serve ammunition trains were driven out; motley hordes of camp followers poured down the Baltimore pike or spread over the fields to the rear. Upon every side caissons exploded; horses were struck down by hundreds; the air was filled with flying missiles; shells tore up the ground and then bounded for another and perhaps more deadly flight, or burst above the crouching troops and sent their ragged fragments down in deadly showers. Never had a storm so dreadful burst upon mortal men. As soon as the cannonade opened, Hancock mounted his horse, and with his staff behind him and his corps flag flying, rode slowly along the front of his line that every man might see that his general was with him in the storm. Thousands of soldiers, crouching close to the ground under the bitter hail, looked up at that calm, stately form, that handsome, proud face, that pennon bearing the well-known trefoil; and found courage longer to endure the pelting of the pitiless gale. Only once was the cavalcade interrupted; so furious was the fire, his favorite black charger became unmanageable, and Hancock was obliged to dismount and borrow the horse of an aid to complete the circuit of his line.

For nearly two hours the cannonade lasted. Long before it died down, the batteries of the corps to the right and of the corps to the left had ceased to respond, reserving their ammunition for what was to follow; but Hancock knew well where the com

ing assault was to fall, and by his direction the batteries of the Second Corps continued firing to the last, for he would not allow his troops to be disheartened by the silence of their own guns.* And now, at nearly three o'clock, the fire of the Confederate artillery slackens; and across the plain, upon Seminary Ridge, the hostile columns are seen forming. Braver men never trod the earth than form the fourteen brigades which are to be launched against our lines. Pettigrew's five constitute the left. Pickett's three, the flower of Virginia chivalry, are on the right. Thomas and McGowan are to cover the flank of Pettigrew; Wilcox and Perry, the flank of Pickett; while Lane and Scales are to support the attacking column.

But Longstreet hesitates. Too well he knows. the courage and endurance of the army he is to encounter. For a moment, and again for a moment, he delays to give the order to advance. He has to be reminded that precious time is passing, and that the giant cannonade must be promptly followed up or its effect will be lost. At last the word is given, whether by him or by a staff officer; and the gallant troops he has marshaled move down the slopes of Seminary Ridge. At once the Union

* In the Century Company's War Book, vol. iii, pp. 385–387, may be found the discussion between General Henry J. Hunt, Chief of Artillery, and myself as to the expediency of Hancock's course in this matter.

batteries on Cemetery Hill and about Little Round Top open fire. The plain between the two lines once more shrieks with flying missiles. A fairer mark was never offered; better artillerists never served their guns. In front of every regiment in the long Confederate line bursts the deadly shrapnel, sending its whistling bullets on into the living mass. But the ranks are closed without a tremor, and steadily and swiftly the divisions of Pettigrew and Pickett move forward to their great enterprise.

And now the guns of the Second Corps, which have thus far, from want of shell and shrapnel, been silent during the Confederate advance, open once more; and the ranks of Pettigrew and Pickett are torn with canister from the guns of Woodruff, Arnold, Cushing, Rorty, and Cowan. These gallant officers serve their batteries as coolly as if they were not looking into the faces of ten thousand rapidly advancing foemen. "No. I, Fire! No. 2, Fire!" resounds monotonously from right to left of each battery, while the hot guns belch their flame and smoke and leaden hail into the very faces of the enemy. At last the infantry of Hays and Gibbon open the fire they have spontaneously reserved for the critical moment. Before the blazing muzzles of those thousands of veteran rifles the Confederate lines for a moment stagger and reel; the ground is strewn with dead and dying. But the blood of Virginia and North Carolina is up; the colors that have

fallen are lifted again and waved defiantly in air; the still advancing lines bend themselves against the storm of lead as a man leans forward to breast a furious gale; they are so near that a few minutes must decide whether Gettysburg is lost or won.

Now three things occur which must be narrated in succession, though they happen, if not all at once, then with inappreciable intervals: (1) Of the five brigades of Pettigrew, that on the extreme left, Brockenborough's Virginians, enfiladed by the guns from Cemetery Hill, breaks and goes to the rear; the remaining brigades, partly under the influence of the same cause, partly recoiling from the steady fire of Hays's line, draw in upon Pickett's troops, heaping up on the center, as one has seen in so many Confederate assaults, while Lane's and Scales's brigades close up from the rear: (2) Stannard's Vermont brigade, away down on the left, is thrown forward upon the Confederate right, driving the brigade of Kemper before it; (3) at "the clump of trees," which hours before had been designated as the point of attack, the more daring of the assailants, led by Armistead, Hancock's old companion in arms, force back the line of the Seventy-first Penn- . sylvania, kill Cushing and his gunners among their pieces, and wave the Stars and Bars in the very center of the Union position.

Where, in this crisis of the action, is Hancock? He has marked the recoil of the Confederates

from Hays's front; he sees the enemy swarming up against the stone wall. Directing upon the head of their column Devereux's Nineteenth Massachusetts and Mallon's Forty-second New York, he gallops to the left, calling to Gibbon as he goes to advance his troops against the head of the assaulting column; then dashes down to the Vermont brigade, which lies in advance of the general line, covered by brush and by the irregularity of the ground, and orders them to change-front-forward to the right and advance against the Confederate flank. Already the Vermonters are up, probably to execute that very manœuvre by the command of their gallant leader, General Stannard. It is a place where no mounted man has been seen for hours, where no mounted man can possibly live for five minutes. Hardly has Hancock reached Stannard's side, and with word and gesture seeks to convey his command amid the roar of battle, when a bullet strikes him near the groin and he falls out of his saddle into the arms of Benedict and Hooker, of Stannard's staff. Randall's Thirteenth Vermont, followed close by Veazey's Sixteenth, swing themselves forward and wheel into line to the right, opening fire upon the Confederate flank, which cringes and curls under the stroke. Yet still lying there, his wound spouting blood, Hancock raises himself upon his elbow to watch the progress of the fight; and as Veazey passes by with his gallant regiment, calls him to himself,