--- title: "Pickett's Charge: Gettysburg's Bloody Turning Point" description: "At 3pm on July 3, 1863, a line of 12,500 Confederate troops descended Seminary Ridge outside the small Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg. Ahead of them lay nearly a mile of open terrain. Beyond that waited a small hill and a low stone wall, behind which sheltered some 6,000 Union soldiers. The plan was simple: the Southerners would strike the Union at its point of maximum weakness, overwhelm its understaffed lines, and win not just the Battle of Gettysburg but enough glory to ensure their names went down in history.\n\nRobert E. Lee's men would indeed go down in history that day, but for the wrong reasons. The assault, known to posterity as Pickett's Charge, was destined to end not in victory but in one of the worst defeats suffered in the entire Civil War. It was a turning point inside a turning point, the tiny pivot that, perhaps, allowed history to swing on its axis.\n\nThis is not the story of a conflict or even a battle, but of a single military action on a single day, an action that nonetheless changed the course of American history. Over the span of roughly one hour, more than 12,000 men advanced into a death trap of cannon and rifle fire from which thousands would never return.\n\nWhat follows is an account of how that charge was conceived, why it failed so catastrophically, and how it came to be remembered as the high-water mark of the Confederacy.\n\n## Key Takeaways\n- Pickett's Charge was a single assault on July 3, 1863, the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, in which roughly 12,500 Confederate troops advanced nearly a mile across open farmland against the Union center on Cemetery Ridge.\n- Robert E. Lee, convinced the Union center was weak after two days of failed flank attacks, ordered a diversion at Culp's Hill followed by a massive charge, but coordination failures undermined the plan from the start.\n- The preliminary Confederate bombardment, with roughly 150 guns, was the heaviest artillery assault ever to take place on American soil, yet faulty fuses and poor aim left the Union lines largely intact.\n- Union commander George Meade correctly anticipated a strike at his center and positioned reinforcements that could move freely once the diversion ended, giving him a decisive edge.\n- The charge briefly breached the Union line at a stretch of stone wall called the Angle, the moment remembered as the Confederacy's high-water mark, before collapsing for lack of reinforcements.\n- In under an hour the Confederacy suffered 6,555 men killed, missing, or wounded, over half of those who took part, while the Union lost about 1,500.\n- Pickett's Charge is popularly seen as the turning point of the war, though many historians point to the fall of Vicksburg a day later as the conflict's true pivot.\n\n## And, On the Third Day\n\nAs the sun set on July 2, 1863, the United States was witnessing unprecedented carnage. At the end of its second day, the Battle of Gettysburg had been raging for nearly 48 hours, during which gruesome records of death and injury had been set. Some 165,000 troops had engaged in one of the largest fights ever to take place on US soil. As the hot, humid July day drew to a close, the fighting was far from over.\n\nSouth of the small Pennsylvania town, the Union Army of the Potomac under General George G. Meade had retreated to a set of low ridges and hills. One of these, Cemetery Ridge, lay directly across from a Confederate encampment on the near-homophone Seminary Ridge, where General Robert E. Lee was stationed. Between the two stretched not quite a mile of farmland studded with fences and stone walls, ground that would soon host the most brutal fighting of all. That evening, though, everything was quiet, or at least as quiet as things can be when over 150,000 adrenaline-filled men move around a confined space.\n\nIn the two opposing camps, fierce debates were raging about what to do next.\n\n## Two War Councils\n\nOn the Confederate side, many of Lee's officers were urging a retreat. They had marched north to secure supplies and take the fight to the Union, they argued. Now that was done, why not draw back and preserve their strength? But Lee was not convinced. After two days of battle that seemed to favor his army, he felt victory must be at hand, that the Northerners must have a weak spot in their lines somewhere.\n\nThat weak spot, he reasoned, he could exploit using fresh troops who had arrived that very afternoon: 4,500 Virginians specially held back under their commander, Major General George Pickett, the same George Pickett who would soon lend his name to the ill-fated charge. Over July 2, Lee's men had repeatedly hit the Union flanks, only to find them stronger than expected. Reasoning therefore that the center must be the weak point, Lee envisaged a diversionary attack at a flashpoint known as Culp's Hill that would make the Army of the Potomac quickly shift troops there, followed by a massive charge at the weakened center. All going well, his men would break through, split the Union lines in two, and be having tea in Pittsburgh before Meade knew what had hit him.\n\nYet Lee was not the only one making plans. Across the dark farmland, General Meade was holding a war council of his own. Unlike the popular image of him as a bit of a buffoon, the real Meade was a man trying his best in extremely trying circumstances. Freshly promoted, he had barely taken over the Army of the Potomac when the battle erupted, throwing him headlong into a baptism of fire that also threatened to double as his funeral. Despite that, and despite some resentment among his men, he was already proving adept at moving troops into position to reinforce the lines, and at divining what his opponent might do next. That night, he divined that Lee was going to strike his center.\n\nLuckily for Meade, by the second evening of Gettysburg, Lee was getting sloppy. Unlike his Union counterpart, Lee held no great council of war and gave no hyper-detailed instructions, instead sending out orders that outlined goals and targets rather than a concrete plan. The resulting coordination issues would give Meade an unexpected edge, not much of one, but perhaps enough to ensure victory, and enough to ensure that George Pickett's men would go charging not into glory, but into their graves.\n\n## A Hard Rain Falls\n\nHindsight, the saying goes, is 20/20. With the benefit of that perfect vision, we can clearly see what those at the Battle of Gettysburg could not: that Lee's men started July 3 bedeviled by problems.