419.  Gettysburg, July 3, 1863.—­Early on this morning the Union soldiers drove the Confederates away from Culp’s Hill and held the whole ridge.  Now again, as at Malvern Hill (p. 321), Lee had fought the Army of the Potomac to a standstill.  But he would not admit failure.  Led by Pickett of Virginia, thirteen thousand men charged across the valley between the two armies directly at the Union center.  Some of them even penetrated the Union lines.  But there the line stopped.  Slowly it began to waver.  Then back the Confederates went—­all who escaped.  The battle of Gettysburg was won.  Lee faced the Army of the Potomac for another day and then retreated.  In this tremendous conflict the Confederates lost twenty-two thousand five hundred men killed and wounded and five thousand taken prisoners by the Northerners—­a total loss of twenty-eight thousand out of eighty thousand in the battle.  The Union army numbered ninety-three thousand men and lost twenty-three thousand, killed and wounded.  Vicksburg and Gettysburg cost the South sixty-five thousand fighting men—­a loss that could not be made good.  We must now turn to eastern Tennessee.

[Sidenote:  Rosecrans and Bragg, 1863.]

[Sidenote:  Chickamauga, September, 1863.]

[Sidenote:  Thomas and Sheridan.]

[Sidenote:  Grant in command in the West.]

420.  Chickamauga, September, 1863.—­For six months after Murfreesboro’ (p. 326) Rosecrans and Bragg remained in their camps.  In the summer of 1863 Rosecrans, by a series of skillful marchings, forced Bragg to abandon Chattanooga.  But Bragg was now greatly strengthened by soldiers from the Mississippi and by Longstreet’s division from Lee’s army in Virginia.  He turned on Rosecrans, and attacked him at Chickamauga Creek.  The right wing of the Union army was driven from the field.  But Thomas, “the Rock of Chickamauga,” with his men stood fast.  Bragg attacked him again and again, and failed every time, although he had double Thomas’s numbers.  Rosecrans, believing the battle to be lost, had ridden off to Chattanooga, but Sheridan aided Thomas as well as he could.  The third day Thomas and Bragg kept their positions, and then the Union soldiers retired unpursued to Chattanooga.  The command of the whole army at Chattanooga was now given to Thomas, and Grant was placed in control of all the Western armies.

[Illustration:  GENERAL THOMAS.]

[Sidenote:  Sherman’s attack.]

[Sidenote:  Hooker’s attack.]

[Sidenote:  Thomas’s attack.]

[Sidenote:  Rout of the Confederates, November, 1863.]

421.  Chattanooga, November, 1863.—­The Union soldiers at Chattanooga were in great danger.  For the Confederates were all about them and they could get no food.  But help was at hand.  Hooker, with fifteen thousand men from the Army of the Potomac, arrived and opened a road by which food could reach Chattanooga.  Then Grant came with Sherman’s corps from Vicksburg.  He at once