Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 05.pdf/187

182 At daylight on the morning of the 2d General Longstreet was at General Lee's headquarters renewing his protest against making an attack, but General Lee "seemed resolved to attack," so says General Longstreet. As General Lee afterwards became so worried at the non-appearance of General Longstreet's troops, is it not a fair presumption that General Longstreet had already received his instructions? General Hood, writing to Longstreet, says, "General Lee was seemingly anxious you should attack that morning, and you said to me, the General is a little nervous this morning; he wishes me to attack; I do not wish to do so without Pickett."

In General Longstreet's official report we find that "Laws' brigade was ordered forward to its division during the day and joined about noon on the 2d. Previous to his joining [the italics are mine] I received instructions from the Commanding-General to move with the portion of my command that was up, to gain the Emmettsburg road on the enemy's left," *   *   *  and that "fearing that my force was too weak to venture to make an attack, I  until General Laws' brigade joined its division." And yet in face of this, his official report, he charges the responsibility of the delay of his attack to General Lee in his recent paper to the Times, by writing that after receiving from General Lee the order to attack at 11 o'clock, he waited for Laws' brigade to come up, and that "General Lee assented." The two statements, it will be readily perceived, are at variance.

General Hood says he arrived, with his staff, in front of the heights of Gettysburg shortly after daybreak on the morning of the 2d, and that his troops soon filed into an open field near by. Colonel Walton, chief of artillery, Longstreet corps, states that his reserve artillery arrived on the field about the same hour and reported themselves ready to go into battle. The Commanding-General was impatient—why the delay then until 4 P. M. in what General Lee intended to be his main attack?

General Longstreet, in his narrative, contends that the delay of several hours in the march of his column to the right was General Lee's fault, since the column was moved under the special directions of Colonel Johnston, an engineer officer of the Commanding-General, and having for the time the authority of General Lee himself, which he, Longstreet, could not set aside. Although he