“I received instructions from the commanding general to move, with the portion of my command that was up, around to gain the Emmitsburg road, on the enemy’s left.”
Lieutenant-General R. H. Anderson, then of Hill’s corps, also makes this definite statement:
“Shortly after the line had been formed, I received notice that Lieutenant-General Longstreet would occupy the ground on my right, and that his line would be in a direction nearly at right angles with mine, and that he would assault the extreme left of the enemy and drive him towards Gettysburg.”
Just here it is pertinent to say that General Longstreet had the afternoon previous, and again that morning, suggested to General Lee the more promising plan of a movement by the Confederate right to interpose between the Federals and their capital, and thus compel General Meade to give battle at a disadvantage. On this point General Longstreet uses the following language in a newspaper publication[B] more than a quarter of a century ago:
“When I overtook General Lee at five o’clock that afternoon [July 1], he said, to my surprise, that he thought of attacking General Meade upon the heights the next day. I suggested that this course seemed to be at variance with the plan of the campaign that had been agreed upon before leaving Fredericksburg. He said, ‘If the enemy is there to-morrow, we must attack him.’ I replied: ‘If he is there, it will be because he is anxious that we should attack him—a good reason in my judgment for not doing so.’ I urged that we should move around by our right to the left of Meade and put our army between him and Washington, threatening his left and rear, and thus force him to attack us in such position as we might select.... I called his attention to the fact that the country was admirably adapted for a defensive battle, and that we should surely repulse Meade with crushing loss if we would take position so as to force him to attack us, and suggested that even if we carried the heights in front of us, and drove Meade out, we should be so badly crippled that we could not reap the fruits of victory; and that the heights of Gettysburg were in themselves of no more importance to us than the ground we then occupied, and that the mere possession of the ground was not worth a hundred men to us. That Meade’s army, not its position, was our objective. General Lee was impressed with the idea that by attacking the Federals he could whip them in detail. I reminded him that if the Federals were there in the morning it would be proof that they had their forces well in hand, and that with Pickett in Chambersburg, and Stuart out of reach, we should be somewhat in detail. He, however, did not seem to abandon the idea of attack on the next day. He seemed under a subdued excitement which occasionally took possession of him when ‘the hunt was up,’ and threatened his superb equipoise.... When I left General Lee on the night of the 1st, I believed that he had made up his mind to attack, but was confident that he had not yet determined as to when the attack should be made.”
But General Lee persisted in the direct attack “up the Emmitsburg road.” Hood, deployed on Longstreet’s extreme right, at once perceived that the true direction was by flank against the southern slopes of Big Round Top. He delayed the advance to advise of the discovery he had made. Soon the positive order came back: “General Lee’s orders are to attack up the Emmitsburg road.” He still hesitated and repeated the suggestion. Again it was reiterated: “General Lee’s orders are to attack up the Emmitsburg road.” Then the troops moved to the attack. There was no alternative. Lee’s orders were imperative, and made after he had personally examined the enemy’s position. Longstreet was ordered to attack a specific position “up the Emmitsburg road,” which was not Little Round Top, as assumed by Gordon. This point is particularly elaborated because in it lies the “milk in the cocoanut” of the charges against Longstreet. Without consulting the records Gordon has merely followed the lead of some of General Lee’s biographers, notably Fitzhugh Lee, who asserts that his illustrious uncle “expected Longstreet to seize Little Round Top on the 2d of July.” The records clearly show that nothing was farther from General Lee’s thoughts.
After the war it was discovered that a very early attack on Little Round Top would perhaps have found it undefended, hence the afterthought that General Longstreet was ordered to attack at sunrise. But whatever the hour Longstreet was ordered to attack, it was most certainly not Little Round Top that was made his objective.