the field. On the second day
occurred the desperate conflict for Little Round Top, which resulted in
that key to the Union line being seized and held by the Union troops.
Neither side, however, gained any decided advantage. On the third day Lee
prepared for the grand movement known in history as "Pickett's charge."
Fourteen thousand men were selected as the forlorn hope of the
Confederacy. For two hours before the charge 120 guns kept up a fearful
cannonade upon the Union lines. Meade answered with eighty guns. About
three o'clock in the afternoon Meade ceased firing. Lee thought the
Northern gunners were silenced. He was mistaken; they knew what was
coming.

On moved the charging column, as the smoke of battle lifted, and the
"tattered uniforms and bright muskets" came plainly into view. At an
average distance of about eleven hundred yards the Union batteries
opened. Shot and shell tore through the Confederate ranks. Still they
marched on over wounded and dying and dead. Canister now rained on their
flanks, and as they came within closer range a hurricane of bullets burst
upon them, and men dropped on every side like leaves in the winds of
autumn. The strength of the charging column melted before the gale of
death; but the survivors staggered on. When the remains of the
Confederate right reached the Union works their three brigade commanders
had fallen, every field officer except one had been killed or wounded;
but still the remnant kept its face to the foe, led to annihilation by
the dauntless Armistead. The four brigades on the left of Pickett met a
similar fate. "They moved up splendidly," wrote a Union officer,
"deploying as they crossed the long sloping interval. The front of the
column was nearly up the slope, and within a few yards of the Second
Corps' front and its batteries, when suddenly a terrific fire from every
available gun on Cemetery Ridge burst upon them. Their graceful lines
underwent an instantaneous transformation in a dense cloud of smoke and
dust; arms, heads, blankets, guns and knapsacks were tossed in the air,
and the moan from the battlefield was heard amid the storm of battle."

One half of the 14,000 perished in the charge. Gettysburg was over, and
the tide of invasion from the South was rolled back never to return.
Meade had lost about 23,000 men, and Lee about 23,000. Halleck, whose
business as general-in-chief seemed to be to annoy successful commanders,
and irritate them to the resignati