choed with the unearthly music.

At a council of war Longstreet begged Lee to withdraw from Gettysburg
and pick more favorable ground. Reinforced by the arrival of Pickett's
division of fifteen thousand fresh men and Stuart's Cavalry, he decided
to renew the battle at dawn.

The guns opened at the crack of day. For seven hours the waves of blood
ebbed and flowed.

At noon there was a lull.

At one o'clock a puff of white smoke flashed from Seminary Ridge. The
signal of the men in gray had pealed its death call. Along two miles on
this crest they had planted a hundred and fifty guns. Suddenly two miles
of flame burst from the hills in a single fiery wreath. The Federal guns
answered until the heavens were a hell of bursting, screaming, roaring
shells.

At three o'clock the storm died away and the smoke lifted.

Pickett's men were deploying in the plain to charge the heights of
Cemetery Ridge. Fifteen thousand heroic men were forming their line to
rush a hill on whose crest lay seventy-five thousand entrenched soldiers
backed by four hundred guns.

Pickett's bands played as on parade. The gray ranks dressed on their
colors. And then across the plain, with banners flying, they swept and
climbed the hill. The ranks closed as men fell in wide gaps. Not a man
faltered. They fell and lay when they fell. Those who stood moved on and
on. A handful reached the Union lines on the heights. Armistead with a
hundred men broke through, lifted his red battle flag and fell mortally
wounded. The gray wave in sprays of blood ebbed down the hill, and the
battle ended. Meade had lost twenty-three thousand men and seventeen
generals. Lee had lost twenty thousand men and fourteen generals.

The swollen Potomac was behind Lee and his defeated army. So sure was
Stanton of the end that he declared to the President:

"If a single regiment of Lee's army ever gets back into Virginia in
an organized condition it will prove that I am totally unfit to be
Secretary of War."

The impossible happened.

Lee got back into Virginia with every regiment marching to quick step
and undaunted spirit. He crossed the swollen Potomac, his army in
fighting trim, every gun intact, carrying thousands of fat Pennsylvania
cattle and four thousand prisoners of war taken on the bloody hills of
Gettysburg.

The rejoicing in Washington was brief. Meade fell before the genius of
Lee, and Grant, the stark fighter of the West, took his place.

The new Commande