The events of the second seem to have impressed the two generals quite differently. In Lee the combative spirit rose even higher. To Meade the result seemed, on the whole, discouraging. The enemy held a strong vantage-ground on his right; his line had been twice pierced. Would he be better able to hold it now that the army was weakened by the loss of eight to ten thousand men? Meade's council. At nightfall a council of war was called, and the situation discussed. Meade desired to know first the condition of the troops, and next the temper of his officers. To this end they were separately asked whether they favored a removal of the army to some other position, or waiting another attack where they now were. The general voice was in favor of fighting it out to the bitter end, and it was so determined. A strong force of infantry and artillery was therefore moved over to the right, in readiness to expel the enemy there at break of day. Lee not beaten yet. Deeming the result of the day's operations to be on the whole favorable to him, Lee was equally determined to fight to a finish. As Napoleon had said before him, in a similar spirit of impulsive exultation, when satisfied that Wellington was awaiting his onslaught at Waterloo, "I have them now, those English!" so Lee now replied to all Longstreet's remonstrances by shaking his clenched fist at Cemetery Hill, exclaiming as he did so, "The enemy is there, and I am going to strike him!" Plan of Attack. He too, therefore, strongly reinforced his left at Culp's Hill, with the view of having a heavy force well in hand there, ready to strike in upon the Union right and rear, while a formidable column of wholly fresh troops, charging it in the centre, should cut that in two, seize the Baltimore pike, and with Ewell's help crush everything on that side. In order to reap to the utmost the advantages looked for as certain, Stuart's cavalry, now back with the army, was sent To guard against some such movement, or in fact any demonstration towards its rear, the Union cavalry was posted on this pike, a few miles back of Cemetery Ridge. Still another cavalry force was guarding the Union left, beyond Round Top. These dispositions present, in brief, the preparations both generals were making for the third day's conflict. Pickett to lead it. Lee had silenced Longstreet's objections by ordering him to get ready Pickett's fresh division for the decisive charge on Cemetery Ridge. These soldiers, Virginians all, bitterly complained because they were only the rear-guard of that army which they were told was driving the Yankees before them in utter rout. Their charge was to be preceded and sustained by turning every gun in the Confederate army upon the point of attack. With the first streak of day the struggle for the possession of Culp's Hill began again. As both sides had orders to attack, there was no delay in One piece of hopeless heroism deserves commemoration in all accounts of this battle. In the height of the engagement an order was brought for two regiments, the Second Massachusetts and the Twenty-seventh Indiana, to charge across the meadow stretching between Culp's Hill and McAllister's Hill, on the other side of which the enemy lay in the old intrenchments. To try to pass that meadow was rushing to certain destruction. Culp's Hill retaken. After seven hours of this kind of fighting, the assailants were finally driven beyond Rock Creek again, leaving five hundred prisoners, besides their dead and wounded, behind them. Again an essential part of Lee's plan of attack had signally failed, and once more the whole Union line stretched unbroken from Culp's Hill to Round Top. But it was only eleven o'clock; and though the battle had gone against him on this side, Lee seems to have felt, like Desaix at Marengo, that there was still time to gain another. Was it here that Lee lost that moral equipoise which seems born in really great commanders in moments of supreme peril? The Cannonade. Be that as it may, the order was given for his This terrific cannonade, under which the solid earth shook, the sky was darkened at noonday, "The storm broke upon us so suddenly that soldiers and officers who leaped, as it began, from their tents, or from lazy siestas on the grass, were stricken at their rising with mortal wounds, and died, some with cigars between their lips, some with pieces of food in their fingers, and one at least—a pale young German from Pennsylvania—with a miniature of his sister in his hands. Horses fell shrieking out such awful cries as Cooper told of, and writhing themselves about in hopeless agony. The boards of fences, scattered by explosions, flew in splinters through the air. The earth, torn up in clouds, blinded the eyes of hurrying men; and through the branches of the trees and among the gravestones of the cemetery a shower of destruction crashed ceaselessly. The hill, which seemed alone devoted to this rain of death, was clear in nearly all its unsheltered places within five minutes after the fire began." Eighty guns replied from the Union position After this indescribable uproar had lasted upwards of two hours, the Union batteries were ordered to cease firing in order to husband their ammunition for what every man in the army knew was coming. It was now three o'clock. The moment had come for the supreme effort of all. All the Union generals now set themselves to work repairing the damages caused by the Union Defences. We had a first line of infantry posted along the foot of the heights,—some behind stone walls, when these followed the natural line of defence, as they now and then did; some behind rocky inequalities of the ground,—with artillery above and behind it; and there was a second line of infantry back of the crest. Although Meade is said to have expected, and even told some of his officers, that Lee's next blow would