beat the other's down before the crisis of the infantry assault.
There was no maneuvering. Each one of Meade's three corps-
-Hancock's, Wright's, and Smith's (brought over from Butler's
command)--marched straight to its front. This led them apart, on
diverging lines, and so exposed their flanks as well as their
fronts to enemy fire. But though each corps thought its neighbor
wrong to uncover its flanks, and the true cause was not
discovered till compass bearings were afterwards compared, yet
each went on undaunted, gaining momentum with every step, and
gathering itself together for the final charge.

Then, surging like great storm-blown waves, the blue lines broke
against Lee's iron front. In every gallant case there was the
same wild cresting of the wave, the same terrific crash, the same
adventurous tongues of blue that darted up as far as they could
go alive, the same anguishing recession from the fatal mark, and
the same agonizing wreckage left behind. In Hancock's corps the
crisis passed in just eight minutes. But in those eight dire
minutes eight colonels died while leading their regiments on to a
foredoomed defeat. One of these eight, James P. McMahon of New
York, alone among his dauntless fellows, actually reached the
Confederate lines, and, catching the colors from their stricken
bearer, waved them one moment above the parapet before he fell.

Flesh and blood could do no more. Under the withering fire and
crossfire of Lee's unshaken front the beaten corps went back,
re-formed, and waited. They had not long to wait; for Grant was
set on swinging his three hammers for three more blows at least.
So again the three assaults were separately made on the one
impregnable front; and again the waves receded, leaving a second