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Rh Longstreet to get ready? It must be borne in mind that General Lee wanted to make the attack on the enemy the day before, according to Longstreet's own statement, and wanted him to begin it, but he demurred and asked permission to take time to reconnoitre. It was twenty-seven hours after his arrival on the field before he was ready to begin, and if the troops of McClellan, the junction of which with Pope's army Jackson's movement had been intended to prevent, had been hurried to the front, what a different result might have taken place!

Is it to be credited that, when General Lee was anxious for Longstreet to begin the attack as soon as his troops arrived on the 29th, he said nothing to him, nor gave him any orders on the 30th, until, as Longstreet says, after 3 P. M. a courier arrived in great haste with orders from General Lee for him to hurry to the assistance of Jackson; and that the only other part General Lee took in the battle that ensued, was to write him a note saying that if he had "found anything better than reinforcing Jackson, to pursue it"? Let us see what General Longstreet says in his official report, intended for General Lee's own eye. In that report, after describing his riding to the front, and his determination to direct an artillery fire on the attacking column, he says:

The claims here made are exorbitant enough in all conscience, but there is a little room left for a suspicion that Jackson's men had something to do with the repulse of the enemy from their front, and that it was not all the work of Longstreet's two batteries, and that they also took some part in the pursuit of the enemy. The relations which General Lee is made to bear to Longstreet's operations and the battle, are very different from those indicated in the extract from the article in the Times.