ny 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 F