University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XXXV.

A detailed account of the series of sanguinary conflicts on
the heights of Gettysburg on the 1st, 2d, and 3d of July, or any
elaborate criticism of the causes which led to the repulse of the
Southern army and deprived it of the success at one time apparently

within its grasp, are not at all within the scope of these
memoirs. The whole subject has been fully and freely discussed
by able officers who were engaged on both sides. But there is
one point, perhaps the most important of all those brought out,
upon which General Pendleton's biographer is called upon to
speak with the utmost clearness and deliberateness of statement.

The fight begun so unexpectedly on the morning of July 1
proved to be a severe encounter between Hill's advance and the
First and Eleventh Corps of the Federal army. With hard fighting
the Federals were driven slowly and steadily back. The
artillery battalions of Pegram and McIntosh took important part
in this attack, occupying one range of hills after another with
their guns as the enemy retreated. About half-past two P.M.
Rodes's division of Ewell's corps, with Carter's artillery, came
upon the scene of action to the northwest. Early's division, with
Jones's artillery, also came into the fight shortly after, farther to
the east. The battle now raged furiously for a short time, when
the enemy was driven through and out of the town with great
loss. Brigadier-General Reynolds was killed and over five thousand
prisoners, besides the wounded, captured, together with artillery
and colors. General Lee reached the battle-field about the
same time with Early's troops. General Pendleton, riding with
him, was requested to examine the ground and post artillery
in good position for hastening the retreat of the enemy. To
this end the woods on the right of the Fairfield road were examined,
and a road was observed along the ravine back of these
woods.[1]

When the enemy were driven from the town they withdrew to
Cemetery Hill, a very strong position on the south, which they occupied,
as well as another height farther to the east. These points
General Ewell was directed to seize if he could do so without
bringing on a general engagement. The near approach of other
Federal troops had been learned; the divisions of Heth and
Pender, Rodes and Early, were much exhausted by hard marching
and severe fighting, and a further attack that night was deemed
inadvisable.

"It had not been intended to deliver a general battle so far
from our base, unless attacked," wrote General Lee in his report,
adding that "a battle had become in a measure unavoidable. . . .
It was determined to make the principal attack upon the enemy's
left, and endeavor to gain a position from which it was thought
our artillery could be brought to bear with effect. Longstreet
was directed to place the divisions of McLaws and Hood on the
right of Hill, partially enveloping the enemy's left, which he was
to drive in."[2]

The reports of Generals Ewell, Early, and Pendleton, written
within a few weeks after the battle, stated that the attack by
General Lee's right, General Longstreet commanding, was expected
to take place at a very early hour on the 2d of July.
General Early says, "Having been informed that a large portion
of the rest of our army would come up during the night, and
that the enemy's position would be attacked on the right and left
flanks very early next morning," etc. "The attack did not begin
in the morning, as was expected, and in the course of the morning
I rode with General Ewell to examine a position on the left
for artillery." Generals A. P. Hill and Anderson, with their
subordinates, corroborate this expectation of early action on the
2d. General Hill states, "The corps of General Longstreet
(McLaws's and Hood's divisions) was on my right, and in a line
very nearly at right angles to mine. General Longstreet was to
attack the left flank of the enemy and sweep down his line, and I
was ordered to co-operate with him with such of my brigades
from the right as could join with his troops in the attack."
General Anderson's division constituted Hill's right, and Wilcox's
brigade held the right of that division. General Anderson says,
" Shortly after the line had been formed I received notice that
Lieutenant-General Longstreet would occupy the ground on the
right; that his line would be nearly at right angles with mine;
that he would assault the extreme left of the enemy and drive
him towards Gettysburg," etc.[3] General Wilcox says, "The
brigade now (nine A.M.) took its position in line of battle on the
right of the division and the extreme right of the army. . . .
From this till two P.M. nothing occurred."[4] General Wright, in

Anderson's centre, reports that "About noon I was informed by
Major-General Anderson that an attack upon the enemy's lines
would soon be made by the whole division."

