180 The American Civil Warreached the end of a very long supply limb,
about 120 miles (190km) from the nearest
railroad-served depot back in the
Shenandoah valley. Stocks of commissary,
quartermaster, and ordnance stores
(particularly artillery ammunition) had
dwindled and could not be renewed.
Overwhelming tactical success on 1 July had
yielded the opportunity for an even greater
triumph on 2 July, but that opportunity
dissolved under frustrating circumstances.
Lee's infantry had never failed to do what he
asked of them. Might not a full fresh
division of them, just arrived on the field,
with support from other units and massed
artillery, break the Federal center?
In the event, they could not. About
12,000 Confederates tried, in the most
renowned attack in all of American military
history. 'Pickett's Charge' actually included
about as many men from other units as from
General George E. Pickett's division, which
prompted postwar quarrels about the event's
famous name. Confederate Colonel E. Porter
Alexander massed artillery for a thunderous
advance barrage, which used up much of the
tenuous supply of shells. The barrage also
fired too high against a target obscured by
smoke and dust. When the infantry stepped
out, they faced a maelstrom of shell-fire,
then canister at closer range, and finally
musketry in sheets as they charged past the
humble farmhouse of the Codori family. A
Virginian in Pickett's command wrote: 'On
swept the column over ground covered with
dead and dying men, where the earth
seemed to be on fire, the smoke dense and
suffocating, the sun shut out, flames blazing
on every side, friend could hardly be
distinguished from foe.'
Generals Lewis A. Armistead and Richard
B. Garnett suffered mortal wounds at the
front of the attack. Garnett's body was never
recovered from the carnage, although his
sword turned up in a pawn shop years later.
Fully one-half of their men went down as
well (Northern losses reached perhaps 1,500).
A handful of brave Confederates broke into
the Federal line for a time and hand-to-hand
fighting raged around a battery near an angle
in a stone fence. A Northern major marveled
at how 'the rebels ... stood there, against the
fence, until they were nearly all shot down.'
They had reached what often has been called
'the high-water mark of the Confederacy.'
When the survivors turned back in sullen
retreat, they suffered as dreadfully as on the
way in. Among the Southern officers
mangled was Colonel Waller Tazewell Patton,
one of six brothers in the army and a great-
uncle of the General Patton famous during
the Second World War. The Colonel had
grasped a cousin's hand, said 'it is our turn
next,' and leaped over the stone wall at the
attack's high-water mark, then went down
with his lower jaw shot away. As he lay
dying in a Federal hospital, unable to talk,
'Taz' scribbled a note to his mother: 'my
only regret is that there are no more brothers
left to defend our country.'
Fighting continued on 3 July in lesser
volume on the far Federal right at Culp's Hill,
and Jeb Stuart's cavalry engaged mounted foe
well behind the main Union line, but
Pickett's Charge proved to be the final major
engagement of the Battle of Gettysburg. Each
army had lost about 25,000 men. During the
night of 4-5 July, Lee's army began to retreat
toward the Potomac river through a violent
rainstorm. The miles-long column of wagons
bearing suffering and dying men became a
train of utter misery. Meade pursued with
some energy. Skirmishing flared along the
route each day, but by 14 July Lee had
managed to cross the rain-swollen river back
into Virginia across a set of precarious
pontoon bridges.
General Meade came in for more calumny
than praise. President Lincoln was disgusted
that he had not captured the entire
Confederate force, which looked far easier on
a Washington map than on a muddy
Maryland ridgeline. George Meade had won
the war's largest battle, scant hours after
taking command, and had done so against
an enemy army that had been inevitably
triumphant theretofore; but politicians and
press, followed eventually by many historical
writers, grumbled that he should have
done more.