had been borrowed, recalled them just before the charge was made, and thus deranged this wise plan. Never was I so depressed as on that day. I felt that my men were to be sacrificed, and that I should have to order them to make a hopeless charge. I had instructed General Alexander, being unwilling to trust myself with the entire responsibility, to carefully observe the effect of the fire on the enemy, and when it began to tell to notify Pickett to begin the assault. I was so much impressed with the hopelessness of the charge that I wrote the following note to General Alexander: "If the artillery fire does not have the effect to drive off the enemy or greatly demoralize him, so as to make our efforts pretty certain, I would prefer that you should not advise General Pickett to make the charge. I shall rely a great deal on your judgment to determine the matter, and shall expect you to let Pickett know when the moment offers." To my note the general replied as follows: "I will only be able to judge the effect of our fire upon the enemy by his return fire, for his infantry is but little exposed to view, and the smoke will obscure the whole field. If, as I infer from your note, there is an alternative to this attack, it should be carefully considered before opening our fire, for it will take all the artillery ammunition we have left to test this one thoroughly, and if the result is unfavorable, we will have none left for another effort, and even if this is entirely successful it can only be so at a very bloody cost." I still desired to save my men, and felt that if the artillery did not produce the desired effect I would be justified in holding Pickett off. I wrote this note to Colonel Walton at exactly 1.30 P.M.: "Let the batteries open. Order great precision in firing. If the batteries at the peach-orchard cannot be used against the point we intend attacking, let them open on the enemy at Rocky Hill." The cannonading which opened along both lines was grand. In a few moments a courier brought a note to General Pickett (who was standing near me) from Alexander, which, after reading, he handed to me. It was as follows: "If you are coming at all you must come at once, or I cannot give you proper support; but the enemy's fire has not slackened at all; at least eighteen guns are still firing from the cemetery itself.” After I had read the note Pickett said to me," General, shall I advance?" My feelings had so overcome me that I would not speak for fear of betraying my want of confidence to him. I bowed affirmation and turned to mount my horse. Pickett immediately said: "I shall lead my division forward, sir." I spurred my horse to the wood where Alexander was stationed with artillery. When I reached him he told me of the disappearance of the seven guns which were to have led the charge with Pickett, and that his ammunition was so low that he could not properly support the charge. I at once ordered him to stop Pickett until the ammunition had been replenished. He informed me that he had no ammunition with which to replenish. I then saw that there was no help for it, and that Pickett must advance under his orders. He swept past our artillery in splendid style and the men marched steadily and compactly down the slope. As they started up the ridge over one hundred cannon from the breastworks of the Federals hurled a rain of cannister, grape, and shell down upon them. They still pressed on until half-way up the slope, when the crest of the hill was lit with a solid sheet of flame as the masses of infantry rose and fired. When the smoke cleared away Pickett's division was gone. Nearly two-thirds of his men lay dead on the field, and the survivors were sullenly retreating down the hill. Mortal man could not have stood that fire. In half an hour the contested field was cleared, and the battle of Gettysburg was over. John S. Wise, the son of Brigadier General Governor Henry A. Wise of Virginia, was fourteen years old when the war broke out. By dint of much begging he got his father's consent to enter the Virginia Military Institute at Lexington ("the West Point of the Confederacy”), and in June, 1864, he joined his father's brigade at Petersburg. Thirty-five years later he wrote of his experiences with the defenders of Richmond. Much of the month of July we passed in the trenches. Father was in command at Petersburg, and Colonel J. T. Goode commanded the brigade. ... Our left was about a hundred yards south of a bastion known as Elliott's salient. Life in the trenches was indescribably monotonous and uncomfortable. In time of sunshine the reflected heat from the new red-clay embankments was intense, and unrelieved by shade or breeze; and in wet weather one was ankle-deep in tough, clinging mud. The incessant shelling and picket-firing made extreme caution necessary in moving about; and each day, almost each hour, added to the list of casualties. The opposing lines were not over two hundred yards apart, and the distance between the rifle pits was about one hundred yards. Both sides had attained accurate marksmanship, which they practised with merciless activity in picking off men. . . . The men resorted to many expedients to secure some degree of comfort and protection. They learned to burrow like conies. Into the sides of the trenches and transverses they went with bayonet and tin cups to secure shade and