Gettysburg: The Third Day

The third day began before dawn on Culp's Hill, where Union artillery opened on the Confederate foothold won the night before, and seven hours of fighting followed. By late morning the hill was secure. Lee's plan had narrowed to one thing: a frontal assault on the center of the Union line.

When it came in mid-afternoon, the fighting at the stone wall came down to yards. Men fired into each other's faces across the wall, swung clubbed muskets, and grappled around the guns of a Union battery. Lewis Armistead, hat on the point of his sword, crossed the wall with a few hundred men and fell beside a captured cannon.

The line was restored in under an hour. Across three days the two armies had lost around 50,000 men. Lee's army left on July 4 — the day Vicksburg surrendered.

This is the moment after the volley. A Union gun at the left fires into the smoke at point-blank range while the men around it fight with whatever they hold — one soldier has his musket reversed and swinging like a club. Wounded lie along the fence line, and a wide sky of pink and gold hangs over it all.

The tall trees on the right anchor the composition and pull the eye back to the far field, where a broken Confederate line is still coming on.