Lee and Longstreet at High Tide: Gettysburg in the Light of the Official Records

by Helen Dortch Longstreet

Another embarrassment prevented an earlier attack on July 2. It was the plan of General Lee to surprise the left flank of the Union army. General Lee ordered Captain Johnson, the engineer officer of his staff, to conduct Longstreet’s column by a route concealed from the enemy. But the formation and movements of the attacking column had been discovered by my reconnoisance; this exposure put an end to any chance of surprise. Other dispositions became necessary; fresh orders from head-quarters were asked for; another line of advance had to be found, less exposed to view. All this took time. These circumstances were, of course, known to General Lee; hence he saw no reason to reproach Longstreet for delay.

The situation on the left flank of the Union army was entirely changed by my advance to the Emmitsburg road. Fitzhugh Lee says, “Lee was deceived by it and gave orders to attack up the Emmitsburg road, partially enveloping the enemy’s left; there was much behind Sickles.” The obvious purpose of my advance was to hold Lee’s force in check until General Meade could bring his reserves from his right flank, at Rock Creek, to the Round Tops, on the left. Fortunately for me, General Lee believed that my line from the Peach-Orchard north​—​about a division front​—​was all Longstreet would have to deal with. Longstreet soon discovered that my left rested beyond Devil’s Den, about twelve hundred yards easterly from the Emmitsburg road, and at a right angle to it. Of course, Longstreet could not push forward to Lee’s objective,​—​the Emmitsburg road ridge,​—​leaving this force on his flank and rear, to take him in reverse. An obstinate conflict followed, which detained Longstreet until the Fifth Corps, which had been in reserve on the Union right, moved to the left and got into position on the Round Tops. Thus it happened that my salient at the Peach-Orchard, on the Emmitsburg road, was not attacked until six o’clock, the troops on my line, from the Emmitsburg road to the Devil’s Den, having held their positions until that hour. The surprise Lee had planned was turned upon himself. The same thing would have happened if Longstreet had attacked in the morning; all the troops that resisted Longstreet in the afternoon​—​say thirty thousand​—​would have opposed him in the forenoon.

The alignment of the Union forces on the left flank at 11 A.M., when Lee gave his preliminary orders to Longstreet for the attack, was altogether different from the dispositions made by me at 3 P.M., when the attack was begun. At eleven in the morning my command was on Cemetery Ridge, to the left of Hancock. At two o’clock in the afternoon, anticipating General Lee’s attack, I changed front, deploying my left division (Birney’s) from Plum Run, near the base of Little Round Top, to the Peach-Orchard, at the intersection of Millerstown and Emmitsburg roads. My right division (Humphrey’s) was moved forward to the Emmitsburg road, its left connecting with Birney at the Orchard, and its right en echelon with Hancock, parallel with the Codori House.

Longstreet was ordered to conceal his column of attack, for which the ground on Lee’s right afforded excellent opportunities. Lee’s plan was a repetition of Jackson’s attack on the right flank of the Union army at Chancellorsville. In the afternoon, however, in view of the advance of my corps, General Lee was obliged to form a new plan of battle. As he believed that both of my flanks rested on the Emmitsburg road, Lee directed Longstreet to envelop my left at the Peach-Orchard, and press the attack northward “up the Emmitsburg road.”

Colonel Fairfax, of Longstreet’s staff, says that Lee and Longstreet were together at three o’clock, when the attack began. Lieutenant-General Hill, commanding the First Corps of Lee’s army, says in his report,​—​

“The corps of General Longstreet (McLaws’s and Hood’s divisions) was on my right, and in a line very nearly at right angles to mine. General Longstreet was to attack the left flank of the enemy, and sweep down his line, and I was ordered to co-operate with him with such of my brigades from the right as could join in with his troops in the attack. On the extreme right, Hood commenced the attack about two o’clock, McLaws about 5.30 o’clock.”

Longstreet was not long in discovering, by his artillery practice, that my position at the Peach-Orchard was a salient, and that my left flank really rested twelve hundred yards eastward, at Plum Run, in the valley between Little Round Top and the Devil’s Den, concealed from observation by woods; my line extended to the high ground along the Emmitsburg road, from which Lee says, “It was thought our artillery could be used to advantage in assailing the more elevated ground beyond.”

General J. B. Hood’s story of his part in the battle of July 2, taken from a communication addressed to General Longstreet, which appears in Hood’s “Advance and Retreat,” pages 57–59, is a clear narrative of the movements of Longstreet’s assaulting column. It emphasizes the firm adherence of Longstreet to the orders of General Lee. Again and again, as Hood plainly points out, Longstreet refused to listen to Hood’s appeal for leave to turn Round Top and assail the Union rear, always replying, “General Lee’s orders are to attack up the Emmitsburg road.”[A]