Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 24.djvu/86

 78 XnHllitTii lli*tin-i<-<il Nor/V/v

was directed to move early. Not long after sunrise I moved forward, and before 8 A. M. the head of my division reached Seminary Ridge, where General Lee was in person." But I propose to put General Longstreet himself in evidence to contradict the statement just now quoted from his book. I have now in my possession an autograph letter from him, written from New Orleans on the 2oth April, 1875, in which he wrote: " It occurs to me that if General Lee had any such idea as an attack at sunrise you must surely be advised of it. Right sure am I that such an order was never delivered to me, and it is not possible for me to believe that he ever entertained an idea that I was to attack at that hour. My two divisions, nor myself, did not reach General Lee until 8 A. M. on the 2nd, and if he had intended to attack at sunrise he surely would have expressed some surprise or made some allusion to his orders." The point here made by General Longstreet, is that he had received no order to attack at sunrise; nor had he such orders; but, as the matter is now presented, the defence is purely technical. He had been made to know full well the importance to General Lee for the presence of his troops at the front, and he failed to meet the occasion and have his command available for the very co-operation with General Ewell by an early attack by our right, of which he wrote in his letter of May

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In other words, had he placed his troops at General Lee's dispo- sal at the proper time, it was unquestionably the purpose of the lat- ter to have ordered an attack at sunrise or soon thereafter. His troops not being in position, of course the attack could not be made. The two statements made by General Longstreet as to the time that he reported with his divisions, cannot be reconciled. In 1875 when he wrote the letter from which I have quoted, he claims that neither he, nor his divisions reached General Lee until 8 o'clock A. M. In his book, published twenty years later, he claims that he reported at General Lee's headquarters before day, "the stars were shining brightly, and that his two divisions reached the front at sunrise," say at 4:35 A. M. The preponderance of contemporaneous eviden- ces goes to prove that General Longstreet accurately described the facts in his letter of April, 1875; the "star-light" scene, with which chapter xxvii of his book opens is too finely drawn for " Old Pete," ( rather early you know), and its accuracy is not visible to the naked eye.

The war record of General Longstreet was a brilliant one. That he should have made mistakes was but natural and inevitable; but