General Pickett

Born into an old Virginia family, General George Pickett was 38 years old when, as a division commander in Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, he led the disastrous charge on the last day of the battle of Gettysburg in which thousands of Confederate soldiers were killed or wounded. In Absalom! the Canadian Shreve gets the battle wrong, and is quickly corrected by Quentin (289). According to Gavin Stevens in Intruder in the Dust, "every Southern boy" can conjure up the moment before the charge began and it still was possible for the South to win the war (190). The "Pickett" Gavin evokes is a romantic figure, "with his long oiled ringlets" and his sword (190).