[Illustration:  R.C.  Carlisle Major and Surgeon, 7th S.C.  Regiment]

[Illustration:  Capt.  J. A, Mitchell, Co.  E, 7th S.C.  Regiment.]

[Illustration:  Capt.  D.J.  Griffith, Co.  C, 15th S.C.  Regiment]

[Illustration:  Capt.  Andrew T. Harllee, Co.  I, 8th S.C.  Regiment.]

* * * * *

CHAPTER XVIII

Battle of Gettysburg—­July 2d.

When the troops were aroused from their slumbers on that beautiful clear morning of the 2d of July, the sun had long since shot its rays over the quaint old, now historic, town of Gettysburg, sleeping down among the hills and spurs of the Blue Ridge.  After an all-night’s march, and a hard day’s work before them, the troops were allowed all the rest and repose possible.  I will here state that Longstreet had with him only two divisions of his corps, with four brigades to a division.  Pickett was left near Chambersburg to protect the numerous supply trains.  Jenkins’ South Carolina brigade of his division had been left in Virginia to guard the mountain passes against a possible cavalry raid, and thus had not the opportunity of sharing with the other South Carolinians in the glories that will forever cluster around Gettysburg.  They would, too, had they been present, have enjoyed and deserved the halo that will for all time surround the “charge of Pickett,” a charge that will go down in history with Balaclava and Hohenlinden.

A.P.  Hill, aided by part of Ewell’s corps, had fought a winning fight the day before, and had driven the enemy from the field through the streets of the sleepy old town of Gettysburg to the high ground on the east.  But this was only the advance guard of General Meade, thrown forward to gain time in order to bring up his main army.  He was now concentrating it with all haste, and forming in rear of the rugged ridge running south of Gettysburg and culminating in the promontories at the Round Top.  Behind this ridge was soon to assemble an army, if not the largest, yet the grandest, best disciplined, best equipped of all time, with an incentive to do successful battle as seldom falls to the lot of an army, and on its success or defeat depended the fate of two nations.

There was a kind of intuition, an apparent settled fact, among the soldiers of Longstreet’s corps, that after all the other troops had made their long marches, tugged at the flanks of the enemy, threatened his rear, and all the display of strategy and generalship had been exhausted in the dislodgement of the foe, and all these failed, then when the hard, stubborn, decisive blow was to be struck, the troops of the first corps were called upon to strike it.  Longstreet had informed Lee at the outset, “My corps is as solid as a rock—­a great rock.  I will strike the blow, and win, if the other troops gather the fruits of victory.”  How confident the old “War Horse,” as General Lee called