disappeared; you heard them squawking horridly; then they squawked not again. The cherries were eaten. Who was it said that those men with long hair had eaten a baby or two? Ja, it was all too true; they had eaten children; it was known … They seized upon Otto Roush’s new wagon, and took it away with them. They sang satanic songs; the pigs squealed for mercy, and were butchered in every farmyard. Many children they had eaten; only the fools would stay. Army after army came clanking in from the south, and cowardly folks ran out to give them coffee and gingerbread, and to cheer at the dirty pink flags they carried.

They cut the ears from pretty girls; they strung the ears like beads and hung them around their necks. Ach, it is a terrible thing which happens to a young woman who is caught by them, all alone … Nein, I have not seen it myself, but it is true. A hundred of those men will carry her away into the forest; she will not be found again. And afterward, they will cut off her ears.