On They Came With Flags Flying by Mort Kunstler - They advanced under unfurled flags, crossing an open field under devastating fire. Their target was the center of the Federal line, which lay beneath a "copse of trees" atop distant Cemetery Ridge. For two days these men in butternut and gray - General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia - had engaged in bloody combat with their blue-uniformed adversaries from the Federal Army of the Potomac.