LEE CHANGES PLAN OF CAMPAIGN
“General, I have been a soldier all my life. I have been with
soldiers engaged in fights by couples, by squads, companies,
regiments, divisions, and armies, and should know as well as
any one what soldiers can do. It is my opinion that no fifteen
thousand men ever arrayed for battle can take that position,”
pointing to Cemetery Hill.--LONGSTREET to LEE.
General Longstreet’s personal account of this magnificent battle “up
the Emmitsburg road” will not be out of place here. In the newspaper
article previously quoted from he very graphically describes the
advance of the two divisions of McLaws and Hood, for when he went into
battle it must be understood that even yet one of his divisions, that
of Pickett, was still absent. He states his total force at thirteen
thousand men. An account of this clash of arms must send a thrill of
pride through every Southern heart:
“At half-past three o’clock the order was given General Hood to
advance upon the enemy, and, hurrying to the head of McLaws’s
division, I moved with his line. Then was fairly commenced what I
do not hesitate to pronounce the best three hours’ fighting ever
done by any troops on any battle-field. Directly in front of us,
occupying the peach-orchard, on a piece of elevated ground that
General Lee desired me to take and hold for his artillery, was
the Third Corps of the Federals, commanded by General Sickles.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL D. E. SICKLES]
“Prompt to the order the combat opened, followed by artillery of
the other corps, and our artillerists measured up to the better
metal of the enemy by vigilant work....
“In his usual gallant style Hood led his troops through the
rocky fastnesses against the strong lines of his earnest
adversary, and encountered battle that called for all of his
power and skill. The enemy was tenacious of his strong ground;
his skilfully handled batteries swept through the passes between
the rocks; the more deadly fire of infantry concentrated as our
men bore upon the angle of the enemy’s line and stemmed the
fiercest onset until it became necessary to shorten their work
by a desperate charge. This pressing struggle and the cross-fire
of our batteries broke in the salient angle, but the thickening
fire, as the angle was pressed back, hurt Hood’s left and held
him in steady fight. His right brigade was drawn towards Round
Top by the heavy fire pouring from that quarter, Benning’s
brigade was pressed to the thickening line at the angle, and G.
T. Anderson’s was put in support of the battle growing against
Hood’s right.
“I rode to McLaws, found him ready for his opportunity, and
Barksdale chafing in his wait for the order to seize the battery
in his front. Kershaw’s brigade of his right first advanced and
struck near the angle of the enemy’s line where his forces were
gathering strength. After additional caution to hold his ranks
closed, McLaws ordered Barksdale in. With glorious bearing he
sprang to his work, overriding obstacles and dangers. Without
a pause to deliver a shot, he had the battery. Kershaw, joined
by Semmes’s brigade, responded, and Hood’s men, feeling the
impulsion of relief, resumed their bold fight, and presently the
enemy’s line was broken through its length. But his well-seasoned
troops knew how to utilize the advantage of their ground and put
back their dreadful fires from rocks, depressions, and stone
fences, as they went for shelter about Little Round Top.... The
fighting had become tremendous, and brave men and officers were
stricken by hundreds. Posey and Wilcox dislodged the forces about
the Brick House.
“General Sickles was desperately wounded!
“General Willard was dead!
“General Semmes, of McLaws’s division, was mortally wounded!...
“I had one brigade--Wofford’s--that had not been engaged in the
hottest battle. To urge the troops to their reserve power in the
precious moments, I rode with Wofford. The rugged field, the
rough plunge of artillery fire, and the piercing musket-shots
delayed somewhat the march, but Alexander dashed up with his
batteries and gave new spirit to the worn infantry ranks....
While Meade’s lines were growing my men were dropping; we had
no others to call to their aid, and the weight against us was
too heavy to carry.... Nothing was heard or felt but the clear
ring of the enemy’s fresh metal as he came against us. No other
part of the army had engaged! My seventeen thousand against the
Army of the Potomac! The sun was down, and with it went down the
severe battle.”
