previous next

[341] General Pickett that the time had arrived for the attack, and I gave the order to General Pickett to advance to the assault. I found then that our supply of ammunition was so short that the batteries could not re-open. The order for this attack, which I could not favor under better auspices, would have been revoked had I felt that I had that privilege.

The advance was made in very handsome style, all the troops keeping their lines accurately, and taking the fire of the batteries with great coolness and determination. About half-way between our position and that of the enemy a ravine partially sheltered our troops from the enemy's fire, and a short halt was then made for rest. The advance was resumed after a moment's pause, all still in good order. The enemy's batteries soon opened upon our lines with canister, and the left seemed to stagger under it, but the advance was resumed, and with some degree of steadiness. Pickett's troops did not appear to be checked by the batteries, and only halted to deliver a fire when close under musket-range. Major-General Anderson's division was ordered forward to support and assist the wavering columns of Pettigrew and Trimble. Pickett's troops, after delivering fire, advanced to the charge and entered the enemy's lines, capturing some of his batteries, and gained his works. About the same moment, the troops that had before hesitated broke their ranks, and fell back in great disorder, many more falling under the enemy's fire in retreating than whilst they were attacking. This gave the enemy time to throw his entire force upon Pickett, with a strong prospect of being able to break up his lines, or destroy him before Anderson's division could reach him, which would in its turn have greatly exposed Anderson. He was, therefore, ordered to halt. In a few moments the enemy, marching against both flanks and the front of Pickett's division, overpowered it and drove it back, capturing about half of those of it who were not killed or wounded. General Wright, of Anderson's division, was ordered, with all of his officers, to rally and collect the scattered troops behind Anderson's division, and many of my-staff officers were sent to assist in the same service. Expecting an attack from the enemy, I rode forward to reconnoitre and superintend the operations of our batteries. The enemy threw forward forces at different times and from different points, but they were only feelers, and retired as soon as our batteries opened upon them. These little advances and checks were kept up till night, when the enemy retired to his stronghold, and my line was withdrawn to the Gettysburg road on the right, the left uniting with Lieutenant-General A. P. Hill's right.

After night I received orders to make all the needful arrangements


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Gettysburg (Pennsylvania, United States) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Pickett (6)
G. T. Anderson (5)
Marcus J. Wright (1)
I. R. Trimble (1)
Pettigrew (1)
Ambrose P. Hill (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: