gton:

"I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer."

On the morning of the 12th Hancock was ordered to charge at daylight.
Lee's lines were spread out in the shape of an enormous letter V.
Hancock's task was to capture the angle which formed the key to this
position.

In pitch darkness under pouring rain his four divisions under Birney,
Mott, Barlow and Gibbon slipped through the mud and crept into position
within a few hundred yards of the Confederate breastworks.

As the first streaks of dawn pierced the murky clouds, without a shot,
the solid, silent lines of blue rushed this angle and leaped into the
entrenchments before the astounded men in grey knew what had happened.

So swift was the blow, so surprising, so overwhelming in numbers, the
angle was captured practically without a struggle and the three thousand
men within it were forced to surrender with every cannon, their muskets,
colors and two Generals. It was the most brilliant single achievement of
"Hancock the Superb."

Pressing on, Hancock's men advanced against the second series of
trenches a half mile beyond. Here the fight really began.

Into their faces poured a terrific volley of musketry and General John
B. Gordon led his men in a desperate charge to drive the invaders back.

Lee, seeing the dangerous situation, rode to the front with the evident
intention of joining in this charge.

Again the cry rang from the hearts of the men who loved him:

"Lee to the rear!"

They refused to move until he was led out of range of the fire. Gordon's
men charged and drove the Federal hosts back until at last they stood
against the entrenchments they had captured. Reinforcements now poured
in from both sides and the fighting became indescribable in its mad
desperation. Thousands of men in blue and men in grey fought face to
face and hand to hand. Muskets blazed in one another's eyes and blew
heads off. The dead were piled in rows four and five deep, blue and grey
locked in each other's arms. The trenches were filled with the dead and
cleared of bodies again and again to make room for the living until they
in turn were thrown out.

Ned Vaughan saw a grey color-bearer's arm shot away at the shoulder, the
quivering flesh smeared with mud, stained with powder and filled with
the shreds of his grey sleeve--and yet, without blenching, he grasped
his colors with the other hand and swept on into the jaws of this
flaming hell at the head of hi