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on. The leading brigades have now unmasked their front to the batteries of the Third Corps on the eastern slope of the little vale and the forty guns of the Third Corps add their thunders to the tumult.
Lee's right brigade has overlapped the Union left, the ‘Excelsior’ Brigade combat their left and open fire upon the flanks.
The Jersey brigade next opens fire and in five minutes more Sickle's whole left is enveloped in flame; this corps is contending with the whole force of Ewell and Hill.
From the first it is apparent that the position must be lost, and Sickles must retire to the line of Cemetery Ridge, but that the ground in front must be defended to the last, must be defended until the enemy is too much exhausted with fatigue, too much enfeebled by death and wounds to continue the assault after Sickles shall have been forced back to the Ridge.
With desperate tenacity, Sickles' Corps holds its original position for half an hour.
Then its left is first forced by sheer weight to retire, but for a few rods only.
Brigade after brigade is forced to follow in the same movement.
The entire engagement is plainly visible from the position occupied by the Nineteenth regiment.
The roar and din is frightful, smoke and dust obscure, at times, the field, where charge after charge is gallantly made and as gallanty repulsed.
Sickles has lost his leg. Hooker's old heroes have suffered terribly.
The left is drawn farther and farther back until at four o'clock the corps has been compelled to change front, its right resting on the Emmetsburg road, in front of the left of the Second Corps, and its left resting upon Round Top, half a mile in the rear of its original position.
The battle lulls a moment while Hill forms his division in lines for the deed which has been the object of all this carnage— the assault of Round Top.
The men of the quiescent Second Corps see it form, they see it move forward, and the storm breaks forth again with renewed intensity and fearful power.
The batteries of the Second Corps concentrate their fire upon the doomed line; its flank is exposed; fifty guns pour upon it a hurtling storm of bursting shell and spherical case.
Wide gaps are torn in its
Salem Press. Co., Salem, Ma., 1906.
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