\n\nLee himself had woken at 3am to eat a simple breakfast under the stars. Then, fed, he mounted his gray horse and rode out in the equally gray light of dawn to make preparations. The first hint of the looming disaster came in his meeting with Lieutenant General James Longstreet. Stationed on Seminary Ridge, Longstreet would be instrumental to Lee's plan, directing the artillery designed to soften the enemy lines before giving the order to charge. But while Longstreet was loyal, he was less than enthusiastic about Lee's orders, trying to talk the general out of it even at this late stage.\n\nThe next warning sign came while the two were on the ridge. At 8am, light flared at Culp's Hill. The diversionary attack on the flanks that Lee had ordered was beginning, yet the rest of his men were not even remotely ready to charge the center. The artillery bombardment would not begin for hours. That meant Meade would not find himself simultaneously trying to hold two parts of the line, leaving his reinforcements free to move around. This is where the whole lack-of-coordination problem starts to damage Lee's chances, especially given the unsustainable losses the Confederacy was suffering at Culp's Hill.\n\nBut at the time, Lee thought he could still make out the faint outlines of victory. And he thought he had the perfect tools to win her favor.\n\n## The Heaviest Cannonade on American Soil\n\nAs the morning passed and the fighting at Culp's Hill intensified, the Union soldiers on Cemetery Ridge observed an awful sight: artillery guns being rolled into position on the Confederate side, gun after gun shifting to concentrate all its firepower on the Northern lines. The Union troops had gun batteries of their own, too, 75 of them, capable of hitting Seminary Ridge. But Lee laughed in the face of such a small number. By 1pm, his forces had marshaled 150 artillery pieces.\n\nAt exactly 1:07pm on July 3, the order went out. A single shell fired in a puff of smoke: the signal for the Confederate batteries to open. So began not just the heaviest artillery assault of the Civil War, but the heaviest ever to take place on American soil. With 150 guns blasting their positions, the Union troops were caught in a maelstrom of lead and fire. Exploding shells tore trees to matchwood. Shrapnel killed anything not hugging the ground. In the rear, Meade's headquarters were, at one point, being hit with six shells a minute. It was like a foretaste of the horrors of the First World War, a poisonous appetizer of the evil that artillery would unleash in conflicts to come.\n\nIt was also, however, a stupendous failure.\n\n## A Bombardment That Missed\n\nHere is the thing with Confederate artillery: the fuses were unreliable. Exploding shells would burst not over cowering Union troops hugging the dirt, but early, if they exploded at all. On top of that, the aiming was off. Rather than pound the Northerners' front lines, the cannonade went whizzing overhead, smashing into the rear, where shells caused chaos and killed horses but otherwise did little to soften the Union troops up.\n\nA great anecdote from the battle shows just how ineffective the bombardment was. After initially ducking, Brigadier General Alexander Webb of the II Corps noticed how off-target the shells were. So, rather than staying low, he got up, strode to the copse of trees the Rebels were trying to hit, lit his pipe, and laconically sat there smoking and smiling as shell after shell failed to kill him. He was not the only one. The commander on Cemetery Ridge, General Winfield S. Hancock, likewise mounted his horse and rode along the frontlines, both a symbol of courage for his men and a very open way of taunting in Lee's general direction.\n\nGiven that this was literally the biggest artillery duel ever to take place in the United States, its results were a dismal failure: a few Union guns taken out, some dead horses, a whole lot of sound and fury signifying, exactly, what? The tragedy was that the Confederates did not know this. Over on their side, the Rebels were already preparing for the charge, assuming the troops facing them must already be severely weakened. It was this one flawed assumption that would turn Pickett's Charge into a massacre.\n\n## Into the Inferno\n\nBefore the charge itself, a common misconception is worth addressing. Despite being called \"Pickett's Charge,\" the coming disaster involved far more men than George Pickett commanded. The Virginians under his command made up only slightly over a third of all troops involved. There were thousands of others, 12,500 in all, from states like North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi.\n\nNor was George Pickett the only commander. Generals Isaac Trimble and James Johnston Pettigrew would charge right alongside him, as would Brigadier General Lewis Armistead. Armistead, as it happened, had been close friends before the war with Winfield S. Hancock, the very Union general now defending against his charge, a reminder that civil wars are good for drama and awful for interpersonal relationships.\n\nSo why is the charge named after Pickett? The answer has to do with Richmond, Virginia. By 1863, the press operating out of Richmond had become the de facto Confederate press corps, the only outlet capable of fielding reporters who could cover all major battles. So when a whole host of Virginians were killed attacking Cemetery Ridge, the entire South got the version written by fellow Virginians, shocked at their deaths, a version that centered the actions of those from Old Dominion and their commander, George Pickett.\n\nBack on the front lines, the two-hour cannon duel thundered toward its conclusion. As the Confederacy began running low on shells, anxious commanders waited for Longstreet to order the charge, an order he was desperate not to give. Examining the terrain, Longstreet saw the near mile of uneven ground, the fences that would have to be broken or crossed, and the Emmitsburg Road running through the middle. He saw the humidity and heat, pushing 87 degrees Fahrenheit, in which his soldiers had been sweltering for hours. It did not take a genius to see how this could all go badly wrong. But Lee had made it clear the attack would go ahead. So, just before 3pm, Longstreet ordered the shelling to end. When a junior officer asked whether they should now advance, the lieutenant general, unable to vocalize, gave only a jerky nod. Yet this was signal enough.\n\n## The March of Automatons\n\nAlong the line, the cannons fell silent. Behind Seminary Ridge, within a sheltering woodline, thousands of men got to their feet and marched forward, a line of Rebel troops over a mile from end to end, prepared to meet their fates. They were arranged in compact lines, with more men concentrated to the right-hand flank, planning to bunch closer as they advanced until they created an overwhelming force that would punch right through Hancock's line. Toward the center, Pickett let out a cry to his own men: \"Don't forget today that you are from Old Virginia!