Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 04.djvu/301

Rh He is here speaking of the morning of the 2d; and would Col. Venable have us believe that General Lee had not then made up his mind that Longstreet should open the attack, or communicated his intention to the latter?

There is one thing very certain, and that is that either General Lee or General Longstreet was responsible for the remarkable delay that took place in making the attack. I choose to believe that it was not General Lee, for if any one knew the value of promptness and celerity in military movements he did. It is equally certain that the delay which occurred in making the attack lost us the victory.

It was very natural that Longstreet's corps should be selected to assume the initiative on the 2nd day at Gettysburg. Neither of his divisions had been at the recent battles at Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg, except McLaws', and that division, with the exception of Barksdale's brigade, had not been as heavily engaged there as the other troops. Ewell's corps had captured Winchester and cleared the valley on its advance into Pennsylvania, and two of its divisions, as well as two of Hill's, had been heavily engaged on the first.

Can it be that General Longstreet apprehended that if the advantage gained on the first day was promptly and vigorously prosecuted the chief glory of the battle would devolve on the two corps which had first encountered the enemy and brought him to bay, and hence desired to change the theatre of the battle that was inevitable?

A careful study of the testimony of Meade and his officers, contained in the 1st volume, 2nd series, of the Congressional Report on the Conduct of the War, will satisfy any one that the bulk of the Federal army that was up was massed on the right, confronting Ewell's corps, all the forenoon of the 2nd, and that the Round Tops, the key to the position on the enemy's left were unoccupied until Longstreet's movement began at 4 P. M. The distance which Longstreet's corps had to march from its camp of the night of the 30th, to reach the town of Gettysburg itself, could not have exceeded 15 miles, and it had the whole day of the 1st to make it, though it was somewhat delayed by Johnson's division of Ewell's corps, which got the road first, by moving more promptly it is presumed. The Fifth corps of Meade's army was