GORDON’S “ESTABLISHED FACTS” AND PENDLETON’S FULMINATIONS
No officer in a position to know anything about the matter
confirmed Pendleton’s statement, while everybody who should have
been aware of such an important order directly contradicted it,
as do all the records.
Continuing on the subject of Longstreet’s alleged disobedience, Gordon
considers the following as another of the “facts established:”
“Thirdly, that General Lee, according to the testimony of Colonel
Walter Taylor, Colonel C. S. Venable, and General A. L. Long,
who were present when the order was given, ordered Longstreet
to make the attack on the last day with the three divisions of
his own corps and two divisions of A. P. Hill’s corps, and that
instead of doing so Longstreet sent only fourteen thousand men to
assail Meade’s army in the latter’s strong and heavily intrenched
position.”
This is the old story that Longstreet was culpable in not sending
McLaws and Hood to the attack with Pickett.
But, in fact, Lee’s own utterances show that McLaws and Hood were not
to join in the Pickett attack, but, on the contrary, were excluded
for other vital service by Lee’s specific directions. It is true this
was done upon Longstreet’s strenuous representations that twenty
thousand Federals were massed behind the Round Top to swoop down on
the Confederate flank if Hood and McLaws were withdrawn. After viewing
the ground himself Lee acquiesced. The eye-witnesses quoted by Gordon
heard only the original order; they evidently did not know of its
necessary modification, after Lee was made aware by his own personal
observations and by Longstreet’s explanations that it was impossible to
withdraw Hood and McLaws.
The official reports of both Lee and Longstreet are conclusive on this
point, and they substantially agree. In the paragraph quoted in the
preceding chapter, Longstreet states explicitly that “the commanding
general joined me” (on the far right on the morning of the 3d) “and
ordered a column of attack to be formed of Pickett’s, Heth’s, and part
of Pender’s divisions,” etc. If this was a misstatement, why did not
Lee correct it before sending the report to the War Department? He did
not; on the contrary, Lee corroborates Longstreet in these paragraphs
of his own official report, in which he also explains in detail why
McLaws and Hood were not ordered forward with Pickett:
“General Longstreet was delayed by a force occupying the high
rocky hills on the enemy’s extreme left, from which his troops
could be attacked in reverse as they advanced. His operations
had been embarrassed the day previous by the same cause, and
he now deemed it necessary to defend his flank and rear with
the divisions of Hood and McLaws. He was therefore reinforced
by Heth’s division and two brigades of Pender’s.... General
Longstreet ordered forward the column of attack, consisting of
Pickett’s and Heth’s divisions in two lines, Pickett on the
right.”
Now, one of Lee’s favorite officers, General Pickett, had personal
supervision of the formation of the attacking column. General Lee was
for a time personally present while this work was going on, conversing
with Pickett concerning the proper dispositions and making various
suggestions. He therefore knew by personal observation, before the
charge was made, exactly what troops were included and what were not.
He knew that the extreme right of Hood’s division was at that moment
fully three miles away, holding a difficult position in face of an
overwhelming force of Federals, and McLaws almost equally distant.
With these documents before him, how can Gordon believe it an
“established fact” that Lee expected McLaws and Hood to take part in
the Pickett charge?
It is admitted by almost if not quite all authority on the subject
that Pickett’s charge was hopeless. The addition of McLaws and Hood
would not have increased the chances of success. The Confederates
under Longstreet and R. H. Anderson had tested the enemy’s position on
that front thoroughly in the battle of the 2d, and with a much larger
force, including these same divisions of McLaws and Hood, who had been
repulsed. There was every reason to believe that the position was much
stronger on the final day than when Longstreet attacked it on the 2d.
The troops of Hood and McLaws, in view of their enormous losses, were
in no condition to support Pickett effectively, even had they been free
for that purpose. But it has been shown above by the testimony of both
Lee and Longstreet that they were required to maintain the position
they had won in the desperate struggle of the evening previous to
prevent the twenty-two thousand men of the Union Fifth and Sixth Corps
from falling _en masse_ upon Pickett’s right flank, or their own flank
and rear had they moved in unison with Pickett.
Having proved from Lee’s own official written utterances that the
three foregoing points set up by Gordon cannot possibly be accepted as
“established facts,” we now come to his “fourthly,” which is really a
summing up of the whole case against Longstreet,--viz., that he was
disobedient, slow, “balky,” and obstructive at Gettysburg. He says,--
“Fourthly, that the great mistake of the halt on the first day
would have been repaired on the second, and even on the third
day, if Lee’s orders had been vigorously executed, and that
General Lee died believing that he lost Gettysburg at last by
Longstreet’s disobedience of orders.”
The first positive utterance holding General Longstreet responsible for
the defeat at Gettysburg, through failure to obey Lee’s orders, came
from Rev. Dr. William N. Pendleton, an Episcopal clergyman of Virginia,
on the 17th of January, 1873. General Lee had then been dead more than
two years. In view of what follows it is well to bear in mind these two
distinct dates. There had been some vague hints, particularly among
some of the higher ex-Confederates from Virginia prior to Pendleton’s
categorical story, but Pendleton was the first person to distinctly
formulate the indictment against Longstreet for disobedience of orders.
In an address delivered in the town of Lexington, Virginia, on the date
mentioned, in behalf of a memorial church to General Lee, Pendleton
uses this language, referring to the battle of Gettysburg:
“The ground southwest of the town [Gettysburg] was carefully
examined by me after the engagement of July 1.... Its practicable
character was reported to our commanding general. He informed
me that he had _ordered Longstreet to attack on that front at
sunrise next morning_. And he added to myself: ‘I want you to be
out long before sunrise, so as to re-examine and save time.’ He
also desired me to communicate with General Longstreet, as well
as himself. The reconnoissance was accordingly made as soon as it
was light enough on the 2d.... All this, as it occurred under my
personal observation, it is nothing short of imperative duty that
I thus fairly state.”
Rev. Dr. Pendleton was a brigadier-general and chief of artillery
on Lee’s staff. He was a graduate of West Point, and was the cadet
friend of Lee for more than three years in the Military Academy. After
the war they were closely associated at Lexington, Virginia. His
fulmination had the effect of a bombshell. There was a hue and cry at
once; corroborative evidence of the easy hearsay sort was forthcoming
from various interested quarters, but most markedly and noisily from
the State of Virginia, as if by preconcert. Pendleton’s fulmination
appeared to have been expected by those who had previously been
pursuing Longstreet. The late General Jubal A. Early was particularly
strenuous in unreserved endorsement of the Pendleton story. The Rev. J.
William Jones, of Richmond, the self-appointed conservator of General
Lee’s fair fame, also quickly added his testimony to the reliability of
the Rev. Dr. Pendleton’s discovery and dramatic disclosure. Those who
approved generally fortified Pendleton with additional statements of
their own.
Pendleton’s statement is characteristic of the whole, but it was for
a time the more effective because it was more definite, in that it
purported to recite a positive statement by Lee of an alleged order to
Longstreet. If Pendleton’s statement falls, the whole falls.
General Longstreet was astounded when Pendleton’s Lexington story was
brought to his attention. He had previously paid but little attention
to indefinite gossip of a certain coterie that he had been “slow” and
even “obstructive” at Gettysburg, and had never heard before that he
was accused of having disobeyed a positive order to attack at any given
hour. That false accusation aroused him to action. He categorically
denied Pendleton’s absurd allegations, and at once appealed to several
living members of Lee’s staff and to others in a position to know the
facts, to exonerate him from the charge of having disobeyed his chief,
thereby causing disaster.
Colonel Walter H. Taylor, a Virginian, and General Lee’s
adjutant-general, promptly responded as follows:
“NORFOLK, VIRGINIA, April 28, 1875.
“DEAR GENERAL,--I have received your letter of the 20th inst. I
have not read the article of which you speak, nor have I ever
seen any copy of General Pendleton’s address; indeed, I have
read little or nothing of what has been written since the war.
