At 1:46 am, on Wednesday, July 1st, 1863, the moon was full over Gettysburg. On that day, in that place, this full moon symbolized the transit hopes of the United, and Confederate, States of America. One army, clad in gray, believed it was invincible, on the verge of winning, and ending, this civil war. But in the other army, the war-weary soldiers in blue felt a change in the great tide of purpose. Rebel invaders were north of the Mason-Dixon line, marching on Union soil. For the first time in the war, the US army was the defender of hearth and home.

Meade's Fishhook...Longstreet's Countermarch...Sickles' Salient...Devil's Den...the Wheatfield...the Peach Orchard...the horror of the Valley of Death...and the fight for Little Round Top--this was a desperate day in the American Civil War, and it became one of the most hallowed.

It was the most infamous day of the Civil War and the most dramatic attack in American military history. On a mile of open ground, 15,000 men fought into the jaws of hell. What happened that day in the sleepy Pennsylvania college town will never be forgotten. This is the story of Pickett's Charge--Gettysburg: Day Three.

In July of 1863, a proud but much-maligned group of men gathered in a small Pennsylvania town to fight an epic battle that would define the future of American history. These were the officers of the United States army of the Potomac. Their names are familiar but their faces are not. Their deeds are famous but their glory is, sometimes, forgotten. John Buford...Judson Kilpatrick...John Reynolds...Winfield Scott Hancock...Dan Sickles...Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain...and George Gordon Meade...these were some of the officers of the United States army, who fought, and won the battle of Gettysburg.

Known affectionately as "Uncle Billy" by Union soldiers but reviled in the South as a brutal war criminal, General William Tecumseh Sherman is one of the truly enigmatic and complex figures in the American pantheon. His legacy was built during a five-week campaign of terror and destruction that would become known as "total war." Sherman ordered his troops to burn crops, kill livestock, destroy railroads, pilfer food supplies and to make sure the South's civilian infrastructure was shattered. Although the concept had been around for centuries, this is the first time in modern warfare that total war was used to such an extensive degree. First Savannah was captured, and then he marched from Georgia through South Carolina and burned the capital to the ground. On the heels of Sherman's destructive onslaughts, the Confederacy officially conceded victory to the Union on April 9, 1865.

In April 1898, the U.S., still recovering from the Civil War, took on a fading Old World power, claimed "Manifest Destiny," and ushered in the "American Century.