The Killer Angels: Part 4

He was high on the summit of Round Top, higher than any man in either army.

“My men need rations, Lieutenant,” Chamberlain said.

There was an exultation, a huge delight: I was alive.

To Tom he said, “You go down and alert the pickets. May be a diversion on that flank. They may be coming this way again. Send Ruel Thomas to me, tell him to send another call to Rice for ammunition.”

He was a puffing lieutenant staggering up among the rocks.

Man nearby, lying on his back, one hand groping upward, oddly reaching for the sky.

An anger Longstreet had never seen before contorted the old man’s face.

Soldiers were drifting up to stand happily by, gazing with paternal affection at Lee, at Longstreet.

Ewell reported that Johnson was being compelled to fall back from the trenches he had won the night before.

Lee said, “The line there is not strong. Meade has strengthened both his flanks; he must be weak in the center. I estimate his strength in the center at not much more than five thousand men. The artillery barrage will upset them.”

Alexander rode up: a young man; nondescript face but very capable.

The lieutenant who was their guide was a dapper young man named Pitzer, who liked to gossip, to show that he was privy to great secrets.

He climbed a stone fence, knee high, saw a shallow depression filled with dead horses, dragged there to get them off the crest, legs and guts and glaring teeth, beginning to smell.

The rider, solicitous, hopped down, offered him the horse, led the animal by the bridle, making Chamberlain feel boyish and ridiculous.

Chamberlain turned, saw the Union guns beginning to open up, to give it back, saw forms moving in the smoke, saw a whole line fire at once, wondered if an attack was coming, thought: how can you form to repel an attack?

They moved on up the line, ethereal, untouched.

And we ought to conserve our long-range stuff.

Pickett took it, looked at it, a sentimental man; he reached out and took Armistead’s hand and pumped it wordlessly, then flung an arm wildly out toward the guns, the noise, the hill to the east.

We have some educated troops, you know, gentlemen privates. Well, I was riding along the line and I heard one of these fellas, ex-professor type, declaiming this poem

He made them cease fire, knowing soon we’d be in the open.

Suddenly, in the dark grove, for no reason at all, Armistead looked at the dark face, the broad back, felt a bolt of almost stunning affection.

To the left of the line a rabbit broke from heavy brush, darted frantically out into the tall grass.

Now for the first time, at just the wrong time, the acute depression hit him a blow to the brain.

He saw the line falter, the men beginning to clump together.

He leaped a fence and became aware of a horse following and swung and saw the face of Goree, the frail Texan trailing him like the wind.

He looked out at the burial parties and the lights beginning to come on across the field like clusters of carrion fireflies.

He said, “We must look to our own deportment. The spirit of the Army is still very good.”

His own mind was blasted and clean, windblown; he was still slightly in shock from the bombardment and he sat not thinking of anything but watching the last light of the enormous day, treasuring the last gray moment.

He had dust all over him, a fine pulverized powder from the shelling, dust in his hair and eyes and dust gritty in his teeth, and now he lifted his face to the rain and licked his lips and could taste the dirt on his face and knew that he would remember that too, the last moment at Gettysburg, the taste of raw earth in the cold and blowing dark, the touch of cold rain, the blaze of lightning.

The light rain went on falling on the hills above Gettysburg, but it was only the overture to the great storm to come.

I alone am to blame, in perhaps expecting too much of its prowess and valor...

For this he is branded a turncoat, within two years of the end of the war is being referred to by Southern newspapers as “the most hated man in the South.”

At the great reunion, years later, of the Army of Northern Virginia, Longstreet is not even invited, but he comes anyway, stubborn to the end, walks down the aisle in his old gray uniform, stars of a general on his collar, and is received by an enormous ovation by the men, with tears and an embrace from Jefferson Davis.

Serves with courage until the end, but as a corps commander he is fated never to achieve distinction.

In Maine he is elected Governor by the largest majority in the history of the state and returned to office three times, where he alienates political friends by refusing to agree to the impeachment of Andrew Johnson.