The following extract is taken from a description of the assault by Colonel Taylor, of General Lee’s staff: “It is needless to say a word here of the heroic conduct of Pickett’s division, that charge has already passed into history as ‘one of the world’s great deeds of arms.’ While doubtless many brave men of other commands reached the crest of the heights, this was the only organized body which entered the works of the enemy.” Pickett’s left and Pettigrew’s and Trimble’s right entered the works. Men from six brigades were there. Which command had most representatives there is a disputed point. As to the superior organization of Pickett’s men what did that amount to? In the nature of things not a brigade on the held was in a condition to repel a determined attack.
Just before the final rush two bodies of Federals moved out on the field and opened fire, the one upon our right the other upon the left. The loss inflicted upon our people by these Vermonters and New Yorkers was very great, and not being able to defend themselves, there was on the part of the survivors a natural crowding to the centre. The commander of a Federal brigade in his report says, “Twenty battle flags were captured in a space of one hundred yards square.” This means that crowded within a space extending only one hundred yards there were the remnants of more than twenty regiments. But Col. Taylor says that Pickett’s division “was the only organized body which entered the enemy’s works.”
The late General Trimble said: “It will be easily understood that as Pickett’s line was overlapped by the Federal lines on his right, and Pettigrew’s and Trimble’s front by the Federal lines on their left, each of these commands had a distinct and separate discharge of artillery and musketry to encounter, the one as incessant as the other, although Pickett’s men felt its intensity sooner than the others, and were the first to be crushed under a fire before which no troops could live. While Pettigrew and Trimble suffered as much or more before the close because longer under fire, in consequence of marching farther.” And again: “Both Northern and Southern descriptions of the battle of Gettysburg, in the third day’s contest, have without perhaps a single exception, down to the present time, given not only most conspicuous prominence to General Pickett’s division, but generally by the language used have created the impression among those not personally acquainted with the events of the day that Pickett’s men did all the hard fighting, suffered the most severely and failed in their charge, because not duly and vigorously supported by the troops on their right and left. It might with as much truth be said that Pettigrew and Trimble failed in their charge, because unsupported by Pickett, who had been driven back in the crisis of their charge and was no aid to them.”