July 3 - Gettysburg. 144 years ago today.

It is all over now. Many of us are prisoners, many are dead, many wounded, bleeding and dying. Your soldier lives and mourns and but for you, my darling, he would rather be back there with his dead, to sleep for all time in an unknown grave.
Maj. Gen. George Pickett, to his Fiancée, July 4, 1863

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I was fascinated to watch a computer model showing that if Lee's commanders had only had the foresight to pre-rig a wooden fence to fall easily, Pickett's charge would have probably worked.

The computer model showed that the fence channeled, slowed and broke up the Confederate advance far more than historians had previously realized.