Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 39.djvu/122

 110 Southern Historical Society Papers.

wall Jackson's reputation will suffer nothing- from such loose criticism ; and we may turn at once to Gettysburg, for it is in the account of that momentous battle that the interest of the memoirs culminates.

General Longstreet discusses the campaign at great length, and his defense of his own conduct fills many pages. This de- fense, however, is by no means satisfactory. In the first place, he tells that when the invasion of Pennsylvania was first broached he assented to General Lee's plan on the condition that the tac- tics of the Confederates should be purely defensive ; but he makes no attempt to explain on what grounds he considered himself entitled to dictate conditions to his superior officer. He had no mandate from the government to act as Lee's adviser. He was merely the commander of an army corps — a subordinate, pure and simple ; and yet he appears to have entered on the campaign with the idea that the commander-in-chief was bound to engage the enemy with the tactics that he, General Longstreet, had sug- gested. In the second place, he does not appear to have grasped the drift of the charges which have been brought against him. The question is not whether the maneuvers suggested by Long- street would have been more successful than those executed by General Lee, but whether the general commanding the First Army Corps did everything which lay within his power to carry out, loyally and unhesitatingly, the wishes and instructions of the commander-in-chief of the Confederate army.

The maneuvers preliminary to the battle were decidedly to the advantage of the Confederates. Lee moved with such rapidity through Pennsylvania that he was far to the northeast of Wash- ington before his columns were threatened by the enemy's ad- vance. On July I he found a Federal force on his right fiank. His advanced troops forced an encounter, and two Federal army corps driven back to a strong position at Gettysburg, covering the direct road to Washington. During the evening Lee and Longstreet reconnoitered the ridge occupied by the enemy. They were aware that no more than 20,000 Federals were on the ground, while 40,000 of their own men, finished with victory, were alread)- present. Longstreet writes: