Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 37.djvu/379

 "It is impossible to believe that General Lee ever professed the ignorance of the movements of Stuart that Heth, Long, and his staff-officers have attributed to him. If he had done so, it would have been affectation. He knew that his and Longstreet's orders would carry Stuart for a while into a state of eclipse; around the enemy, out of sight, and out of communication with him.

"Heth delivered the judgment in his letter that 'the failure to crush the Federal army in Pennsylvania can be expressed in five words—the absence of cavalry; 'I would rather say it was due to the presence of Heth. "

THE MUCH-MOOTED LETTER-BOOK.

"In another letter in the Philadelphia Times of December 27, 1877, Heth professes to have read in General Lee's letter-book his instructions to Stuart to keep in close contact and communication with Longstreet. Now the contents of the letter-book have since been published and I have read the original copies. Heth's account of what he read in the book is pure fiction. Instead of ordering Stuart to keep on Longstreet's flank, he ordered him to leave Longstreet in Virginia, cross the Potomac, and join Ewell on the Susquehanna—a hundred miles away.

"It was all the same to Lee at what ford Stuart crossed the Potomac.

"Heth's letter was written to give information to the Count of Paris. It is the origin of his criticism of Stuart in his History of the War.

"As for cavalry there were as many with Ewell as there were with Reynolds that day. Buford fought his two brigades dismounted in the morning, when Heth attacked him. There were no cavalry charges on either side. If there had existed any necessity to make a reconnaissance Lee's headquarters were near and so were Swell's cavalry. The order should have come from the commander-in-chief. Hill and Heth never informed him of the exploit they meditated. He would never have sanctioned it."

Now Heth says that if our cavalry had been there there would have been no battle at Gettysburg. He does not say how cavalry could have kept him and Hill away; he unconsciously pays a