Lee and His Men at Gettysburg: The Death of a Nation (23 page)

In the troops east of Gordon, the newly arrived division of Allegheny Johnson, there was a private in the 19th Virginia of the Stonewall Brigade who also could not sleep. His name was Wesley Culp, of the family for whom the hill had been named, and he was excited by his homecoming. On the next day he hoped to see the house in which he had been born. He got to see it. On the next day the soldier was buried in the fields of his childhood.

James Longstreet, the First Corps’s sturdy “Old Pete,” had not tried to sleep. Leaving his hard-marched men plodding through the night toward the field, he rode ahead to find General Lee, to learn the plans for the next day.

Unknown to Lee or to anyone else, the long-dependable corps commander was in the process of trying to establish over the commanding general the same type of ascendancy which Jubal Early now exerted over Dick Ewell. The difference was that Longstreet had kept silent since afternoon, when Lee on Seminary Ridge had dismissed his suggestion of avoiding battle where they were and moving around Meade’s left. None of his inner agitation over the burst bubble of his dream of sharing a partnership with Lee showed in his impassive, heavily bearded face.

Lee gained some reassurance from the familiar, stolid presence of his orthodox fighter. Slow Longstreet might be, but his troops were near, they would get some rest, and all the units were composed of trustworthy veterans, officers and men alike.

Very doubtful of Ewell after his visit with the odd trio, Lee began to shift to a plan that demanded nothing of the Second Corps. For if Ewell’s chiefs failed to make a convincing demonstration, as their defensiveness indicated they might, the Federals in their natural works would be free to pour enfilade fire along the ridge that the Confederates must take before Meade could concentrate on it. Lee aroused one of the staff officers from his rest and sent him with a message intended to be the final order to Ewell.

General Ewell was to shift from his present position—at an angle to the left of the Confederate line, facing south as the troops of Hill and Longstreet faced east—and move around to his right. This would shorten the Confederates’ long exterior line and remove its hinge at Cemetery Hill. Ewell’s corps would thus be put, under Lee’s observation, in position to support an attack from the Confederate right.

The worn Old Man, in his eagerness to avoid losing the fruits of the unwanted collision, was planning to work with what he had. Yet he was not satisfied even with the rearranged plan. He did not go to bed, nor give Longstreet anv positive orders. Worries kept gnawing away behind the composed façade.

Late at night he was surprised to see Ewell dismounting—awkwardly because of his wooden leg—outside headquarters. The general approached the group with more self-control than he had displayed in the arbor conference. He appeared to have regained at least the power to make a decision, and he spoke out forthrightly.

Evidently worried (though he did not say so) about the terrain of the rocky cliff on which he was to demonstrate the following day, Ewell had sent two staff officers to reconnoiter Culp’s Hill. They had reported to Allegheny Johnson, and had received a startling report themselves. General Johnson, forgotten by Ewell when he called Early to join Rodes and himself for Lee’s visit, had in soldierly fashion reconnoitered the enemy’s ground in front of him. His reconnoitering party had brought back the information that the wooded spikes of Culp’s Hill were not yet occupied.

In the still of the night, with the day’s agonies of command behind him, Ewell had responded to this condition which offered him assurance of success. Unquestionably he had suffered shame in his depressed apathy, and he recognized Lee’s change of plans—to shift him around to the right in support—as evidence of loss of confidence. But unoccupied ground to be seized relieved him from uncertainty, and his natural pride asserted itself. He wanted to regain a position of respect in the army bv making the attack that the commanding general manifestly hoped for.

He finished his report to Lee by offering to attack Culp’s Hill in conjunction with Longstreet’s attack on the enemy left.

This was more like the Ewell his colleagues understood. At last the elements with which Lee was dealing became positives. He immediately threw off his fretful vacillation.

General Lee was not known for any favorite expression, like Tackson’s “Very good, very good.” He showed his satisfaction by a relaxation of his tired tautness of self-control. The haggard mask fell away and his eyes brightened as his mind shaped the plans with firm clarity.

Longstreet and Ewell would attack the enemv’s line on opposite ends as soon after daylight as was practicable. Because Longstreet must get his men into position, Ewell would await Longstreet’s opening guns before making his attack. The enemy’s attention would be distracted and his defense divided. A. P. Hill would make a demonstration in the center, further to confuse the Federal command and immobilize units.

Every member of the staff recognized that Uncle Robert was finally finished with fumbling for a decision that held conviction for him when he spoke with a quiet, resonant finality: “Gentlemen, we will attack the enemy as early in the morning as possible.”

To the exhausted staff officers the words meant that at last their day was over. In the orchard under the thin moonlight, the young men, fully dressed, lay down on blankets and fell into heavy sleep.

“Lee’s Warhorse”

D
URING
the night of July 1 in the vicinity of the sleeping town of Gettysburg only Meade’s Federal troops acted with urgency. While the defeated survivors of the day entrenched themselves on Cemetery Hill, new arrivals hurried through the windless night to occupy the ridge southward from Cemetery Hill all the way down to the Round Tops, where Lee planned to attack.

