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results it stands unequaled, and towers in unrivaled superiority above all similar displays.
One hundred and fifty Southern guns raining metallic tons on the Northern infantry for two hours ought to have made a desert of their lines wide and broad enough to admit an army, but three days work on a strong, natural, and defensive ridge had placed the infantry under cover, and resting securely, they were not “shaken,” as those who participated in the charging column can testify.
Hunt, with a soldier's instinct, knew so much noise meant a fight with other arms.
Anticipating Meade's orders, he gave instructions to cease firing, to let his guns cool, ran up fresh batteries, replenished his limber chests and caissons, and “cleared decks” for the real work to follow.
Amid the clamor produced by fiery flashes from nearly three hundred guns, the gray heroes selected to destroy an army lay close under the cover of a friendly ridge.
Longstreet was disappointed when he received the order to make this attack, and wanted to move to the Federal left, but Lee knew his relations with Meade had been too intimate during the last two days and the relative hosts too close for such tactical folly.
His right corps chief says he took Pickett, who was to command the charge, to the crest of Seminary Ridge, pointed out the direction to be taken and the point to be assaulted, that he “could see the desperate and hopeless nature of the charge and the cruel slaughter it would cause,” and that his “heart was heavy” when he left Pickett; that his objections to Pickett's battle had been overruled, and that the day was one of the saddest of his life, for he foresaw what his men would meet, and would gladly have given up his position rather than share in the responsibilities of that day. Lee, au contraire, was impatiently waiting to see Longstreet's corps and one half of Hill's, or, if necessary, all of it, break, with the force of the tempest which strands navies, through the hostile lines, if the testimony of his staff officers is worthy of credence.
The details of the attack were properly left to the officer who was to make it. Lee did not care whether Hood and McLaws attacked, re-enforced by Pickett and
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