David, hard to believe Gen'l Lee and others previously named in my original post did not know the fence was there. It was only "about" 3/4 of a mile from the starting point of the charge if my estimate is correct.

Hopefully Miles repost on another board will shed some light on this. One thing I had in mind was whether or not Alexander's cannonade, had it been trained on the fence, could have done any real damage or not from his range?

Of course, that would have signaled Pickett's route of advance unless Alexander trained his cannon across the entire fence line - sort of like the 8th AF bombardment of the entire French coast on the day or two preceding the landings at Normandy on D-Day.

So many questions . . .