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Overnight at Metzel's Hotel near the courthouse, Confederate Gen. Jubal Early must have mulled methods to extract the $70,000-plus demanded from York residents.
Monday morning - 24 hours into his division's invasion of York - the commander of the occupying forces embarked on a plan to progressively raise tension in an already tense town to break loose more Northern greenbacks.
He summoned Judge Robert Fisher to his courthouse headquarters for a lawyer-to-lawyer talk.
"I want all the keys to the Court House," Early told the judge of York and Adams counties. Early planned to burn the county's records. Fisher reminded the general of his pledge not to destroy private property.
It would be in retaliation for a similar act perpetrated in Fairfax, Va., Early said.
"Two wrongs would not make a right," Fisher argued.
Early gave in but put forth one more question.
Was any property left in York County that would be contraband of war and used for federal military purposes?
Fisher offered only one thing: Cigars made from county tobacco.
Early, a confirmed Virginian, was wary of the quality of Northern cigars.
He declined
At one point, old Jube ran an errand for his superior, Richard Ewell.
Benjamin S. Ewell, Gen. Ewell's brother, was a colonel in the Confederate Army. During the war, his wife, Julia McIlvaine Ewell, resided in York, her hometown.
The McIlvaine family was not in a good mood when Early came to visit. His stay was short.
Mary McIlvaine, Julia's sister, left the house because she had no desire to speak to the commander of the occupying force.
After Early left, Mary washed the chair he sat on with soap and water.
Monday morning along the river
The potential of a rebel crossing of the Susquehanna River on Monday morning concerned Col. Jacob Frick and Maj. Granville Haller, leaders of Wrightsville's defense the previous day.
From Columbia, they peered across the foggy river. They could see the sturdy stone piers stretching across the river with no load. These supports were all that remained of the bridge that Union soldiers burned the previous night to prevent the rebels from crossing.
A hastily built bridge across the mile-wide Susquehanna was not likely, but the Union officers gazed toward the river's west bank to discover if any makeshift rafts floated their way.
Late in the afternoon, they learned that the Confederates had moved west.
Mary Jane Rewalt, Gen. John B. Gordon's hostess, enchanted the commander of the rebel brigade occupying Wrightsville.
The young woman warmly provided breakfast for overnight guest Gordon and a handful of his officers.
Over breakfast, Gordon probed his hostess. Did she hold Southern sympathies? he wondered. Perhaps she might have written the note among the flowers handed him the day before, detailing Yankee positions in Wrightsville.
Rewalt firmly stated her conviction in a room full of high-ranking Confederates: "General Gordon, I fully comprehend you, and it is due to myself that I candidly tell you that I am a Union woman. I cannot afford to be misunderstood, nor to have you misinterpret this simple courtesy. You and your soldiers last night saved my home from burning, and I was unwilling that you should go away without receiving some token of my appreciation. I must tell you, however, that, with my assent and approval, my husband is a soldier in the Union army, and my constant prayer to Heaven is that our cause may triumph and the Union be saved."
No Confederate, Gordon wrote, left that room without respect or admiration for the brave Mary Jane Rewalt.
Gordon's men operated under Robert E. Lee's Order No. 72 - the prohibition against plundering. Or so Gordon believed.
The Georgian would soon become defensive about press reports that his men set fire to Wrightsville. He had resolved to leave no ruin in the wake of his march through the lush Pennsylvania countryside.
The general later listed two exceptions to Lee's order. Finding his men short of firewood, he okayed a request to take the top rail on nearby fences. The next morning, most of the rails were gone. Each man had taken the top rail, so the fences gradually disappeared from top to bottom.
"It was a case of adherence to the letter and neglect of the spirit," Gordon wrote, "but there was no alternative except good-naturedly to admit that my men had gotten the better of me that time."
The other exception was the conscription of horses. One Pennsylvania Dutchman, a German-speaker who knew only a little English, was so put out about the loss of his horse that he took his case to Gordon. No argument would shake the man's determination to get his mare back.
Finally, in exasperation the man made a comparison that showed his love for his horse. "I've been married, sir, t'ree times," he said, "and I vood not geef dot mare for all does voomans."
Gordon did not find the argument convincing, but the man was so distressed that he returned his horse.
Although the Southerners did not disturb people or property during their occupation of Wrightsville - save for fence posts and livestock - they caused immense destruction on their countermarch west.
After spending the morning on the bank of the Susquehanna, Elijah White's cavalry battalion burned bridges - 14 in all - on the railroad that paralleled the path of the march back to York.
Gordon's men reached York at about 4 p.m.
They marched through town and camped along the Carlisle Pike, ready to complete orders to meet Richard Ewell's 2nd Corps in Dillsburg for an assault on Harrisburg.
The brigade's ambulance wagons burst with men, hitching an easy ride.
The return of Gordon's brigade Monday afternoon stoked Cassandra Small's fears about the invaders' intentions toward her family and town.
The burning of the bridge thwarted Early's plans to cross over and take Harrisburg from the rear.
Now what would the general do?
After tea, Cassandra's family - the household of York businessman Philip Small - bolted the doors and closed the shutters.
"But all was quiet - no disturbance at all. . . ," she wrote in a letter to her cousin, Lissie.
Early presses for money
Jubal Early persisted in his grab for the remainder of the greenbacks owed him Monday afternoon.
"I have determined to burn the shops," Early told Chief Burgess David Small.
Small walked with Early down North Duke Street toward York's extensive railroad car manufacturing and maintenance shops.
"These shops are built of wood," Small argued. Ignite them and the flames would likely devour the entire town. The general had promised not to harm the town.
"Then call out your fire department to protect the homes and other buildings," Early replied.
Despite his privately held opinion that torching the shops, indeed, could ignite the town, Early sounded so convincing that word traveled quickly up and down York's streets to brace for the worst.
In the neighborhood of the shops, residents filled tubs, buckets and any container that they could find with water. They lugged their furniture outside.
By this time, a group of leading townsmen followed the general and the chief burgess toward the railroad shops. Behind them, a delegation of boys and men tagged along.
As they passed, weeping women and bawling children begged the general to save their property - to refrain from burning the railroad car factories.
Earlier that day, the general had ordered a squad to burn railroad cars at the depot, cars made for government service.
Their actions increased anxiety among the town's leaders about what Early might do to the shops. Would he use the excuse that they manufactured cars for the U.S. government? Remember what he did to Thaddeus Stevens' furnace? The rebels had destroyed railroad switches, tracks, bridges and now cars. What was next?
Seated in the railroad depot - surrounded by unopened boxes of goods and reportedly energized by some snorts of Mount Vernon whiskey - Early made another snatch for the greenbacks.
He reiterated the simple message: If he received the balance of the $100,000, his men would not burn the factories or the depot.
"General," David Small argued, "I would do so very willingly, but the fact is I have raised all the money I could raise in town, and a good deal of it has been contributed in small sums. I don't know any man in town that has more than $1."
At that point, a nervous Philip Small played a card he had been holding since the rebels entered town.
Desist from burning the factories, he said, and he would give a $50,000 note drawn on a Philadelphia bank, payable however the war played out.
Early did not have a chance to respond. Just then, a courier raced down North Duke Street to the depot on a lathered calico horse.
An order from Gen. Lee
Elliot Johnson, from Richard Ewell's staff, had entered town only moments before.
He met John D. Daniel, Early's aide, who pointed him to the railroad where the general had convened court with the town's leaders. Johnson found Early and handed him a message.
Early stepped aside, read the note and returned to the York leaders. He would consider Philip Small's proposition that night.
The messenger's note concerned Early, an outwardly untroubled man. Walking with Small, he retraced his footsteps on North Duke Street and retired to his headquarters.
The messenger carried an order from Robert E. Lee, indicating that the Union Army had crossed the Potomac and marched north of Frederick, Md. Lee's order called for a concentration of the Confederate Army west of South Mountain in Franklin County.
