One more trial
of arms--something--an attack somewhere--not _a retreat_!
That was the spirit of the army on the night of the second of July.
A flanking movement to draw the enemy out of their works, or a second
attack remained.
Lee determined to attack.
Longstreet and Ewell had accomplished nothing by assailing the right
and left of the enemy. Lee resolved now to throw a column against its
centre--to split the stubborn obstacle, and pour into the gap with the
whole army, when all would be over.
That was hazardous, you will say perhaps to-day, reader. And you have
this immense argument to advance, that it failed. Ah! these arguments
_after the event_! they are so fatal, and so very easy.
Right or wrong, Lee resolved to make the attack; and on the third of
July he carried out his resolution.
If the writer of the South shrinks from describing the bloody repulse
of Longstreet, much more gloomy is the task of painting that last
charge at Gettysburg. It is one of those scenes which Lee's old
soldiers approach with repugnance. That thunder of the guns which comes
back to memory seems to issue, hollow and lugubrious, from a thousand
tombs.
Let us pass over that tragedy rapidly. It must be touched on in these
memoirs--but I leave it soon.
It is the third of July, 1863.
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