Surely these are not the utterances of one who had been slow, balky,
and obstructive on that field. The ring of these sentences tells no
tale of apathy or backwardness because his advice to pursue a different
line of operations had been ignored by Lee.
General Gordon, continuing, very complacently assumes that “two of the
largest corps of Meade’s army would not have been in the fight” of the
2d had Longstreet attacked early in the morning. He refers to the Union
Fifth and Sixth Corps. That statement is correct only as regards the
Sixth Corps, which, it is true, did not arrive on the field until late
in the afternoon. But it took only a slight part at dark on the 2d,
when the battle was over. Indeed, as it was so slightly engaged, the
hour of its arrival at Gettysburg is unimportant. The losses of the
different corps conclusively show what part the Sixth, which was the
largest in the army, took in the battle of the 2d of July; as given in
the Rebellion Records:
Killed and wounded: First Corps, 3980; Second Corps, 3991; Third Corps,
3662; Fifth Corps, 1976; Sixth Corps, 212; Eleventh Corps, 2353;
Twelfth Corps, 1016.
Its non-participation strongly militates against the spirit of
Gordon’s argument, in that Meade entirely frustrated Lee’s plans and
defeated the Confederate army, scarcely using the Sixth Corps, some
fifteen thousand men, at all. This is a significant commentary on the
anti-Longstreet assumption of how easy it was to win at Gettysburg if
only Longstreet had obeyed orders!
At sunrise on the 2d, the hour at which Longstreet’s critics would have
had this attack delivered, the Federal Fifth Corps was as near the
battle-ground of that day as Longstreet’s troops. Longstreet’s troops
were bivouacked the night previous at Marsh Creek, four miles west of
Gettysburg. They began to arrive near Lee’s head-quarters on Seminary
Ridge not earlier than 7 A.M. of the 2d, and the last of the column
did not get in until near noon. Then they were still five miles by the
route pursued from the chosen point of attack.
The Union Fifth Corps was bivouacked five miles east of Gettysburg
about the same hour on the 1st that Longstreet’s tired infantry reached
Marsh Creek. At four o’clock A.M. of the 2d they marched on Gettysburg,
arriving about the same hour that Longstreet’s troops were being massed
near Lee’s head-quarters, and were thereupon posted upon the extreme
Federal right.
Upon the first manifestation of Confederate movements on the right and
left, we know that the Fifth Corps was immediately drawn in closer,
and about nine o’clock massed at the bridge over Rock Creek on the
Baltimore pike, ready for developments. Meade thought Lee intended
to attack his right. That Lee contemplated it is quite certain.
Colonel Venable, of his staff, was sent about sunrise to consult with
Lieutenant-General Ewell upon the feasibility of a general attack from
his front. Lee wanted Ewell’s views as to the advisability of moving
all the available troops around to that front for such a purpose.
Venable and Ewell rode from point to point to determine if this should
be done. Finally, Venable says, Lee himself came to Ewell’s lines, and
eventually the design for an attack on the Union right was abandoned.
Where the Fifth Corps was finally massed, it was only one and a half
miles in the rear of General Sickles’s position. Moreover, it had
an almost direct road to that point. This facility for reinforcing
incidentally illustrates the advantages of the Union position. At
the same hour General Longstreet’s troops were still massed near the
Chambersburg pike, three miles on a straight line from the point of
attack. That is to say, Longstreet had twice as far to march on an
air-line to strike Sickles “up the Emmitsburg road” as Sykes had to
reinforce the threatened point. But, in fact, Sykes’s advantage was
far greater in point of time, because, by order of Lee, Longstreet was
compelled to move by back roads and lanes, out of sight of the enemy’s
signal officers on Round Top. His troops actually marched six or seven
miles to reach the point of deployment.
