THE CHARGE AT GETTYSBURG

For the Lord
On the whirlwind is abroad;
In the earthquake he has spoken;
He has smitten with his thunder
The iron walls asunder,
And the gates of brass are broken!
--Whittier

With bray of the trumpet,
And roll of the drum,
And keen ring of bugle
The cavalry come:
Sharp clank the steel scabbards,
The bridle-chains ring,
And foam from red nostrils
The wild chargers fling!

Tramp, tramp o'er the greensward
That quivers below,
Scarce held by the curb bit
The fierce horses go!
And the grim-visaged colonel,
With ear-rending shout,
Peals forth to the squadrons
The order, "Trot Out"!
--Francis A. Durivage.


THE CHARGE AT GETTYSBURG

The battle of Chancellorsville marked the zenith of Confederate
good fortune. Immediately afterward, in June, 1863, Lee led the
victorious army of Northern Virginia into Pennsylvania. The South
was now the invader, not the invaded, and its heart beat proudly
with hopes of success; but these hopes went down in bloody wreck
on July 4, when word was sent to the world that the high valor of
Virginia had failed at last on the field of Gettysburg, and that
in the far West Vicksburg had been taken by the army of the
"silent soldier."

At Gettysburg Lee had under him some seventy thousand men, and
his opponent, Meade, about ninety thousand. Both armies were
composed mainly of seasoned veterans, trained to the highest
point by campaign after campaign and battle after battle; and
there was nothing to choose between them as to the fighting power
of the rank and file. The Union army was the larger, yet most of
the time it stood on the defensive; for the difference between
the generals, Lee and Meade, was greater than could be bridged by
twenty thousand men. For three days the battle raged. No other
battle of recent time has been so obstinate and so bloody. The
victorious Union army lost a greater percentage in killed and
wounded than the allied armies of England, Germany, and the
Netherlands lost at Waterloo. Four of its seven corps suffered
each a greater relative loss than befell the world-renowned
British infantry on the day that saw the doom of the French
emperor. The defeated Confederates at Gettysburg lost,
relatively, as many men as the defeated French at Waterloo; but
whereas the French army became a mere rabble, Lee withdrew his
formidable soldiery with their courage unbroken, and their
fighting power only diminished by their actual losses in the field.

The decisive moment of the battle, and perhaps of the whole war,
was in the afternoon of the third day, when Lee sent forward his
choicest troops in a last effort to break the middle of the Union
line. The center of the attacking force was Pickett's division,
the flower of the Virginia infantry; but many other brigades took
part in the assault, and the column, all told, numbered over
fifteen thousand men. At the same time, the Confederates attacked
the Union left to create a diversion. The attack was preceded by
a terrific cannonade, Lee gathering one hundred and fifteen guns,
and opening a fire on the center of the Union line. In response,
Hunt, the Union chief of artillery, and Tyler, of the artillery
reserves, gathered eighty guns on the crest of the gently sloping
hill, where attack was threatened. For two hours, from one till
three, the cannonade lasted, and the batteries on both sides
suffered severely. In both the Union and Confederate lines
caissons were blown up by the fire, riderless horses dashed
hither and thither, the dead lay in heaps, and throngs of wounded
streamed to the rear. Every man lay down and sought what cover he
could. It was evident that the Confederate cannonade was but a
prelude to a great infantry attack, and at three o'clock Hunt
ordered the fire to stop, that the guns might cool, to be ready
for the coming assault. The Confederates thought that they had
silenced the hostile artillery, and for a few minutes their
firing continued; then, suddenly, it ceased, and there was a lull.

The men on the Union side who were not at the point directly
menaced peered anxiously across the space between the lines to
watch the next move, while the men in the divisions which it was
certain were about to be assaulted, lay hugging the ground and
gripping their muskets, excited, but confident and resolute. They
saw the smoke clouds rise slowly from the opposite crest, where
the Confederate army lay, and the sunlight glinted again on the
long line of brass and iron guns which had been hidden from view
during the cannonade. In another moment, out of the lifting smoke
there appeared, beautiful and terrible, the picked thousands of
the Southern army coming on to the assault. They advanced in
three lines, each over a mile long, and in perfect order.
Pickett's Virginians held the center, with on their left the
North Carolinians of Pender and Pettigrew, and on their right the
Alabama regiments of Wilcox; and there were also Georgian and
Tennessee regiments in the attacking force. Pickett's division,
however, was the only one able to press its charge home. After
leaving the woods where they started, the Confederates had nearly
a mile and a half to go in their charge. As the Virginians moved,
they bent slightly to the left, so as to leave a gap between them
and the Alabamians on the right.

