Douglas Southall Freeman and Pickett's Charge

[What follows is the brilliant and heart-rending account of Pickett's Charge in Douglas Southall Freeman's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of General Robert E. Lee.]

Twenty-five yards - only twenty-five to the barrier in Garnett’s front. The grimy faces of the Federal infantry can be seen where the smoke lifts for an instant in front of the wall. But the lines are all in confusion now. Fry’s men are mingled with Garnett’s, Marshall’s right is piling up on Garnett’s left. Garnett is down, dead, and his horse is racing back toward the Confederate lines, a great gash in his shoulder; Kemper has fallen; the line is melting away on the right and on the left. Still the dauntless men rush upward. The Virginians and some of the Tennesseans and Carolinians are at the stone fence, and on their left the rest of Marshall’s brigade is rushing into the open ground at the angle and fighting on to the wall, eighty yards farther eastward. Armistead is up now, at the low barrier, his sword is high, and his hat, pierced by the point of his sword, is down to the hilt of his blade. His voice is ringing out above the din, “Follow me!” Over the wall then, with the bayonet, and on to the crest of the hill! About 100 men of five brigades follow him into the melee, with butt and thrust, but they fall at every step. In the angle, Marshall’s men press on. The enemy is all around them. Where are the thousands who marched in that proud line from the woods? Where are the flags and where are the supports? The right is in the air; they are bluecoats firing over there, not Confederates. And on the left - more Federals. The place is a death-trap - are there no officers to tell one what to do? In the front are the enemy’s batteries; Armistead lies yonder among the guns, forty yards within the wall, his left hand on a cannon, his right still grasping his sword. Davis has reached the wall and has recoiled, broken; Mayo’s men have failed; the left has melted away. Lowrance and Lane are in the angle, but they are only a fragment. Are there no reinforcements to drive the victory home? Wilcox is advancing on the right and that is Perry’s little brigade beside him, but they have lost direction. Instead of following Kemper’s turn they are moving straight on - to annihilation if they continue. A few batteries have advanced, but their fire is weak and erratic. No support; no succor! In the angle and beyond the wall, there is nothing to do but to struggle with those thickening masses of Federals. Here and there an officer is calling out, “Steady, men”; pistols are being used against muskets; Captain M. P. Spessard yonder has stopped to take a last look at his dying son and then has sprung over the wall, and is fighting with his bare sword in a hand-to-hand struggle with Federal infantrymen. That color-sergeant is using his flag staff as a lance; the flag of the Eleventh North Carolina has gone down again and again, and now Captain Francis Bird is carrying it and rallying his men; the survivors, unconsciously crowding around the standards, are stumbling over the bodies of the dead; every minute sees the struggling remnants thinned.

From the right there is a rush and a volley; on the left the Federals loose an overwhelming blast of musketry; in front, they stand stubbornly behind the wall at the angle and on the crest. The column is surrounded - there is no escape except in abandoning the height, won with so much blood and valor. Every man for himself! Uplifted hands for the soldier whose musket has been struck down, a white handkerchief here, a cry of “I surrender,” and for the rest - back over the wall and out into the field again. The assault has failed. Men could do no more!


Freeman