Longstreet eventually attacked about 4 P.M., and the Fifth Corps was
used very effectively against him. But no historian who esteems the
truth, with the undisputed records before him, will deny that it
could and would have been used just as effectively at seven or eight
o’clock in the morning. The moment Longstreet’s movement was detected
it was immediately hurried over to the left and occupied Round Top. If
Longstreet had moved earlier, the Fifth Corps also would have moved
earlier. It could have been on Sickles’s left and rear as early as
seven o’clock A.M., had it been necessary. If Ewell and not Longstreet
had delivered the general attack it would have been found in his front.
It is mathematically correct to say that the troops which met
Longstreet on the afternoon of the 2d could have been brought against
him in the morning. The reports of General Meade, General Sykes, the
commander of the Fifth Corps of Sykes’s brigade, and regimental
commanders, and various other documentary history bearing on the
subject, are convincing upon this point.
General Sickles’s advance was made in consequence of the Confederate
threatening, and would have been sooner or later according as that
threatening was made. The critics ignore this fact.
General Longstreet says on this point:
“General Meade was with General Sickles discussing the
feasibility of moving the Third Corps back to the line originally
assigned for it; the discussion was cut short by the opening of
the Confederate battle. If that opening had been delayed thirty
or forty minutes, Sickles’s corps would have been drawn back to
the general line, and my first deployment would have enveloped
Little Round Top and carried it before it could have been
strongly manned. The point should have been that the battle was
opened too soon.”
So much for one part of Gordon’s assumption, based upon other
assumptions founded upon an erroneous presumption, that if Longstreet
had taken wings and flown on an air-line from his bivouac at Marsh
Creek to the Federal left and attacked at sunrise he would have found
no enemy near the Round Tops.
In another equally unwarranted assumption of what the “impartial”
military critic will consider an “established fact,” Gordon declares:
“Secondly, that General Lee ordered Longstreet to attack at
daylight on the morning of the third day, and that the latter
did not attack until two or three o’clock in the afternoon, the
artillery opening at one.”
Lee himself mentions no such order. In his final report, penned six
months afterwards, he merely mentions that the “general plan was
unchanged,” and Longstreet, reinforced, ordered to attack “next
morning,” no definite hour being fixed. It is significant, however,
that in his letter to Jefferson Davis from the field, dated July 4, Lee
uses this language:
“Next day (July 3), the third division of General Longstreet’s
corps having come up, a more extensive attack was made,” etc.
The “third division” was Pickett’s, which did not arrive from
Chambersburg until 9 A.M. of the 3d. In the same report, Lee himself
states that “Pickett, with three of his brigades, joined Longstreet the
following morning.” There is no dispute, however, about the hour of
Pickett’s arrival.
So that, as Pickett was selected by Lee to lead the charge, and as Lee
knew exactly where Pickett was, it is morally impossible that it was
fixed for daylight, five hours before Pickett’s troops were up.
In one place Lee remarks in his report: “The morning was occupied in
_necessary_ preparations, and the battle recommenced in the afternoon
of the 3d.” Time was not an essential element in the problem of the
3d. The Federal army was then all up, whereas Pickett’s Confederate
division was still absent. The delay of a few hours was therefore a
distinct gain for the Confederates, and not prejudicial, as Gordon
would have the world believe.
But Longstreet’s official report is decisive of the whole question. He
says,--
“On the following morning (that is, after the fight of the 2d)
our arrangements were made for renewing the attack by my right,
with a view to pass round the hill occupied by the enemy’s left,
and gain it by flank and reverse attack. A few moments after my
orders for the execution of this plan were given, the commanding
general joined me, and ordered a column of attack to be formed of
Pickett’s, Heth’s, and part of Pender’s divisions, the assault to
be made directly at the enemy’s main position, the Cemetery Hill.”
Clearly this shows that Longstreet had no orders for the morning of
July 3. As Longstreet’s report passed through Lee’s hands, the superior
would most certainly have returned it to the subordinate for correction
if there were errors in it. This he did not do, neither did Lee indorse
upon the document itself any dissent from its tenor.
As Pickett did not come up until 9 A.M., and as General Lee says “the
morning was occupied in _necessary_ preparations,” it was logistically
and morally impossible to make an attack at daylight, and General
Longstreet states that it could not have been delivered sooner than it
was.
