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Cemetery Ridge; but the Union guns made no change in aim and went on mowing down Pickett’s men. A storm of canister came. The slaughter was terrible; but, nothing daunted, the remnant of Pickett’s division of 5000 pressed on in the lead. The other brigades followed. Now the Union infantry opened fire 1 and the Confederates replied. General Garnett, just out of the sick ambulance and commanding a brigade in Pickett’s division, “rode immediately in the rear of his advancing line” with great coolness and deliberation, and endeavored, so wrote Major Peyton, “to keep his line well closed and dressed. He was shot from his horse while near the center of the brigade within about 25 paces of the stone wall.” But “our line much shattered still kept up the advance until within about twenty paces of the wall when, for a moment, it recoiled under the terrific fire that poured into our ranks both from their batteries and from their sheltered infantry. At this moment General Kemper came up on the right and General Armistead in rear, when the three lines joining in concert, rushed forward with unyielding determination and an apparent spirit of laudable rivalry to plant the Southern banner on the walls of the enemy.” Armistead, wrote Colonel Aylett, was “conspicuous to all. Fifty yards in advance of his brigade, waving his hat upon his sword, he led his men upon his enemy with a steady bearing.… Far in advance of all he led the attack till he scaled the works of the enemy and fell wounded in their hands, but not until he had driven them from their position and seen his colors planted over their fortifications.” The enemy’s “strongest and

Note 1. “The fire of the Union infantry which with great coolness was withheld for close work was opened from different parts of the line at 200 to 70 yards. Unfaltering under the destructive fire, the Confederates marched in such order and with such courage as to win the admiration of their opponents.”—T. L. Livermore, Milt. Hist. Soc., XIII, 537. [back]

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