of the second, and Ewell was still rooted firmly, it seemed, in their works near Gettysburg.  These advantages were certainly considerable, and promised success to the Southern arms, if the assault were renewed.  But the most weighty consideration prompting a renewal of the attack was the condition of the troops.  They were undismayed and unshaken either in spirit or efficiency, and were known both to expect and to desire a resumption of the assault.  Even after the subsequent charge of Pickett, which resulted so disastrously, the ragged infantry were heard exclaiming:  “We’ve not lost confidence in the old man!  This day’s work won’t do him no harm!  Uncle Robert will get us into Washington yet!” Add to this the fact that the issue of the second day had stirred up in Lee himself all the martial ardor of his nature; and there never lived a more thorough soldier, when he was fully aroused, than the Virginian.  All this soldiership of the man revolted at the thought of retreating and abandoning his great enterprise.  He looked, on the one hand, at his brave army, ready at the word to again advance upon the enemy—­at that enemy scarce able on the previous day to hold his position—­and, weighing every circumstance in his comprehensive mind, which “looked before and after,” Lee determined on the next morning to try a decisive assault upon the Federal troops; to storm, if possible, the Cemetery Range, and at one great blow terminate the campaign and the war.

The powerful influences which we have mentioned, cooeperating, shaped the decision to which Lee had come.  He would not retreat, but fight.  The campaign should not be abandoned without at least one great charge upon the Federal position; and orders were now given for a renewal of the attack on the next morning.  “The general plan of attack,” Lee says, “was unchanged, except that one division and two brigades of Hill’s corps were ordered to support Longstreet.”  From these words it is obvious that Lee’s main aim now, as on the preceding day, was to force back the Federal left in front of Longstreet, and seize the high ground commanding the whole ridge in flank and reverse.  To this end Longstreet was reenforced, and the great assault was evidently intended to take place in that quarter.  But circumstances caused an alteration, as will be seen, in Lee’s plans.  The centre, thus weakened, was from stress of events to become the point of decisive struggle.  The assaults of the previous day had been directed against the two extremities of the enemy; the assault of the third day, which would decide the fate of the battle and the campaign, was to be the furious rush of Pickett’s division of Virginian troops at the enemy’s centre, on Cemetery Hill.