In the first place, because I could not spare the time, and in
the second, of those of whose writings I have heard I deem but
very few entitled to any attention whatever. I can only say that
I never before heard of ‘the sunrise attack’ you were to have
made as charged by General Pendleton. If such an order was given
you I never knew of it, or it has strangely escaped my memory.
I think it more than probable that if General Lee had had your
troops available the evening previous to the day of which you
speak he would have ordered an early attack, but this does not
touch the point at issue. I regard it as a great mistake on the
part of those who, perhaps because of political differences, now
undertake to criticise and attack your war record. Such conduct
is most ungenerous, and I am sure meets the disapprobation of
all good Confederates with whom I have had the pleasure of
associating in the daily walks of life.
“Yours very respectfully,
“W. H. TAYLOR.
“TO GENERAL LONGSTREET.”
Two years afterwards Colonel Taylor published an article strongly
criticising General Longstreet’s operations at Gettysburg, but in that
article was this candid admission:
“Indeed, great injustice has been done him [Longstreet] in the
charge that he had orders from the commanding general to attack
the enemy at sunrise on the 2d of July, and that he disobeyed
these orders. This would imply that he was in position to attack,
whereas General Lee but anticipated his early arrival on the
2d, and based his calculations upon it. I have shown how he was
disappointed, and I need hardly add that the delay was fatal.”
The fact that Colonel Taylor was himself a somewhat severe critic of
General Longstreet, through a misapprehension of certain facts and
conditions, gives additional force and value to this statement.
Colonel Charles Marshall, then an aide on Lee’s staff, who succeeded
Long as Military Secretary and subsequently had charge of all the
papers left by General Lee, wrote as follows:
“BALTIMORE, MARYLAND, May 7, 1875.
“DEAR GENERAL,--Your letter of the 20th ult. was received
and should have had an earlier reply but for my engagements
preventing me from looking at my papers to find what I could
on the subject. I have no personal recollection of the order
to which you refer. It certainly was not conveyed by me, nor
is there anything in General Lee’s official report to show the
attack on the 2d was expected by him to begin earlier, except
that he notices that there was not proper concert of action on
that day....
“Respectfully,
“CHARLES MARSHALL.
“TO GENERAL LONGSTREET, NEW ORLEANS.”
Colonel Charles S. Venable, another of Lee’s aides and after the war
one of his firmest partisans, made the following detailed statement,
which not only refutes Pendleton’s Lexington story, but bears
luminously upon every other point at issue concerning the alleged early
attack order of the 2d:
“UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, May 11, 1875.
“GENERAL JAMES LONGSTREET:
“DEAR GENERAL,--Your letter of the 25th ultimo, with regard
to General Lee’s battle order on the 1st and 2d of July at
Gettysburg, was duly received. I did not know of any order for an
attack on the enemy at sunrise on the 2d, nor can I believe any
such order was issued by General Lee. About sunrise on the 2d of
July I was sent by General Lee to General Ewell to ask him what
he thought of the advantages of an attack on the enemy from his
position. (Colonel Marshall had been sent with a similar order
on the night of the 1st.) General Ewell made me ride with him
from point to point of his lines, so as to see with him the exact
position of things. Before he got through the examination of the
enemy’s position General Lee came himself to General Ewell’s
lines. In sending the message to General Ewell, General Lee was
explicit in saying that the question was whether he should move
all the troops around on the right and attack on that side. I do
not think that the errand on which I was sent by the commanding
general is consistent with the idea of an attack at sunrise by
any portion of the army.
“Yours very truly,
“CHAS. S. VENABLE.”
General A. L. Long, a Virginian, was General Lee’s Military Secretary
and aide at Gettysburg. After the war he wrote a book,--“Memoirs of
General Lee,”--in which he endeavored to hold Longstreet largely
responsible for the Gettysburg disaster. But in it he made no assertion
that Longstreet had disobeyed an order for a sunrise attack on the 2d,
or at any other specific hour on that or the next day. He wrote as
follows:
“BIG ISLAND, BEDFORD, VIRGINIA, May 31, 1875.
