Alexander’s batteries, both of position, and the line now turned loose with redoubled energy on those of the enemy’s to relieve, as far as possible, our defeated, flying, and demoralized troops.  For a few moments (which seemed like days to the defeated) it looked as if all nature’s power and strength were turned into one mighty upheaval; Vessuvius, Etna, and Popocatepetl were emptying their mighty torrents upon the heads of the unfortunate Confederates.  Men fell by the hundreds, officers ceased to rally them until the cover of the ridge was reached.  The hills in front were ablaze from the flashes of near two hundred guns, while the smoke from almost as many on our lines slowly lifted from the ridge behind us, showing one continued sheet of flames, the cannoneers working their guns as never before.  The earth seemed to vibrate and tremble under the recoil of these hundreds of guns, while the air overhead was filled with flying shells.  Not a twinkling of the eye intervened between the passing of shots or shells.  The men who were not actively engaged became numbed and a dull heavy sleep overcame them as they lay under this mighty unnatural storm, shells falling short came plowing through the ground, or bursting prematurely overhead, with little or no effect upon the slumberers, only a cry of pain as one and another received a wound or a death shot from the flying fragments.  The charge of Pickett is over, the day is lost, and men fall prone upon the earth to catch breath and think of the dreadful ordeal just passed and of the many hundreds lying between them and the enemy’s line bleeding, dying without hope or succor.

Farnsworth, of Kilpatrick’s Cavalry, had been watching the fray from our extreme right, where Hood had stationed scattered troops to watch his flank, and when the Union General saw through the mountain gorges and passes the destruction of Pickett he thought his time for action had come.  The battle-scarred war horses snuffed the blood and smoke of battle from afar, and champed their bits in anxious impatience.  The troopers looked down the line and met the stern faces of their comrades adjusting themselves to their saddles and awaiting the signal for the charge.  Farnsworth awaits no orders, and when he saw the wave of Pickett’s recede he gave the command to “Charge,” and his five hundred troopers came thundering down upon our detachments on the extreme right.  But Farnsworth had to ride over and between the Fourth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Alabama Regiments, the Eleventh Georgia and the First Texas, and it is needless to add, his ride was a rough and disastrous one.  Farnsworth, after repeated summons to surrender, fell, pierced with five wounds, and died in a few moments.  His troopers who had escaped death or capture fled to the gorges and passes of the mountains through which they had so recently ridden in high expectation.

The enemy, as well as the Confederates, had lost heavily in general officers.  Hancock had fallen from his horse, shot through the side with a minnie ball, disabling him for a long time.  General Dan Sickles, afterwards military Governor of South Carolina, lost a leg.  General Willard was killed.  Generals Newton, Gibbon, Reynolds, Barlow were either killed or wounded, with many other officers of note in the Federal Army.