Sometime between 7 and 8 o’clock, Captain Samuel R. Johnston of Lee’s staff returned from a reconnaissance of the Union left flank near the Cemetery Ridge-Little Round Top area. When Johnston assured Lee that he and his party had reached the base of the hill and found no Federals on the ground, Lee prepared an attack scheme that would have McLaws and Hood advance up the Emmitsburg Road toward Cemetery Ridge. Longstreet objected to the troop alignment, but Lee firmly overruled him. A short time later, Lee mounted his horse Traveller and rode to Ewell’s headquarters for another conference with the II Corps commander.

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Lee had not issued specific orders to Longstreet before he departed, but the latter undoubtedly understood what Lee intended — and what role was intended for Longstreet’s own I Corps in the assault. Undoubtedly, too, Longstreet was troubled by the plan. He ‘failed to conceal some anger,’ wrote Major G. Moxley Sorrel, his chief of staff. To Hood, Longstreet confided, ‘The General is a little nervous this morning; he wishes me to attack. I do not wish to do so without [George] Pickett. I never like to go into battle with one boot off.’

Lee returned to Seminary Ridge approximately two hours later, about 11 o’clock. While he had been on the army’s left, Longstreet had done virtually nothing to implement the movement, except to order Colonel E. Porter Alexander to find a concealed route to the right for the artillery. He neither conducted another reconnaissance, nor checked with Alexander to ascertain if he had located a route, nor conferred with McLaws and Hood. ‘There was apparent apathy in his movements,’ admitted Sorrel. ‘They lacked the fire and point of his usual bearing on the battlefield.’

Longstreet allowed his disagreement with Lee’s plans to affect his generalship, and he deserves censure for this. While he may have opposed the idea of an offensive, he was still in a position of responsibility. What Lee expected of Longstreet during the two-hour interim is uncertain, but Lee expected something. Without specific orders, duty required that Longstreet attend to the preparations for a movement. On that morning, Longstreet was not the same general who had performed so capably on previous battlefields. His judgment about the offensive may have been correct, but he owed more to Lee than he gave.

Lee now issued the orders. Longstreet asked for a delay until one of Hood’s brigades reached the field, and Lee consented. Sometime before 1 o’clock, McLaws and Hood began the march toward the southern end of the battlefield. Along the way, the two divisions had to countermarch to avoid detection from a Union signal station on Little round Top. Instead of finding unoccupied ground once they cleared Seminary Ridge, the Confederates found the Union III Corps stretched from Little Round Top to the Peach Orchard and northward along Emmitsburg Road. Adjustments in the attack formation were needed, and Hood argued for a movement around the Round Tops, a request Longstreet refused.

Finally, after all the disagreements, delays and realignments, the Southern assault rolled toward the enemy. The Federal lines exploded with artillery fire; men fell with each step, with one of them writing a few days later, ‘I could hear bones crash like glass in a hail storm.’ But Longstreet’s veterans kept coming, crashing into the salient at the Peach Orchard, clawing their way over Houck’s Ridge into the Valley of Death, sweeping through the now famous Wheat Field and scaling Little Round Top. Federal reinforcements hammered them back, recoiled before the counterattacks, and fought with a tenacity that saved Meade’s army. Longstreet was at the front, issuing orders, doing his duty as he had previously in the hell of Sharpsburg and in the fury of Fredericksburg. He later stated that his men rendered ‘the best three hours’ fighting ever done by any troops on any battlefield.’

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