\"\n\nAnd with that, the charge began, though it was not a \"charge\" in the sense of moving fast. Rather than running and giving the Rebel yell, the Confederate soldiers marched ahead at the regulation pace of 100 yards a minute. This was to stop the line from breaking, ensuring that when the order came, all could stop at once and unleash a hail of musket fire as a single coordinated mass. But it had a real psychological effect, too. At the Union lines, soldiers watched the advance with terror. One man wrote that the Southerners moved like \"automatons,\" deadly and seemingly unstoppable. Others confided in letters that they expected to shortly be in a Confederate prison.\n\nIt is easy to see why. Behind the stone wall, Hancock commanded only 6,000 men. They were outnumbered, outgunned. Yet that fear would soon dissipate. As the charge reached the first wooden fence, the Union guns that had survived the cannonade suddenly roared to life. There was a blast, and then the Confederate left flank was being hit. Men fell. The line wavered. And just like that, the fog of war lifted from everyone's eyes, and it became obvious what was about to happen. The men in Pickett's Charge were advancing into a pincer of cannon and rifle fire from which there would be no escape. Now the only question was how many would make it back alive.\n\n## The South's High-Water Mark\n\nThe march across Pennsylvania's farmland that day must have seemed like one of those nightmares where you can see the terrible thing about to happen but are powerless to stop it.\n\nWhen the Union guns opened up, the death toll was staggering. Northern troops reported seeing ten men killed by a single shell. As one soldier from Ohio wrote: \"Arms, heads, blankets, guns and knapsacks were thrown and tossed into the clear air.\" As the guns let rip, those on the flanks started to push inward, trying to make themselves invisible in the mass of men. But this only made the cannonfire more effective. By the time the Confederates were just 500 yards from enemy lines, they had lost formation. When they reached their target, they would be forced to fight in individual pockets, not as a single, powerful mass.\n\nThat assumed they reached their target at all. Many never would. When the charge hit Emmitsburg Road and the fences running alongside it, a mere 100 yards from Hancock's men, the Union unleashed a salvo of lead right into them. Over 400 rifle shots peppered the Confederate line at once. So many were wounded in the volley that Union positions reported hearing a loud groan rise into the air.\n\nYet the defense was only just getting started. As artillery joined the rifle fire, General Trimble fell from his horse. Moments later, General Pettigrew's men surged forward, just north of a jutting piece of stone wall known as the Angle. This was meant to be the main attack point, the place where the Confederates would break through and slice Meade's lines in half. Instead, nearly everyone who surged forward here was mown down. One Mississippi regiment lost every single one of its members. It was now clear that the attack was a costly failure, that the image of victory Lee thought he had seen had been a cruel mirage.\n\n## The Angle\n\nRather than end only in massacre, Pickett's Charge would first hit one of the most-fabled points in Civil War legend: the high-water mark of the Confederacy. Just as all seemed lost, Brigadier General Lewis Armistead personally led around 250 men from Pettigrew's and Pickett's divisions over the stone wall at the Angle and into history. With a cry of \"Come on, boys! Give them the cold steel!\" Armistead cut his way into the Union lines, before he himself was cut down by gunfire. Yet still his men surged on.\n\nFor a few breathless minutes, the Confederates were able to take ground at the Angle and hold it. Not that they had time to celebrate. The breakthrough was marked by fierce hand-to-hand combat, an ugly brawl for command of this fragment of Northern land. Seeing what was happening, Union Colonel Arthur Devereux urgently asked Hancock for permission to take his men into the Angle and join the fight. \"Let me in there!\" he shouted. To which Hancock grimly replied: \"Go in there pretty quick.\"\n\nBehind him ran other brigades, desperate to block the hole in their lines. Before they could get there, the Confederate cannons started up again, likely a wild attempt to give those taking the Angle some cover. But with everything such a mess, the shells had no hope of accuracy. Whether they were in Union blue or Confederate gray, those in the way died all the same. Among their number, very nearly, was Winfield S. Hancock himself. Mounted on his horse, the Union general was hit by a piece of shrapnel that buried in his leg, leaving an ugly wound. But while those around him insisted he get to a doctor, Hancock refused to leave. So long as the fight continued, he would remain in the field.\n\n## The Turning of the Tide\n\nLuckily for Hancock, the fight would not last much longer. Down at the Angle, the few remaining Confederates managed to push the Union troops back long enough for a breather, a chance to look around for the reinforcements they were sure were coming. What they saw instead was nothing, nothing of their backup but bodies on a battlefield. They had taken the Angle, all right. But now they were alone, with the full fury of Meade's reinforcements bearing down on them. With no other choice, they did what anyone would probably do: they ran for their lives, abandoning the Angle.\n\nIt was the turning of the tide, the retreat of the Confederate flood, leaving behind what later became known as the South's high-water mark. It would take nearly two more years, but eventually this turning tide was destined to sweep them all the way back to where they had come from.\n\nAfter the loss of the Angle, Pickett's Charge was effectively over. What men survived hauled themselves back across that mile of farmland, running for the safety of the Confederate lines like men who had just come within mere moments of death. And there had been a lot of death. In the near-hour that the fighting had raged, the Confederacy had suffered 6,555 men killed, missing, or wounded, equivalent to over half of all those who participated in Pickett's Charge. For the group that actually took the Angle, the rate was closer to 70 percent. Major General Pickett himself lost so many soldiers that he literally cried as he reported to Lee, his cheeks wet with tears.