t; Kemper was shot and disabled, and the
ranks of the Virginians were thinned to a handful. The men did not,
however, pause. The enemy had partially retreated, from their first
line of breastworks, to a second and stronger one about sixty yards
beyond, and near the crest; and here the Federal reserve, as Northern
writers state, was drawn up "four deep." This line, bristling with
bayonets and cannon, the Virginians now charged, in the desperate
attempt to storm it with the bayonet, and pierce, in a decisive
manner, the centre of the Federal army. But the work was too great
for their powers. As they made their brave rush they were met by a
concentrated fire full in their faces, and on both flanks at the
same moment. This fire did not so much cause them to lose heart, as
literally hurl them back. Before it the whole charging column seemed
to melt and disappear. The bravest saw now that further fighting was
useless--that the works in their front could not be stormed--and, with
the frightful fire of the enemy still tearing their lines to pieces,
the poor remnants of the brave division retreated from the hill. As
they fell back, sullenly, like bull-dogs from whom their prey had been
snatched just as it was in their grasp, the enemy pursued them with a
destructive fire both of cannon and musketry, which mowed down large
numbers, if large numbers, indeed, can be said to have been left.
The command had been nearly annihilated. Three generals, fourteen
field-officers, and three-fourths of the men, were dead, wounded, or
prisoners. The Virginians had done all that could be done by soldiers.
They had advanced undismayed into the focus of a fire unsurpassed,
perhaps, in the annals of war; had fought bayonet to bayonet; had left
the ground strewed with their dead; and the small remnant who
survived were now sullenly retiring, unsubdued; and, if repulsed, not
"whipped."

Such was the last great charge at Gettysburg. Lee had concentrated in
it all his strength, it seemed. When it failed, the battle and the
campaign failed with it.

[Illustration: Lee at Gettysburg.]

XIX.

LEE AFTER THE CHARGE.

The demeanor of General Lee at this moment, when his hopes were all
reversed, and his last great blow at the enemy had failed, excited the
admiration of all who witnessed it, and remains one of the greatest
glories of his memory.

Seeing, from his place on Seminary Ridge, the unfortunate results
of the attack, he mounted his ho