General remarks.
Pickett's men could have gone into battle on the previous evening, when they reached
Gettysburg.
They were in fine condition.
The march from
Chambersburg did not fatigue them at all. Anyone who will visit
Gettysburg battlefield will see the truth of these views.
The writer calls to memory that just before the artillery opened he filled his canteen from a well near which one of our batteries was posted.
In talking with the men of the contemplated charge, and, having the position pointed out to him, he remarked on his return to the line, ‘He would not give twenty-five cents for his life if the charge was made.’
He further recalls that one of the comrades,
M. J. Wingfield, called ‘
Monk,’ turned to him when about half way across the field, saying, ‘Where are our reinforcements?’
On looking around nothing was in sight, except the three brigades of
Pickett about 300 yards in rear of our skirmish line and now subject to a storm of shells, tearing great gaps into the lines.
The writer then replied, ‘
Monk, I don't see any,’ on which he replied, ‘We are going to be whipped, see if we don't.’
Alas, for the poor fellow, these were his last words, for a bullet ended his life only a few minutes afterward.
The story here told is but a record of the excellence of all of the fifteen regiments of
Pickett's division that charged on that historic day.