“DEAR GENERAL,--Your letter of the 20th ult., referring to an
assertion of General Pendleton’s, made in a lecture delivered
several years ago, which was recently published in the _Southern
Historical Society Magazine_ substantially as follows: ‘That
General Lee ordered General Longstreet to attack General Meade
at sunrise on the morning of the 2d of July,’ has been received.
I do not recollect of hearing of an order to attack at sunrise,
or at any other designated hour, pending the operations at
Gettysburg during the first three days of July, 1863....
“Yours truly,
“A. L. LONG,
“TO GENERAL LONGSTREET.”
The foregoing letters, all written by members of General Lee’s military
family, all his close friends and personal partisans, are worth a
careful study. They not only negative General Pendleton’s “sunrise”
story, but as a whole they go to prove that it was not expected by Lee,
Longstreet, Pendleton, nor any other high officer, that an early attack
was to have been delivered on the 2d of July. Both Generals McLaws and
Hood, Longstreet’s division commanders, made statements disclosing that
they were totally unaware at Gettysburg of any order for a sunrise
attack on that day. No officer in a position to know anything about the
matter confirmed Pendleton’s statement, while everybody who should have
been aware of such an important order, directly contradicted it, as do
all the records.
The statement of General McLaws appeared in a narrative of Gettysburg
published in a Savannah paper nearly thirty years ago. Besides
its direct bearing on the Pendleton story, it furnishes valuable
information as to some of the causes of delay encountered by
Longstreet’s troops in their long march from Chambersburg on the 1st of
July:
“On the 30th of June I had been directed to have my division
in readiness to follow General Ewell’s corps. Marching towards
Gettysburg, which it was intimated we would have passed by
ten o’clock the next day (the 1st of July), my division was
accordingly marched from its camp and lined along the road in the
order of march by eight o’clock the 1st of July. When the troops
of Ewell’s corps (it was Johnston’s division in charge of Ewell’s
wagon-trains, which were coming from Carlisle by the road west of
the mountains) had passed the head of my column I asked General
Longstreet’s staff-officer, Major Fairfax, if my division should
follow. He went off to inquire, and returned with orders for
me to wait until Ewell’s wagon-train had passed, which did not
happen until after four o’clock P.M.
“The train was calculated to be fourteen miles long, when I
took up the line of march and continued marching until I arrived
within three miles of Gettysburg, where my command camped along
a creek. This was far into the night. My division was leading
Longstreet’s corps, and of course the other divisions came up
later. I saw Hood’s division the next morning, and understood
that Pickett had been detached to guard the rear.
“While on the march, at about ten o’clock at night I met General
Longstreet and some of his staff coming from the direction of
Gettysburg and had a few moments’ conversation with him. He said
nothing of having received an order to attack at daylight the
next morning. Here I will state that until General Pendleton
mentioned it about two years ago, when he was on a lecturing
tour, after the death of General Lee, I never heard it intimated
even that any such order had ever been given.”
The following is an extract from a letter[D] of General Hood to General
Longstreet on the subject of the sunrise order, which indirectly,
though conclusively, shows there could have been no such order, besides
being interesting and instructive as to other points:
“I arrived with my staff in front of the heights of Gettysburg
shortly after daybreak, as I have already stated, on the morning
of the 2d of July. My division soon commenced filing into an
open field near me, when the troops were allowed to stack arms
and rest until further orders. A short distance in advance of
this point, and during the early part of the same morning, we
were both engaged in company with Generals A. P. Hill and Lee
in observing the position of the Federals. General Lee, with
coat buttoned to the throat, sabre belt around his waist, and
field-glasses pending at his side, walked up and down in the
shade of large trees near us, halting now and then to observe
the enemy. He seemed full of hope, yet at times buried in
deep thought. Colonel Fremantle, of England, was ensconced in
the forks of a tree not far off with glasses in constant use
examining the lofty position of the Federal army.
