ABSTRACT
The long, bitter day that had ended for Longstreet was not yet over for Ewell. Old Bald Head, entrusted with guarding the Confederate's left flank and with striking the enemy when he could, had waited throughout the morning and afternoon for the sound of Longstreet's guns as a signal to action. As Ewell surveyed the Federal entrenchments that now opposed him from the crests of Cemetery, Culp's, and Wolf hills he hardly needed to be told by Lee: "We did not or could not pursue our advantage of yesterday, and now the enemy are in good position." Not only did these hills bristle with the cannons and rifles of the Union's Eleventh Corps, but the bluecoats also had spent a night and day building breastworks, felling trees, blocking them up into a close log fence, battening with cordwood from piles near at hand, and surmounting the whole with "head-logs" so that these works when finally in place appeared so formidable to the Confederates that they reported them to be log forts requiring scaling ladders for successful assault. But the holding of these ridges had become a necessity for Meade's men since not more than one hundred and twenty rods behind them lay the Baltimore Pike —the line of retreat for more than two-thirds of the Army of the Potomac!
