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Friday, July 3, about 3:45 A.M. - Lee's
timetable was undermined as Union cannons pounded the Rebels holding a lodgement at the
lower end of Culp's Hill to drive them from the trenches. The Rebels did not withdraw, but
instead attacked the Federals around 8 A.M.
Thus began a vicious three hour struggle with the Rebels charging time after time
up the hill only to be beaten back. The Federals finally counter attacked and drove the
Rebels off the hill and east across Rock Creek. Around 11
A.M. the fighting on Culp's Hill stopped.  Throughout
the morning and early afternoon amid 90°
heat and stifling humidity the Rebels moved into position in the woods opposite Cemetery
Ridge for the coming charge. Some Union troops were moved away from Cemetery Ridge on
Meade's orders because he thought Lee would attack again in the south. At the conference
the night before, Meade had correctly predicted Lee would attack the center, but now
thought otherwise. He had left only 5,700 infantrymen stretched out along the half-mile
front to initially face the 12,500 man Rebel charge centered on the fresh troops of
General George Pickett's Virginians.
1:07 P.M. - 140 Confederate cannons -- the
greatest concentration of artillery ever assembled for one purpose in North America --
opened fire on the Union position at the center of Cemetery Ridge. It was
"indescribably grand. All the batteries were soon covered with smoke, through
which the flames were incessant, whilst the air seemed filled with shells, whose sharp
exlosions, with the hurtling of their fragments, formed a running accompaniment to the
deep roar of the guns." On the recieving end, it was "the most infernal
pandemonium it has ever been my fortune to look upon." Amid all this, Union
General Hancock, his orderly displaying the Corps guidon, slowly rode the full length of
the line under the hail of shells. His men cheered him lustily from behind whatever
cover they had found.
Around 2:45 P.M. the Federal artillery
slowed their return fire, then ceased, to conserve ammunition and to fool the Rebels into
thinking the cannons were knocked out. The ruse worked.
3:00 P.M. - "Up,men, and to your posts!
Don't forget today that you are from Old Virginia!" yelled Pickett as the
Rebels formed an orderly line that stretched a mile from flank to flank. In deliberate
silence and with military pageantry, they slowly headed toward the Union Army a mile away
on Cemetery Ridge.
Within minutes, the Federal artillery was back in action, tearing great gaps in
the Confederate line. The Rebels advanced at about a hundred yards a minute
and, as they got within closer range, Federal cannons switched to using grapeshot, a shell
containing iron balls that flew apart when fired. The Federal Infantry ripped into the
Rebels with deadly accurate rifle volleys killing many and wounding more.
The fierce battle raged for an hour with much brutal hand to hand fighting, shooting at
close range and stabbing with bayonets. For a brief moment, the Rebels nearly had their
chosen objective, a small clump of oak trees atop Cemetery Ridge. Some of the attackers
had made a small penetration there and just to the south, a Mississippi regiment managed
to take it's colors to within arms reach of the Union line. A North Carolina
sergeant and color-bearer actually stepped over the wall -- the only two of that entire
regiment to make it that far. But Union reinforcements and regrouped Union infantry
units swarmed in and opened fire on the Rebel ranks.
4:00 P.M. - The battered, outnumbered Rebels
finally began to give way and this great human wave that had been Pickett's Charge began
to recede, leaving 7,500 men lying on the field of battle. The Union troops chanted
"Fredericksburg, Fredericksburg, Fredericksburg" in a taunt reminding the
Confederates of the failed Federal charge at Fredericksburg, VA the previous winter.
As the tattered survivors reached the Confederate line Lee rode out to meet them.
He took all the blame for the failed attack and rallied and reassured them.
"All this has been my fault. It is I who have lost this fight, and you
must help me out the best way you can."
Saturday, July 4 - Confederate wounded were
loaded aboard wagons to begin the journey back toward the South in a long slow withdrawal
of the army back to Virginia. Union commander Meade, out of fatigue and caution, did not
immediately pursue Lee.
July 10 - Meade pins Lee in his defensive
works along the crossing point on the rain-swollen Potomac, but does not immediately
attack him. By July 14, the Army of
Northern Virginia is back across the river. Meade crossed on July
17 - 19.
August 4 - Both armies are back at the
original starting point where the campaign had begun sixty days before.
November 19 - President Lincoln went to
the battlefield to dedicate it as a military cemetery.
Confederate causalities in dead, wounded and missing were 28,000 out of 75,000. Union
casualties were 23,000 out of 88,000. It was the most costly battle ever fought in the
United States. For the remainder of the war the South will not have the strength to
mount another offensive into the North.
July 1 July 2
Sources:
Foote, Shelby. The Civil War, A Narrative - Fredericksburg to Meridian. New
York, Random House, 1963.
Schlesinger, Arthur. The Almanac of American History. New York, Putnam, 1983.
Battle maps from The
Battle of Gettysburg by Brian Williams.
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