Editing Battle of Gettysburg (section)

===Lee's plan===
[[File:Gettysburg Battle Map Day3.png|thumb|An overview map of the [[Battle of Gettysburg, third day cavalry battles|third and final day]] of the Battle of Gettysburg, fought on July 3, 1863]]
Lee wished to renew the attack on Friday, July 3, using the same basic plan as the previous day: Longstreet would attack the Union left, while Ewell attacked Culp's Hill.<ref>Harman, p. 63.</ref> However, before Longstreet was ready, Union XII Corps troops started a dawn artillery bombardment against the Confederates on Culp's Hill in an effort to regain a portion of their lost works. The Confederates attacked, and the second fight for Culp's Hill ended around 11{{nbsp}}a.m. Harry Pfanz judged that, after some seven hours of bitter combat, "the Union line was intact and held more strongly than before".<ref>Pfanz, ''Culp's Hill'', pp. 284–352; Eicher, pp. 540–541; Coddington, pp. 465–475.</ref>

Lee was forced to change his plans. Longstreet would command Pickett's Virginia division of his own First Corps, plus six brigades from Hill's Corps, in an attack on the Union II Corps position at the right center of the Union line on Cemetery Ridge. Prior to the attack, all the artillery the Confederacy could bring to bear on the Union positions would bombard and weaken the enemy's line.<ref>Eicher, p. 542; Coddington, pp. 485–486.</ref>

In his memoir, Longstreet states that he told Lee that there were not enough men to assault the strong left center of the Union line by McLaws's and Hood's divisions reinforced by Pickett's brigades. Longstreet thought the attack would be repulsed and a counterattack would put Union forces between the Confederates and the Potomac River. Longstreet wrote that he said it would take a minimum of thirty thousand men to attack successfully as well as close coordination with other Confederate forces. He noted that only about thirteen thousand men were left in the selected divisions after the first two days of fighting. They would have to walk a mile under heavy artillery and long-range musketry fire. Longstreet states that he further asked Lee: "the strength of the column. He [Lee] stated fifteen thousand. Opinion was then expressed [by Longstreet] that the fifteen thousand men who could make successful assault over that field had never been arrayed for battle; but he was impatient of listening, and tired of talking, and nothing was left but to proceed."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Longstreet |first1=James |title=From Manassas to Appomattox: Memoirs of the Civil War in America |date=1896 |publisher=J. B. Lippincott |location=Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US |pages=[https://archive.org/details/manassasappomatt00longrich/page/386 386]–387 |url=https://archive.org/details/manassasappomatt00longrich}}</ref><ref group="fn">Longstreet wrote in his memoirs that he estimated that his force would have "about thirteen thousand" men, not fifteen thousand. When asked by Longstreet the "strength of the column", Lee said the size would be fifteen thousand, which apparently included his estimate of the strength of two brigades of Anderson's Division of Hill's Third Corp that he would add to support Longstreet's men. Neither general knew the exact number of men available to attack at that tine because of casualties already sustained, merely the units. Longstreet did not write that he accepted that 15,000 would be the exact number of attackers. He merely said that no fifteen thousand men could take the Union position, that it would require 30,000. Historians give differing numbers of attackers for various reasons but all give numbers that are lower than 15,000 as shown in the next footnote.</ref>