The Coolidge examiner., 1933-06-23


tied down to a fitful slumber.
Pickett's Famous Charge.
Could they hold their gains on the
morrow and drive through the hun
dred PAGES to triumph? At four
o'clock the next morning guns boom
OUT their demand for an answer.
The battle is on. Artillery fire
blasts their front and rakes their
flanks. Musket fire throws a dead
ly leaden hail into them from al
most every angle. Their position
becomes an inferno. They charge
into a binding sheet of alarms
fire; they reel back. reform, charge
and are hurled back again. Again
they reform and charge once more
At last, almost literally blasted from
the field, the bugles sound the
mOurnful notes of the retreat and
General Meade holds the ground un-
challenged.
Pickett's charge will ever live in
the minds of men as the climactic
episode of Gettysburg; but military
men agree that in the menace it
held, in the fierceness of the as
saults that were made, in the car
mage that was wrought, the attack
made by the men whom StOnewall
! Jackson had led at Bull Run. Antie-
tam, Fredericksburg, and Chancel-
lOrsville deserves an equal place In
the annals of war. That attack last
ed six hours. Pickett's charge
moved out at three o'clock, reached
high water mark at 3:20, began its
retreat at $40, and was off the
field a little after four o'clock.
AS military spectacle, that con
Guiding act has never been excelled
Its prelude was played by 800 guns,
as battery answered battery across
the gently rolling fields over which
the historic charge was to sweep.
Every position seems to have
broken out with guns everywhere,
and from Round Top to Cemetery
Hill is like a blazing volcano" re
ported one officer. The grand roar
of nearly the whole artillery of both
armies burst in on the silence al
most as suddenly as the full notes
of an organ would fill a church, 4"
wrote another
In an hour and n half the Fed
erals slackened their fire, so that
their guns might cool, wrecked bat
teries be replaced, and the at
mosphere allowed to clear.
Forty-two Confederate regiments
move out Pickett leads them, with
his own division In the center. The
charge begins with the precision of
dress parade. A murmur of admira-
ton sweeps the Union line. And
then its artillery opens again with
every ounce Of its reinforced power.
Presently torn by shot and shell
the charging host comes within rifle
range. They press on. They are
within 80 yards of their goal. fac
ing death in a thousand forms.
End Of the Bloody Fight
Picketts men melt like snow on
a hot day, but a second and a third
wave sweeps on. They face double
canister at ten PAGES, but they ST
lence the guns that fire them. Into
Webb'S rifle pits they leap and over
the barricade. Armistead and his
men vault over the stone wall. He
falls mortally wounded. The mo
mentum of the charge wanes and
dies.
Raked with fire and crOss-fre.
there is nothing to do but fall back
But they return across the sanguin-
airy field in such fashion that the re
pulse does not become a rOut. Out
of the 400 men of Pickett's divi-
sion, not more than 1000 return. or
the Is field officers and four gen
erals, only Pickett and one lieuten-
ant colonel escape unscathed.
The Battle of Gettysburg is end
ed AS one walks over the scene
and tries TO measure the courage
of the men who fought here, he
comes to understand why there
is pride in every American heart
that the battle field is now mill
tary park, and that it was dedicated
in immortal words by Abraham Lin
coin.
The fine generosity of the Federal
government, that knows no North
and no South in the marking Of
these hallowed acres, cements in
the iirmest bonds of history the
sons and daughters Of those whose
bravery and courage made the field
the sacred spot it is.
First established by the Gettys-
! burg Battle Field Memorial assOcia
ton in 1864, taken over by the gov
ernment in 1895. more adequately
marked by the Gettysburg National
Park commission, the park now con
siStS of 2,530 acres of government
owned land. It has 221a miles of
avenues, in addition to the state
and county highways that traverse
il. In it there are SO statues, in
addition 70 paarIy OO0 otbar r,,0D,,