AMERICA - Joel Cook

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the west, their lines also stretching around through Gettysburg to the north of the cemetery, and two miles east along the base of Culp's Hill. In the long intervening valley, and in the ravines and upon the slopes of the Cemetery Ridge and Culp's Hill, the main battle was fought. The attack began by General Longstreet advancing against the two Round Tops, but after a bloody contest he was repulsed. General Sickles, who held the line to the south of the Little Round Top, then thought he could improve his position by advancing a half-mile into the valley towards the Seminary Ridge, thus making a broken Union line, with a portion dangerously thrust forward. The enemy soon took advantage of this, and fell upon Sickles, front and flank, almost overwhelming his line in the "Peach Orchard," and driving it back to the adjacent "Wheat Field." Reinforcements were quickly poured in, and there was a hot conflict, Sickles being seriously wounded and his troops almost cut to pieces. About the same time Ewell made a terrific charge out of Gettysburg upon the Cemetery and Culp's Hill, with the "Louisiana Tigers" and other troops, effecting a lodgement, although the defending soldiers wrought great havoc by a heavy cannonade. The Union gunners on Little Round Top ultimately cleared the "Wheat Field," and then the combatants rested. Lee was much inspirited by his successes, and determined to renew the attack next morning.

      Upon the third and last day, July 3d, General Meade opened the combat early in the morning by driving out Ewell's forces, who had effected a lodgement on Culp's Hill. General Lee did not learn of this, but he was full of the idea that both the Union centre and right wing had been weakened the previous day, and during the night he planned an attack in front, to be accompanied by a cavalry movement around the Union right to assail the rear, thus following up Ewell's supposed advantage. To give Stuart with the cavalry time to get around to the rear, the front attack was not made until afternoon. During the morning each side got cannon into position, Lee having one hundred and twenty guns along Seminary Ridge, and Meade eighty in the Cemetery and southward, along a low, irregular stone pile, forming a sort of rude wall bordering the road leading from Gettysburg south to Taneytown, in Maryland. The action began about one o'clock in the afternoon, when the Confederates opened fire, and the most terrific artillery duel of the war took place across the intervening valley, six guns being discharged every second. The troops suffered little, as they kept down in the ground, but several Union guns were dismounted. After two hours deafening cannonade Lee ordered his grand attack, the celebrated charge by General Pickett, a force of fourteen thousand men with brigade front advancing across the valley. They marched swiftly, and had a mile to go, but before they were half-way across all the available Union guns had been trained upon them. Their attack was directed at an umbrella-shaped clump of trees on the Cemetery Ridge at a low place where the rude stone wall made an angle, with its point outside. General Hancock commanded this portion of the Union line. The grape and canister of the Union cannonade ploughed furrows through Pickett's ranks, and when his column got within three hundred yards, Hancock opened musketry fire with terrible effect. Thousands fell, and the brigades broke in disorder; but the advance, headed by General Armistead on foot, continued, and about one hundred and fifty men leaped over the stone piles at the angle to capture the Union guns. Lieutenant Cushing, mortally wounded in both thighs, ran his last serviceable gun towards the wall, and shouting to his commander, "Webb, I will give them one more shot!" he fired the gun and died. Armistead put his hand on the cannon, waved his sword, and called out, "Give them the cold steel, boys!" then, pierced by bullets, he fell dead alongside of Cushing. Both lay near the clump of trees, about thirty yards inside the wall, their corpses marking the farthest point to which Pickett's advance penetrated. There was a hand to hand conflict; Webb was wounded, and also Hancock, and the slaughter was dreadful. The Confederates were overwhelmed, and not one-fourth of the gallant charging column, composed of the flower of the Virginia troops, escaped, the remnant retreating in disorder. Stuart's cavalry failed to coöperate as intended, having met the Union cavalry about four miles to the east of Gettysburg, and the conflict ensuing prevented their attacking the Union rear. After Pickett's retreat there was a general Union advance, closing the combat.

      The point within the angle of the stone wall where Cushing and Armistead fell has been commemorated by what is known as the "High-Water Mark Monument," for it was placed at the point reached by the top of the flood-tide of the rebellion, as afterwards there was a steady ebb. During the night of July 3d Lee began a retreat, and aided by heavy rains, usually following great battles, the Confederates next day withdrew through the mountain passes towards Hagerstown, and afterwards escaped across the Potomac. Upon the day of Lee's retreat, Vicksburg surrendered to General Grant, and these two events began the Confederacy's downfall. There were engaged in the battle of Gettysburg about eighty thousand men on each side, the Union army having three hundred and thirty-nine cannon and the Confederates two hundred and ninety-three. It was the largest battle of the Civil War in the actual numbers engaged, and one of the most hotly contested. The Union loss was twenty-three thousand and three killed, wounded and prisoners, and the Confederate loss twenty-three thousand seven hundred and sixty-eight.

      THE GETTYSBURG MONUMENTS.

      The battlefield of Gettysburg is better marked, both topographically and by monuments, than probably any other battlefield in the world. Over a million dollars have been expended on the grounds and monuments. The "Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association," representing the soldiers engaged, has marked all the important points, and the tracts along the lines, over four hundred and fifty acres, have been acquired, so as to thoroughly preserve all the landmarks where the most important movements were executed. There are some five hundred monuments upon the field, placed with the utmost care in the exact localities, and standing in woods or on open ground, by the roadsides, on stony heights and ridges in gardens, and of all designs, executed in bronze, marble, granite, on boulders and otherwise. Marking-posts also designate the positions of the various organizations in the opposing armies. To the north and west of Gettysburg is the scene of the first day's contest, but the more interesting part is to the southward. Ascending the Cemetery Hill, there is passed, by the roadside, the house of Jenny Wade, the only woman killed in the battle, accidentally shot while baking bread. The rounded Cemetery Hill is an elevated and strong position having many monuments, and here, alongside the little village graveyard, the Government established a National Cemetery of seventeen acres, where thirty-five hundred and seventy-two soldiers are buried, over a thousand being the unknown dead. A magnificent battle monument is here erected, surmounted by a statue of Liberty, and at the base of the shaft having figures of War, History, Peace and Plenty. This charming spot was the centre of the Union line, then a rough, rocky hill. The cemetery was dedicated in November, 1863, Edward Everett delivering the oration, and the monument on July 1, 1869. At the cemetery dedication President Lincoln made the famous "twenty-line address" which is regarded as the most immortal utterance of the martyr President, and has become an American classic. The British Westminster Review described it as an oration having but one equal, in that pronounced upon those who fell during the first year of the Peloponnesian War, and as being its superior, because "natural, fuller of feeling, more touching and pathetic, and we know with an absolute certainty that it was really delivered." The President was requested to say a few words by way of dedication, and drawing from his pocket a crumpled piece of paper on which he had written some notes, he spoke as follows:

      "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new Nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting-place of those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work that they have thus far so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain—that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth

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