"What if Lee, so confident in an army that rarely had failed him, had listened to subordinates and decided against the suicidal Pickett's Charge, saving his army to fight another day on a more favorable northern field?"
A new book "The Civil War in 50 Objects" by Harold Holzer includes the accounts of two officers at Gettysburg-- one who died and one who survived.
Confederate Brigadier General Paul Semmes (wonder if he was related to Confederate Admiral Raphael Semmes, commander of the CSS Alabama), a Georgian, was mortally wounded on the second day at Gettysburg in a charge against Little Round Top. Semmes lingered for eight days before his death and wrote his wife a letter in which he said, "My brigade suffered severely and behaved well."
Lt. Colonel William H. Paine of the 4th Wisconsin was a mapmaker who witnessed Pickett's Charge into point-blank artillery grape shot and rifle fire.
Essentially, the High Tide of a Nation. --Old Secesh
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