In Longstreet’s two divisions near the field, the men who were to make that attack went into bivouac from two to six or more miles from Seminary Ridge. It was not thoughtfulness for his men which caused Longstreet to allow the unfought troops to sleep before reaching the position from which they would attack. The reason lay within the strangely disturbed mind of James Longstreet.

Regarded as the army’s one dependable corps commander, an old reliable who continued the character of the pre-Chancellorsville army in the reorganization, Longstreet had given little hint of the agitated state in which he prepared for the second day’s fighting. His later explanations for his behavior, written years after the war in an atmosphere of bitter recrimination between Longstreet and his former brother officers, revealed that Old Pete himself possessed no clear understanding of the nature of his turmoil at Gettysburg.

Then forty-two years old, James Longstreet had been born in the Edgefield district (that “red hill and cotton” country) of South Carolina, though his roots were not in the aristocratic republic. His people, of Dutch background, had come to the South from New Jersey, and in Longstreet the strain of Dutch characteristics ran more strongly than environmental influence. On his father’s death, Longstreet’s family moved to Alabama when he was twelve, and all during his youth he visited much in Georgia, where his uncle, Judge A. B. Longstreet, was a scholarly and highly esteemed citizen. Without an ancestral place-identification, Longstreet was more or less attached to the Lower South and was not a typical product of any Southern state.

This least Southern of Confederate leaders was a prudent man, methodical and cautious by habit, blunt-spoken and stubborn in manner, with a disregard for the social graces. Yet his personality was by no means unattractive. Powerful of chest and shoulders, very strong, without fear, he possessed that uncomplicated nature which makes for an easy adaptability in undemanding societies. There was a stalwartness about him, a quality of reassurance in his bluff presence, and he had a hearty sense of humor. He liked to banter with other men and, when amused, laughed loudly. Men of his own type were strongly attracted to him, and he formed enduring friendships. One of his oldest friends was General Grant, an intimate since West Point, who was married to Longstreet’s cousin.

Longstreet’s wife was a Virginia girl, daughter of his former brigade commander, and the ten children of their union had caused him to exchange military glory for security in the old army. A line captain at the age of thirty-four, Longstreet transferred to the paymaster department with the higher rank and higher pay of major. Without the war, he would probably have lived out his days in this mundane niche at the Albuquerque post, enjoying the fine outdoor sports offered by the New Mexico country. Even when he went with the South, he still wanted security first. Saying that “I had given up all aspirations for military glory,” he applied for a commission in the Confederate pay office.

A circumstance changed his mind and course. Because of the long trip by way of Texas, where Longstreet deposited his family, he did not reach Richmond until the end of June 1861, long after most other returned Southerners had received commissions as colonels. When Longstreet appeared at the war office, there was a desperate need for a brigadier to assume command of three raw Virginia regiments on the main defense line at Manassas. By this chance his date of rank, July 1, gave him seniority to the majority of brigadiers of his age, some with more distinguished records in the old army.

As a result, he was upped to major general in October 1861, when his contemporaries were making brigadier. This temporal seniority, along with his stolid self-assurance, caused Lee to entrust considerable responsibility to him when Lee first took command of the army. As Longstreet thrived on it, he was the inevitable choice for corps commander when Lee organized his force into the Army of Northern Virginia.

As corps commander, Old Pete gave complete satisfaction to everyone. Although sometimes slow, and preferring to have everything just so before committing himself, he was always sound. Despite a starvation diet, he kept his troops well conditioned and in fine unit spirit, and as a fighting force in straight-on action they were probably unsurpassed in the modern history of warfare. Wearing a heavy, bushy beard and looking at the world with unblinking blue eyes, the sturdily built general looked the part of the ultimately dependable lieutenant, “Lee’s warhorse.”

This open record of person and performance comprised the Longstreet that the army and the Confederate people knew. Inside, there was another man, known only to Longstreet—and not too well known to him. This inner man was born sometime in the eighteen months between the war’s first battle at Manassas and his good day at Fredericksburg in December 1862. During that period, when Longstreet was between forty and forty-two, he experienced a rebirth of the “aspiration for military glory.” As he kept it to himself, the ambition fed a growing delusion that his gifts were commensurate with his aspiration, and the good corps commander convinced himself that he possessed a genius for high command.

After the Battle of Fredericksburg, Longstreet tried in various ways to have himself detached from Lee’s army, where he felt the chance would never be given him to win the fame he deserved. Stonewall Jackson stood in the way. Old Jack was the one the songs and poems were written about (“Stonewall Jackson’s Way”), and people began to refer to “Lee and Jackson” and then to the rest of the army. In the public mind Longstreet was the warhorse, merely a trusted subordinate.

It was partly Longstreet’s desire to stay away from Lee’s army which removed him and two divisions from Chancellorsville, where his rival won his supreme glory. While Longstreet was maneuvering for a transfer with his divisions to the West, Jackson died and everything changed. In the reorganization of the army, Longstreet would be next to Lee.