Pickett's Charge sent 12,500 Confederate soldiers across open ground into Union cannon

On the third day at Gettysburg, General Lee ordered roughly 12,500 Confederate troops to charge nearly a mile across open fields toward entrenched Union lines. Fewer than half returned, and the failed assault broke the Confederacy's last major invasion of the North. Lee's army retreated to Virginia, and the Union victory, paired with the fall of Vicksburg the same week, marked the war's turning point.

— Allen C. Guelzo, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion — 2013
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