About one o'clock one hundred and fifty-five guns suddenly opened on that one division. For two hours the air was fairly alive with shells. Every size and form of shell known to British or American gunnery shrieked, whirled, moaned, whistled and wrathfully fluttered over the ground, says Wilkinson. "As many as six in a second, constantly two in a second came screaming around the headquarters. They burst in the yard; burst next to the fence where the horses belonging to the aids and orderlies were hitched. The fastened animals reared and plunged with terror. One horse fell, then another; sixteen lay dead before the cannonade ceased. Through the midst of the storm of screaming and exploding shells an ambulance driven at full speed by its frenzied conductor presented the marvelous spectacle of a horse going rapidly on three legs, a hind one had been shot off at the hock. A shell tore up the little step at the headquarters cottage and ripped bags of oats as with a knife. Another shell soon carried off one of its two pillars. Soon a spherical case burst opposite the open door, another tore through the low garret, the remaining pillar went almost immediately to the howl of a fixed shot that Whitworth must have made. Soldiers in Federal blue were torn to pieces in the road and died with the peculiar yell that blends the extorted cry of pain with horror and despair."
"The Union guns," says Barnes, "replied for a time, and were then withdrawn to cool." Probably the experience of the veteran troops knew that they would soon be needed for closer work. The men lay crouching behind rocks and hiding in hollows, from the iron tempest which drove over the hill, anxiously awaiting the charge, which experience taught them, must follow. Finally the cannonade lulled, the supreme minute had come, and out of the woods swept the Confederate double battle-line, over a mile long, preceded by a cloud of skirmishers, and with wings on either side to prevent its being flanked. This was Lee's first charge, and upon it depended, as subsequently seen, the rise or fall of the Confederate cause.
A quarter of a mile away, and a hundred guns tore great gaps in the line, but the men closed up and sternly moved on. A thrill of admiration ran along the Union ranks as silently and with disciplined steadiness, that magnificent column of eighteen thousand men moved up the slope, with its red battle-flags flying, and the sun playing on its burnished bayonets. On they came on the run. Infantry volleys struck their ranks. Their ranks were broken, and their supports were scattered to the winds. Pickett's veterans and A. P. Hill's best troops went down. Out of that magnificent column of men, only one-fourth returned to tell the story. Three generals, fourteen field officers, and fourteen thousand men were either slain or captured. This was the supreme moment of the war; from that hour the Confederate cause waned and slowly died.