It had not been enough, however. Against successive waves of Federal units, the Rebels had finally stalled. When other Confederate divisions did not continue the en echelon assaults as Lee had directed, Meade's army still clung to Cemetery Ridge and Little Round Top. Lee watched the terrible struggle and concluded that if his commanders could coordinate their assaults, the Yankees could not withstand the thrusts. That night Lee ordered a renewal of the offensive for daylight, Friday, July 3.

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Before sunrise Lee rode to Longstreet's position, near the position known ever since as the Peach Orchard, where he expected to find preparations for the assault underway. When he did not find the men forming, Lee sought Longstreet and an explanation.

'General,' Longstreet said in welcome, 'I have had my scouts out all night, and I find that you still have an excellent opportunity to move around to the right of Meade's army and maneuver him into attacking us.'

Lee clearly was angry; he had heard enough. He pointed toward Cemetery Ridge and said, 'The enemy is there, and I am going to strike him.'

As Longstreet saw the situation, Lee wanted too much. Longstreet said that a direct assault on the Federal position was doomed — that it would mean 'the sacrifice of my men.' As Longstreet recalled later: 'I felt then that it was my duty to express my convictions. I said, 'General, I have been a soldier all my life. I have been with soldiers engaged in fights by couples, by squads, companies, regiments, divisions, and armies, and should know, as well as anyone, what soldiers can do. It is my opinion that no fifteen thousand men ever arranged for battle can take that position."

The exchange was a defining moment between the two generals — the culmination of three days of disagreement over the army's tactics. From the afternoon of the 1st, Longstreet had seen Lee taking risks, willing to accept casualties while striking the enemy. Now, Lee was asking even more, a frontal assault with no chance of success, with an enormous loss of life a certainty. The idea went against the basic beliefs and characteristics of Longstreet's generalship.

'Never was I so depressed,' Longstreet wrote afterward of this day. But Lee's orders stood, and preparations proceeded throughout the morning. Longstreet had responsibility for the assault force comprising Maj. Gen. George E. Pickett's three brigades and six brigades from A.P. Hill's corps.

Following a thunderous artillery bombardment, the brave Pickett rode to Longstreet for the order to advance. The senior officer was so overcome with emotion that he could not speak — he only nodded his head. When Pickett turned away, Longstreet went to Alexander's batteries and there told the artillery officer: 'I don't want to make this attack. I believe it will fail — I would not make it even now, but the General Lee has ordered it & expects it.'

Longstreet then watched as the Confederate ranks marched toward the ridge — and to the slaughter he had predicted. Union cannon crews and infantrymen blasted apart the Southern units in a gale of death. As the remnants of the brigades stumbled back to Seminary Ridge, Longstreet saw that 'Pickett's division was gone.' Nearby, Lee rode among the survivors, remarking to a general, 'All this has been my fault — it is I that have lost this fight.'

Pickett's Charge, as it came to be called, was a dramatic finale to a battle rich in drama. Lee's army began its retreat the next day and within a fortnight had returned to safety in Virginia. Before long, examination of Gettysburg began; and it will, in all likelihood, continue as long as Americans seek explanations of the past. Part of the nation's soul lay in such places as Culp's Hill, Cemetery Hill, Little Round Top, the Wheat Field, the Valley of Death, Devil's Den, Trostle's Woods and Cemetery Ridge. After Appomattox and the end of the Confederacy two years later, Southerners fashioned their own interpretation of the conflict, and Gettysburg became the tantalizing and bitter 'if' of the war.

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