ht. He was almost cut in
two, but holding his body together with one hand, with the other he
fired his last gun, and fell dead just as Armistead, pressing forward at
the head of his men, leaped the wall, waving his hat on his sword.
Immediately afterwards the battle-flags of the foremost Confederate
regiments crowned the crest; but their strength was spent. The Union
troops moved forward with the bayonet, and the remnant of Pickett's
division, attacked on all sides, either surrendered or retreated down
the hill again. Armistead fell dying by the body of the dead Cushing.
Both Gibbon and Webb were wounded. Of Pickett's command two-thirds were
killed, wounded, or captured, and every brigade commander and every
field officer save one fell. The Virginians tried to rally, but were
broken and driven again by Gates, while Stannard repeated at the expense
of the Alabamians the movement he had made against the Virginians, and,
reversing his front, attacked them in flank. Their lines were torn by
the batteries in front, and they fell back before the Vermonters'
attack, and Stannard reaped a rich harvest of prisoners and of
battle-flags.

The charge was over. It was the greatest charge in any battle of modern
times, and it had failed. It would be impossible to surpass the gallantry
of those that made it, or the gallantry of those that withstood it. Had
there been in command of the Union army a general like Grant, it would
have been followed by a counter-charge, and in all probability the war
would have been shortened by nearly two years; but no counter-charge was
made.

As the afternoon waned, a fierce cavalry fight took place on the Union
right. Stuart, the famous Confederate cavalry commander, had moved
forward to turn the Union right, but he was met by Gregg's cavalry, and
there followed a contest at close quarters with "the white arm." It
closed with a desperate melee, in which the Confederates, charging under
Wade Hampton and Fitz-Hugh Lee, were met in mid-career by the Union
Generals Custer and McIntosh. All four fought, sabre in hand, at the
head of their troopers, and every man on each side was put into the
struggle. Custer, his yellow hair flowing, his face aflame with the
eager joy of battle, was in the thick of the fight, rising in his
stirrups as he called to his famous Michigan swordsmen, "Come on, you
Wolverines, come on!" All that the Union infantry, watching eagerly from
their lines, could see was a vast dust clo