Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Longstreet at Gettysburg

I just got into this.
Old Pete’s actions and feelings at the Battle of Gettysburg, I think, have pretty well been recorded by historians.
Since Old Pete is one of the many I admire, I’ve read most.
Longstreet at Gettysburg
I feel that Pete was wrongly branded as the “Scapegoat”, mostly by officers of Lee’s army who had sorta dropped the Ball themselves.
I want to remind the membership, that zero accusations were launched against “Pete” until two significant things happened.
Lee’s death in 1870, and Longstreet joining the Republican Party!
Several other historians have offered a pretty decent reward, for anybody proving accusations against Longstreet prior to this.
Nobody has ever collected!
7mm

Lee would not take Longstreet's advice and it cost him dearly. Early and Stewart defamed Longstreet to avoid their own dalliances in the battle. Lee's orders were not clear and led to many problems. hindsight is always 20/20 but Longstreet was not to blame for the defeat although he has been vilified for it by many historians that cannot admit the truth of it. After the battle a devastated Pickett turned in his battle report and Lee refused it. He never rewrote it.

Lots of things went wrong at Gettysburg the south needed TJ there

2 gg grandads of mine crossed the emittsburg road under Pickett and some how made it back

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose than all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago.

Far and away the best Gettysburg book I have read….

https://www.abebooks.com/Second-Day...T9IiC_QIVIxTUAR0LNQSeEAQYBCABEgKRfvD_BwE

Really a book about the whole battle, not just the Second Day. Gives credit to Meade not often given. Handed command just THREE Days before the battle, handed a mess by Hooker but aided by able subordinates scarcely slept at all over that three days, got the Army of the Potomac in motion with exemplary speed.

Buford is properly given credit for day one, generally overlooked is his excellent reconnaissance in the days leading up to the battle that enabled Meade and his generals to make the decisions they did.

Two wrong decisions you can hang on Longstreet:

1) His insistence on delaying the attack for hours while waiting for his favorite Alabama shock troops to arrive from twenty five miles out. Then his throwing those same exhausted troops against Little Round Top with empty canteens on a stifling hot day.

As it was even given that long delay Warren put the 20th Maine and Vincent’s NY troops on Little Round Top with just minutes to spare. What would have been the outcome if nobody had been on that hill and the Confederates had flanked the Union line?

2) His absolute refusal to consider Hood’s urgent requests to strike the main Union Artillery Park while lay just on the far side of the Round Tops, on the turnpike being used by the arriving Union Army. How would it have affected the already rattled Union troops on Cemetery Ridge if Hood had gone around their rear?

As for disengaging the whole army and going around the Union left as Longstreet reportedly proposed, hardly possible with both armies already in close contact with arriving troops and supply trains of both armies spread out over twenty miles. Add to that, in the absence of Stuart, no one on the Confederate side knew where the Union Army was other than those they could see in front on them.

JMHO

Lee should’ve went full blown early morning July 2 on cemetery hill with Ap hill and Ewell and Mr sickles wouldn’t have wandered

Longstreet was the sacrificial lamb of the "Lost Cause" narrative. No one dared question Lee's orders or his handling of the Northern invasion. Yet blame had to be laid somewhere, Pickett like Lee was untouchable so, it fell on Longstreet. Longstreet joined the Republican party to aid in reconstruction, that and as mentioned earlier the death of St. Robert ruined his reputation in the South.

Richard Ewell is the blame

LBP, Faulkner put it into words better than anyone.If a person has stood where Pickett's charge began you know what he was talking about.

I just knew that had to be a Faulkner quote. What story or book did that come from?

Intruder in the Dust

I’ve never been to Gettysburg but I can imagine the feeling.

For some reason, I agree with you.

All CW Generals fought the last war (Mexican) but only the North had the limitless manpower and material to sustain that method.
Just like the Russians and the Germans in WWII.

You should defnitely go to Gettysburg some time in your life. It's one heckuva place to see and walk over. We did it a few years ago, and it was really moving. By all means, watch "Gettysburg" first, and it will be pretty familiar to you by the time you get there. Take one of the tour bus rides around the place, there are plenty of them in town. Go to the diorama at the Welcome Center, it's worth the visit.

you can't say that Longstreet didn't properly support picket's charge because Lee sat right there on Seminary ridge watching it. He could've changed anything he wanted. Lee's orders were confusing and sometimes misinterpreted. Lee had very few staff and most of them were Lt. Colonels. He didn't send staff to ensure his orders were carried out. As for the early attack Longstreet was supposed to have failed on, did not happen. Lee's only attack order came at 11a.m. That was Early's myth. "Thomas Connelly describes how Early and Jones had falsified documents and cut deals with other authors in their effort to praise Lee and Early and to damn Longstreet".

Cemetery ridge was wide open late evening day 2 a excellent time for AP Hill corps to exploit

General Longstreet begged General Lee not to make that attack on the center. Longstreet was the scapegoat because nobody could bring themselves to blame the General of the Army. Ironic that history choose someone else to blame for that day even though Lee was a big enough man to say out loud that it was all his fault.

As for the north, Meade's great contribution to the battle was that he didn't allow his own ego to get in his or his generals way. John Reynolds and Joshua Chamberlin saved the Union at Gettysburg.

Ewell falling yet again on his poorly done amputated leg below the knee stump that afternoon prob’ly didn’t help any, but what is not usually mentioned is this.

At that moment in time the Union Twelfth Corps, 3,700 men and twelve Napoleon cannons surprised the Confederates from high ground on Ewell’s immediate left flank and commenced a cannonade. Ewell got a report in the fading light that this was “a large force of the enemy”, infantry, artillery and cavalry.

Ewell was compelled to order Gordon and his brigade in that direction to screen his flank, a job that should have been the job of the absent cavalry. That Union Twelfth Corps was shortly thereafter ordered to retire so no attack materialized, Ewell had no way of knowing that.

Available to Ewell at that point we’re just two under strength brigades weary from the day’s activities. He requested support from Anderson’s whole Division sitting idle within sight but Lee declined. Anderson’s Division could see the situation and were anxious to attack, no order from Lee came, they went into bivouac on Herr’s Ridge.

Apparently Lee himself, going into battle blind, chose to keep Anderson in reserve.

This from the source I linked. The author’s point out that Jackson himself had declined to press an attack at Fredericksburg because of a similar flanking force of Union artillery.

So would Jackson have taken that Hill? Who knows.