For
every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he
wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock
on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind
the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the
furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself
with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and
his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to
give the word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happened yet,
it hasn't even begun yet, it not only hasn't begun yet but there is
still time for it not to begin against that position and those
circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and
Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it's going to begin, we all know
that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment
doesn't even need a fourteen-year-old boy to think THIS TIME. MAYBE
THIS TIME with all this much to lose and all this much to gain:
Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington
itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory.
-WILLIAM FAULKNER, "lntruder in the
Dust"(1948)
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