General Lee's whole army, with the exception of Pickett's
division and Laws's brigade of Longstreet's corps, had come up
to within striking distance of Gettysburg on or during the night
of the 1st of July. General Hood states that his troops "reached
Gettysburg at or before sunrise" that morning, and that himself
and staff "arrived shortly after daybreak."[5]

What, then, caused the long delay, so unlike General Lee's
usual promptness in the presence of the enemy? He knew that
the whole of General Meade's army was pushing up to meet him.
Why wait to give them opportunity to arrive and take possession
of the commanding positions towards his right? "All now
agree," says General Early, "that the fullest success would have
attended the effort if the blow had been struck in the morning or
forenoon of the 2d, as it should have been, and as was General
Lee's purpose."[6] That such was General Lee's intention General
Long, in his recent "Memoirs of General Lee," General
Hood, in the letter above quoted, and Colonel Taylor[7] abundantly
establish, were there no other testimony.

So long as General Lee lived it could not be becoming for any
of his subordinates to break the silence he so magnanimously
kept as to his apparent failure to seize the great opportunity
before him on the morning of July 2 at Gettysburg; but when
their beloved leader passed to his rest their lips were unsealed,
and those few survivors who knew felt it their duty to put on
record the facts in the case. General Early, in an address delivered
on the 19th of January,[8] 1872, at Lexington, Virginia,
said,—

"In a conference with General Ewell, General Rodes, and myself,
when he (General Lee) did reach us after the enemy had been
routed, he expressed his determination to assault the enemy's position
at daylight on the next morning, and wished to know whether

we could make the attack from our flank—the left—at the designated
time. We informed him of the fact that the ground immediately
in our front furnished much greater obstacles to a
successful assault than existed at any other point. . . . He then
determined to make the attack from our right on the enemy's
left, and left us for the purpose of ordering up Longstreet's corps
in time to begin the attack at dawn the next morning. That
corps was not in readiness to make the attack until four o'clock
of the next day. By that time Meade's whole army had arrived
on the field and taken its position. Had the attack been made
at daylight as contemplated it must have resulted in a brilliant
victory, as all of Meade's army had not then arrived and a very
small portion of it was in position. A considerable portion of
his army did not get up until after sunrise,[9] one corps not
arriving until two in the afternoon, and a prompt advance to the
attack must have resulted in his defeat in detail. The position
which Longstreet attacked at four was not occupied by the
enemy until late in the afternoon, and Round Top Hill, which
commanded the enemy's position, could have been taken in the
morning without a struggle."[10]

On January 19, 1873, a year after General Early made the foregoing
statement, General Pendleton also delivered a memorial
address on General Lee at Lexington, which he afterwards repeated
at different points throughout the South and published in
the Southern Magazine for December, 1874. In this address,
speaking of Gettysburg, General Pendleton said,—

"The ground southwest of the town was carefully examined
by me after the engagement of July 1. Being found much less
difficult than the steep ascent fronting the troops already up, its
practicable character was reported to our commanding general.
He informed me that he had ordered Longstreet to attack on
that front at sunrise the next morning. And he added to myself,

'I want you to be out long before sunrise so as to re-examine
and to save time.' The reconnoissance was accordingly made as
soon as it was light enough on the 2d, and made through a long
distance,—in fact, very close to what there was of the enemy's
line. No insuperable difficulty appearing, and marching up, far
off, the enemy's reinforcing columns being seen, the extreme desirableness
of immediate attack there was at once reported to
the commanding general, and, according to his wish, message
was also sent to the intrepid but deliberate corps commander
whose sunrise attack had there been ordered. There was, however,
unaccountable delay. My own messages went repeatedly
to General Lee, and his, I know, were urgently pressed on General
Longstreet, until, as I afterwards learned from officers who
saw General Lee, as I could not at the time, he manifested extreme
displeasure with the tardy corps commander. That hard-fighting
soldier, to whom it had been committed to attack early
in the day, did not, in person, reach the commanding general,
and with him ride to a position whence to view the ground
and see the enemy's arriving masses, until twelve o'clock, and
his column was not up and ready for the assault until four P.M.
All this, as it occurred under my own personal observation, it
is nothing short of imperative duty that I should thus fairly
state."

