half past seven o'clock
The charging blue hosts literally walked into the crater of a volcano flaming in their faces and pouring tons of steel and lead into their stricken flanks . Nothing like it had ever before been seen in the history of war . _ Ten thousand men in blue fell in twenty minutes ! _ The battle was practically over at half past seven o'clock . General Smith received an order from Meade to renew the assault and flatly refused . The scene which followed has no parallel in the records of human suffering . Its horror is inconceivable and unthinkable .