Battles & Leaders of the Civil War: The Confederate Retreat from Gettysburg

Despite having no military training, John D. Imboden (1823-1895) became a well regarded cavalry officer and partisan fighter during the Civil War, distinguishing himself in Stonewall Jackson’s famous Valley Campaign in 1862. In the Gettysburg Campaign, Imboden’s brigade of cavalry guarded the Army of Northern Virginia’s rear during the invasion into Pennsylvania and guarded wagon trains during the army’s perilous retreat back to Virginia after the devastating loss at Gettysburg, helping keep a bad situation from growing worse.
President Lincoln was so upset with General Meade’s inability to destroy the Confederate army during the retreat that he wrote a letter to Meade, complaining “He was within your easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection with our other late successes, have ended the war. As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely.” Lincoln never sent the letter, and it only saw the light of day years after the war and Lincoln’s death.
Imboden went on to write an article about the Confederate retreat from Gettysburg that was eventually published in the well known Battles & Leaders series.