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Philadelphia.
    Then, around four in the afternoon,Elijah White’s battalion of“Comanches” galloped wildly into town from the west, along Chambersburg Street, “yelling most unearthly, cursing,” noisily firing carbines and revolvers into the air “like so many savages from the Rocky Mountains” and “not caring whether they maimed man, woman or child; and rushing from stable to stable in pursuit of horses.” Doors slammed shut, window shutters closed, horses were rounded up off the streets, heads peered nervously out of second-story windows. They stalked intoGeorge Arnold’sFarmer’s and Mechanics Savings Institution and demanded thatSamuel Bushman, the clerk, clean out the vault, and when Bushman rapidly explained that everything had been sent to Philadelphia by train for safekeeping, one “Comanche” threatened to “send me and the treasurer to Richmond.” 18
    Presently, along came Early’s infantry into town, slopping through the mud and drizzle, in line withJubal Early himself, “tall and well-looking … with the stars of a major general decorating his collar, and a capacious brown felt hat, looped up at the right side, resting easily on his head.” Riding into the diamond, Early demanded to speak to “the mayor of your town,” only to be told that the town burgess,Robert Martin, had beaten a prudent path out of Gettysburg.
Very well, what about the town council?
David Kendlehart, the council president, had stayed put at his boot shop on Baltimore Street, and was pulled out to negotiate with Early. The brusque Confederate snappedoff a list of requisitions—flour, bacon, sugar, coffee, salt, onions, hats, and a thousand pair of shoes. This was impossible, Kendlehart pleaded. “The quantities required are far beyond that in our possession.”
Fine
, replied Early,
then we will take whatever we can lay hands on ourselves
.
    For the rest of the rainy afternoon, parties of Confederate soldiers ransacked “barns, stores and chicken coops” for everything from hatfuls of candy fromPeter Winter’s candy shop onChambersburg Street to horseshoes from the blacksmith’s shop behindSarah Barrett King’s house. Some simply demanded to be fed. Others “had a pile of hats on their heads, looking comical, strings of muslin and other goods trailing to the ground” and “blankets, quilts and shawls … piled up on their horses.”John Wills, whose father ran theGlobe Hotel, actually recognized one of Early’s staffers as a spy who had been earlier scouting the region to supplyJedediah Hotchkiss with mapmaking data. They did not look the part of either cavaliers or devils. They were “clad almost in rags,” wrote Tillie Pierce, and “covered with dust,” and primMichael Jacobs, one of the five regular members of thePennsylvania College faculty, was almost nauseated from their smell. But at least they did not “molest the women,” and the worst Jubal Early devised for a dispirited crowd of prisoners from the 26th Pennsylvania was a lecture on the folly of going so ill-prepared to war. “You boys ought to be home with your mothers,” Early snarled, “and not out in the fields where it is dangerous and you might get hurt,” and then paroled them. 19
    The carnival, punctuated by regimental bands thumping out “Dixie
”
“and other Confederate airs,” lasted till eleven o’clock, when the last Confederates staggered off to their bivouac northeast of the town. Early had no more time to spend looting, and since “I had no opportunity of compelling a compliance with my demands,” the next morning his division was up and on the road to York—although not before men of Gordon’s brigade had chopped down the town flagpole, burned the modest wooden bridge on the east side of town, and boasted that they intended “to remain all summer” in Pennsylvania and meant “to go as far as Philadelphia.” But most of them would have trouble just getting to York, since “the men having too free access to