Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 23.djvu/251

 Cause of tl f.*3 of Gettysburg. 245

municate by relays through Charlestown. I send instructions for General Jones, which pK-.iM- read." Jones was one of the best out- post officers in the army. Stuart's main reliance was on him. His brigade was at that time much nearer the Potomac than Robertson's. Jones in accordance with Stuart's order places the Twelfth Virginia Cavalry at Charlestown. Longstreet was responsible for the use made of these two brigades, as they were under his orders. It would have been much rasirr to send a courier back for them from Hagerstown, if the cavalry was needed, than from Chambersburg. He knew that Hooker's army had crossed the river, and was hold- ing the South Mountain passes when he was at Hagerstown. So his spy only told General Lee what he already knew. It could not have been a surprise to hear at Chambersburg that the Northern army was moving north. There was nothing else for it to do. If when General Lee was at Hagerstown he had supposed that Hooker was still south of the Potomac he would not have moved north, but due east, toward Baltimore and Washington. There is not the slightest evidence to show that in this campaign any injury resulted to the army from want of cavalry. Our communications were never in- terrupted. General Longstreet speaks of Stuart's movement toward Ewell's right flank as a raid. As I have shown, it was nothing of the kind, but a part of a combined movement of the whole army. The criticisms of Stuart are all predicated on the idea that Gettys- burg was General Lee's objective point; and as Stuart was absent from the first day's battle he must, therefore, have been in default. But General Lee was not present in the battle; he arrived just at the close. On this assumption a plausible theory was invented that the battle was precipitated for want of cavalry. In Belford's Magazine (October and November, 1891), in an article on Gettysburg, based on a study of the records, I demonstrated the error; and showed that General Lee never intended to go to Gettysburg, but that Cashtown was his expected point of concentration. General Heth, General Longstreet, Long, and others, had represented Gettysburg to be the stragetic point on which General Lee was manoeuvreing. They forgot that we had held and then abandoned it. Of course, when the base was knocked from under it, the theory fell.

WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE.

General Longstreet now says that Cashtown was the place where General Lee ordered the concentration. He did not say so in the Century. He fails to show the genesis of the battle, and who