idge.

The Federal batteries began to work upon the line. Into the valley and
up the hill it came, with all the cannon in our front and right,--and
far to the right,--pumping death into its ranks.

I gave it up. I thought of Captain Haskell, and of his words concerning
General Lee's inclination to attack. I was no military man; I knew
nothing of scientific war, but I was sure that time had knelled the doom
of our poor line--condemned to attack behind stone fences the flower of
the Army of the Potomac protected by two hundred guns. It was simply
insane. It was not war, neither was it magnificent; it was too absurd
to be grand.

Great gaps were made in the line. It came on and passed over the
skirmishers. The left of the line passed over us just beyond the spot
where Rhodes lay dead. I could see down our line. It was already in
tatters. Writers of the South and of the North have all described
Pickett's charge as gallant, and have said that his line came on like
troops on dress-parade. It was gallant enough--too gallant; but there
was no dress-parade. Our officers and men on Seminary Ridge were looking
at Pickett's division from its rear; the blue men were looking upon it
from its front; from neither position could the alignment be seen; to
them it looked straight and fine; but that line passed by me so that I
looked along it, and I know that it was swayed and bent long before it
fired a shot. As it passed over us, it was scattered--many men thirty,
forty, even fifty yards in front of other men. No shame to Pickett's men
for this. The charge should not be distinguished for mere gallantry, but
for something far superior--endurance. From right and front and left, a
semicircle of fire converged upon their ranks and strewed the ground
with their dead. For half a mile they advanced under an iron tempest
such as Confederate troops never saw elsewhere than at Gettysburg--- a
tempest in which no army on earth could live.

I was hoping that the line would break and run before it came under the
fire of infantry; but it did not break. It was ragged, because the gaps
could not be filled as fast as they were made; but the fragments kept on
up the hill, uniting as they went.

And the line disappears in smoke, which tells us, as well as the sound,
that the Federal infantry and ours have at last joined their battle.
Here and there we see a real battle-flag violently shaking; the thunder
of the cannon no more is heard; the smoke reced