All the Union generals now set themselves to work repairing the damages caused by the cannonade—re-forming ranks, replacing dismantled guns, rectifying positions, exhorting the men to stand firm, and, in short, themselves offering the highest examples of coolness and soldierly conduct.
Union Defences.
We had a first line of infantry posted along the foot of the heights,—some behind stone walls, when these followed the natural line of defence, as they now and then did; some behind rocky inequalities of the ground,—with artillery above and behind it; and there was a second line of infantry back of the crest. Although Meade is said to have expected, and even told some of his officers, that Lee's next blow would fall on the Union centre, we detect no specific preparation to meet it.
The Storming Column.
The troops designated for the assault were waiting only for the order to advance, Pickett's splendid division on the right, Pettigrew's, lately Heth's, on the left, with two brigades in support of Pickett, two in support of Pettigrew, and still another marching at some distance in the rear. Though the equals of any in that army, Heth's soldiers had been so much shaken by their encounter with the First Corps that they were far from showing the same ardor as Pickett's men. All told, the assaulting force numbered not less than fifteen thousand, and probably more.[74]
Pickett was watching the effect of the artillery-fire when a courier brought him word from the batteries that if he was coming at all now was his time, as the Union guns had slackened their fire. After reading it himself, Pickett handed the note to Longstreet at his side. "General, shall I advance?" Pickett asked his chief. Mastered by his emotions, Longstreet could only give a nod of assent and turn away. "I shall lead my division forward, sir," was the soldierly reply.
As the charging column passed through them to the front, fifteen or eighteen guns followed close behind in support.
Friend and foe alike have borne testimony to the steadiness with which this gallant band met the ordeal—by much the hardest that falls to the soldier's lot—of having to endure a terrible fire without the power of returning it. No sooner had the long gray lines come within range than the Union artillery opened upon it, right and left. For a quarter of an hour the march was kept up in the face of a storm of missiles. Cemetery Hill was lighted up by the flashes. Little Round Top struck in sharply. Smoke and flame burst from the batteries along Cemetery Ridge. Solid shot tore through the ranks; shells were bursting under their feet, over their heads, in their faces; men, or the fragments of men, were being tossed in the air every moment, but, closing up the gaps and leaving swaths of dead and dying in their track, these men kept up their steady march to the front, as if conscious that the eyes of both armies were upon them. They had been told that the enemy's artillery was silenced!
Pickett's Advance.
As soon as they could do so without injury to their own men, the Confederate guns began afresh, so that again shells streamed through the air and balls bounded over the plain without intermission, dense smoke shutting out the assailants from view.