Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/521

 186s] Defeat of the Confederates. 489 improvised entrenchments, in which work they had become very expert during their severe Virginia campaigns. When Meade, fourteen miles away at Taneytown, received the report of this first day's fighting, he immediately accepted the advice of the generals who witnessed it, and gave his whole army orders to make Gettysburg, instead of Pipe Creek, the battle-field. All through the night Unionist reinforcements were arriving behind Cemetery Ridge. The commanding general reached the ground after midnight. While thus, on the morning of July 2, the Federal army was posted on an irregular semicircle from the Round Tops on its extreme left to Gulp's Hill on its extreme right, the army of Lee had also come up and taken position in a wider semicircle in its front. This placed it at the disadvantage of having the greater distances between its wings and its several corps, making the transmission of orders and the movement of detachments in support slower and more difficult. The first day's success, however, had made Lee over-confident. Besides, he did not know that Meade's reinforcements had arrived during the night. He vigorously attacked the Federal position on both right and left. There was stubborn fighting for several hours at different points ; but, though the Confederates nearly gained possession of Little Round Top and actually at night held a lodgment in the exterior entrenchment of Gulp's Hill, the result was a general failure of the attack. The crisis of the battle came on July 3. Both armies had received their last reinforcements. A corps reached Meade on the afternoon of the 2nd after a march of thirty-two miles; and three brigades of Virginia veterans joined Lee on the morning of the 3rd. Both armies were now in a position which made the final struggle un- avoidable. Some fighting occurred very early in the day, in which the Union line regained the ground on the right lost the evening before; and then ominous stillness fell upon the battle-field till one o'clock. Half a mile west of Cemetery Ridge was the long parallel elevation of Seminary Ridge, from which 130 Confederate guns for two hours belched forth a furious cannonade, answered with equal vigour by 80 Federal guns on Cemetery Ridge. Deeming the culminating struggle near at hand, the Unionist chief of artillery first slackened, then stopped the fire of his batteries to prepare for the coming assault. Half an hour afterwards, there swept across the undulations of the intervening valley in clear view of the opposing armies the attacking lines of 15,000 Confederate veterans, upon whom, as they neared the Unionist entrenchments, was poured the rapid and deadly fire of the Federal field batteries and the rifles of the infantry regiments from behind their natural and extemporised defences. Under this terrible ordeal the assaulting lines wavered, doubled, and broke, part rolling like a spent wave back down the slope in indiscriminate retreat, while the few fragments that rushed across the Union breastworks dropped their battle-flags and bayonets