Lee not beaten yet.
Deeming the result of the day's operations to be on the whole favorable to him, Lee was equally determined to fight to a finish. As Napoleon had said before him, in a similar spirit of impulsive exultation, when satisfied that Wellington was awaiting his onslaught at Waterloo, "I have them now, those English!" so Lee now replied to all Longstreet's remonstrances by shaking his clenched fist at Cemetery Hill, exclaiming as he did so, "The enemy is there, and I am going to strike him!"
Plan of Attack.
He too, therefore, strongly reinforced his left at Culp's Hill, with the view of having a heavy force well in hand there, ready to strike in upon the Union right and rear, while a formidable column of wholly fresh troops, charging it in the centre, should cut that in two, seize the Baltimore pike, and with Ewell's help crush everything on that side. In order to reap to the utmost the advantages looked for as certain, Stuart's cavalry, now back with the army, was sent far round to the Union rear, with orders to strike the Baltimore pike as soon as the retreat should begin.
To guard against some such movement, or in fact any demonstration towards its rear, the Union cavalry was posted on this pike, a few miles back of Cemetery Ridge. Still another cavalry force was guarding the Union left, beyond Round Top.
These dispositions present, in brief, the preparations both generals were making for the third day's conflict.
Pickett to lead it.
Lee had silenced Longstreet's objections by ordering him to get ready Pickett's fresh division for the decisive charge on Cemetery Ridge. These soldiers, Virginians all, bitterly complained because they were only the rear-guard of that army which they were told was driving the Yankees before them in utter rout. Their charge was to be preceded and sustained by turning every gun in the Confederate army upon the point of attack.
With the first streak of day the struggle for the possession of Culp's Hill began again. As both sides had orders to attack, there was no delay in commencing. Soon from every commanding spot the Union batteries were sending their shot crashing and tearing through the woods in which the Confederates lay hid, smiting the forest with a tempest of iron, throwing down branches, and plowing up the earth in great furrows.[72] Stirred up by this shower of missiles, Ewell's men poured forth from the valley of Rock Creek, and rushed up the hillside in front, to begin anew the sanguinary struggle they had only ceased from on the previous night. Here among the gray rocks and aged oaks—the pleasure-ground, in fact, of the people of Gettysburg—a contest raged for hours, similar to that which Little Round Top had witnessed on the previous afternoon.
One piece of hopeless heroism deserves commemoration in all accounts of this battle. In the height of the engagement an order was brought for two regiments, the Second Massachusetts and the Twenty-seventh Indiana, to charge across the meadow stretching between Culp's Hill and McAllister's Hill, on the other side of which the enemy lay in the old intrenchments. To try to pass that meadow was rushing to certain destruction. "Are you sure that is the order?" was demanded of the officer who brought it. "Positive," was the reply. "Up, men—fix bayonets—forward!" was the ringing command. One regiment reached the works, the other faltered midway under the terrible fire. As many were lost in falling back as in going forward. Only half the men got back to the lines unhurt.