They were marching to battle, and to useless battle, too; and hundreds of these men would die before the sun set tonight. Longstreet’s throat ached with grief and anger and humiliation. It was Lee’s province to decide, his to obey with a whole and willing heart; but he remembered something he had said to Major Currain long ago, that when he was told to do a thing he knew should not be done, his effectiveness was gone. Probably Lee knew this. Probably that was why Lee had put Captain Johnston to direct McLaws. Now Captain Johnston was leading these men miles away from their eventual destination, wearying them with needless marching. He would bring them already footsore to the battlefield! Oh, wrong, wrong, wrong!
A messenger from General Pendleton suggested that Longstreet come and see the ground over which the assault would be made. Longstreet followed the messenger, riding through the fields beside the road so that he need not hinder the marching men. The road the men took led them away southwesterly, the enemy lay to the east. Probably Captain Johnston, remembering how at Chancellorsville General Jackson took his men by a wide detour to strike Hooker’s flank, dreamed of guiding a like maneuvre today; but Jackson had marched through screening forests. In this open farm land with only an occasional fringe of trees for cover, no such surprise was possible. Long before they came into position they would be seen.
Well, the plan was General Lee’s, not his. He and the messenger who was his guide descended to cross a shallow stream and went on for a mile or more over rolling ground to where the road crossed a low hill. It was within minutes of noon when he joined General Pendleton. Beyond, the road the men were following dipped into the ravine of a large creek, and Longstreet saw that at the creek the head of McLaws’s column was turning left along a lane that swung back southeasterly to lead directly toward Round Top, three or four miles away. He could see the lofty hill, but the column in the lane down there was fifty or sixty feet below him; the men would not be visible to any enemy watcher on that distant height, not yet.
General Pendleton pointed off to the southeast where they could look over the tops of the trees to higher ground beyond. “The Emmitsburg road is there, just beyond the woods,” he said. Longstreet levelled his glasses, and General Pendleton added: “I saw enemy cavalry there this morning, and an infantry column moved up the road with their artillery and trains.”
Longstreet lowered his glasses in scornful amusement. It must be two miles, perhaps more, from where they stood to the Emmitsburg road. A survey from this distance might be General Pendleton’s idea of reconnaissance, but it was not his. Colonel Alexander joined them and Longstreet asked: “Where are your guns, Colonel?”
Alexander pointed toward the woods, a mile and a half away to the east. “In those trees, General. The road is just beyond.”
Longstreet turned to Pendleton. “You had better go with Colonel Alexander and show him what you can,” he directed; and he himself rode back along the column of marching men till he encountered General Lee. As they met, an aide reported to General Lee that the enemy was extending his left toward the Round Tops.
“Those people might have saved themselves the trouble,” Lee said cheerfully. “General Longstreet will have them out of there before night.”
Longstreet knew this was Lee’s way of praising him, and his heart warmed. Off toward the front there was some scattered outpost fire. The small sounds came faintly to Longstreet’s ears, and his blood began to stir. This was Lee’s battle, not his; yet he would know how to fight it when the time came. A halt came back along the line, and in impatience at this new delay he left General Lee and rode across the fields to investigate. McLaws cantered to meet him.
“General,” McLaws reported, “if we follow that lane any farther we’ll come under enemy observation.”
So Captain Johnston had botched his job, and all this marching had been wasted. “Well, what do you propose to do?”
“We might countermarch to that ravine”—McLaws pointed back along the road by which they had come—“and follow it south through the woods till we can turn east without being seen.”
What McLaws proposed meant that the column must retrace its steps, meant a wasted hour. That was Captain Johnston’s fault, and it was General Lee’s fault for putting Captain Johnston to guide the column; but time enough had been wasted! “Do so. Let General Hood take the lead,” Longstreet said curtly. “Be quick, but don’t exhaust your men. From now on, I’ll direct the march.”
McLaws rode away, and Longstreet found Hood and gave him his orders. As a consequence of Captain Johnston’s blunder, fifteen thousand men must march two or three unnecessary miles in blistering heat before they went into battle; but he would see to it no more strength was wasted! When Hood’s column, returning by the way they had come, at last reached the sheltering ravine, Longstreet directed them to follow the stream down through the woods. Then with Sorrel and the others of the staff he pushed ahead through grateful shade and out into the blazing sun again. They followed the shallow branch till Longstreet saw a school house on the other side, and a lane leading up the slope toward a point of trees that widened into a belt of woodland.
He waited at the waterside till Hood joined him. “Cross your men here, General,” he directed. “Send scouts ahead of you to make sure those woods up there are clear. Oblique your men to the right behind the woods and move them through to the road in battle front. McLaws will come in on your left. General Hill has extended his line this way. McLaws will make contact and pivot on him, and you on McLaws. You are to cross the road and wheel toward the town, guiding your left by the road.”
The movement was clear in his mind. General Hill’s corps was the fence, lapping the Union right; his own divisions were the swinging gate that would throw the Union flank into disorder. Second Manassas was the model for the maneuver. There Jackson had been the wall that received the enemy attack, while he himself swung against their flank. True, there was a difference. At Second Manassas, Jackson had first cut the Union line of supply. He himself had proposed to Lee to do the same thing here, but Lee overruled him. Well, perhaps Lee was right! Certainly the position today offered great possibilities. His pulse quickened to the coming hour.
Hood’s scouts went up past the school house; the head of Hood’s column splashed through the shallow brook. The men were dripping with sweat. As they waded the little stream, without checking their steady pace, they scooped up water in their palms and drank. Wounded men would suffer terribly from thirst today. Any wound in any weather made a man thirsty, but in this heat thirst would be keenest torture.
Longstreet rode up along the lane to the point of trees where Hood’s men, screened by the rising ground and by the woods on its crest from enemy observation, were obliquing to the right; and he found that short of the highest ground the lane forked. Hood’s men were taking the right fork, which went through thick woodland and over a slight rise before dipping at an angle toward the road again. The other fork bore left to pass a house and then to turn even more to the left into another wood lot. This lane too was screened by trees. Good! The men might move into position without showing themselves.
He returned to the streamside as the head of McLaws’s column, doubling on Hood’s, approached the crossing. Hood’s column was nearest the brook, McLaws’s men on the right of Hood’s; but this was awkward, since when they deployed McLaws must form on Hood’s left, not on his right. McLaws might halt his column here till Hood’s last brigades were past, then cross Hood’s rear; but that would leave a gap on Hood’s left for half an hour or more before McLaws reached his proper position, and gaps were dangerous. The alternative was to halt Hood, and let McLaws pass through him here. Then their columns, proceeding side by side to where the lane forked, and opening like jaws to right and left, would come into battle front almost simultaneously.
He sent Sorrel to direct Hood to wait, and himself spoke to General Kershaw, whose brigade led McLaws’s division. Kershaw was a South Carolina man, a good friend of Cousin Cinda and of Brett Dewain, w
hose plantation was down near Camden somewhere. After serving as a delegate from Kershaw County in the South Carolina convention which passed the ordinance of secession, Kershaw was elected Colonel of the Second Regiment. He was on Morris Island during the bombardment of Sumter; his regiment won its spurs in Bonham’s brigade at First Manassas, and as brigadier he had since then distinguished himself at Harper’s Ferry, at Sharpsburg, at Fredericksburg, and at Chancellorsville. His place in the van of McLaws’s column was well earned.
Longstreet explained the situation. “I’m halting Hood’s brigades to let you pass through them. Follow the lane to the fork, and then take the left fork through the woods till you can see the Emmitsburg road. Deploy under cover there and make contact with Hood on your right.”
Kershaw said crisply: “Very well, sir.” He led his men across the creek. Longstreet reflected that by giving Kershaw orders directly, instead of through McLaws, he had done exactly the thing which when General Lee did it he had resented; but McLaws, never jealous of his prerogatives, would take no offense.
Nor, damn his own hide, should he himself have taken offense at Lee! That was sheer childish petulance. Here was a battle to be fought; nothing else mattered! He brushed aside his ill humor in a rising haste for action, watching the regiments pass, seeing how the heat and their long march had drained strength out of even these hardened veterans. For almost three hours they had been plodding clear around Robin Hood’s barn, along roads miles away from where they should have been.
But now at last the brigades were coming into position. Barksdale passed with a salute and a word of greeting. Hood’s men along the stream were taking the chance to rest and to drink the warm brook water while McLaws went through them. General Pendleton rode down from the higher ground toward the enemy and eased his horse through the column and spoke to Longstreet.
“General, the enemy has extended his flank a little farther south. It rests now at a four corners due east of you here. He’s thrown some men into a peach orchard, has a battery there and some infantry.”
“Will McLaws be beyond his flank, if he follows that lane to the left through the woods?”
“Oh yes.”
“You’ve directed Colonel Alexander where to place his guns?”
“Yes, General.”
“Good.”
Pendleton rode away; and McLaws came to join Longstreet. Longstreet asked: “How are you going in, General?”
“I’ll wait and see what’s on my front.”
“General Pendleton says you will have nothing in front of you. I told Kershaw to take your leading brigade along this lane through the woods up there and form on Hood. Meade’s flank is anchored in a peach orchard, but when you reach the road you will be south of them.”
“Then I’ll cross the road and wheel to the left and attack.”
Longstreet nodded. The little sounds of distant shots came pricking through the shimmering heat of midafternoon, as sharpshooters or skirmishers thought they saw a target. But of course no one could shoot straight at long range on a day like this, when the hot air rose from the sunned earth in waves that distorted vision. Colonel Fremantle and two or three others rode up from the south and Longstreet greeted the Englishman amiably.
“Well, Colonel, have you scouted the enemy position for us?”
“No sir. We went to find a farm where we could buy some feed for our horses, robbed a cherry tree or two, bathed in the stream down there. What’s going to happen, General?”
“We propose to roll their flank up the road toward the cemetery.” Longstreet with action near was in high good humor. “Go back where you were this morning and you can count them like sheep as we drive them by!”