fall on the Union centre, we detect no specific preparation to meet it. The Storming Column. The troops designated for the assault were waiting only for the order to advance, Pickett's splendid division on the right, Pettigrew's, lately Heth's, on the left, with two brigades in support of Pickett, two in support of Pettigrew, and still another marching at some distance in the rear. Though the equals of any in that army, Heth's soldiers had been so much Pickett was watching the effect of the artillery-fire when a courier brought him word from the batteries that if he was coming at all now was his time, as the Union guns had slackened their fire. After reading it himself, Pickett handed the note to Longstreet at his side. "General, shall I advance?" Pickett asked his chief. Mastered by his emotions, Longstreet could only give a nod of assent and turn away. "I shall lead my division forward, sir," was the soldierly reply. As the charging column passed through them to the front, fifteen or eighteen guns followed close behind in support. Friend and foe alike have borne testimony to the steadiness with which this gallant band met the ordeal—by much the hardest that falls to the soldier's lot—of having to endure a terrible fire without the power of returning it. No sooner had the long gray lines come within range than Pickett's Advance. As soon as they could do so without injury to their own men, the Confederate guns began afresh, so that again shells streamed through the air and balls bounded over the plain without intermission, dense smoke shutting out the assailants from view. Protected by the fire of this redoubtable artillery, the column continued its deliberate march. When within five hundred yards, or about to This must be considered, we think, as the turning-point in the assault. Stannard's attack, made at such close quarters, so shattered Pickett's right brigade that this flank of the assaulting column never reached the crest at all, but drifted more and more to the rear, lost to all organization. Thus was repeated that memorable manoeuvre of the Fifty-second Regiment against the Imperial Guard at Waterloo, and with like results; for before the close and deadly fire poured in upon them at only a few rods' distance—a fire they were powerless to return—Pickett's right was either shot to pieces or crowded in upon the centre, so throwing it into disorder and checking its momentum, while Eight batteries were now pouring canister into Pickett at point-blank range, carrying away whole ranks of men at every discharge. Before him, between two little clumps of trees, which Lee himself had carefully pointed out and Pickett was making such heroic efforts to reach, lay the Second Union Corps. As the men of this corps realized that the brunt of the charge was to fall on them, they grew restive and anxious; but Gibbon, curbing their impatience with voice and gesture, quietly said, as he passed along the ranks, "Hold your fire, boys—they are not near enough yet." charge stopped Point where Pickett's Charge was stopped. The Final Charge. Pickett's first line had come within a hundred and fifty yards when the order was given to fire. It was followed by a terrible volley before which that line went down like grass before the scythe. When the smoke rolled away the charging lines were seen inextricably mixed together, all order lost—a frantic mob covered with blood and dirt, In this manner one portion of the Confederates struck and overwhelmed the first Union line, driving its defenders back upon the second. Here they turned and faced their infuriated assailants, who, led on by Armistead, had leaped the last stone wall, shooting down or bayoneting all those found crouching behind it, had then rushed up to seize the solitary gun that had just fired its last shot in their faces, and, as if victory was assured, already had raised their cry of triumph on the disputed summit. The Repulse. Though divided and thrown off by this entering wedge, the Union soldiers, who now came swaying up from right to left, soon seized it as in a vise. For a few minutes an indescribable mÊlÉe raged here on half an acre of ground, at push of bayonet, hand to hand, muzzle to muzzle, breast to breast. Gradually the enclosing lines surged forward. Armistead was shot When it was all over with Pickett, the two supporting brigades came up on the right, only to be repulsed by a few volleys. Pettigrew had been defeated almost before he could come to close quarters, Pickett destroyed, Wilcox brushed away. From his post of observation Longstreet had watched the advance up the ridge. "I saw," he says, "the crest of the hill lit up with a solid sheet of flame. When the smoke cleared away the division was gone. Nearly two-thirds lay dead on the field, and the survivors were sullenly retreating down the hill. Mortal man could not have stood that fire." Again the old story. An assaulting column has been driven through an opposing line, it is true, but with the loss of all organization, without a supporting force to follow up the advantage it has Cavalry Battles. Two cavalry battles belong to the complete history of this remarkable day, though in no way affecting the main result. In the first Stuart attacked and was defeated. This was cavalry against cavalry; and as Pickett's front attack was repulsed, that in the rear amounted to little in itself. In the second Kilpatrick made a bold dash into Hood's rear, about Round Top, with the view of throwing the enemy into confusion, breaking up his line there, and so facilitating an advance by the Union forces in that quarter. This was cavalry against infantry in position, and the ground the worst possible for cavalry manoeuvres. For an hour the enemy had our troopers riding round them with drawn sabres, receiving the fire first of one regiment and then of another. No FOOTNOTES: |