Southern Historical Society: Accounts of Pickett’s Charge

When the Civil War began, Dabney Maury (1822-1900) was the Assistant Adjutant General in the New Mexico Territory, based in Santa Fe. Hearing the news of the firing on Fort Sumter, he resigned from the United States Army and travelled back to Virginia. He entered the Confederate Army as a colonel, serving as an Adjutant General, then was Chief of Staff under General Earl Van Dorn. Following the Battle of Pea Ridge, he was promoted to the rank of brigadier general and assigned to field command. Maury led a division at the Battle of Corinth, and was appointed major general in November 1862. He participated in army operations around Vicksburg, Mississippi, and in the defense of Mobile, Alabama. In the latter military campaign, Maury commanded the Department of the Gulf.

But Maury made his mark after the war. With the conclusion of the Civil War, Maury came home to Virginia and established an academy in Fredericksburg to teach classical literature and mathematics. In 1868 he organized the Southern Historical Society, based in Richmond. D. H. Maury spent 20 years working for the Southern Historical Society that produced 52 volumes of Southern history and genealogies. Over that time, the Southern Historical Society became the primary vehicle for the Lost Cause, which dominated Civil War history and historiography for the next 100 years.

The most famous attack of the Civil War was also one of its most fatal. On July 3, 1863, the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, Army of Northern Virginia commander Robert E. Lee decided to make a thrust at the center of the Union’s line with about 15,000 men spread out over three divisions. Lee’s army had failed to flank the Army of the Potomac on the first two days of the battle, and the Union still held the high ground on Cemetery Hill.

Though it is now known as Pickett’s Charge, named after division commander George Pickett, the assignment for the charge was given to General James Longstreet, whose Corps included Pickett’s division. Longstreet had serious misgivings about Lee’s plan and tried futilely to talk him out of it. Lee’s decision necessitated a heavy artillery bombardment of the Union line and attempting to knock out the Union’s own artillery before beginning the charge that would cover nearly a mile of open space from Seminary Ridge to the Union line on Cemetery Ridge. Lee tasked Porter Alexander, in charge of the 1st Corps’ guns, to conduct the artillery bombardment. What resulted was the largest sustained bombardment of the Civil War, with over 150 Confederate cannons across the line firing incessantly at the Union line for nearly 2 hours. 

Unfortunately for Porter Alexander and the Confederates, the sheer number of cannons belched so much smoke that they had trouble gauging how effective the shells were. As it turned out, most of the artillery was overshooting the target, landing in the rear of the Union line. Reluctant to order the charge, Longstreet commanded Porter Alexander to order the timing for the charge. As Longstreet and Alexander anticipated, the charge was an utter disaster, incurring a nearly 50% casualty rate and failing to break the Union line. When Lee later commanded Pickett to reform his division, Pickett is reputed to have replied, “I have no division.”

After the war, the Southern Historical Society collected several accounts of the famous charge, written by men who fought in it. This edition has collected half a dozen accounts of Pickett’s Charge and is specially formatted with pictures of the battle's important commanders.