Fremantle laughed and moved away, and Longstreet rode with the column advancing toward the front, picturing in his mind the field of battle still hidden beyond the woods. Powell Hill’s corps on his left confronted the enemy along a line drawn parallel with the Emmitsburg road. His own men would cross the road and swing into action on a front perpendicular to the road. It was thus Lee had designed the attack: McLaws the hinge, Hood the swinging gate. Longstreet remembered that hour at Second Manassas when as Pope’s line of battle faltered in front of Jackson his own corps swung crushingly against the enemy flank. That might well be the story of this day!
In a rising and confident exhilaration, his doubts of the morning and his anger alike forgotten, Sorrel by his side, the officers of his staff following close, Longstreet cantered up past the schoolhouse. There he called to Trav.
“Currain, go to General McLaws, keep me informed. I will see Hood’s brigades across the road.”
He turned to the right along the lane Hood’s men had followed. The lane was full of them, pressing slowly forward as the regiments in front made room. To his left he saw through the fringe of trees an orchard, and as he continued there were open fields just across a wall within ten feet of him. Where the lane presently bore more to the right, he kept straight ahead, then picked his way through the woods till he saw the road a hundred yards ahead across an open field.
He halted there in the cover of the trees. Northward toward the town a belt of pasture and tillage bordered the road as far as he could see. The road itself came toward him along the crest of that rising ground which General Lee had pointed out this morning from their vantage two miles northward. The worst heat of the day was past, for it was after three o’clock; but even here in the forest shade, men gasped and panted and wiped their dripping brows. Longstreet took off his hat to let what airs there were cool his forehead. From where he stood, the ground rose slightly toward the road; but beyond, it seemed to descend again, and he could see the tops of apple trees in orderly rows half a mile away down the gentle slope. To his left, not far away across the road, rose a low wooded hill; and beyond the apple trees the Round Tops were bold against the sky. Somewhere off to the north, Yankee skirmishers were posted on this side of the road, for he heard the occasional bark of a musket; and once at a sharp report he saw a crow, flying high toward Round Top, tower and veer away to the north on quickened wing.
General Hood came to report that his men were well closed up in the fringe of the trees on this side of the road. “A lane leads from our front straight toward Round Top,” he explained. “We can file into that, or we can cross the road in line of battle.”
“File into the lane,” Longstreet directed. “Put scouts ahead and skirmishers on your left flank. There’s nothing in front of you. Meade’s flank is half a mile north of us, extending along the road to that peach orchard you see yonder. When your brigades are across the road, left face and you’ll be in line of battle on Meade’s left rear. Use skirmishers, and close support in strength, and hit them hard.”
Hood wheeled his horse away, and Major Currain on Nig came bursting through the thickets. “Sir, General McLaws reports that the enemy on his front is in great strength. He says they extend well to his right.”
“He must be mistaken,” Longstreet protested. General Pendleton had reported that the enemy flank now rested in the peach orchard; but that was only the anchor of his line, could not be strongly held. “Tell him to attack at once.”
Trav raced away, and Longstreet rode to the right to watch Hood’s advance. Down below the road a spatter of skirmishing fire told him Hood was already visible to the enemy. Currain returned with an insistent message from McLaws; the force in front of his division was strong and well placed; Colonel Alexander’s guns would have to break the enemy before a direct attack was feasible. “He wants you to come and see for yourself, sir,” Trav explained.
Longstreet’s anger of the morning returned. If the reconnaissance by General Pendleton and Captain Johnston had been faulty, his was not the blame. General Lee had believed them, had believed the enemy flank was on that high ground half a mile north of the peach orchard, and in that belief had given his orders for the tactical development of the battle. Well, they were wrong, so General Lee was wrong. It was true the enemy had, since Lee’s
orders were given, reached down the road to the peach orchard; but Pendleton must have reported that to the commanding general, and Lee had sent no new orders. McLaws must do as General Lee had directed.
“Tell him to advance,” Longstreet insisted. “Tell him to cross the road and wheel to the left as General Lee directed.”
As Trav went to carry this order for a third time to McLaws, Moxley Sorrel brought a message from Hood, whose skirmishers had begun to develop the Yankee position. Sorrel said the enemy flank, instead of being up there in the peach orchard as McLaws thought, was refused. The peach orchard was the angle of a salient; their line drew a concave curve from the orchard to the foot of Round Top, with that low tree-clad hill below the road as a strong point midway of the curve. Hood believed, and Sorrel agreed, that to attack up the road would be to accept enemy fire on flank and rear.
“Hood is wrong, Sorrel,” Longstreet said calmly; but his own words did not persuade him. Hood could be trusted not to be wrong! But damn it, he must be. He had to be! Longstreet found himself with two divisions committed to battle—to a battle which was to be fought against his judgment and advice—on the assumption that Meade’s flank was in the air; but instead, Meade’s left was solidly posted, anchored against Round Top and bolstered by that low hill here below the road and by the guns in the peach orchard half a mile to the north.
Well, no matter; he must attack. It was almost four o’clock. Lee was somewhere two or three miles away. There was no time to report this changed situation. Lee’s orders, overruling his suggestion of a maneuvre to the right, gave Longstreet no discretion. He was nothing but Lee’s instrument, to see Lee’s orders obeyed.
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