\n\n## Counting the Cost\n\nIt was not only the Confederacy that suffered that day. Across the lines, the bombardment and attack had left 1,500 Union men killed or wounded, a big number, but one dwarfed by Confederate casualties. As a shellshocked Rebel captain would later write of the charge: \"We gained nothing but glory, and lost our bravest men.\" He was not exaggerating. Of all Confederate casualties in the entire three-day Battle of Gettysburg, nearly a quarter occurred in this single hour.\n\nIn terms of noble, pointless, and bloody assaults, Pickett's Charge ranks above even the infamous Charge of the Light Brigade. Like the Light Brigade's failure, it would also be romanticized after the fact, turned into a noble endeavor rather than what it really was: a complete and utter disaster. Even Robert E. Lee could see this, standing and apologizing to his surviving men as they returned from the killing field. While his later reports would be written to absolve him of blame, on that bloody afternoon Lee personally went to the weeping Pickett and told him: \"General Pickett, this has been my fight, and upon my shoulders rests the blame.\"\n\nBut Pickett was not interested in forgiving the older man. For the rest of his life, and he lived until 1875, it is said that, in private, Pickett nursed a bitter grudge against the commander who had forced him to waste so many good soldiers.\n\n## Meade's Caution and the Verdict of History\n\nLee was not the only leader who came out of the charge looking bad. Across the lines, General Meade should have been feeling flush with victory. After all, it had been his judicious placing of troops that allowed for quick reinforcements when the Angle was breached. But Meade was not feeling flush with anything. As the Battle of Gettysburg reached its end, he found himself presiding over an Army of the Potomac that had just suffered more casualties than, to that point, any other army in US history.\n\nWhile some wanted him to now launch his own assault on the wounded Confederates, he was too aware of his men's exhaustion, and too aware of the risk that he might allow another Pickett's Charge to happen, this time in reverse. So he held back. And Lee and his army were able to retreat south, bloodied but intact. For this, Meade would be vilified by history.\n\nToday, with that perfect hindsight, Pickett's Charge has come to be seen as a turning point, the moment when the Rebels lost the Battle of Gettysburg and thus the war. This is not, however, the view among historians. For Civil War buffs, the fall of Vicksburg to Ulysses S. Grant's forces just a day later marks the real turning point of the conflict. Yet in the popular imagination, it is Gettysburg that made the difference, the moment when Lee finally overreached and suffered his first serious defeat.\n\nAll of which raises the question: why did the charge fail? There are numerous theories, some already outlined here, the failed bombardment, and the basic competence of Meade in putting reinforcements in place. There are others, too, that this analysis declines to entertain, such as the old canard that the North Carolinians in the charge got spooked and upset the formation.\n\nPerhaps the last word belongs to George Pickett himself, despite whatever he may have privately thought about Lee's culpability. When asked in late life why he thought the charge had failed, the old man mused simply: \"I've always thought the Yankees had something to do with it.\"\n\n## Frequently Asked Questions\n\n### How many troops took part in Pickett's Charge, and were they all under George Pickett?\n\nAround 12,500 Confederate troops took part. Despite the name, the Virginians under George Pickett made up only slightly over a third of those involved; the rest came from states including North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi. Generals Isaac Trimble and James Johnston Pettigrew and Brigadier General Lewis Armistead also led men in the charge. The charge is named after Pickett largely because the Richmond press, the de facto Confederate press corps by 1863, centered the version written by fellow Virginians shocked at the deaths.\n\n### Why did the Confederate artillery bombardment fail?\n\nThe bombardment failed for two main reasons: unreliable fuses and poor aim. Confederate shells often burst early, if they exploded at all, and rather than pounding the Union front lines, much of the cannonade flew overhead and smashed into the rear, killing horses and causing chaos but doing little to weaken the defending troops. Though it was the heaviest artillery duel ever fought on American soil, with 150 Confederate guns, it took out only a few Union guns and some horses.\n\n### What was the Angle and the high-water mark of the Confederacy?\n\nThe Angle was a jutting piece of stone wall on Cemetery Ridge that was meant to be the main breakthrough point. Brigadier General Lewis Armistead personally led around 250 men over the wall there, briefly taking and holding ground in fierce hand-to-hand combat before being cut down by gunfire. When no reinforcements arrived, the survivors abandoned the position and ran. This moment became known as the South's high-water mark, the furthest point of the Confederate advance.\n\n### How many casualties did each side suffer?\n\nIn the near-hour of fighting, the Confederacy suffered 6,555 men killed, missing, or wounded, over half of all those who took part, with a rate closer to 70 percent among those who reached the Angle. The Union lost about 1,500 men killed or wounded. Nearly a quarter of all Confederate casualties from the entire three-day Battle of Gettysburg occurred during this single hour.\n\n### Is Pickett's Charge considered the turning point of the Civil War?\n\nIn the popular imagination, Pickett's Charge is seen as the turning point, the moment Lee overreached and the Confederacy lost the war. Most historians, however, point to the fall of Vicksburg to Ulysses S. Grant's forces just a day later as the conflict's true turning point. Either way, the charge marked Lee's first serious defeat and the beginning of a long retreat that would, over nearly two more years, sweep the Confederacy back to where it had come from.