Harper's Round Table, May 28, 1895

HEROES OF AMERICA.

THE CHARGE AT GETTYSBURG.

BY THE HONORABLE THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

he battle of Chancellorsville marked the zenith of Confederate good fortune. Immediately afterwards, in June, 1863, Lee led the victorious Army of Northern Virginia north into Pennsylvania. The South was now the invader, not the invaded, and its heart beat proudly with hopes of success; but these hopes went down in bloody wreck on July 4th, when word was sent to the world that the high valor of Virginia had failed at last on the field of Gettysburg, and that in the far West Vicksburg had been taken by the army of the "silent soldier."

At Gettysburg Lee had under him some seventy thousand men, and his opponent, Meade, about ninety thousand. Both armies were composed mainly of seasoned veterans, trained to the highest point by campaign after campaign and battle after battle; and there was nothing to choose between them as to the fighting power of the rank and file. The Union army was the larger, yet most of the time it stood on the defensive; for the difference between the generals, Lee and Meade, was greater than could be bridged by twenty thousand men.

For three days the battle raged. No other battle of recent years has been so obstinate and so bloody. The victorious Union army lost a greater percentage in killed and wounded than the allied armies of England, Germany, and the Netherlands lost at Waterloo. Four of its seven corps suffered each a greater relative loss than befell the world-renowned British infantry on the day that saw the doom of the mighty French Emperor. The defeated Confederates at Gettysburg lost relatively as many men as the defeated French at Waterloo; but whereas the French army became a mere rabble, Lee withdrew his formidable soldiery with their courage unbroken, and their fighting power only diminished by their actual losses in the field.

The decisive moment of the battle, and perhaps of the whole war, was in the afternoon of the third day, when Lee sent forward his choicest troops in a last effort to break the middle of the Union line. The kernel of the attacking force was Pickett's division, the flower of the Virginian infantry, but many other brigades took part in the assault, and the attacking column, all told, numbered over fifteen thousand men. At the same time Longstreet's Confederate forces attacked the Union left to create a diversion. The attack was preceded by a terrific cannonade, Lee gathering one hundred and fifteen guns, and opening a terrible fire on the centre of the Union line. In response, the Union chief of artillery gathered eighty guns along on the crest of the gently sloping hill where attack was threatened. For two hours, from one to three, there was a terrific cannonade, and the batteries on both sides suffered severely. In both the Union and Confederate lines caissons were blown up by the fire, riderless horses dashed hither and thither, the dead lay in heaps, and throngs of wounded streamed to the rear. Every man lay down and sought what cover he could. It was evident that the Confederate cannonade was but a prelude to a great infantry attack, and at three o'clock Hunt, the Union chief of artillery, ordered the fire to stop, that the guns might cool to be ready for the coming assault. The Confederates thought that they had silenced the Union artillery, and for a few minutes their firing continued; then suddenly it ceased, and there was a lull.

The men on the Union side who were not at the point directly menaced peered anxiously across the space between the lines to watch the next move, while the men in the divisions which it was certain were about to be assaulted lay hugging the ground and gripping their muskets, excited, but confident and resolute. They saw the smoke clouds rise slowly above the opposite crest, where the Confederate army lay, and the sunlight glinted again on the long line of brass and iron guns which had been hidden from view during the cannonade. In another moment, out of the lifting smoke there appeared, beautiful and terrible, the picked thousands of the Southern army advancing to the assault. They advanced in three lines, each over a mile long, and in perfect order. Pickett's Virginians held the centre, with on their left the North Carolinians of Pender and Pettigrew, and on their right the Alabama regiments of Wilcox; and there were also Georgian and Tennessee regiments in the attacking force. Pickett's division, however, was the only one able to press its charge home.

The Confederate lines came on magnificently. As they crossed the Emmetsburg Pike the eighty guns on the Union crest, now cool and in good shape, opened upon them, first with shot and then with shell. Great gaps were made every second in the ranks, but the gray-clad soldiers closed up to the centre, and the color-bearers leaped to the front, shaking and waving the flags. The Union infantry reserved their fire until the Confederates were within easy range, when the musketry crashed out with a roar; the big guns began to fire grape and canister.

On came the Confederates, the men falling by hundreds, the colors fluttering in front like a little forest; for as fast as a color-bearer was shot, some one else seized the flag from his hand before it fell. The North Carolinians were more exposed to the fire than any other portion of the attacking force, and they were broken before they reached the line. There was a gap between the Virginians and the Alabama troops, and this was taken advantage of by Stannard's Vermont brigade and a demi-brigade under Gates of the Twentieth New York, who were thrust forward into it. Stannard changed front with his regiments and attacked Pickett's forces in flank, and Gates continued the attack. When thus struck in the flank the Virginians could not defend themselves, and they crowded off toward the centre to avoid the pressure. Many of them were killed or captured; many of them were driven back: but two of the brigades, headed by General Armistead, forced their way forward to the stone wall on the crest, where the Pennsylvania regiments were posted under Gibbon and Webb.

The Union guns fired to the last moment, until of the two batteries immediately in front of the charging Virginians every officer but one had been struck. One of the mortally wounded officers was young Cushing, a brother of the hero of the Albemarle fight. 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 cloud, where flakes of light shimmered as the sun shone upon the swinging sabres. At last the Confederate horsemen were beaten back, and they did not come forward again or seek to renew the combat; for Pickett's charge had failed, and there was no longer hope of Confederate victory.

When night fell the Union flags waved in triumph over the field of Gettysburg; but over thirty thousand men lay dead or wounded, strewn through wood and meadow, on field and hill, where the three days' fight had surged.

MEMORIAL DAY.

Flutter of flag and beat of drum And the sound of marching feet, And in long procession the soldiers come To the call of the bugles sweet.

And the marching soldiers stop at last Where their sleeping comrades lie, The men whose battles have long been fought, Who dared for the land to die.

Children, quick with your gathered flowers, Scatter them far and near; They who were fathers and brothers once Are peacefully resting here.

Flutter of banner and beat of drum And the bugle's solemn call, In grand procession the soldiers come-- And God is over us all!

THE CAT SHOW.

BY WALTER CLARK NICHOLS.

At last the cats have had a show of their own, and for the time being their old enemies, the dogs, have been forced to take a back seat, and sulk at the attention which the 250 and more pussies received from the girls and boys and grown-up people at the Madison Square Garden in New York. It has been a gala-time for the children, especially, and the petting which the different tabbies received would have turned their heads had they not been so well-bred and aristocratic. For the common tramp cat, who knows no better than to give unwelcome concerts on the back fence at night, or the scraggly kitten, whose one ambition is rat-catching, had no place among the cats who made their first public bow and mieuw a week ago. Only those whose great grandpapas or grandmammas were distinguished people in the cat kingdom were allowed to be exhibited.

After all, the cat kingdom isn't nearly so large as the dog kingdom. All of our domestic cats are grouped under two distinct heads--the short-haired European or Western cat, and the long-haired Asiatic or Eastern cat. The tortoise-shell, white, black, blue, or slate-color (Maltese), and the tabbies are embraced in the European, and the Asiatic includes the Persian, Angora, Russian, and Indian. So that it is ever so much easier to learn what class your cat belongs in than to know the different kinds of dogs.