Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to episode 374 of our Civil War Podcast.

I'm Rich and Tracy won't be with us for this show.

As we let those of you who follow us on social media know, Tracy has been out of town this

past week on a family matter.

So you're stuck with just me for this episode.

I know, hug.

Sorry.

But we'll soldier on and keep going with our discussion of Picket's Charge.

Here at the beginning of this show, we'll just wrap up a few loose ends about the Confederate

Artillery bombardment that preceded the infantry attack.

First, how long did the bombardment last?

Well, the traditional view is that it lasted nearly two hours, mostly because several

officers noted similar times in their battle reports.

But as we've said before on the podcast, time simply wasn't measured as precisely back

in those days.

In fact it's kind of interesting that analyzing participant accounts, you'll find that

Federals skewed toward 90 minutes or longer while roughly half of Confederate accounts were

one hour and 15 minutes or less.

A general mead reported that the bombardment opened at 1pm and continued, quote, over

two hours.

However, Lieutenant Colonel Freeman McGilbury of the Army of the Potomac's Artillery

Reserve thought 90 minutes.

...