General Hancock’s evidence on that point is:
“General Meade told me before the fight that if the enemy attacked me, he intended to put the Fifth and Sixth Corps on the enemy’s flank.”
From which it is evident that the withdrawal of the divisions of my right, to be put in the column of assault, would have been followed by those corps swinging around and enveloping the assaulting columns and gaining Lee’s line of retreat.
Colonel Venable thinks it a mistake to have put Heth’s division in the assaulting column. He says,—
“They were terribly mistaken about Heth’s division in this planning. It had not recuperated, having suffered more than was reported on the first day.”
But to accept for the moment Colonel Taylor’s premises, the two divisions referred to would have swelled the columns of assault to twenty-three thousand men. We were alone in the battle as on the day before. The enemy had seventy-five thousand men on strong ground, with well-constructed defences. The Confederates would have had to march a mile through the blaze of direct and cross fire and break up an army of seventy-five thousand well-seasoned troops, well defended by field-works!
A rough sketch of the positions of the forces about my right and rear will help to show if it “was comparatively safe, and not at all threatened.”
General Gibbon’s testimony in regard to the assaulting columns of the 3d: