"July 3d.--The distance between the Confederate guns and the Yankee position--i.e. between the woods crowning the opposite ridges--was at least a mile, quite open, gently undulating, and exposed to artillery the whole distance. This was the ground which had to be crossed in today’s attack. Pickett’s division, which had just come up, was to bear the brunt in Longstreet’s attack, together with Heth and Pettigrew in Hill’s corps. Pickett’s division was a weak one (under five thousand), owing to the absence of two brigades.
"At noon all Longstreet’s dispositions were made; his troops for attack were deployed into line and lying down in the woods; his batteries were ready to open. The General then dismounted and went to sleep for a short time. . . .
"The road at Gettysburg was lined with Yankee dead, and as they had been killed on the 1st, the poor fellows had already behun to be very offensive. We then returned to the hill I was on yesterday. But finding that to see the actual fighting it was absolutely necessary to go into the thick of the thing, I determined to make my way to General Longstreet. It was then about two-thirty. After passing General Lee and his staff, I rode on through the woods in the direction in which I had left Longstreet. I soon began to meet many wounded men returning from the front many of them asked in piteous tones the way to the doctor or an ambulance. The farther I got, the greater became the number of the wounded. At last I came to a perfect stream of them flocking through the woods in numbers as great as the crowd in Oxford Street in the middle of the day. Some were walking alone on crutches composed of two rifles, others supported by men less badly wounded than themselves, and others were carried on stretchers by the ambulance corps; but in no case did I see a sound man helping the wounded to the rear unless he carried the red badge of the ambulance corps. They were still under a heavy fire; the shells were continually bringing down great limbs of trees and carrying further destruction amongst this melancholy procession. I saw all this in much less time than it takes to write it, and although astonished to meet such vast numbers of wounded, I had not seen enough to give me any idea of the real extent of the mischief.
"When I got close up to General Longstreet, I saw one of his regiments advancing through the woods in good order; so, thinking I was just in time to see the attack, I remarked to the General that ‘I wouldn’t have missed this for anything.’
"Longstreet was seated at the top of a snake fence at the edge of the woods and looking perfectly calm and unperturbed. He replied, laughing; ‘The devil you wouldn’t! I would like to have missed it very much we’ve attacked and been repulsed; look there!”
"For the first time I then had a view of the open space between the two positions and saw it covered with Confederates, slowly and sulkily returning toward us in small broken parties, under a heavy fire of artillery. But the fire where we were was not so bad as farther to the rear, for although the air seemed alive with shell, yet the great number burst behind us.
"The General told me that Pickett’s division had succeeded in carrying the enemy’s position and capturing its guns, but after remaining there twenty minutes, it had been forced to retire, on the retreat of Heth and Pettigrew on its left. No person could have been more calm or self-possessed than General Longstreet under these trying circumstances, aggravated as they now were by the movements of the enemy, who began to show a strong disposition to advance. I could now thoroughly appreciate the term bulldog, which I had heard applied to him by the soldiers. Difficulties seem to make no other impression upon him than to make him a little more savage.
"Soon afterward I joined General Lee, who had in the meanwhile come to the front on becoming aware of the disaster. If Longstreet’s conduct was admirable, that of Lee was perfectly sublime. He was engaged in rallying and in encouraging the broken troops and was riding about a little in front of the wood, quite alone, the whole of his staff being engaged in a similar manner farther to the rear. His face, which was always placid and cheerful, did no show signs of the slightest disappointment, care, or annoyance; and he was addressing to every soldier he met a few words of encouragement, such as: ‘All this will come right in the end; we’ll talk it over afterwards; but in the meantime, all good men must rally. We want all good and true men just now,’ etc. He spoke to all the wounded men that passed him, and the slightly wounded he exhorted to ‘bind up their hurts and take up a musket’ in this emergency. Very few failed to answer his appeal, and I saw many badly wounded men take off their hats and cheer him.
"He said to me, ‘This has been a sad day for us, Colonel-a sad day; but we can’t expect always to gain victories.”. . . I saw General Willcox come up to him and explain, almost crying, the state of his brigade. General Lee immediately shook hands with him and said cheerfully: ‘Never mind, General, all this has been my fault--it is I that have lost this fight, and you must help me out of it in the best way you can.’
"In this way I saw General Lee encourage and reanimate his somewhat dispirited troops and magnanimously take upon his own shoulders the whole weight of the repulse. It was impossible to look at him or to listen to him without feeling the strongest admiration."
Source: Three Months in the Southern States
Commentary
Colonel Arthur Freemantle of England, who had been observing the Confederate Army, gives the following account of Pickett's repulse: