"It will never happen," Hunt said wearily. "The attack goes in at dawn."

"And do you think it will succeed?"

Henry sighed. "I have to believe it will. Give me enough ammunition, and I can suppress their guns. Do that and there's a fair chance with a full assault, of three corps; forty thousand men, hitting all at once, just might break through."

Sickles dropped his cigar and snuffed it out with the toe of his boot "Fine, Hunt," he said dejectedly. "Just keep enough ammunition in reserve to cover the retreat You'll need it"

Henry watched as' Sickles turned and went back to the command tent

What more could he say? That he felt sick to his stomach, that he wished the hell he could just go to sleep and not wake up for a week? Sickles was a corps commander looking to him for advice.

Then again, he could almost feel sympathy for a man who prior to this campaign he had viewed with outright distaste. Sickles was outside the mould. He was vain, self-serving, glory hunting, and yet he loved his men and had the guts to stand on the front line. If there was to be a sacrifice tomorrow, he wanted it to mean something, and not just be another mad exercise in futility. There was nothing for him to offer though.

Henry slowly walked over to where his staff was camped. The boys were all asleep; he could not blame them. They had tied his horse off, brushed it down, and by the soft, glowing fire left a plate with some salted beef and hardtack. He didn't have the stomach for it

Finding his blanket roll, Henry opened it up. Looking up at the sky, he decided to put the rubber poncho on top and lying down on the cool, damp grass felt good, comforting.

A light rain began to fall, but Henry didn't notice. He was fast asleep.

Across the fields to either side of Pipe Creek ten thousand campfires flickered, glowed, and then slowly guttered out as the cool blanket of a summer's night rain drifted down from the heavens. It was not enough to wash away the blood in the pastures around Taneytown or to still the smoldering embers of Westminster, but for the moment it was a comfort after the long days of heat and dust and misery.

Some were still awake. Armistead, looking up at the sky, thinking of the colonel he had tried to save, wondered if that gallant soldier was still alive. At least I am still alive this evening, he thought and curling up under a horse blanket he drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

Winfield Scott Hancock did not sleep, gazing out from under his tent watching the droplets fall, watching the night slowly pass, wondering what this day of July 3rd had brought and why it could not have been different

George Pickett lost in dreams of glory won and the embrace of a fair lass, slept the sleep of the victorious.

Major Williamson, sitting on the bluffs overlooking Pipe Creek, was wrapped in silence, comrades asleep about him, wondering what the morning would bring and would the day to come be his last

Wesley Culp, a private with Johnson's division, lay curled up on his side near the Taneytown-Emmitsburg Road, clutching his torn stomach, crying softly, as his life trickled out Only the day before he had crept through the lines to visit his family home at Gettysburg, a Northern boy who had somehow wound up in the Southern ranks. Now he was dying here. At least I could have-died on my own land, he thought

John Bell Hood, arms folded, walked slowly through the camps of his division, nodding, offering a few words of congratulations, as men looked up at him. Finally he walked out into the fields, alone, looking north toward the fires burning on the other side. His arm hurt scratched by a ball. It could have been worse though, he realized.

Porter Alexander crawled under a limber wagon, stretching out calculating the numbers in his head, glad for once that there was more than enough ammunition to go around, in fact more ammunition, than he could fire in a long battle; glad as well that the day was over as he closed his eyes.

And thousands more drifted in and out of sleep. Those who were still alive, who might have been dead, and those who were alive and would be dead come morning. From the far reaches of a nation or from just down the lane they had come, these 160,000 boys and men, filled with tragic dreams of glory or with no dream at all other than a realization that they had to be here.

They had flowed over the roads, cresting mountains, leaping rivers, a tidal flow of a nation that still had not resolved if it could, indeed, be a nation. They were unlike any armies in history. Few of them truly hated; none had dreams of conquest of pillage and rape and destruction. Both armies fought mostly for an ideal, ironically the same ideal in the minds of many, and a few fought for a greater vision of all that could be, a dream that transcended the moment and the age they lived in. If they prayed, both prayed to the same vision of God, and even at this moment thousands had that same book open to favorite passages, most of them turning to the Psalms, silently reading while comrades and enemies slept.

Some now wandered the fields near Taneytown, lanterns bobbing up and down in the night mists. And when a comrade was found, more than one sat in silent grief, wondering why, wondering as well if fate had been different might that smiling friend be alive this evening, rather than cold and ready to go back into the earth.

The campfires guttered out All was still except for the muffled calls of sentries, the snoring of exhausted men, the steady patter of rain, and the distant muffled sobs of the wounded. Occasionally a man asleep would cry out stir, and sit up. Looking around, he'd remember that it was but a dream, and then silently lie back down. The nervous who could not sleep sat by die dying fires, staring off into the night pondering, as all soldiers have pondered, the meanings behind all things, the reasons why, the dreams yet to be lived, the fears of what might be.

And so, four score and seven years after the founding of the Republic, July 4,1863, began.

A steady cool rain fell from the early morning sky, the first light of dawn revealing the dark gray overcast blanketing.

Coiling mists rose up from the bottomland of Pipe Creek, blanketing the earth in a dull, impenetrable gloom Clouds above turned into fog in the valley. Everyone in the valley labored in virtual blindness. Above its fogged-in floor, gunners, who had been up most of the night, continued to labor on the barricades protecting the grand battery of 120 rifled guns. Tarpaulins were spread above caissons to protect the precious ammunition loads from moisture.

Henry paced slowly along the battery front, trailed by his dejected, wet staff. He kept looking to the south but it was still too dark; nothing could be seen of the opposite slope. All was gray and black.

The guns were spaced at fifteen-foot intervals, far too close for field operations, but he wanted a maximum concentration of firepower. Hopefully, multiple damage against his own guns from a single hit would be at a minimum. He had seized on the idea of using one caisson to provide ammunition for each two-gun section, thereby keeping the area directly behind the guns a little less crowded. The sixty caissons in place ten yards behind the guns were loaded almost exclusively with solid shot and case shot, with only a couple of rounds of canister. Once depleted, the caisson would be sent to the rear and a fresh load brought up. His orders were to keep up a sustained, rapid bombardment for two hours, set to begin at six in the morning.

The minutes ticked by as he continued to pace the line. Gunners were beginning to drop their entrenching tools, falling in around their pieces. Men looked expectantly at him. He said nothing, lost in thought, pacing the line, and now silently cursing… the mist and ground fog blanketing the valley and opposite slope. Nothing was visible.