the subsequent charge of
Pickett, which resulted so disastrously, the ragged infantry were
heard exclaiming: "We've not lost confidence in the old man! This
day's work won't do him no harm! Uncle Robert will get us into
Washington yet!" Add to this the fact that the issue of the second day
had stirred up in Lee himself all the martial ardor of his nature;
and there never lived a more thorough _soldier_, when he was fully
aroused, than the Virginian. All this soldiership of the man revolted
at the thought of retreating and abandoning his great enterprise. He
looked, on the one hand, at his brave army, ready at the word to again
advance upon the enemy--at that enemy scarce able on the previous
day to hold his position--and, weighing every circumstance in his
comprehensive mind, which "looked before and after," Lee determined on
the next morning to try a decisive assault upon the Federal troops;
to storm, if possible, the Cemetery Range, and at one great blow
terminate the campaign and the war.

The powerful influences which we have mentioned, cooeperating, shaped
the decision to which Lee had come. He would not retreat, but fight.
The campaign should not be abandoned without at least one great charge
upon the Federal position; and orders were now given for a renewal
of the attack on the next morning. "The general plan of attack," Lee
says, "was unchanged, except that one division and two brigades of
Hill's corps were ordered to support Longstreet." From these words it
is obvious that Lee's main aim now, as on the preceding day, was to
force back the Federal left in front of Longstreet, and seize the high
ground commanding the whole ridge in flank and reverse. To this
end Longstreet was reenforced, and the great assault was evidently
intended to take place in that quarter. But circumstances caused
an alteration, as will be seen, in Lee's plans. The centre, thus
weakened, was from stress of events to become the point of decisive
struggle. The assaults of the previous day had been directed against
the two extremities of the enemy; the assault of the third day, which
would decide the fate of the battle and the campaign, was to be the
furious rush of Pickett's division of Virginian troops at the enemy's
centre, on Cemetery Hill.

A preliminary conflict, brought on by the Federal commander, took
place early in the morning. Ewell had continued throughout the night
to hold the enemy's breastworks on their right, from which he h