Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 33.djvu/146

 142 Southern Historical Society Papers.

most lovable old man." Commanding a brigade of infantry at the First Manassas, he became a trusted division commander under Jackson. At the second battle of Manassas he lost a leg, and lay invalided for some time in Richmond, until after Chancellorsville he was made a Lieutenant-General and returned to the field to command the Second Corps. He was much disabled by the ioss of his leg, was dyspeptic, and to his staff both affectionate and irritable. With loyalty unquestioned, and supreme confidence in his commander, at Gettysburg he lacked initiative, and at a crit- ical moment waited for orders.

Lieutenant-General Ambrose P. Hill, commanding the Third Corps, was thirty-nine years of age. He was a native of Culpep- er, Va., and graduated in 1847, w ^ tn Burnside. He was small and neat in form, and soldierly in bearing, a fine division com- mander. Under forty, he still had enough of initiative to act for himself at Gettysburg, and to bring on the first day's action, contrary to General Lee's wishes, and with serious consequences.

Lieutenant-General J. E. B. Stuart was but thirty years of age at Gettysburg. He was a native of Patrick county, Va., and gradu- ated at West Point in 1854. He was an officer of the First Cav- alry, with General Sumner as Colonel, and Joseph E. Johnston as Lieutenant- Colonel. He was an aid of Colonel R. E. Lee at Har- per's Ferry in the John Brown rebellion. A superb horseman, he was an officer of energy, vigilance and personal courage, and irrepressible gaiety of spirits, with entire freedom from every form of dissipation. As a superior officer, the only criticism ever made was that he preferred a hundred times to lead a charge himself, rather than send another to do it.

THE FIRST DAY.

On June 3Oth, General A. P. Hill being atCashtown, Pettigrew's Brigade, of Heth's Division, was permitted to go forward to levy from the stores of Gettysburg shoes for some of his barefooted men, but he found Buford's cavalry about the town, and retired without the shoes. On that day, the 3Oth, General Lee was with Long- street's camp, at Greenwood, just west of the mountain at Cashtown. Ewell with two divisions was a short distance north, coming east from Carlisle, and Early was retiring from York toward Cashtown; Stuart, of whose whereabouts General Lee knew nothing was fight- ing Kilpatrick at Hanover.