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No pomp and circumstance of glorious war was here, but these were fighting men. Never before, save as I watched Pickett's charging line sweep on to death at Gettysburg, did I feel the stern manliness of war as now. File upon file, company after company, regiment following regiment, they swung sternly by.
Meanwhile Merritt had been busy working his men close up to the intrenchments from the angle of the return west, along the White Oak road. About 4 o'clock Warren began the attack. He was to assault the left flank of the Confederate infantry at a point where I knew Pickett's intrenchments were refused, almost at right angles with the White Oak road.
Down through the centuries the great commanders have left us their stories of prowess, and we have kept their portraits to adorn our stately halls of fame; and in our historic shrines we have preserved their records Cyrus, Alexander, Leonidas at Thermopylæ, Hannibal crossing the Alps, Charles Martel at Tours, the white-plumed Henry of Navarre leading his soldiers in the battle of Ivry, Cromwell with his Ironsides godly men who chanted hymns while they fought Napoleon's grand finale at Waterloo, with his three thousand steeds mingling the sound of hoof-beats with the clang of cuirasses and the clash of sabres; Pickett's grand sweep at Gettysburg, and Hooker's charge up Lookout Mountain.
She resigned from the post-office to marry him, and San Pasqual took a night off to give her a charivari. Two weeks after the ceremony Miss Pickett's husband, despairing of the savings, jumped a south-bound freight and was seen no more.
As a matter of fact, for it will be as well to know what was there, though the general in command made very little note of it at the time, there were two brigades an entire division commanded by General Pettigrew, one of the men who participated in Pickett's charge at Gettysburg.
The general left them and went east, where he "deployed on our right" and executed flank movements, and watched Pickett's column come fling itself to death at Gettysburg.
Pickett's isolation offered an opportunity which we could not afford to neglect, and the destruction of his command would fill the measure of General Grant's expectations as well as meet my own desires.
When halted by the attack of Gregg and Gibbs, Pickett, desisting from his pursuit of Devin, as already stated, turned his undivided attention to this unexpected force, and with his preponderating infantry pressed it back on the Five Forks road toward Dinwiddle, though our men, fighting dismounted behind barricades at different points, displayed such obstinacy as to make Pickett's progress slow, and thus give me time to look out a line for defending the Court House.
In reply our horse-artillery opened on the advancing Confederates, but the men behind the barricades lay still till Pickett's troops were within short range. Then they opened, Custer's repeating rifles pouring out such a shower of lead that nothing could stand up against it.
And as for what I know of the other the only love-making to which I ever listened was ended forty years ago by one of the northern balls that fell in fiery rain on Pickett's charge at Gettysburg.
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