Billows of smoke lay ahead of the Union men at the stone wall,
momentarily obscuring the enemy. But trained observers on Little Round
Top, far to the south, could see in the rear of this curtain of smoke
the waves of Confederates starting forward. Pickett, finding his
brigades drifting southeastward, ordered them to bear to the left, and
the men turned toward the copse of trees. Kemper was now approaching on
the south of the Codori buildings; Garnett and Armistead were on the
north. Halted momentarily at the Emmitsburg Road to remove fence rails,
Pickett’s troops, with Pettigrew on the left, renewed the advance.
Pickett had anticipated frontal fire of artillery and infantry from the
strong Union positions at the stone walls on the ridge, but now an
unforeseen attack developed. Union guns as far south as Little Round
Top, along with batteries on Cemetery Hill, relieved from Confederate
fire at the Seminary buildings, opened on the right and left flanks. As
Pickett’s men drove toward the Union works at The Angle, Stannard’s
Vermont troops, executing a right turn movement from their position
south of the copse, fired into the flank of the charging Confederates.
The advancing lines crumbled, re-formed, and again pressed ahead under
terrific fire from the Union batteries.
[Illustration: _Maj. Gen. J. E. B. Stuart._ Courtesy National
Archives.]
[Illustration: _Maj. Gen. George E. Pickett._ Courtesy National
Archives.]
A hundred yards from the stone wall, in the tall grass, they encountered
Union skirmishers who fired and hastily withdrew. But all along the wall
the Union infantry opened with volley after volley into the depleted
ranks of Garnett and Fry. Armistead closed in, and with Lane and
Lowrance joining him, made a last concerted drive. At this close range,
double canister and concentrated infantry fire cut wide gaps in the
attacking front. Garnett was mortally wounded; Kemper was down, his
lines falling away on the right and left. Armistead reached the low
stone fence. In a final surge, he crossed the wall with 150 men and,
with his cap on his sword, shouted “Follow me!” At the peak of the
charge, he fell mortally wounded. From the ridge, Union troops rushed
forward and Hall’s Michigan regiments let loose a blast of musketry. The
gray column was surrounded. The tide of the Confederacy had “swept to
its crest, paused, and receded.”
Two of the divisions in the charge were reduced to mere fragments. In
front of the Union line, 20 fallen battle flags lay in a space of 100
yards square. Singly and in little clumps, the remnants of the gray
columns that had made the magnificent charge of a few minutes earlier
now sullenly retreated across the fields toward the Confederate lines.
Lee, who had watched anxiously from Spangler’s Woods, now rode out to
meet his men. “All this has been my fault,” he said to General Wilcox
who had brought off his command after heavy losses. “It is I that have
lost this fight, and you must help me out of it in the best way you
can.” And again that night, in a moment of contemplation, he remarked to
a comrade, “Too bad! too bad! Oh! too bad!”
[Illustration: _The Angle, showing the stone wall and the fields’
over which Pickett’s troops charged. The Virginia Memorial appears
in the background on Seminary Ridge._]
[Illustration: _The High Water Mark Monument, which marks the
farthest advance made by the Confederates against the Federal
position in Pickett’s Charge._]