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under their former commander. Before the brigades arrived at the camp of the Fifth corps, the report reached them that General Meade had assumed command of the army; it was enthusiastically received by all the men, who had learned to love and cherish the general as one of their own command. General Crawford therefore reported to General Sykes, who succeeded Meade in command of the Fifth corps.

Colonel Hardin, of the Twelfth regiment, had not yet recovered from the severe wound he had received in the battle of Bull run, but as soon as he learned that the Reserves were moving northward with the great army of the Potomac, he threw aside the garb of an invalid, abandoned the doctor and his medicines, put on his uniform and hurried away to the field; he rejoined his regiment and commanded it in the battle of Gettysburg and through the subsequent campaign.

General Meade assumed the command of the army on the 28th of June, at Frederick. The several corps were then encamped in the country about that city, from the Monocacy on the east, to Middletown on the west. General Hooker left the camp a few hours after he had been relieved of the command, and without communicating to his successor any facts in relation to the whereabouts of the enemy, or submitting any plan for future operations. From information. derived from newspaper reports, and from other sources, General Meade learned that General Lee had passed northward through Hagerstown, and was marching up the Cumberland valley, with an army estimated to number over one hundred thousand men; that large detachments had occupied Carlisle and York, and were threatening the Susquehannah at Harrisburg and Columbia. The commanding general saw the necessity of at once forcing the enemy to loose his hold on the line of the Susquehannah. He therefore promptly moved his army on the direct line from Frederick toward Harrisburg, determined to march on that line until he either encountered the enemy, or had reason

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