On the 3d of November, 1877, General Longstreet published
in the Philadelphia Times an article on the "Causes of Lee's
Defeat at Gettysburg," beginning it with a letter written by
himself on June 24, 1863, in which he claimed that he had communicated
to General Lee a much better plan for the battle of
Gettysburg than that on which it was fought, but generously
prefers that all the blame for the failure should rest upon himself.
Regretting that he could not in 1877 rest upon that letter of 1863,
General Longstreet then went at length into the blunders and
failure made by General Lee on account of his disregarding his
(General Longstreet's) advice with regard to the Pennsylvania
campaign; flatly denied that he was ordered or expected to
attack on the right early on the morning of the 2d; assailed
Generals Pendleton and Early abusively, and asserted that he
had disproved their declaration that he was thus ordered by

letters from members of General Lee's staff. Three of these
letters, from Colonels Taylor, Marshall, and Long, simply declare
that they individually were not informed of such an order to
General Longstreet. Colonel Venable goes further, and falls
into the grave mistake of doubting the word of a brother officer
because he was not told of such an order. The question at issue
was not what the commanding general had said to the younger
men who served him so faithfully, but what he had chosen to
communicate to his chief of artillery, with serious responsibilities
resting upon him, for the coming contest, and who was at the
same time his contemporary and life-long friend.

To this attack of General Longstreet upon the veracity of his
statement General Pendleton made no reply. He had, in defence
of General Lee, affirmed what he knew to be true, and
rested calmly in the assurance that, as true, it must ultimately be
established. General Early, however, published a full and free
reply[11] to General Longstreet, giving facts and details known only
to himself of the events of the night of July 1 and morning of
July 2. After giving an account of the conference between
Generals Lee, Ewell, Rodes, and himself, mentioned before, General
Early goes into the particulars of that consultation: "I
then called General Lee's attention to the Round Tops, the outline
of which we could see, though dusk was approaching, and
suggested that those heights must evidently command the
enemy's position and render it untenable,[12] . . . adding the suggestion
that the attack could be made on that side, and from our
right flank, with better chances of success.[13] . . . The first mention
of Longstreet's name in connection with the attack was in
this wise: when General Lee had heard our views, he said, in these
very words, which are indelibly impressed on my memory, 'Well,
if I attack from my right, Longstreet will have to make the attack;'
and after a moment's pause, during which he held his head
down in deep thought, he raised it, and added, 'Longstreet is a
very good fighter when he gets in position and gets everything
ready, but he is so slow.' The emphasis was just as I have given
it, and the words seemed to come from General Lee with pain."[14]

General Longstreet, in the Times, stated that he left General
Lee on the night of the 1st "without any orders at all," and
that on the morning of the 2d he renewed his protest against
making any attack at all, which declarations are strangely at
variance with all the reports above quoted, as well as contrary to
his own report, which says, "Laws's brigade was ordered forward
to his division and joined about noon on the 2d. Previous to
his joining I received instructions from the commanding general
to move with the portion of my command that was up around to
gain the Emmittsburg road, on the enemy's left. . . . Fearing my
force was too weak to venture to make an attack, I delayed until
General Laws's brigade joined its division." Later denials cannot
correct the impression made by this report, written within a
few weeks after the battle, that whenever he was ordered up he
deliberately chose to disobey the order.

How desperate was the long-delayed attack on the right, how
furiously the battle raged, and how the Confederates drove the
enemy from his advanced positions, out of the peach orchard
and to the base of the Round Tops, other and abler pens have
told with full detail. But the crests of those hills, crowned
with scores of guns, had not been reached, some of the
ground covered had to be abandoned, and of the artillery
left by the enemy as he fell back only four guns could be
brought off.