\n\n## Related Coverage\n- [Power Projection: How Nations Extend Military Force Beyond Their Borders](https://warfronts.pub/military/power-projection-how-nations-extend-military-force-beyond-borders)\n\n## Sources\n1. \n2. \n3. \n\n[1]: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/picketts-charge\n[2]: https://www.historynet.com/picketts-charge-gettysburg/\n[3]: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/videos/picketts-charge\n\n" url: https://warfronts.pub/article/picketts-charge-gettysburgs-bloody-turning-point.md canonical: https://warfronts.pub/article/picketts-charge-gettysburgs-bloody-turning-point datePublished: 2026-06-02 dateModified: 2026-06-02 author: - name: Simon Whistler url: https://warfronts.pub/author/simon-whistler publisher: Warfronts image: "https://media.warfronts.pub/cdn-cgi/image/width=1600,height=900,fit=cover,quality=80,format=auto/articles/SJqfj7m1wiQ/hero.jpg" type: NewsArticle contentHash: f1730100c6b93296b8e6bc0c136eef8d4e07508c3d8f78ee2ee122548c3ad6a4 tokens: 6702 summaryUrl: https://warfronts.pub/article/picketts-charge-gettysburgs-bloody-turning-point.md.summary.md --- At 3pm on July 3, 1863, a line of 12,500 Confederate troops descended Seminary Ridge outside the small Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg. Ahead of them lay nearly a mile of open terrain. Beyond that waited a small hill and a low stone wall, behind which sheltered some 6,000 Union soldiers. The plan was simple: the Southerners would strike the Union at its point of maximum weakness, overwhelm its understaffed lines, and win not just the Battle of Gettysburg but enough glory to ensure their names went down in history. Robert E. Lee's men would indeed go down in history that day, but for the wrong reasons. The assault, known to posterity as Pickett's Charge, was destined to end not in victory but in one of the worst defeats suffered in the entire Civil War. It was a turning point inside a turning point, the tiny pivot that, perhaps, allowed history to swing on its axis. This is not the story of a conflict or even a battle, but of a single military action on a single day, an action that nonetheless changed the course of American history. Over the span of roughly one hour, more than 12,000 men advanced into a death trap of cannon and rifle fire from which thousands would never return. What follows is an account of how that charge was conceived, why it failed so catastrophically, and how it came to be remembered as the high-water mark of the Confederacy. ## Key Takeaways - Pickett's Charge was a single assault on July 3, 1863, the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, in which roughly 12,500 Confederate troops advanced nearly a mile across open farmland against the Union center on Cemetery Ridge. - Robert E. Lee, convinced the Union center was weak after two days of failed flank attacks, ordered a diversion at Culp's Hill followed by a massive charge, but coordination failures undermined the plan from the start. - The preliminary Confederate bombardment, with roughly 150 guns, was the heaviest artillery assault ever to take place on American soil, yet faulty fuses and poor aim left the Union lines largely intact. - Union commander George Meade correctly anticipated a strike at his center and positioned reinforcements that could move freely once the diversion ended, giving him a decisive edge. - The charge briefly breached the Union line at a stretch of stone wall called the Angle, the moment remembered as the Confederacy's high-water mark, before collapsing for lack of reinforcements. - In under an hour the Confederacy suffered 6,555 men killed, missing, or wounded, over half of those who took part, while the Union lost about 1,500. - Pickett's Charge is popularly seen as the turning point of the war, though many historians point to the fall of Vicksburg a day later as the conflict's true pivot. ## And, On the Third Day As the sun set on July 2, 1863, the United States was witnessing unprecedented carnage. At the end of its second day, the Battle of Gettysburg had been raging for nearly 48 hours, during which gruesome records of death and injury had been set. Some 165,000 troops had engaged in one of the largest fights ever to take place on US soil. As the hot, humid July day drew to a close, the fighting was far from over. South of the small Pennsylvania town, the Union Army of the Potomac under General George G. Meade had retreated to a set of low ridges and hills. One of these, Cemetery Ridge, lay directly across from a Confederate encampment on the near-homophone Seminary Ridge, where General Robert E. Lee was stationed. Between the two stretched not quite a mile of farmland studded with fences and stone walls, ground that would soon host the most brutal fighting of all. That evening, though, everything was quiet, or at least as quiet as things can be when over 150,000 adrenaline-filled men move around a confined space. In the two opposing camps, fierce debates were raging about what to do next. ## Two War Councils On the Confederate side, many of Lee's officers were urging a retreat. They had marched north to secure supplies and take the fight to the Union, they argued. Now that was done, why not draw back and preserve their strength? But Lee was not convinced. After two days of battle that seemed to favor his army, he felt victory must be at hand, that the Northerners must have a weak spot in their lines somewhere. That weak spot, he reasoned, he could exploit using fresh troops who had arrived that very afternoon: 4,500 Virginians specially held back under their commander, Major General George Pickett, the same George Pickett who would soon lend his name to the ill-fated charge. Over July 2, Lee's men had repeatedly hit the Union flanks, only to find them stronger than expected. Reasoning therefore that the center must be the weak point, Lee envisaged a diversionary attack at a flashpoint known as Culp's Hill that would make the Army of the Potomac quickly shift troops there, followed by a massive charge at the weakened center. All going well, his men would break through, split the Union lines in two, and be having tea in Pittsburgh before Meade knew what had hit him. Yet Lee was not the only one making plans. Across the dark farmland, General Meade was holding a war council of his own. Unlike the popular image of him as a bit of a buffoon, the real Meade was a man trying his best in extremely trying circumstances. Freshly promoted, he had barely taken over the Army of the Potomac when the battle erupted, throwing him headlong into a baptism of fire that also threatened to double as his funeral. Despite that, and despite some resentment among his men, he was already proving adept at moving troops into position to reinforce the lines, and at divining what his opponent might do next. That night, he divined that Lee was going to strike his center. Luckily for Meade, by the second evening of Gettysburg, Lee was getting sloppy. Unlike his Union counterpart, Lee held no great council of war and gave no hyper-detailed instructions, instead sending out orders that outlined goals and targets rather than a concrete plan. The resulting coordination issues would give Meade an unexpected edge, not much of one, but perhaps enough to ensure victory, and enough to ensure that George Pickett's men would go charging not into glory, but into their