The Confederate lines came on magnificently. As they crossed the
Emmetsburg Pike the eighty guns on the Union crest, now cool and
in good shape, opened upon them, first with shot and then with
shell. Great gaps were made every second in the ranks, but the
gray-clad soldiers closed up to the center, and the color-bearers
leaped to the front, shaking and waving the flags. The Union
infantry reserved their fire until the Confederates were within
easy range, when the musketry crashed out with a roar, and the
big guns began to fire grape and canister. On came the
Confederates, the men falling by hundreds, the colors fluttering
in front like a little forest; for as fast as a color-bearer was
shot some one else seized the flag from his hand before it fell.
The North Carolinians were more exposed to the fire than any
other portion of the attacking force, and they were broken before
they reached the line. There was a gap between the Virginians and
the Alabama troops, and this was taken advantage of by Stannard's
Vermont brigade and a demi-brigade under Gates, of the 20th New
York, who were thrust forward into it. Stannard changed front
with his regiments and fell on Pickett's forces in flank, and
Gates continued the attack. When thus struck in the flank, the
Virginians could not defend themselves, and they crowded off
toward the center to avoid the pressure. Many of them were killed
or captured; many were driven back; but two of the brigades,
headed by General Armistead, forced their way forward to the
stone wall on the crest, where the Pennsylvania regiments were
posted under Gibbon and Webb.

The Union guns fired to the last moment, until of the two
batteries immediately in front of the charging Virginians every
officer but one had been struck. One of the mortally wounded
officers was young Cushing, a brother of the hero of the
Albemarle fight. He was almost cut in two, but holding his body
together with one hand, with the other he fired his last gun, and
fell dead, just as Armistead, pressing forward at the head of his
men, leaped the wall, waving his hat on his sword. Immediately
afterward the battle-flags of the foremost Confederate regiments
crowned the crest; but their strength was spent. The Union troops
moved forward with the bayonet, and the remnant of Pickett's
division, attacked on all sides, either surrendered or retreated
down the hill again. Armistead fell, dying, by the body of the
dead Cushing. Both Gibbon and Webb were wounded. Of Pickett's
command two thirds were killed, wounded or captured, and every
brigade commander and every field officer, save one, fell. The
Virginians tried to rally, but were broken and driven again by
Gates, while Stannard repeated, at the expense of the Alabamians,
the movement he had made against the Virginians, and, reversing
his front, attacked them in flank. Their lines were torn by the
batteries in front, and they fell back before the Vermonter's attack,
and Stannard reaped a rich harvest of prisoners and of battle-flags.

The charge was over. It was the greatest charge in any battle of
modern times, and it had failed. It would be impossible to
surpass the gallantry of those that made it, or the gallantry of
those that withstood it. Had there been in command of the Union
army a general like Grant, it would have been followed by a
counter-charge, and in all probability the war would have been
shortened by nearly two years; but no countercharge was made.

As the afternoon waned, a fierce cavalry fight took place on the
Union right. Stuart, the famous Confederate cavalry commander,
had moved forward to turn the Union right, but he was met by
Gregg's cavalry, and there followed a contest, at close quarters,
with "the white arm." It closed with a desperate melee, in which
the Confederates, charged under Generals Wade Hampton and Fitz
Lee, were met in mid career by the Union generals Custer and
McIntosh. All four fought, saber in hand, at the head of their
troopers, and every man on each side was put into the struggle.
Custer, his yellow hair flowing, his face aflame with the eager
joy of battle, was in the thick of the fight, rising in his
stirrups as he called to his famous Michigan swordsmen: "Come on,
you Wolverines, come on!" All that the Union infantry, watching
eagerly from their lines, could see, was a vast dust-cloud where
flakes of light shimmered as the sun shone upon the swinging
sabers. At last the Confederate horsemen were beaten back, and
they did not come forward again or seek to renew the combat; for
Pickett's charge had failed, and there was no longer hope of
Confederate victory.

When night fell, the Union flags waved in triumph on the field of
Gettysburg; but over thirty thousand men lay dead or wounded,
strewn through wood and meadow, on field and hill, where the
three days' fight had surged.

****

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