eight o'clock
Longstreet was slow . Jackson would have struck with the rapidity of lightning . On this swift action Lee had counted . The blow should have been delivered before eight o'clock . It was two o'clock in the afternoon before Longstreet made the attack and Meade 's position had been made stronger each hour . From two o'clock until dark the long lines of gray rolled and dashed against the heights and broke in red pools of blood on their rocky slopes . Three hundred pieces of artillery thundered their message in an Oratorio of Death .