Unfortunately, through some mistake on the part of Lee’s staff, the order of attack which had been already issued was not rescinded.  It was certainly an extraordinary production.  “Batteries,” it ran, “have been established to rake the enemy’s line.  If it is broken, as is probable, Armistead, who can witness the effect of the fire, has been ordered to charge with a yell.  Do the same."* (* O.R. volume 11 part 1 page 677.) This was to D.H.  Hill and to Magruder, who had under his command Huger’s and McLaws’ divisions as well as his own.

5.30 P.M.

So, between five and six o’clock, General D.H.  Hill, believing that he heard the appointed signal, broke forward from the timber, and five brigades, in one irregular line, charged full against the enemy’s front.  The Federals, disposed in several lines, were in overwhelming strength.  Their batteries were free to concentrate on the advancing infantry.  Their riflemen, posted in the interval between the artillery masses, swept the long slopes with a grazing fire, while fence, bank, and ravine, gave shelter from the Confederate bullets.  Nor were the enormous difficulties which confronted the attack in any way mitigated by careful arrangement on the part of the Confederate staff.  The only hope of success, if success were possible, lay in one strong concentrated effort; in employing the whole army; in supporting the infantry with artillery, regardless of loss, at close range; and in hurling a mass of men, in several successive lines, against one point of the enemy’s position.  It is possible that the Federal army, already demoralised by retreat, might have yielded to such vigorous pressure.  But in the Confederate attack there was not the slightest attempt at concentration.  The order which dictated it gave an opening to misunderstanding; and, as is almost invariably the case when orders are defective, misunderstanding occurred.  The movement was premature.  Magruder had only two brigades of his three divisions, Armistead’s and Wright’s, in position.  Armistead, who was well in advance of the Confederate right, was attacked by a strong body of skirmishers.  D.H.  Hill took the noise of this conflict for the appointed signal, and moved forward.  The divisions which should have supported him had not yet crossed the swamp in rear; and thus 10,500 men, absolutely unaided, advanced against the whole Federal army.  The blunder met with terrible retribution.  On that midsummer evening death reaped a fearful harvest.  The gallant Confederate infantry, nerved by their success at Gaines’ Mill, swept up the field with splendid determination.  “It was the onset of battle,” said a Federal officer present, “with the good order of a review.”  But the iron hail of grape and canister, laying the ripe wheat low as if it had been cut with a sickle, and tossing the shocks in air, rent the advancing lines from end to end.  Hundreds fell, hundreds swarmed back to the woods, but still the brigades pressed on, and through the smoke of battle the waving