Lee was drawn on by the success of the first day to fight again on the second; his success on the second induced him to try for the third time; but he had exhausted his good-fortune. At earliest dawn of July 3, 1863, began a wrestle for the possession of Culp’s Hill, Ewell heavily reinforcing the Stonewall division which had won footing there the night before, and the Twelfth Corps as stubbornly struggling for the ground it had lost. It was a fight of six hours, in which the extreme northern wings of the two armies only were concerned. The Federals won, at a heavy sacrifice of life. [Illustration: POSITION, JULY 3, IN THE EARLY AFTERNOON] Elsewhere the armies rested, an ominous silence at last reigning on the trampled and bloody field under the mid-day sun. Meade and his soldiers knew that it portended danger, and with a sure intuition the army chief was watching with especial care the centre, as yet unassailed. On the Confederate side, the unhappy Longstreet, at odds with his chief as to the wisdom of the campaign from the start, and disapproving both its strategy and tactics, was now in deeper gloom than ever. Lee had determined to assault the Federal centre, and by a cruel turn of fate the blow must be struck by the reluctant Longstreet. Of the three great Confederate corps, it was only in Longstreet’s that a force remained as yet unwrung by the fearful agonies of the last two days. Pickett’s division, solidly Virginian, and in the eyes of Lee a Tenth Legion in its valor, as yet had done nothing, and was to bear the brunt of the attack. “What troops do you design for the assault?” Longstreet had asked. Lee, having indicated Pickett’s division of five thousand, with auxiliary divisions, making an entire number in the charging column of fifteen thousand, the Georgian burst out: “I have been a soldier from the ground up. I have been with soldiers engaged in fights by couples, by squads, companies, regiments, armies, and should know as well as any one what soldiers can do. It is my opinion that no fifteen thousand men ever arrayed for battle can take that position.”[263] But Lee was unmoved. Confident of success, he despatched Stuart, arrived at last after his raid, so long and futile, around beyond the Federal right. When the Union centre should be broken and Meade thrown into retreat, Stuart was to seize its only practicable route for retreat, the Baltimore pike, and make the defeat decisive.