Finally, Longstreet emphatically denies that Lee ordered him to attack
at daylight on the 3d. He says that he had no orders of any kind on
that morning until Lee personally came over to his front and ordered
the Pickett charge. No early attack was possible under the conditions
imposed by Lee to use Pickett’s, Pettigrew’s, and Pender’s troops,
widely separated.
But without any orders from Lee, as is quite apparent, Longstreet
had already given orders for a flank attack by the southern face of
Big Round Top, as an alternative to directly attacking again the
impregnable heights from which he had been repulsed the night before.
That would have been “simple madness,” to quote the language of the
Confederate General Law. But such an act of “simple madness” was the
only daylight attack possible from Longstreet’s front on the morning
of the 3d. Lee substituted for the feasible early attack projected by
Longstreet the Pickett movement straight on Cemetery Heights which it
required hours of preparation to fulminate, and which proved the most
disastrous and destructive in Confederate annals. It was, in fact, the
death-knell of the Southern republic.
In his published memoirs,[C] page 385, General Longstreet makes this
concise statement in regard to Lee’s alleged orders for the early
morning operations on the 3d: “He [General Lee] did not give or send
me orders for the morning of the third day, nor did he reinforce me by
Pickett’s brigades for morning attack. As his head-quarters were about
four miles from the command, I did not ride over, but sent, to report
the work of the second day. In the absence of orders, I had scouting
parties out during the night in search of a way by which we might
strike the enemy’s left and push it down towards his centre. I found
a way that gave some promise of results, and was about to move the
command when he [Lee] rode over after sunrise and gave his orders.”
But in his paper of 1877, on Gettysburg, herein-before freely quoted
from, General Longstreet goes more into detail with relation to Lee’s
plans and orders for the morning of the 3d, and more fully discloses
the genesis of the Pickett charge. In this account his own opposition
to a renewal of the attack on Cemetery Hill is developed and the
obvious reasons therefor. As he is confirmed in nearly every particular
by participants and by the records, his account is here reprinted:
“On the next morning he came to see me, and, fearing that he was
still in his disposition to attack, I tried to anticipate him by
saying, ‘General, I have had my scouts out all night, and I find
that you still have an excellent opportunity to move around to
the right of Meade’s army and manœuvre him into attacking us.’ He
replied, pointing with his fist at Cemetery Hill, ‘The enemy is
there, and I am going to strike him.’ I felt then that it was my
duty to express my convictions. I said, ‘General, I have been a
soldier all my life. I have been with soldiers engaged in fights
by couples, by squads, companies, regiments, divisions, and
armies, and should know as well as any one what soldiers can do.
It is my opinion that no fifteen thousand men ever arrayed for
battle can take that position,’ pointing to Cemetery Hill.
“General Lee, in reply to this, ordered me to prepare Pickett’s
division for the attack. I should not have been so urgent had I
not foreseen the hopelessness of the proposed assault. I felt
that I must say a word against the sacrifice of my men; and
then I felt that my record was such that General Lee would or
could not misconstrue my motives. I said no more, however, but
turned away. The most of the morning was consumed in waiting for
Pickett’s men and getting into position.”
To make the attitude of the superior and his subordinate more clear in
relation to the proposed desperate throw of General Lee for victory,
and to further explain the foregoing protest of General Longstreet,
quotations from a second paper of the series printed in 1877 are here
given, in which he says,--
“In my first article I declared that the invasion of Pennsylvania
was a movement that General Lee and his council agreed should
be defensive in tactics, while of course it was offensive in
strategy; that the campaign was conducted on this plan until
we had left Chambersburg, when, owing to the absence of our
cavalry and our consequent ignorance of the enemy’s whereabouts,
we collided with them unexpectedly, and that General Lee had
lost the matchless equipoise that usually characterized him,
and through excitement and the doubt that enveloped the enemy’s
movements, changed the whole plan of the campaign and delivered a
battle under ominous circumstances.”