“General Lee was seemingly anxious that you should attack that
morning. He remarked to me, ‘The enemy is here, and if we do not
whip him he will whip us.’ You thought it better to await the
arrival of Pickett’s division, at that time still in the rear, in
order to make the attack, and you said to me subsequently, while
we were seated together near the trunk of a tree, ‘General Lee is
a little nervous this morning. He wishes me to attack. I do not
wish to do so without Pickett. I never like to go into a battle
with one boot off.’”
Another letter, which in a way is still more important than any of the
foregoing, is one from Colonel John W. Fairfax, a member of General
Longstreet’s staff. It tends to show that the sunrise-order story was
conjured up by Dr. Pendleton and others at Lexington after Lee’s death;
in other words, it is strong circumstantial confirmation of General
Longstreet’s belief in a conspiracy. Written more than twenty-six years
ago, the manner in which it dovetails with all the foregoing statements
and documents as to the various events involved is peculiarly
significant. Colonel Fairfax is a Virginian and was always an ardent
admirer of General Lee, but not to the extent of desiring to uphold his
fame at the expense of honor or the ruin of another:
“FREESTONE P. O., PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY, VIRGINIA.
“November 12, 1877.
“MY DEAR GENERAL LONGSTREET,-- ... The winter after the death
of General Lee I was in Lexington, visiting my sons at the
Virginia Military Institute. General Pendleton called to see me
at the hotel. General Custis Lee was in my room when he came in.
After General Lee left, General Pendleton asked me if General
Longstreet was not ordered to attack on the 2d of July at six
o’clock in the morning, and did not attack until four in the
evening. I told him it was not possible. When he left me I was
under the impression I had convinced him of his mistaken idea. I
told General Pendleton that you and General Lee were together the
greater part of the day up to about three o’clock or later; that
you separated at the mouth of a lane not long thereafter. You
said to me, ‘Those troops will be in position by the time you get
there; tell General Hood to attack.’
“When I gave the order to General Hood he was standing within a
step or two of his line of battle. I asked him to please delay
his attack until I could communicate to General Longstreet that
he can turn the enemy--pointing to a gorge in the mountain, where
we would be sheltered from his view and attack by his cavalry.
General Hood slapped me on the knee, and said, ‘I agree with you;
bring General Longstreet to see for himself. When I reported to
you, your answer was, ‘It is General Lee’s order; the time is
up,--attack at once.’ I lost no time in repeating the same to
General Hood, and remained with him to see the attack, which was
made instantly. We had a beautiful view of the enemy’s left from
Hood’s position, which was close up to him. He gave way quickly.
General Hood charged, and I spurred to report to you; found you
with hat in hand, cheering on General McLaws’s division....
“Truly your friend,
“JOHN W. FAIRFAX.”
General Longstreet’s views at the time of the Gettysburg operations are
conveyed in a personal letter of a confidential nature, written only
twenty days after the event to his uncle in Georgia, upon being made
aware that there was a sly undercurrent of misrepresentation of his
course current in certain circles of the army:
“CAMP CULPEPER COURT-HOUSE,
“July 24, 1863.
“MY DEAR UNCLE,--Your letters of the 13th and 14th were received
on yesterday. As to our late battle I cannot say much. I have
no right to say anything, in fact, but will venture a little
for you alone. If it goes to aunt and cousins it must be under
promise that it will go no farther. The battle was not made as
I would have made it. My idea was to throw ourselves between the
enemy and Washington, select a strong position, and force the
enemy to attack us. So far as is given to man the ability to
judge, we may say with confidence that we should have destroyed
the Federal army, marched into Washington, and dictated our
terms, or at least held Washington and marched over as much of
Pennsylvania as we cared to, had we drawn the enemy into attack
upon our carefully chosen position in his rear. General Lee chose
the plans adopted, and he is the person appointed to choose and
to order. I consider it a part of my duty to express my views
to the commanding general. If he approves and adopts them, it
is well; if he does not, it is my duty to adopt his views and
to execute his orders as faithfully as if they were my own. I
cannot help but think that great results would have been obtained
had my views been thought better of, yet I am much inclined to
accept the present condition as for the best. I hope and trust
that it is so. Your programme would all be well enough had it
been practicable, and was duly thought of, too. I fancy that no
good ideas upon that campaign will be mentioned at any time that
did not receive their share of consideration by General Lee.
