On the afternoon of July 1, 1863, the exhausted Union regiments faced new attacks by fresh Confederate units arriving from the west and the north. Confederate Major General Henry Heth used superior numbers to outflank and push the 1st Corps back to Seminary Ridge. The fighting was intense with heavy casualties. Confederate Colonel Abner Perrin's 1,600 South Carolinians advanced directly across the ground in front of you and were met by what Perrin described as "the most destructive fire of musketry I have ever been exposed to." The line of Union breastworks, hastily constructed from garden fences, erupted into "a sheet of fire and smoke." Confederate General Alfred Scales' brigade of 1,300 North Carolinians met "terribly destructive" fire as they crossed the ground in front of you. According to a Union soldier, "Not a Confederate reached our line. After we had ceased firing and the smoke of battle had lifted, we looked again, but the charging Confederates were not there. Only the dead and dying remained on the bloody slopes of Seminary Ridge." As the Confederates continued to advance, the outflanked and shattered units of the 1st Corps began a fighting withdrawal towards the center of town.
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