Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/443

Rh anxiously watching for the coming of Longstreet's two divisions, those of McLaws and Hood, and for that of Anderson's of Hill's corps, that he might begin the battle on his right at the hour appointed with Ewell. But Anderson did not move until 7, and not until 8 did his skirmishers, under Wilcox, drive in those of the Federal center, and it was 9 before Hill's line of battle, on Seminary ridge, with its right resting on the Emmitsburg road, was ready to advance. Longstreet's movements were still tardier than Hill's. His two divisions did not leave their Willoughby run bivouac until after sunrise, and it was 8 o'clock when his first brigade, Kershaw's of McLaws' division, reached Seminary ridge, where Lee was impatiently waiting—seated on the trunk of a fallen tree consulting a map, writes McLaws—with Longstreet "walking up and down a little way off, apparently in an impatient humor."

Hood's division followed McLaws, but that intrepid leader had ridden to the front, and joined Lee at his post of observation soon after daylight. Hood thus describes what he saw and heard: "General Lee, with coat buttoned up to the throat, saber belt around his waist, and field glass 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." Lee said to Hood: "The enemy is here, and if we do not whip him, he will whip us."

Longstreet had joined Lee in the early morning, but hours passed before any of his men appeared, and victory, which the fighting ancients pictured with wings, took her flight to the ridge held by the army of the Potomac. Longstreet importuned Lee to move around to the right, but when the latter would not agree to change his plan, Longstreet asked that the attack on the right be delayed until the arrival of Pickett's division. It was characteristic of Longstreet, as of most stubborn men, that he always desired to follow a plan of his own suggestion, rather than that of his commander-in-chief, and so, with dogged persistence, he continued to urge his own plan upon Lee, but without avail, as he had determined to attack as soon as Longstreet's men should arrive. His advance appeared at about 8 o'clock, having consumed three hours of the day in a march of from two to four miles. The head of his column was at once