Question on Battle of Gettysburg

I was watch the movie Gettysburg and was seeing Pickett charge. I noticed that General Longstreet pointed out how the attacking soldiers would bunch up at the fence in the field. They did bunch up during the attack.

I am wondering why the Confederate artillery did not shell the fence so that sections would have been removed so that the infantry had one less challenge during Pickett's charge?
 
Firstly, the bombardment didn't last that long, and required a lot of ammunition. The main purpose was to drive off the Federal batteries from Cemetary Ridge. There simply wasn't time to remove a wooden fence with artillery since that wasn't necessarily a huge obstacle: the main problem was the defensive fire by canister rounds and infantry in protected positions. Other than that, the intensity of fire would probably have drawn a lot of smoke (of course there is no way now) which would make targeting the fence itself pretty difficult.

The main problem was not the terrain or its features or necessarily the context of the attack, but probably the poor tactics used in launching it and the total failure of the Confederate artillery under Alexander to properly suppress the Federal guns. In this context, the fence seems less important.
 
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I've seen sources suggest that the fuses the confederate army were using were at fault and that a large number of the shells fired overshot. I've seen other sources suggest that was intentional to hit the reverse slope at Cemetery Ridge hoping to catch union reserves but that seems a bit like post hoc reasoning to me.
 
The CS artillery did have inferior fuses, but it also suffered from shooting at a target of higher elevation, which is not easy. Shooting up at something on a ballistic arc is tricky enough but add in bad fuses, trying to aim at things you cant necessarily see, and also trying to aim above then...
 
Eh, the effect of the fences along the Emmitsburg has been exaggerated. Though Pettigrew’s Division was unfortunate enough to run into the fences (though it was fairly catastrophic for them), most sections of the fence had already been taken down by Union soldiers to build breastworks and advancing Confederate soldierd took them down during their own advance.
 
Oh, it's highly unlikely that the fence was the factor that made this attack unlikely to yield success more than it was the effects of running across an open field without any cover to strike a prepared position that happened to be the reinforced center of a battle line with clear interior lines of communication, a lot more artillery, and a lot better access to ammunition resupply. It's understandable that Lee might have seen himself as nigh invincible after the whacky battleplan that was Chancellorsville worked out to the extent it did, but you only have to walk the bloody angle at Cemetery Ridge a while to get a fairly intense Marye's Heights with a full battle line feel.
 
I have to wonder how much ammo you'd have to shoot to knock down a rail fence... I'd think you'd miss a lot over/under the boards, or just knock out chunks of wood in near misses... while the Confederate artillery would get it done, how much shellacking would they take from the Union artillery in the process?
 
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