After consecutive days of gruesome combat, the third day of battle in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania brought an assault led by the Confederacy. The result for the Confederate men–suffering staggering casualties–proved to be fatefully aligned with the name of where the loss took place: Cemetery Hill.

Artillery fire flew from both sides as Confederate General Lewis Armistead bravely led his single brigade up the hill, crying out: “Come on, boys! Give them cold steel!” Shortly thereafter, his fearlessness was extinguished with the loss of his own life. 

The fighting continued on, with countless Confederate deaths following Armistead’s. It was only when it dawned on General Isaac R. Trimble (partly in shock from pain and blood loss) that failure looked imminent, did he voice to his counterparts that it would be impossible to renew an assault on the Union.     

At this point, both sides realized they had reached the end for the time being.  “The gloom that settled over the western ridge” – in relation to the Confederates – “was more than matched, at least in intensity, by the elation of the victors on the one across the way.”

A wild celebration followed the conclusion of combat, with the young Lieutenant David Shields experiencing a feeling of invincibility surrounded by his grinning colleagues. “If he could survive what he had just been through, he could survive anything…He was going to live forever.”