Pickett's Charge Options

[RC James]

Pickett's Charge - Gettysburg, Pa. - July 3rd, 1863

One hundred and fifty big guns,
imported under some duress
from the South, opened fire,
commencing the bloody battle.

Colonel Gibbons’s officer luncheon guests
on the flat of Cemetery Ridge were dozing
contentedly on the ground after a fulsome repast
when Confederate guns started firing incessantly.
General Hancock, incredulous, said it was
the heaviest cannonade he’d ever witnessed;
horses broke their hitches and ran pell-mell,
wild, riderless, through the fields of conflict.

Brigadier General Henry J. Hunt, Cmdr.
Union artillery, quickly ordered return fire.
After two hours of bombardment, it ceased.
When the Union artillery began to slacken,
Gen. Alexander, Confederate artillery cmdr.,
informed Pickett he was low on amunition,
Union fire had lessened, it was time to charge.
Pickett asked General Longstreet if he should.
Longstreet, knowing the impending sacrifice,
said nothing, but bowed his head in affirmation
and turned to mount his horse, Pickett told him
he would lead his division forward immediately.

Informed of low ammunition Longstreet told Alexander
he disliked making the charge. At that precise moment
General Garnett’s brigade emerged from the woods
behind the two of them; there was now no turning back.

The Confederate regiments marched straight through
the Union batteries toward the Emmittsburg Road
in strict, cadenced formation, knowing the conflict
would be a bloody one, but confident of their victory.
The road was a diagonal slash across the field of battle,
with fences, some as high as five feet on both sides,
built of posts and rails, which eventually delayed
all Confederate movement as men climbed over them.

General Pettigrew and Pickett started their advances
simultaneously, a feat, being a quarter mile apart.
As they marched toward the Emmittsburg Road,
they were in perfect formation, but started to lose
their symmetry and precisión under Union Artillery.

Brigadier General Alexander Hays, a New York Irishman,
said he was fighting for his home state and loved ones,
and if they lost at Gettysburg his life was worthless.
He ordered his men to hunt up all abandoned rifles
on the field, so when the charge began some men
would have four loaded weapons at hand ready to fire.
Twelve New Jersey men equipped with 69 Cal. Muskets
for close-in fighting, converted them to shotguns
by breaking open their buck and ball cartridges
and preparing new ones with 10-25 buckshots in each.
Confederate infantry struck at Hays’s 2nd Corps line,
but veterans of the Union line knew enough to wait.
They watched the attackers cross the Emmittsburg Road,
and mass together into what seemed like a formidable group,
break into a Rebel Yell and, hell bent for leather, charged.
When they were at 300 feet, thousands of muskets blazed.
The unexpected blasts demoralized the confederate troops

Two different commands, all from New York, the 2nd Corps
under Hays, the 125th and 126th under Brown and Armstrong
struck the Confederate left flank with máximum fury.
Brown and Armstrong posted their men along a rail fence
at right angles to the enemy and quickly decimated their ranks.
Armstrong said many of the Confederates fell in great heaps.
Combined fire from the two commands was too much, too heavy.

While the left flank was under siege, three Vermont regiments
launched a blistering attack against the exposed right flank
with seasoned soldiers, they took many lives and prisoners
of Pickett’s Virginians. But the Confederates still advanced,
under heavy layers of battle smoke toward the Bloody Angle.

Some Union soldiers were not so sure of ultimate victory
and turned tail; Corporal Plunkett saw one man deserting
and disgustedly hit him over the head with a coffee pot.
The bottom gave way, the pot dropped around the man’s neck.

Just at this point, when the Confederacy had the upper hand
and thrown the Union army into some confusión, at a time
when success seemed imminent, their drive lost momentum.
When they reached the wall Webb’s regiment was defending,
they hesitated; that moment was the moment of defeat.

General Armistead saw if they stayed there, Union regiments
would press in on them, and with one hundred fifty men,
scaled the Stone Wall shouting, “Boys, give them cold Steel”,
but they were met with hot lead from the defenders instead.

This losing skirmish was the beginning of the end for the South,
historically known as the “High Water Mark of the Confederacy.”
George Edward Pickett rode off from the defeat head lowered,
into a questionable future and a quickly fading military career.
Longstreet attributed the defeat to the disarray among troops,
and the falling away of discipline and order in the assaulting lines,
not to mention the overwhelming Union power on both flanks.

Some of Meade’s friends, and every last one of his enemies,
excoriated him for not pursuing the enemy after defeating him.

The Army of the Potomac, Lincoln the Emancipator's great hope,
headed south across the river and into "God-fosaken" Virginia,
and so the bloodiest war in America's history went cruelly on.