On July 2, 1863, as dawn broke over Gettysburg, General James Longstreet faced what he considered an impossible decision. Robert E. Lee had ordered a full-scale assault on fortified Union positions, a plan Longstreet had opposed from the start, warning that it would end in disaster. Yet, bound by duty, he prepared to execute the very attack he believed would destroy his men.
Longstreet’s doubts about Lee’s strategy were not new. They had taken shape weeks earlier, during meetings in May 1863, when the Army of Northern Virginia was still reeling from the battle of Chancellorsville and the mortal wounding of Stonewall Jackson. Jackson died on May 10, leaving the Second Corps without a leader. Lee turned to Longstreet, his most trusted subordinate, to help plan the next campaign.
During those discussions, Longstreet pushed for a defensive strategy. He proposed sending two divisions to Tennessee to join forces with the Army of Tennessee and Joseph E. Johnston, hoping to defeat the Union Army of the Cumberland near Chattanooga and then advance into Kentucky, potentially threatening Cincinnati. He believed this approach could relieve pressure on Vicksburg.
Lee rejected the idea, preferring an invasion of Pennsylvania. Longstreet later wrote that he eventually stopped pressing his alternative plan, feeling it had become futile and inappropriate to keep challenging his commander. However, his private letters at the time suggested a different attitude. In a letter to Senator Lewis T.
Wigfall, he expressed optimism about the Pennsylvania campaign, writing that crossing the Potomac with 75,000 men would compel Lincoln to reveal his intentions, either peace or annihilation. Lee meanwhile restructured the army for the campaign. Richard S. Ewell replaced Jackson, and a new Third Corps was formed under A.
P. Hill. Longstreet supported Ewell but privately doubted Hill’s leadership, preferring D. H.
Hill for the role. Another source of tension involved Lafayette McLaws, whose division remained under Longstreet’s command. Lee was dissatisfied with McLaws’ performance at Chancellorsville and considered reassigning him. McLaws resisted, insisting he was fit for duty.
Longstreet, though doubtful, took responsibility for his performance, warning Lee that any failures would rest on his shoulders. The army began its march north on June 3 under scorching summer heat. Longstreet’s First Corps, made up of the divisions of McLaws, Hood, and Pickett, pressed forward. An officer noted Longstreet’s fatigue, but the general sharply replied that he had never felt exhaustion in his life.
Behind the scenes, he coordinated with Jeb Stuart’s cavalry to mask the army’s movements through the Blue Ridge gaps. Despite Longstreet’s later claims that he preferred a Western campaign, his actions in May 1863 suggested a commander committed to Lee’s invasion plan. He even proposed exchanging McLaws’ division for one of Bragg’s to strengthen their forces, but Lee declined. By June 27, part of the Confederate army had reached Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and established temporary headquarters there.
British observer Arthur Fremantle of the Coldstream Guards noted the close bond between Lee and Longstreet, describing them as nearly inseparable. Some of Longstreet’s officers, however, complained that the constant closeness between the two generals restricted their autonomy compared to Ewell’s corps. On June 28, with Stuart’s cavalry absent, Lee lacked reliable intelligence. That changed when a scout named Harrison, paid in gold coins, reached Longstreet’s headquarters with urgent news: the Union Army was advancing rapidly.
Lee, who had planned to move on Harrisburg, abruptly changed course. Addressing his officers, he announced they would not go to Harrisburg as planned. Instead, they would head to Gettysburg to investigate Union General George Meade’s movements. On June 30, the Confederate army shifted east toward Cashtown.
Longstreet slept little that night, troubled by the approaching battle. The battle began on July 1. As Longstreet, Lee, and Fremantle rode along the Chambersburg Pike, they spotted federal troops regrouping on high ground beyond Gettysburg. Lee saw an opportunity, remarking that the enemy could not have been positioned more favorably for their plans.
Longstreet, ever cautious, replied that if the Union forces were there, it was because they had chosen to be there. Lee was determined. Striking his fist into his hand, he declared that if the enemy was there the next day, they would have to engage him. On the morning of July 2, Lee finalized plans for a full-scale assault on the Union positions.
Over breakfast near Seminary Ridge, he met with Longstreet, A. P. Hill, Henry Heth, and John Bell Hood. Longstreet urged a flanking maneuver to outmaneuver Meade’s army, but Lee dismissed the idea.
Pointing to a map, he demanded that Longstreet position a division across a specific road. Reconnaissance proved dangerously flawed. Captain Samuel Johnston of Lee’s staff and Major John Clark of Longstreet’s staff scouted toward Little Round Top and the Peach Orchard, reporting only four federal cavalrymen. In reality, Union Third Corps infantry lay hidden in the mist.
Division commander Lafayette McLaws asked permission to verify the terrain himself, but Longstreet refused, telling him not to leave his division. Lee traced a perpendicular line across the Emmitsburg Road on his map and ordered McLaws to attack directly. McLaws protested, sketching a parallel line on the map and suggesting a position that would envelop the Union flank. Lee overruled him, insisting the line be placed perpendicular.
As Lee rode off to consult Ewell, Longstreet lingered, visibly uneasy. He privately told Hood that they should swing past the Union left, positioning themselves between Meade and Washington. But with Lee’s orders final, he reluctantly prepared for battle. By 11 a.
m. , Lee had returned and issued final orders. McLaws and Hood’s divisions would lead the assault. The stage was set for some of the bloodiest hours of the battle.
The Confederate assault finally advanced at 4 p. m. Hood’s division targeted Devil’s Den and Little Round Top, while McLaws’ men moved toward the Wheatfield and Peach Orchard. Longstreet insisted Hood wait for a delayed brigade, costing valuable daylight.
Observers noted that Longstreet lacked his usual vigor that day. He approached the task with less energy than he had shown at Second Manassas or Fredericksburg. As debris fell around him, he remained mounted and resolute, observing the fighting through his spyglass. Kershaw’s brigade suffered devastating artillery fire after being channeled onto exposed roads where Union signal stations could detect them.
Johnston had urged the use of concealed fields, but Longstreet insisted on the predictable roadway approach. When Hood’s scouts reported a chance to flank the Union right, Longstreet rejected four requests to adjust tactics. As McLaws later wrote, it was at this point that he realized they had been misled about enemy positions. There was a bitter irony in Longstreet’s position.
As troops cheered at the sight of their commander, they were unaware that he had privately opposed the very attack he was now leading. After the fighting on July 2, a Union prisoner captured by Barksdale’s Mississippians reportedly asked who had led the rebels. When told it was Old Pete, he muttered that he now understood why they were defeated on every field, adding that no other lieutenant general in the army would risk men like that. Longstreet’s boots were stained with the blood of Hood’s and McLaws’ divisions.
When his own men cheered him, he snapped that silent men fight harder. At sunrise on July 3, Lee rode to Longstreet’s headquarters and demanded a renewed assault. Longstreet, who had spent the night scouting, argued fiercely, insisting that 15,000 men could not take the ridge and pleading to be allowed to flank Meade instead. Lee jabbed his fist toward Cemetery Ridge and ordered the attack with his corps.
Neither general informed Pickett that his fresh division would lead the charge. Artillery officer Edward Porter Alexander later suggested that Longstreet never received the dawn attack order, an omission that remains debated. For the first time since Antietam, Longstreet positioned himself dangerously close to the front, watching Hood’s crippled Texans and the wreckage of the previous day’s fighting. An aide noted that Longstreet’s hands trembled, not from fear, but from helpless frustration.
That night, he refused to personally report to Lee, sending only a brief casualty list. On the morning of July 3, Lee remained determined. Pointing toward Cemetery Ridge, he declared that the enemy was there and that he would strike him. Longstreet made one last plea, repeating that he had been a soldier all his life and that no 15,000 men could take that position.
Lee’s response was a silent fist slammed toward the ridge. The order was final. At 11:45 a. m.
, Longstreet sent a desperate note to Colonel Alexander, his artillery chief, saying that if the fire did not dislodge or weaken the enemy, Alexander should not advise Pickett to charge, trusting his judgment. The note effectively shifted a measure of command to Alexander, but the plan was already in motion. At 12:15 p. m.
, 170 Confederate cannons opened fire in the war’s largest artillery duel. Smoke obscured the field, and it was impossible to tell whether the Union guns had been silenced. As Pickett’s men stepped off at 3 p. m.
, Longstreet, unable to watch, turned away. His final words to Alexander were that he did not wish to make this charge, not now, not here. When Pickett approached for final orders and asked whether he should advance, Longstreet could only bow his head silently. Soldiers would later call the gesture the death knell of the Confederacy.
A courier raced through cannon fire at 2:45 p. m. with Alexander’s desperate note: for God’s sake, come quick, they could not support the charge. Pickett never saw it.
His division was already half destroyed. As shattered remnants of Pickett’s division staggered back to Seminary Ridge, a shaken staff officer gasped that they needed to regroup. Longstreet growled that he would have preferred to avoid the whole thing entirely. With Union cheers echoing across the field, Longstreet and Lee ordered the army of Northern Virginia to retreat.
It was the end of the Confederacy’s last great offensive. Lee rode among the survivors, telling them it was all his fault and that they must help him save the men. Longstreet silently counted the empty places in the ranks. Every missing face was a man who had followed orders he had opposed.
In the weeks that followed, as campfires glowed in Virginia, Longstreet struggled with history’s verdict. He questioned whether he would be judged as cautious or cowardly, whether flanking Meade could have altered the war, and whether thousands of men had died for a general’s pride. Longstreet’s later service in the Union Army would prove that his crisis at Gettysburg was not about loyalty.
But for him and for Lee, Gettysburg was the day the war and their legacies changed forever.