General James Longstreet: The Confederacy's Most Controversial Soldier by Jeffry D. Wert

Author:Jeffry D. Wert [Wert, Jeffry D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2015-05-26T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

14

“NEVER WAS I SO DEPRESSED”

The nearly fifty-eight hundred Virginians of Major General George Pickett’s infantry division arrived at Gettysburg on the afternoon of July 2, 1863. While the other divisions of the army coverged on the battlefield on July 1, Pickett’s three brigades remained in Chambersburg, destroying public property and workshops. Relieved by a cavalry brigade that night, the Virginians started for Gettysburg early on July 2. The day’s heat and the march’s length wilted the troops, and when they halted near Marsh Creek, they were “almost exhausted.” To the east, artillery fire growled, hinting of the fury that was soon to engulf their comrades in the First Corps.1

While the men rested in the fields, Pickett directed Major Walter Harrison to report the division’s arrival to Robert E. Lee and then spurred ahead to find his commander and old friend, James Longstreet. Pickett located the lieutenant general while the latter was watching the attack against the Union Third Corps. Longstreet “was mighty glad to see me,” wrote Pickett. The two officers chatted briefly, with Pickett describing the location and condition of his troops. Before long Harrison rode up to inform Pickett that he had met with Lee, who said to the staff officer: “Tell General Pickett I shall not want him this evening, to let his men rest, and I will send him word when I want them.”2

Pickett and Harrison lingered in the area, spectators to the combat that raged in the fields between the Emmitsburg Road and Cemetery Ridge. As the fighting subsided with the repulse of Major General Richard Anderson’s Confederate brigades, the division commander and his staff officer headed back to their fellow Virginians. Pickett issued orders for an early start the next morning. Sleep came easily for the weary men. Circumstances had spared them for two days, but such fortune could sometimes exact its price. A terrible accounting awaited when the word came from Lee.3

With Pickett’s division at hand, Lee finally had his army on or near the battlefield. An hour or so before Pickett rode up, the long-absent cavalry commander, J. E. B. Stuart, had reported to Lee on Seminary Ridge. Stuart had been out of contact with the invading Confederates since the morning of June 25. While the Southern infantry and artillery had stumbled into the collision at Gettysburg, Stuart’s three brigades had become entangled with the Union army en route northward; they captured an enemy wagon train that further slowed their march and engaged enemy horsemen at Hanover, Pennsylvania. A courier from Lee located Stuart at Carlisle on the night of July 1. The orders directed the cavalry officer to Gettysburg, and he moved his tired men there hours later.4

When Stuart joined Lee, the commanding general, as was his habit, said little, but his deameanor indicated his disappointment with the cavalry commander. While others in the army would castigate Stuart then and later for his “ride”—Charles Marshall, Lee’s aide, even suggested that he should be shot—Lee only mildly rebuked the subordinate in his report.

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