CHAPTER VII PENDLETON'S UNRELIABLE MEMORY All the battle worthy the name for the Southern cause at Gettysburg on the 2d and 3d was made by Longstreet. The whole superstructure of the contentions against his honor as a soldier is based solely on the statements since the war, and since Lee's death, of two or three obscure individuals. They are easily exploded by the records of the battles; they are corroborated by none. WHEN the Rev. Dr. Pendleton told that dramatic story to his breathless hearers at Lexington in 1873, under "pressure of imperative duty," had he forgotten the tenor of his official report, made in 1863? The story as modified by the prior report forms the greatest anticlimax in all history. Several decisive facts are disclosed by this unbiassed report. 1. Instead of being dilatory and obstructive, Pendleton himself establishes that Longstreet was personally exerting himself to "hasten forward" the very artillery of which he, Pendleton, was the chief. 2. As late certainly as eleven o'clock, if not noon, General Lee and his staff-officers were still rambling all over a front six miles long, yet undetermined either as to the point or proper route of attack. According to both Pendleton and Venable, they did not begin this necessary preliminary survey until "about sunrise," the specific hour at which General Lee on the night previous had already ordered Longstreet to begin his attack, as asserted by Pendleton at Lexington. 3. Not until Lee and Pendleton had devoted the entire forenoon to the examination of the ground, did Pendleton go to conduct Longstreet to the point of attack thereupon decided upon. Evidently Longstreet was not delaying action; he was awaiting their motions. The following general conclusions upon the state of facts disclosed by Pendleton's remarkable report are therefore inevitable and unavoidable. 1. At sunrise of the 2d, General Lee himself did not know where to attack. He did not know as late as ten or eleven o'clock. His mind was not fully made up until after he came back from Ewell's front (about nine o'clock, according to all authorities), and had made the final examination on the right. General Longstreet says he received his orders to move about eleven o'clock, and this corresponds with Pendleton's report. But if anything, it was later, rather than earlier. 2. These painstaking, time-consuming reconnoissances of the commanding general and his staff-officers, the journey of Colonel Venable to Ewell, three miles to the left, and Lee's later visit to Ewell, together with the unavoidable absence of General Longstreet's troops until late in the morning, prove absolutely that Lee issued no order for Longstreet to attack at any specific hour on July 2. 3. Longstreet's preliminary movements from start to finish were under the personal supervision of Lee's confidential staff-officer, Pendleton, and the subordinate staff-officers. So Longstreet has positively stated, so has General McLaws, and both are confirmed by Pendleton's report. The staff guide caused a loss of three hours by putting the head of McLaws's column upon a wrong road. This compelled This compelled Longstreet to hasten matters" by assuming personal direction of the movement, and pushing Hood's division rapidly to the front past McLaws. 4. Pendleton's official utterances make it an established fact" that General Longstreet made his tremendous and successful attack on July 2 at the earliest mo ment possible after receiving Lee's orders to advance, under the conditions imposed by Lee,-viz., to be conducted to the point of attack by Pendleton himself and the other staff-officers. Thus the misapprehensions respecting Longstreet's great part at Gettysburg were cleared away, and a better general understanding of what actually occurred was obtained from the Rev. Mr. Pendleton's report of September 12, 1863. Few military students now hold that Longstreet was in the remotest degree culpable for Lee's defeat. On the contrary, most of them severely criticise Lee's operations from start to finish, particularly the hopeless assaults he persisted in making, and for the lack of concert. It is held generally now that the dreadful result fully justified Longstreet's protests against attacking the Federals in that position, and that his suggestion of a turning movement was far more promising of success. In all the circumstances it is not only entirely improbable, but the developed facts of the battle make it impossible that " General Lee died believing that he lost Gettysburg at last by Longstreet's disobedience of orders." Longstreet disobeyed no orders at Gettysburg, and Lee was well aware of the fact. General Gordon has simply reiterated the claque set up after Lee's death by his fond admirers to shift the responsibility of defeat from his shoulders upon Longstreet. It was necessary to the success of that folly to make the world believe Lee always quietly held that view, and only imparted it in the strictest confidence to close friends like the ex-army chaplain, Rev. J. William Jones, and the Rev. William N. Pendleton. The evidence is totally insufficient. Its gauzy character is fully exposed by the Pendleton report. But apocryphal after-war evidence of this kind was the only reliance of the conspirators. It is absolutely certain that there is no evidence of any such belief in any of Lee's official utterances during the progress of the war, nor a hint of it in his private correspondence then or afterwards, so far as has been produced. The whole superstructure of the contention is based solely on the statements since the war, and since Lee's death, of two or three obscure individuals. Pendleton's Lexington yarn is an example. They are easily exploded by the records of the battle; they are corroborated by none. All the battle worthy the name for the Southern cause at Gettysburg on the 2d and 3d was made by Longstreet. Another evidence of the falsehoods concerning Longstreet's disobedience and Lee's alleged belief is found in the relations of the two men. Their personal friendship continued after Gettysburg as it was before. It was of the closest and most cordial description. General Lee always manifested the highest regard for General Longstreet, and continued to manifest undiminished confidence in his military capacity, fighting qualities, and subordination. There is no manifestation of a withdrawal of that confidence after Gettysburg. I here cite a few illustrations of their relations after Gettysburg. Just after his corps was ordered to reinforce Bragg before Chattanooga, Longstreet wrote Lee from Richmond, where he had temporarily stopped on his journey to the new field: "If I did not think our move a necessary one, my regrets at leaving you would be distressing to me. . . . Our affections for you are stronger, if it is possible for them to be stronger, than our admiration for you." After the battle of Chickamauga Lee wrote to Longstreet: 66 ... My whole heart and soul have been with you and your brave corps in your late battle. . Finish the work before |