On the left, Ewell had been directed to delay attack until
Longstreet's guns were heard. During all the long hours of the
morning the enemy was occupied in strengthening his already
well-nigh impregnable positions. Late in the day Johnson, on
the extreme left, carried the works in his front to the foot of
Culp's Hill, and Early's troops succeeded in reaching the crest
of Cemetery Hill, but being unsupported could not hold it.
Night closed with heavy loss on both sides, with the Confederate
troops well advanced, but with the strongly-fortified heights from
Culp's Hill to the Round Tops still in the possession of the
enemy. The artillery throughout the day had done gallant
service. The batteries of the First Corps did much towards
preparing for the advance of McLaws and Hood, and followed
the enemy at full run as he was driven out of the peach orchard.
The guns of Hill's corps, in the centre, fired upon the enemy at

intervals to prevent a concentration of the artillery opposed to
them and to divert attention from the First Corps. On the left
Andrews's battalion, assisted by the four Virginia batteries of
Graham, Dance, Watson, and Smith, opened a heavy fire at four
in the afternoon, but the contest proved very unequal. The
enemy replied from a superior artillery force on Cemetery Hill,
and the Confederate ammunition running low, most of the guns
had to be withdrawn. Its commander, Major Latimer, here
received a mortal wound.

The success of the second day encouraged the hope that an
early, vigorous, and simultaneous attack next morning would
carry the enemy's positions and secure the victory. "The artillery
along the entire line was to be prepared for opening, as early
as possible on the morning of the 3d, a concentrated and destructive
fire, consequent upon which a general advance was to
be made."[15] "Longstreet, reinforced by Pickett's three brigades
(not yet under fire), was ordered to attack the next morning,
and General Ewell was ordered to assail the enemy's right at the
same time."[16] That time was "at daylight on Friday morning."[17]
At dawn on the morning of the 3d the artillery on the right was
posted by Colonel Alexander and visited by General Pendleton.
The attack ordered on the left was anticipated by the Federals,
who attempted to retake the works occupied by Johnson's
division the night before. But General Longstreet was again
unprepared. He says, in his paper in the Philadelphia Times, he
was unwilling to obey General Lee's orders. After Johnson, on
the left, was engaged and could not be recalled, General Ewell
was informed that Longstreet would not attack until ten o'clock.[18]
He was not, in fact, ready for his advance until two P.M., and
then, as he himself states, wished to throw the responsibility upon
Colonel Alexander as to whether and when Pickett's division
should be ordered forward to the assault.

At one P.M. the signal was given for the Confederate cannon,
nearly one hundred and fifty, to open fire; and then ensued for
two hours the most furious cannonade ever heard on this continent.
When the enemy's fire ceased, Pickett's division, followed

by Heth's, advanced to the charge. As they moved forward
into open ground the Federal guns burst out again, pouring into
them a most destructive fire, to which adequate reply could not
be made for want of ammunition. Undeterred by this and by
the hot storm of musket-balls which met them in front, the
gallant division swept up the height with a steadiness and
bravery which elicited the admiration of the enemy. Had they
been supported, as General Lee had ordered, the Federal position
might then have been seized. But their corps commander not
only failed to lead, drive, or order either of his other divisions to
support Pickett's magnificent charge, as General Lee had directed
and intended, but he went further, and forbade General Anderson
of Hill's corps to move forward to assist in the attack, which he
was about to do.

In the February number of the Century Magazine for 1887
General Longstreet saw fit to repeat, and in some respects to
amplify, his previous assumption of superior military wisdom
and skill, his carping criticism on General Lee, and his
charge of falsehood upon General Pendleton. Many officers
have again refuted his assertions on various points. The only
further reply to his discourteous and malign attack on General
Pendleton necessary here is given in the following letter
from Bishop George W. Peterkin, of West Virginia, who
was General Pendleton's "tried and trusty aide" throughout
the war: