AND THAT WAS THE POINT

they howled three times into that night from one end of the line to the other across the heart of the wilderness into the mind and heart of the enemy ... saying in context I suspect something like this ... you came into the wilderness a year ago and we mauled you then just as we did yesterday and today and this is what we will do to you every time we meet till you die of it ... or leave us alone ... indeed they had come these blue and these grey to the fulcrum point not of the season or the campaign but of the war itself ... not just the abstract point of the argument where they put the eye in the triangle but of the bloody angle itself where standing on the top of the wall ... then ... the union would jump forward go south and win ... or fall back north and lose ... they did not fall back but the rebellion did ... the union now had it in its grip and grant would not let lee go ... longstreet's charge was lee's last hurrah the day of the night the men howled calling for the point ... the topmost angle the highest peak in the spiritual combat ... the very point for which the heroes had reenlisted