From Pennsylvania came ex-Governor Curtin, the war Governor, and two Union Generals. The Philadelphia Brigade, that stood on Cemetery Hill and received the shock of that great charge which will live in history while our country stands, marched in a body to pay tribute to the great Southern soldier whose heart was filled with kindness, leaving no room for enmity. Officers of the old Army of the Forties and Fifties, who had loved my Soldier in those far-gone days, three of them members of that memorable class of 1846, were there, with the golden flames of old camp-fires yet burning upon the altar of the heart.
General Longstreet thus recalls his old comrade:
In memory I can see him, of medium height, of graceful build, dark, glossy hair, worn almost to his shoulders in curly waves, of wondrous pulchritude and magnetic presence, as he gallantly rode from me on that memorable third day of July, 1863, saying in obedience to the imperative order to which I could only bow assent, "I will lead my Division forward, General Longstreet."
He was the first to scale the parapets of Chapultepec on the 13th of September, 1847, and was the brave American who unfurled our flag over the castle, as the enemy's troops retreated, firing at the splendid Pickett as he floated our victorious colors.
With George E. Pickett, whether fighting under the Stars and Stripes at Chapultepec or under the Stars and Bars at Gettysburg, duty was his polar star, and with him duty was above consequences and, at a crisis, he would throw them overboard.
In a memorial paper General George B. McClellan wrote of my Soldier:
He will live in history as nearer to Light Horse Harry, of the Revolution, than any other of the many heroes produced by old Virginia,—his whole history when told, as it will be by some one of the survivors of Pickett's men, will reveal a modern type of the Chevalier Bayard, "Sans peur et sans reproche."
Could he have had his wish, he had died amid the roar of battle. No man of our age has better illustrated the aptitude for war of his class of our country, and with these talents for war was united the truest and sweetest nature.
Virginia will rank him in her roll of fame with Lee, with Johnston, with the Jackson she loves as "Stonewall"; and mourners for the noble and gallant gentleman, the able and accomplished soldier, are legion.
True and noble soul, rest in peace.