I made a note of the following, from Shelby Foote's brilliant TV series on the Civil War. This passage is from the diary of a Confederate general, describing a Union offensive during the Battle of Fredericksburg:

"How beautifully they came on. Their bright bayonets glistening in the sunlight made their line look like a huge serpent of blue and steel. We could see our shells bursting in their ranks, making great gaps; but on they came, as though they would go straight through us and over us... The brilliant assault of their Irish brigade was beyond description. We forgot they were fighting us, and cheer after cheer at their fearlessness went up along our lines... It was suicide... They came forward as though they were breasting a storm of rain and sleet... The Irish brigade got within 25 paces of the wall, and the men of the 24th Georgia who shot them down were Irish too."   -   General George Pickett

Pickett's own division was lost - again near a stone wall - when Lee ordered a suicidal charge on the appropriately-named Cemetery Ridge during the Battle of Gettysburg. It was Longstreet's duty to relay Lee's command to Pickett, and when the hour of attack came, he could not trust his voice, but merely nodded. As the doomed Rebel troops advanced, waiting Union soldiers are said to have chanted "Fredericksburg Fredericksburg" over and over, before slaughtering 6500 Confederates. Afterwards, when Lee told Pickett to rally his division in case of a counter- offensive, Pickett replied "General, I have no division now." He never forgave Lee.