[Sidenote: SAFE SURRENDER OR DANGEROUS RETREAT?]
Leaving out Lane’s brigade, which lay far over to the left in the Emmittsburg road, our line, which was so imposing at the beginning of the assault, covered the front of only two Federal brigades at its close. Into the interval between Lane’s and Pettigrew’s troops New Yorkers were sent, who attacked the left of the latter’s own brigade. About the same time Vermonters moved up and fired several volleys into Pickett’s right. Which body of these flankers first made their attack has been a subject of some dispute, but it is a matter of no importance. Neither attack was made before Armistead was wounded. But there is a matter of very great importance, and that is to correctly decide which of the two contrary lines of action taken that day is the more honorable and soldier-like. Here were troops lying out in the open field, all of them knowing that they had met with a frightful defeat. Those on the left, seeing a move on the part of the enemy to effect their capture, thought it a duty they owed themselves, their army and their country to risk their lives in an effort to escape. Acting upon this thought they went to the rear with a rush, helter skelter, devil take the hindmost, and the most of them did escape. Those on the right when ordered to surrender did so almost to a man. The North Carolinians, Alabamians and Tennesseeans upon the field felt that to surrender when there was a reasonable hope of escape was very little better than desertion. If the opinions of the Virginians were not quite as extreme as this, they certainly would have been surprised at that time had they been told that their conduct was heroic. Since then maudlin sentimentalists have so often informed them it was that now they believe it. The time may come when history will call their surrender by its right name.
The late Gen. James Dearing, of Virginia, at the time of the battle an artillery major, witnessed the assault, and shortly afterwards, giving a description of it to a friend of the writer, mentioned a circumstance which partly accounts for the fact that all of Pickett’s troops were not captured. It was that from the very start individuals began to drop out of ranks, and that the number of these stragglers continued to increase as the line advanced, and that before a shot had ever been fired at them it amounted to many hundreds. This conduct on the part of so many must be taken into consideration in accounting for the shortness of our line at the close of the assault; also that the troops both to the right and left dressing upon Archer’s brigade there was in consequence much crowding towards the centre. By adding to these causes the deaths and wounds the explanation of a condition which has puzzled many writers is readily seen.