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The evening of July 1st closed in with the Union army holding out, but with the advantages, such as they were, on the Confederate side. The second day the fight was fiercely renewed and closed with no special advantage on either side. On the third day it was still undecided until in the afternoon when the climax came in Pickett's famous charge.
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.
At three o'clock the storm died away and the smoke lifted. Pickett's men were deploying in the plain to charge the heights of Cemetery Ridge. Fifteen thousand heroic men were forming their line to rush a hill on whose crest lay seventy-five thousand entrenched soldiers backed by four hundred guns. Pickett's bands played as on parade. The gray ranks dressed on their colors.
"I reckon that's all, Pickett. You draw your time right now." Randerson sheathed his pistol and turned slightly sidewise to Pickett, evidently intending to come up on the porch. Ruth gasped. For she saw Pickett reach for his gun. It was drawn half out of its holster. As though he had divined what was in Pickett's mind, Randerson had turned slightly at Pickett's movement.
And every moment which he spent in the Excelsior Boarding-House made it clearer to him that that infernal old woman with the pale eyes thought him an incompetent fool. It was that, more than anything, which made him acutely conscious of his lack of success. His nerves were being sorely troubled by the quiet scorn of Mrs. Pickett's gaze.
He had heard that Longstreet had criticized Lee for ordering Pickett's famous charge at Gettysburg, but if so, Lee had taken no notice of it, and Longstreet had proved himself the same stalwart fighter as of old. He and the prompt arrival of his veterans had enabled Bragg to win Chickamauga, and it was not Longstreet's fault that the advantage gained there was lost afterward.
His left was to have been held by a demonstration in force by Longstreet against the Devil's Den and Round Tops, while Ewell held Culp's Hill, which seemed to be at his mercy, and which would flank any Federal retreat. At the same time Meade's center was to have been rushed by Pickett's fresh division supported by three attached brigades.
The general's wife, with her baby on her arm, met him at the door. She herself has told the story for us. "'Is this George Pickett's home? he asked. "With all the courage and dignity I could muster, I replied: 'Yes, and I am his wife, and this is his baby. "'I am Abraham Lincoln. "'The President! I gasped.
As the Fifth Corps moved into action, its right flank was to be covered by Mackenzie's cavalry, thus entirely cutting off Pickett's troops from communication with Lee's right flank, which rested near the Butler house at the junction of the Claiborne and White Oaks roads.
The Southern army shouted again, and it is true that, at this moment, the Union ranks burst into a like cry of admiration, at the sight of a foe so daring, men of their own race and country. But Harry never took his eyes for a moment from Pickett's column. He was using his glasses, and everything stood out strong and clear.
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