graves. ## A Hard Rain Falls Hindsight, the saying goes, is 20/20. With the benefit of that perfect vision, we can clearly see what those at the Battle of Gettysburg could not: that Lee's men started July 3 bedeviled by problems. Lee himself had woken at 3am to eat a simple breakfast under the stars. Then, fed, he mounted his gray horse and rode out in the equally gray light of dawn to make preparations. The first hint of the looming disaster came in his meeting with Lieutenant General James Longstreet. Stationed on Seminary Ridge, Longstreet would be instrumental to Lee's plan, directing the artillery designed to soften the enemy lines before giving the order to charge. But while Longstreet was loyal, he was less than enthusiastic about Lee's orders, trying to talk the general out of it even at this late stage. The next warning sign came while the two were on the ridge. At 8am, light flared at Culp's Hill. The diversionary attack on the flanks that Lee had ordered was beginning, yet the rest of his men were not even remotely ready to charge the center. The artillery bombardment would not begin for hours. That meant Meade would not find himself simultaneously trying to hold two parts of the line, leaving his reinforcements free to move around. This is where the whole lack-of-coordination problem starts to damage Lee's chances, especially given the unsustainable losses the Confederacy was suffering at Culp's Hill. But at the time, Lee thought he could still make out the faint outlines of victory. And he thought he had the perfect tools to win her favor. ## The Heaviest Cannonade on American Soil As the morning passed and the fighting at Culp's Hill intensified, the Union soldiers on Cemetery Ridge observed an awful sight: artillery guns being rolled into position on the Confederate side, gun after gun shifting to concentrate all its firepower on the Northern lines. The Union troops had gun batteries of their own, too, 75 of them, capable of hitting Seminary Ridge. But Lee laughed in the face of such a small number. By 1pm, his forces had marshaled 150 artillery pieces. At exactly 1:07pm on July 3, the order went out. A single shell fired in a puff of smoke: the signal for the Confederate batteries to open. So began not just the heaviest artillery assault of the Civil War, but the heaviest ever to take place on American soil. With 150 guns blasting their positions, the Union troops were caught in a maelstrom of lead and fire. Exploding shells tore trees to matchwood. Shrapnel killed anything not hugging the ground. In the rear, Meade's headquarters were, at one point, being hit with six shells a minute. It was like a foretaste of the horrors of the First World War, a poisonous appetizer of the evil that artillery would unleash in conflicts to come. It was also, however, a stupendous failure. ## A Bombardment That Missed Here is the thing with Confederate artillery: the fuses were unreliable. Exploding shells would burst not over cowering Union troops hugging the dirt, but early, if they exploded at all. On top of that, the aiming was off. Rather than pound the Northerners' front lines, the cannonade went whizzing overhead, smashing into the rear, where shells caused chaos and killed horses but otherwise did little to soften the Union troops up. A great anecdote from the battle shows just how ineffective the bombardment was. After initially ducking, Brigadier General Alexander Webb of the II Corps noticed how off-target the shells were. So, rather than staying low, he got up, strode to the copse of trees the Rebels were trying to hit, lit his pipe, and laconically sat there smoking and smiling as shell after shell failed to kill him. He was not the only one. The commander on Cemetery Ridge, General Winfield S. Hancock, likewise mounted his horse and rode along the frontlines, both a symbol of courage for his men and a very open way of taunting in Lee's general direction. Given that this was literally the biggest artillery duel ever to take place in the United States, its results were a dismal failure: a few Union guns taken out, some dead horses, a whole lot of sound and fury signifying, exactly, what? The tragedy was that the Confederates did not know this. Over on their side, the Rebels were already preparing for the charge, assuming the troops facing them must already be severely weakened. It was this one flawed assumption that would turn Pickett's Charge into a massacre. ## Into the Inferno Before the charge itself, a common misconception is worth addressing. Despite being called "Pickett's Charge," the coming disaster involved far more men than George Pickett commanded. The Virginians under his command made up only slightly over a third of all troops involved. There were thousands of others, 12,500 in all, from states like North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi. Nor was George Pickett the only commander. Generals Isaac Trimble and James Johnston Pettigrew would charge right alongside him, as would Brigadier General Lewis Armistead. Armistead, as it happened, had been close friends before the war with Winfield S. Hancock, the very Union general now defending against his charge, a reminder that civil wars are good for drama and awful for interpersonal relationships. So why is the charge named after Pickett? The answer has to do with Richmond, Virginia. By 1863, the press operating out of Richmond had become the de facto Confederate press corps, the only outlet capable of fielding reporters who could cover all major battles. So when a whole host of Virginians were killed attacking Cemetery Ridge, the entire South got the version written by fellow Virginians, shocked at their deaths, a version that centered the actions of those from Old Dominion and their commander, George Pickett. Back on the front lines, the two-hour cannon duel thundered toward its conclusion. As the Confederacy began running low on shells, anxious commanders waited for Longstreet to order the charge, an order he was desperate not to give. Examining the terrain, Longstreet saw the near mile of uneven ground, the fences that would have to be broken or crossed, and the Emmitsburg Road running through the middle. He saw the humidity and heat, pushing 87 degrees Fahrenheit, in which his soldiers had been sweltering for hours. It did not take a genius to see how this could all go badly wrong. But Lee had made it clear the attack would go ahead. So, just before 3pm, Longstreet ordered the shelling to end. When a junior officer asked whether they should now advance, the lieutenant general, unable to vocalize, gave only a jerky nod. Yet this was signal enough. ## The March of Automatons Along the line, the cannons fell silent. Behind Seminary Ridge, within a sheltering woodline, thousands of men got to their feet and marched forward, a line of Rebel troops over a mile from end to end, prepared to meet their fates. They were arranged in compact lines, with more men concentrated to the right-hand flank, planning to bunch closer as they advanced until they created an overwhelming force that would punch right through Hancock's line. Toward the center, Pickett let out a cry to his own men: "Don't forget today that you are from Old Virginia!" And with that, the charge began, though it was not a "charge" in the sense of moving fast. Rather than running and giving the Rebel yell, the Confederate soldiers marched ahead at the regulation pace of 100 yards a minute. This was to stop the line from breaking, ensuring that when the order came, all could stop at once and unleash a hail of musket fire as a single coordinated mass. But it had a real psychological effect, too. At the Union lines, soldiers watched the advance with terror. One man wrote that the Southerners moved like "automatons," deadly and seemingly unstoppable. Others confided in letters that they expected to shortly be in a Confederate prison. It is easy to see why. Behind the stone wall, Hancock commanded only 6,000 men. They were outnumbered, outgunned. Yet that fear would soon dissipate. As the charge reached the first wooden fence, the Union guns that had survived the cannonade suddenly roared to life. There was a blast, and then the Confederate left flank was being hit. Men fell. The line wavered. And just like that, the fog of war lifted from everyone's eyes, and it became obvious what was about to happen. The men in Pickett's Charge were advancing into a pincer of cannon and rifle fire from which there would be no escape. Now the only question was how many would make it back alive. ## The South's High-Water Mark The march across Pennsylvania's farmland that day must have seemed like one of those nightmares where you can see the terrible thing about to happen but are powerless to stop it. When the Union guns opened up, the death toll was staggering. Northern troops reported seeing ten men killed by a single shell. As one soldier from Ohio wrote: "Arms, heads, blankets, guns and knapsacks were thrown and tossed into the clear air." As the guns let rip, those on the flanks started to push inward, trying to make themselves invisible in the mass of men. But this only made the cannonfire more effective. By the time the Confederates were just 500 yards from enemy lines, they had lost formation. When they reached their target, they would be forced to fight in individual pockets, not as a single, powerful mass. That assumed they reached their target at all. Many never would. When the charge hit Emmitsburg Road and the fences running alongside it, a mere 100 yards from Hancock's men, the Union unleashed a salvo of lead right into them. Over 400 rifle shots peppered the Confederate line at once. So many were wounded in the volley that Union positions reported hearing a loud groan rise into the air. Yet the defense was only just getting started. As artillery joined the rifle fire, General Trimble fell from his horse. Moments later, General Pettigrew's men surged forward, just north of a jutting piece of stone wall known as the Angle. This was meant to be the main attack point, the place where the Confederates would break through and slice Meade's lines in half. Instead, nearly everyone who surged forward here was mown down. One Mississippi regiment lost every single one of its members. It was now clear that the attack was a costly failure, that the image of victory Lee thought he had seen had been a cruel mirage. ## The Angle Rather than end only in massacre, Pickett's Charge would first hit one of the most-fabled points in Civil War legend: the high-water mark of the Confederacy. Just as all seemed lost, Brigadier General Lewis Armistead personally led around 250 men from Pettigrew's and Pickett's divisions over the stone wall at the Angle and into history. With a cry of "Come on, boys! Give them the cold steel!" Armistead cut his way into the Union lines, before he himself was cut down by gunfire. Yet still his men surged on. For a few breathless minutes, the Confederates were able to take ground at the Angle and hold it. Not that they had time to celebrate. The breakthrough was marked by fierce hand-to-hand combat, an ugly brawl for command of this fragment of Northern land. Seeing what was happening, Union Colonel Arthur Devereux urgently asked Hancock for permission to take his men into the Angle and join the fight. "Let me in there!" he shouted. To which Hancock grimly replied: "Go in there pretty quick." Behind him ran other brigades, desperate to block the hole in their lines. Before they could get there, the Confederate cannons started up again, likely a wild attempt to give those taking the Angle some cover. But with everything such a mess, the shells had no hope of accuracy. Whether they were in Union blue or Confederate gray, those in the way died all the same. Among their number, very nearly, was Winfield S. Hancock himself. Mounted on his horse, the Union general was hit by a piece of shrapnel that buried in his leg, leaving an ugly wound. But while those around him insisted he get to a doctor, Hancock refused to leave. So long as the fight continued, he would remain in the field. ## The Turning of the Tide Luckily for Hancock, the fight would not last much longer. Down at the Angle, the few remaining Confederates managed to push the Union troops back long enough for a breather, a chance to look around for the reinforcements they were sure were coming. What they saw instead was nothing, nothing of their backup but bodies on a battlefield. They had taken the Angle, all right. But now they were alone, with the full fury of Meade's reinforcements bearing down on them. With no other choice, they did what anyone would probably do: they ran for their lives, abandoning the Angle. It was the turning of the tide, the retreat of the Confederate flood, leaving behind what later became known as the South's high-water mark. It would take nearly two more years, but eventually this turning tide was destined to sweep them all the way back to where they had come from. After the loss of the Angle, Pickett's Charge was effectively over. What men survived hauled themselves back across that mile of farmland, running for the safety of the Confederate lines like men who had just come within mere moments of death. And there had been a lot of death. In the near-hour that the fighting had raged, the Confederacy had suffered 6,555 men killed, missing, or wounded, equivalent to over half of all those who participated in Pickett's Charge. For the group that actually took the Angle, the rate was