When he did attack, it was indeed magnificent. Gray and blue fought with equal valor. Perhaps they realized that they were making history, and that the fate of a na- tion depended on their efforts ; or perhaps they fought without any realization except that they were Americans, and that those heights were to be taken or to be held. But, as throughout the whole war, with courage so equal, defense was stronger than attack.
Again and again Longstreet hurled his columns at those rocky slopes, sometimes gaining a foothold in one place, sometimes in another. Each time Sickles, Warren, Humphreys, and the rest threw the aggressors back, and the immense advantage of the curved Union position enabled Meade to sustain weak and threatened points, while Lee's separated flanks could not act in harmony with each other.
Thus, at the end of the second day, the Confederate general had tried both wings of his antagonist, and in spite of temporary shifts of fortune, had found them both invulnerable.
There remained the Union centre, Cemetery Hill, as yet untried. To storm that high point, which could be readily strengthened by troops hurried from either flank, seemed a wild adventure. Events proved that it was a wild adventure. When the general-in-chief assigned the task to Pickett's splendid division, which had all this time been held in reserve, Longstreet, the corps com-
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