protection from rain. Soon, such was their proficiency that, at sultry midday or during a rainfall, one might look up or down the trenches without seeing anybody but the sentinel. At the sound of the drum, the heads of the soldiers would pop up and out of the earth, as if they had been prairie-dogs or gophers. Still many lives were lost by the indifference to danger which is begotten by living constantly in its presence. . ... A man, because he had not been hit, would soon come to regard himself as invulnerable. The fact that his comrades had been killed or wounded appeared to make little impression upon him. Past immunity had made him so confident that he would walk coolly over the same exposed ground where somebody else had been shot the day before. The "spat," " whiz," " zip," of hostile bullets would not even make him quicken his pace. Mayhap he would take his short pipe out of his mouth and yell defiantly, "Ah-h-Yank-yer-kain't—shoot," and go on his way tempting fate, until a bullet struck him and he was dead or maimed for life. . . . When our troops first manned the lines, the things most dreaded were the great mortar shells. They were particularly terrible at night. Their parabolas through the air were watched with intense apprehension, and their explosion seemed to threaten annihilation. Within a week they had ceased to occasion any other feeling among the men than a desire to secure their fragments. There was little chance of a shell's falling upon the men, for they could see it and get out of the way. Unless it did actually strike some one in its descent, the earth was so tunnelled and pitted that it was apt to fall into some depression, where its fragments would be stopped and rendered harmless by surrounding walls of dirt. Iron was becoming scarce. As inducement to collecting scrap-iron for our cannon foundries, furloughs were offered, a day for so many pounds collected. Thus, gathering fragments of shell became an active industry among the troops. So keen was their quest that sometimes they would start towards the point where a mortar-shell fell even before it exploded. Such was life in the trenches before Petersburg. Looking back at it now, one wonders that everybody was not killed, or did not die from exposure. But, at the time, no man there personally expected to be killed, and there was something-nobody can define what it was which made the experience by no means so horrible as it now seems. . . . About day-break, July 30, the mine was exploded. ... It consisted of a shaft 510 ft. long, with lateral galleries under our works 38 and 37 feet long respectively; in these, 320 kegs of powder, containing 25 pounds each-in all 8000 pounds were placed, and preliminary to the explosion, 81 heavy guns and mortars and over 80 light guns of the Union army were brought to bear on the position to be mined and attacked. . . . The fuse of the mine was lighted about 3.30 A.M. The ragged remnant of the Confederate army still left before Petersburg enjoyed unusual repose that night, for the firing along the lines had almost ceased. A long delay ensued. After waiting for more than an hour for the explosion, two Union soldiers, at the risk of their lives, crawled into the gallery of the mine and found 96. Change in the for the fuse had failed; they relit it and returned. ... the Confederate infantrymen and cannoneers at the doomed salient slept on, as the fuse sparkled and sputtered inch by inch towards the four tons of gunpowder which were to rend with the violence of an earthquake the spot on which they were resting. "There she goes!" exclaimed one of the watchers. The ground trembled for an instant; an immense mass of earth, cannon, timbers, human beings, and smoke shot skyward, paused for an instant in mid-air, illumined by the flash of the explosion; and, bursting asunder, fell back into and around the smoking pit. The dense cloud of smoke drifted off, tinged by the first faint rays of sun-rise; a silence like that of death succeeded the tremendous report. Nearly 300 Confederates were buried in the débris of the crater; their comrades on either side adjacent to the fatal spot fled from a sight so much resembling the day of judgment. . . . At least 300 yards of our lines were deserted by their defenders, and left at the mercy of the assaulting columns. Beyond that breach not a Confederate infantryman stood to dispute their passage into the heart of Petersburg. A prompt advance in force, a gallant dash, not into the crater, but around it and 300 yards beyond it, would have crowned the great explosion with a victory worthy of its grandeur. From the eminence where Blandford Church and cemetery stood, in the rear of the mine, Grant's forces might, within ten minutes after the mine was sprung, have looked backward upon the Confederates, stunned, paralyzed, and separated; and, looking forward, they might have seen the coveted city [Richmond] undefended and at their mercy. THE TRIUMPH OF THE NORTH The difference in tone between the two following tunes of the extracts from the messages of Jefferson Davis shows Confederacy, the effect of the Union victories of the summer and April-December, 1863 autumn of 1863 (Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Chattanooga) on the confidence of the South. The first extract is from an address "to the People of the Confederate States," on [452] |