closer to 70 percent. Major General Pickett himself lost so many soldiers that he literally cried as he reported to Lee, his cheeks wet with tears. ## Counting the Cost It was not only the Confederacy that suffered that day. Across the lines, the bombardment and attack had left 1,500 Union men killed or wounded, a big number, but one dwarfed by Confederate casualties. As a shellshocked Rebel captain would later write of the charge: "We gained nothing but glory, and lost our bravest men." He was not exaggerating. Of all Confederate casualties in the entire three-day Battle of Gettysburg, nearly a quarter occurred in this single hour. In terms of noble, pointless, and bloody assaults, Pickett's Charge ranks above even the infamous Charge of the Light Brigade. Like the Light Brigade's failure, it would also be romanticized after the fact, turned into a noble endeavor rather than what it really was: a complete and utter disaster. Even Robert E. Lee could see this, standing and apologizing to his surviving men as they returned from the killing field. While his later reports would be written to absolve him of blame, on that bloody afternoon Lee personally went to the weeping Pickett and told him: "General Pickett, this has been my fight, and upon my shoulders rests the blame." But Pickett was not interested in forgiving the older man. For the rest of his life, and he lived until 1875, it is said that, in private, Pickett nursed a bitter grudge against the commander who had forced him to waste so many good soldiers. ## Meade's Caution and the Verdict of History Lee was not the only leader who came out of the charge looking bad. Across the lines, General Meade should have been feeling flush with victory. After all, it had been his judicious placing of troops that allowed for quick reinforcements when the Angle was breached. But Meade was not feeling flush with anything. As the Battle of Gettysburg reached its end, he found himself presiding over an Army of the Potomac that had just suffered more casualties than, to that point, any other army in US history. While some wanted him to now launch his own assault on the wounded Confederates, he was too aware of his men's exhaustion, and too aware of the risk that he might allow another Pickett's Charge to happen, this time in reverse. So he held back. And Lee and his army were able to retreat south, bloodied but intact. For this, Meade would be vilified by history. Today, with that perfect hindsight, Pickett's Charge has come to be seen as a turning point, the moment when the Rebels lost the Battle of Gettysburg and thus the war. This is not, however, the view among historians. For Civil War buffs, the fall of Vicksburg to Ulysses S. Grant's forces just a day later marks the real turning point of the conflict. Yet in the popular imagination, it is Gettysburg that made the difference, the moment when Lee finally overreached and suffered his first serious defeat. All of which raises the question: why did the charge fail? There are numerous theories, some already outlined here, the failed bombardment, and the basic competence of Meade in putting reinforcements in place. There are others, too, that this analysis declines to entertain, such as the old canard that the North Carolinians in the charge got spooked and upset the formation. Perhaps the last word belongs to George Pickett himself, despite whatever he may have privately thought about Lee's culpability. When asked in late life why he thought the charge had failed, the old man mused simply: "I've always thought the Yankees had something to do with it." ## Frequently Asked Questions ### How many troops took part in Pickett's Charge, and were they all under George Pickett? Around 12,500 Confederate troops took part. Despite the name, the Virginians under George Pickett made up only slightly over a third of those involved; the rest came from states including North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi. Generals Isaac Trimble and James Johnston Pettigrew and Brigadier General Lewis Armistead also led men in the charge. The charge is named after Pickett largely because the Richmond press, the de facto Confederate press corps by 1863, centered the version written by fellow Virginians shocked at the deaths. ### Why did the Confederate artillery bombardment fail? The bombardment failed for two main reasons: unreliable fuses and poor aim. Confederate shells often burst early, if they exploded at all, and rather than pounding the Union front lines, much of the cannonade flew overhead and smashed into the rear, killing horses and causing chaos but doing little to weaken the defending troops. Though it was the heaviest artillery duel ever fought on American soil, with 150 Confederate guns, it took out only a few Union guns and some horses. ### What was the Angle and the high-water mark of the Confederacy? The Angle was a jutting piece of stone wall on Cemetery Ridge that was meant to be the main breakthrough point. Brigadier General Lewis Armistead personally led around 250 men over the wall there, briefly taking and holding ground in fierce hand-to-hand combat before being cut down by gunfire. When no reinforcements arrived, the survivors abandoned the position and ran. This moment became known as the South's high-water mark, the furthest point of the Confederate advance. ### How many casualties did each side suffer? In the near-hour of fighting, the Confederacy suffered 6,555 men killed, missing, or wounded, over half of all those who took part, with a rate closer to 70 percent among those who reached the Angle. The Union lost about 1,500 men killed or wounded. Nearly a quarter of all Confederate casualties from the entire three-day Battle of Gettysburg occurred during this single hour. ### Is Pickett's Charge considered the turning point of the Civil War? In the popular imagination, Pickett's Charge is seen as the turning point, the moment Lee overreached and the Confederacy lost the war. Most historians, however, point to the fall of Vicksburg to Ulysses S. Grant's forces just a day later as the conflict's true turning point. Either way, the charge marked Lee's first serious defeat and the beginning of a long retreat that would, over nearly two more years, sweep the Confederacy back to where it had come from. ## Related Coverage - [Power Projection: How Nations Extend Military Force Beyond Their Borders](https://warfronts.pub/military/power-projection-how-nations-extend-military-force-beyond-borders) ## Sources 1. 2. 3. [1]: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/picketts-charge [2]: https://www.historynet.com/picketts-charge-gettysburg/ [3]: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/videos/picketts-charge <!-- youtube:SJqfj7m1wiQ -->