"In the shadow cast by the tiny farm-house, sixteen by twenty, which General Meade had made his head-quarters, lay wearied staff officers and tired correspondents. There was not wanting to the peacefulness of the scene the singing of a bird, which had a nest in a peach-tree within the tiny yard of the whitewashed cottage. In the midst of its warbling a shell screamed over the house, instantly followed by another, and another, and in a moment the air was full of the most complete artillery-prelude to an infantry battle that was ever exhibited. Every size and form of shell known to British and to American gunnery shrieked, whirled, moaned, and whistled, and wrathfully fluttered over our ground. As many as six in a second, constantly two in a second, bursting and screaming over and around the head-quarters, made a very hell of fire that amazed the oldest officers. They burst in the yard,—burst next to the fence on both sides, garnished as usual with the hitched horses of aides and orderlies. The fastened animals reared and plunged with terror. Then one fell, then another,—sixteen lay dead and mangled before the fire ceased, still fastened by their halters, which gave the expression of being wickedly tied up to die painfully. These brute victims of a cruel war touched all hearts. Through the midst of the storm of screaming and exploding shells an ambulance, driven by its frenzied conductor at full speed, presented to all of us the marvellous spectacle of a horse going rapidly on three legs. A hinder one had been shot off at the hock. A shell tore up the little step at the head-quarters cottage, and ripped bags of oats as with a knife. Another soon carried off one of its two pillars. Soon a spherical case burst opposite the open door,—another ripped through the low garret. The remaining pillar went almost immediately to the howl of a fixed shot that Whitworth must have made. During this fire, the horses at twenty and thirty feet distant were receiving their death, and soldiers in Federal blue were torn to pieces in the road, and died with the peculiar yells that blend the extorted cry of pain with horror and despair. Not an orderly, not an ambulance, not a straggler was to be seen upon the plain swept by this tempest of orchestral death, thirty minutes after it commenced. Were not one hundred and twenty pieces of artillery trying to cut from the field every battery we had in position to resist their purposed infantry attack, and to sweep away the slight defences behind which our infantry were waiting? Forty minutes,—fifty minutes,—counted watches that ran, O so languidly! Shells through the two lower rooms. A shell into the chimney, that daringly did not explode. Shells in the yard. The air thicker, and fuller, and more deafening with the howling and whirring of these infernal missiles. The Chief of Staff struck,—Seth Williams,—loved and respected through the army, separated from instant death by two inches of space vertically measured. An aide bored with a fragment of iron through the bone of the arm. And the time measured on the sluggish watches was one hour and forty minutes."
A soldier was lying on the ground a few rods distant from where I was sitting. There was a shriek, such as I hope never again to hear, and his body was whirling in the air, a mangled mass of flesh, blood, and bones!
A shell exploding in the cemetery, killed and wounded twenty-seven men in one regiment![51] and yet the troops, lying under the fences,—stimulated and encouraged by General Howard, who walked coolly along the line,—kept their places and awaited the attack.
It was half past two o'clock.
"We will let them think that they have silenced us," said General Howard to Major Osborne. The artillerists threw themselves upon the ground beside their pieces.
Suddenly there was a shout,—"Here they come!"
Every man was on the alert. The cannoneers sprang to their feet. The long lines emerged from the woods, and moved rapidly but steadily over the fields, towards the Emmettsburg road.
Howard's batteries burst into flame, throwing shells with the utmost rapidity. There are gaps in the Rebel ranks, but onward still they come. They reach the Emmettsburg road. Pickett's division appears by Klingel's house. All of Howard's guns are at work now. Pickett turns to the right, moving north, driven in part by the fire rolling in upon his flank from Weed's Hill, and from the Third, Fifth, and Sixth Corps batteries. Suddenly he faces east, descends the gentle slope from the road behind Codori's, crosses the meadow, comes in reach of the muskets of the Vermonters. The three regiments rise from their shallow trench. The men beneath the oak-trees leap from their low breastwork of rails. There is a ripple, a roll, a deafening roar. Yet the momentum of the Rebel column carries it on. It is becoming thinner and weaker, but they still advance.
The Second Corps is like a thin blue ribbon. Will it withstand the shock? "Give them canister! Pour it into them!" shouts Major Charles Howard, running from battery to battery. The Rebel line is almost up to the grove in front of Robinson's. It has reached the clump of shrub-oaks. It has drifted past the Vermont boys. Onward still. "Break their third line! Smash their supports!" cries General Howard, and Osborne and Wainwright send the fire of fifty guns into the column, each piece fired three times a minute! The cemetery is lost to view,—covered with sulphurous clouds, flaming and smoking and thundering like Sinai on the great day of the Lord! The front line of Rebels is melting away,—the second is advancing to take its place; but beyond the first and second is the third, which reels, breaks, and flies to the woods from whence it came, unable to withstand the storm.
Hancock is wounded, and Gibbon is in command of the Second Corps. "Hold your fire, boys; they are not near enough yet," says Gibbon, as Pickett comes on. The first volley staggers, but does not stop them. They move upon the run,—up to the breastwork of rails,—bearing Hancock's line to the top of the ridge,—so powerful their momentum.