ctively engaged became numbed and a
dull heavy sleep overcame them as they lay under this mighty unnatural
storm, shells falling short came plowing through the ground, or
bursting prematurely overhead, with little or no effect upon the
slumberers, only a cry of pain as one and another received a wound or
a death shot from the flying fragments. The charge of Pickett is over,
the day is lost, and men fall prone upon the earth to catch breath
and think of the dreadful ordeal just passed and of the many hundreds
lying between them and the enemy's line bleeding, dying without hope
or succor.

Farnsworth, of Kilpatrick's Cavalry, had been watching the fray from
our extreme right, where Hood had stationed scattered troops to watch
his flank, and when the Union General saw through the mountain gorges
and passes the destruction of Pickett he thought his time for action
had come. The battle-scarred war horses snuffed the blood and smoke
of battle from afar, and champed their bits in anxious impatience.
The troopers looked down the line and met the stern faces of their
comrades adjusting themselves to their saddles and awaiting the signal
for the charge. Farnsworth awaits no orders, and when he saw the wave
of Pickett's recede he gave the command to "Charge," and his five
hundred troopers came thundering down upon our detachments on the
extreme right. But Farnsworth had to ride over and between the Fourth,
Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Alabama Regiments, the Eleventh Georgia and
the First Texas, and it is needless to add, his ride was a rough and
disastrous one. Farnsworth, after repeated summons to surrender, fell,
pierced with five wounds, and died in a few moments. His troopers
who had escaped death or capture fled to the gorges and passes of
the mountains through which they had so recently ridden in high
expectation.

The enemy, as well as the Confederates, had lost heavily in general
officers. Hancock had fallen from his horse, shot through the side
with a minnie ball, disabling him for a long time. General Dan
Sickles, afterwards military Governor of South Carolina, lost a leg.
General Willard was killed. Generals Newton, Gibbon, Reynolds, Barlow
were either killed or wounded, with many other officers of note in the
Federal Army.

The soldier is not the cold unfeeling, immovable animal that some
people seem to think he is. On the contrary, and paradoxical as it may
appear, he is warm-hearted, sympathetic, and generous spirit