The Union guns fired to the last moment, until of the two
batteries immediately in front of the charging Virginians every
officer but one had been struck. One of the mortally wounded
officers was young Cushing, a brother of the hero of the
Albemarle fight. He was almost cut in two, but holding his body
together with one hand, with the other he fired his last gun, and
fell dead, just as Armistead, pressing forward at the head of his
men, leaped the wall, waving his hat on his sword. Immediately
afterward the battle-flags of the foremost Confederate regiments
crowned the crest; but their strength was spent. The Union troops
moved forward with the bayonet, and the remnant of Pickett's
division, attacked on all sides, either surrendered or retreated
down the hill again. Armistead fell, dying, by the body of the
dead Cushing. Both Gibbon and Webb were wounded. Of Pickett's
command two thirds were killed, wounded or captured, and every
brigade commander and every field officer, save one, fell. The
Virginians tried to rally, but were broken and driven again by
Gates, while Stannard repeated, at the expense of the Alabamians,
the movement he had made against the Virginians, and, reversing
his front, attacked them in flank. Their lines were torn by the
batteries in front, and they fell back before the Vermonter's
attack, and Stannard reaped a rich harvest of prisoners and of
battle-flags.

The charge was over. It was the greatest charge in any battle of
modern times, and it had failed. It would be impossible to
surpass the gallantry of those that made it, or the gallantry of
those that withstood it. Had there been in command of the Union
army a general like Grant, it would have been followed by a
counter-charge, and in all probability the war would have been