The few things that he might have overlooked himself were, I
believe, suggested by myself. As we failed, I must take my share
of the responsibility. In fact, I would prefer that all the blame
should rest upon me. As General Lee is our commander, he should
have the support and influence we can give him. If the blame, if
there is any, can be shifted from him to me, I shall help him
and our cause by taking it. I desire, therefore, that all the
responsibility that can be put upon me shall go there and shall
remain there. The truth will be known in time, and I leave that
to show how much of the responsibility of Gettysburg rests on my
shoulders....
“Most affectionately yours,
“J. LONGSTREET.
“TO A. B. LONGSTREET, LL.D., COLUMBUS, GA.”
Aside from all this irrefragable personal testimony of conspicuous
participants disproving Pendleton’s apocryphal story, there is other
evidence still more conclusive that no sunrise order for attack by
Longstreet was given by Lee, and equally strong that an early attack on
that day was out of the question. The position of Longstreet’s troops,
all still absent from the field and on the march, forbade an attack by
him at sunrise, or at any other hour much before noon, at the point
designated by Lee. General Lee was well aware of its impossibility. At
sunrise Longstreet’s infantry was still distant from the field, but
rapidly coming up. One brigade (Law’s) was not less than twenty miles
away at the very hour Pendleton would have had Longstreet attack.
McLaws’s and Hood’s divisions had encamped at Marsh Creek, four miles
from Gettysburg, at midnight of the 1st, and did not begin to arrive on
Seminary Ridge until more than three hours after sunrise on the 2d.
The corps artillery did not get up until nine or ten o’clock, and part
of it not until noon or after. Pickett’s division did not begin its
march from the vicinity of Chambersburg, some thirty miles away, until
the 2d. Pendleton’s report, herein quoted, shows how the artillery was
delayed, and the deterrent effect that delay had upon Longstreet’s
advance after he received the order. Pendleton himself was the chief of
artillery, and largely responsible for its manœuvres.
After their arrival upon Seminary Ridge, the infantry of Hood and
McLaws was massed in a field within musket shot of General Lee’s
head-quarters, and there rested until the troops took arms for the
march to the point of attack. From this point of rest near Lee’s
head-quarters to the point of attack, by the circuitous route selected
by Pendleton, was between five and seven miles.
So that Longstreet’s infantry, the nearest at hand, had from nine
to eleven miles to march to reach the selected point of attack, the
greater part of which march by the back roads and ravines, to avoid
the observation of the enemy, was necessarily slow at best, and made
doubly so by the mistakes of Pendleton’s guides, who put the troops
upon the wrong routes. The artillery, still back on the Chambersburg
road, did not all get up until noon, causing a further delay of the
whole column, as shown by the Pendleton report. General Law’s brigade,
marching from 3 A.M., arrived about noon.
After they came up all movements were still several hours delayed,
awaiting Lee’s personal reconnoissances on the left and right to
determine the point of attack.
Colonel Venable says that “about sunrise” he was sent to General
Ewell on the left to inquire if it were not more feasible to attack
in that quarter. While he was riding from point to point with Ewell,
Lee himself came over to see Ewell in person. Lee did not return
to Longstreet’s front until about nine o’clock. Meanwhile, his
staff-officers, Pendleton, Long, Colonel Walker, and Captain Johnston,
by Lee’s orders, had been examining the ground to the right. Upon Lee’s
return from the left he rode far to the right and joined Pendleton.
Not until then was the attack on the enemy’s left by Longstreet finally
decided upon. Longstreet said it was not earlier than eleven o’clock
when he received his orders to move; from the time consumed by Lee and
his staff it was probably later. The front of the Confederate army was
six miles in extent.
Hence matters on the morning of July 2 were not awaiting Longstreet’s
movements. All that long forenoon everything was still in the air,
depending upon Lee’s personal examinations and final decisions.
It is perfectly clear from this indecision on the 2d that Lee could not
have arrived at a decision the previous night, as asserted by Pendleton
at Lexington long after the war.