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<p>Trimble reached and penetrated the Union line, the charge failed, and the survivors of those who took part in it retreated without panic to Seminary Ridge. As the survivors passed him, Lee comforted them with these words: “All this has been my fault. The task was too great for you.”
The remnants of the Army of Northern Virginia stayed on Seminary Ridge during the daylight hours of July 4 awaiting an attack by Meade that never came. When night descended, the rain began to fall in torrents, and Lee started his retreat to Virginia.
Gettysburg was, in essence, an artillery and infantry duel between Meade, who employed about 92,000 men and 354 cannon, and Lee, who used about 79,000 men and 272 cannon. Casualties at Gettysburg cannot be ascertained with certainty. According to a recent computation, the Confederates lost 3903 killed, 18,736 wounded, and 5425 captured – a total of 28,063 – while Union losses aggregated 23,049. The difference in the losses of the opposing armies is explainable by the fact that the Confederates were the attackers. Unlike the North, however, the South did not have the man power to repair its loss.
The appalling nature of the Confederate loss at Gettysburg is not fully revealed by the recital of the numbers killed, wounded, and captured. It is made more manifest by the casualties among the general, field, and company officers who furnished leadership to the army, and the casualties among the rank and file of the veteran regiments which constituted the backbone of the army,.
According to the historians, casualties among general officers numbered 17, those among full colonels totaled at least 18, and those among lesser field officers and company officers were virtually past counting. Most of the ve3teran regiments suffered decimating losses among their rank and file. For example, the Twenty Sixth North Carolina which fought under Pettigrew, lost more than 86 per cent of its personnel in killed and wounded.
It may be said that the actual fighting at Gettysburg ended in a stalemate, and that the armed forces of the South continued to fight with military success for 22 months.
Nevertheless, it must be said that Gettysburg marked the turning point of the war as well as the high-water mark of the Confederacy.
At Gettysburg the South lost by death and disabling wounds a multitude of her sons possessing high military capacity. As a consequence, Gettysburg impaired to a substantial degree the South’s power to wage the offensive warfare absolutely necessary to ultimate military victory. In this way, Gettysburg combined with the South’s shrinking man power and material resources to make inevitable the South’s defeat in the war of attrition carried on by Grant after he assumed direction of the Union campaign in Virginia.
When one ponders the story of the soldiers and sailors of the Confederacy who fought at Gettysburg and in countless other engagements on land and sea, he cannot avoid putting this question to history: What inspire these men to fight so bravely, always against great odds and oftentimes unto death?
The assertion that theyfought [sic] to perpetuate slavery does not suffice to answer the question. Most of them did not own or expect to own a single slave. Indeed, few of them had any material stake whatever in the victory of the Confederacy.
The question has been answered by one who knew these men well and loved them much. Almost two score and ten years after he had served with gallantry as a lieutenant of the Confederacy at Gettysburg, Dr. Randolph McKim, a beloved Episcopal minister of Washington, answered the question in words of unforgettable beauty,</p>
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