"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 oclock 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, INTRUDER IN THE DUST (1948) pp. 194-195