Early immediately sent out word to his brigade commanders that the division would retrace its steps early the next morning.
He would not tell the troubled people of York his intentions.
Ewell's horseman had rushed into town with a message of importance. Gordon's brigade had countermarched through town. Regiments showed restlessness, gathering supplies and preparing to break camp. Wagons loaded with requisitioned supplies moved out the Carlisle Road.
What would be Early's parting shot?
Later Monday night, Early showed part of his hand.
The lawyer-general took one last opportunity to make a closing argument to the people of York and all Northerners.
The York Gazette's press printed an address explaining why Early would not burn railroad buildings and car shops: Such an act would endanger the town. If he had started the fire without concern for its aftermath, he would have been justified. The Union Army had done just that in the South.
"But we do not war upon women and children. . . ," Early wrote.
Union forces on the move
As Lee urgently directed his corps to concentrate, Union commanders used forced marches to overtake the Confederate thrust into Pennsylvania.
The farther Union Army commander George Meade moved from Washington in chasing the rebels, the more difficulty he had communicating with the War Department.
That evening, Meade sent a courier with vital communications to Army command in Washington. The rider, starting north of Frederick, would have to find a telegraph station still transmitting in Hanover Junction or some other point along the Northern Central Railway.
Now near midnight Monday, the eastbound courier rode near Green Ridge, in a remote area of Codorus Township. He headed toward a farmhouse to gain directions and perhaps some grain for his horse.
George Bair became frightened when the mounted courier called on him.
He loaded his gun, aimed it at what he believed to be an invading rebel and squeezed the trigger. The shot killed the courier instantly, his pistol dropping to the ground beside him.
The messenger had carried a message from Meade informing the War Department about his new plans:
His Army would track down Lee by moving toward Gettysburg instead of eastward toward York, keeping his men between Lee and Washington. If Lee fronted Harrisburg, Union defenders in that town must delay the enemy until Meade's men could fall upon the rebel rear.
Back in York, the streets teemed with activity as thousands of soldiers and teamsters and wagons prepared to retrace their steps.
Sentries from Robert F. Hoke's North Carolina brigade positioned in town withdrew from the hotels and taverns joining the rest of their regiment in the march out the Carlisle Road.
Meanwhile, Early unknowingly was a wanted man.
A Union cavalry division numbering about 3,500 horsemen under the command of Gen. Judson Kilpatrick was moving north to sniff out Early's trail.
Kilpatrick, nicknamed "Kill-Cavalry" for his reckless direction of his men and horses, camped at Littlestown, on the Pennsylvania border.
The general and his two brigade commanders, Elon J.
Farnsworth and George Armstrong Custer, would be delayed in their quest for Early. Events the next day in Hanover would dictate that.
The main body of Confederate cavalry, under the command of Jeb Stuart, also was in an urgent search for the Confederate general. Stuart's three brigades of 4,000 to 4,500 men spent the night in Union Mills, Md., not far from Littlestown, where Kilpatrick's men camped.
Earlier, Lee had directed Stuart, known as the "eyes and ears" of the Confederate Army, to "feel the right of Ewell's troops" and forage for supplies for the rest of the army. This meant that Stuart would supply intelligence and Union troop positions to Lee or to other commanders.
Ewell's right was Early's division, and an increasingly worried Stuart did not know where to find it. York was his best bet.
". . .York, Pa. was designated as the point in the vicinity of which he was to expect to hear from Early, and as the possible (if not probable) point of concentration of the army," Stuart aide H.B. McClellan later wrote.
In York, Early was spending a quiet evening in his hotel room at Metzel's, oblivious that horsemen in both blue and gray wanted to make contact.
As it turned out on Tuesday, neither Kilpatrick nor Stuart connected with Jubal Early.
But on the streets of Hanover, the two generals got to know each other intimately.
Reach James McClure at 771-2012 or jem@ydr.com.
