On the afternoon of July 2, 1863, as the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg reached its critical hour, Confederate General John Bell Hood stood at a crossroads. His division had marched to the high ground outside the Pennsylvania town just after sunrise, and by early afternoon, his men had formed up in a nearby meadow, leaning their weapons against the earth and waiting for orders. General Robert E. Lee had walked among them that morning, fully uniformed, his collar secured and his sword belt snug, pausing now and then to study the Federal positions through his field glasses.
He looked hopeful, though he often drifted into deep reflection about the trials ahead. Near him, an English observer, Colonel Freemantle, sat in the branches of a tree, endlessly scanning the enemy’s high ground. Lee had made no secret of his wishes. He told Hood plainly, “The foe waits here.
Unless we break them, they’ll break us. ” Yet he judged it wiser to delay the attack until General George Pickett’s division arrived. As the morning dragged on in suspense, Hood stood near a thick tree trunk with his superior, General James Longstreet. Longstreet remarked that Lee appeared restless, that he wanted the attack but would not proceed without Pickett.
Longstreet, for his part, said he never marched to war half booted, meaning he disliked entering a fight unprepared. So the morning crawled by until around three o’clock, when the decision came: they would not wait for Pickett. The order was to swing far to the right and launch an assault down the Emmitsburg Road, with General Lafayette McLaws pushing ahead and Hood following closely. Hood received orders to quicken his speed and overtake McLaws.
He dispatched pioneers to smash fences and clear the path. His instructions were plain: position his unit across the Emmitsburg Road, form battle lines, and prepare to charge. But before reaching the road, he sent trusted Texas scouts forward to find the enemy’s farthest left edge. Their report changed everything.
The Federal flank hugged Round Top Mountain. The scouts described open land that would allow Hood’s men to weave through wooded pasture around the mountain and strike the enemy from the side and behind. They also reported that Federal wagons were jammed tightly behind the enemy lines, exposed to such an approach. When Hood reached the Emmitsburg Road, he acted quickly, placing two artillery batteries and opening fire, eager to shift the battle’s flow.
The enemy’s cannon fire betrayed their positions. Their left flank sat near Round Top, with their lines bending backward to form a hollow curve. Hood could see a body of troops camped ahead of the main Federal force, lodged between the Emmitsburg Road and Round Top Mountain, standing battle ready on a slope near an orchard. He realized that obeying the order to charge up the Emmitsburg Road would mean first driving back this forward line.
Worse, the base and slopes of Round Top were covered with giant stacked boulders, creating narrow passes that could shatter his ranks as men climbed the rocky incline. The enemy’s main line anchored on the mountain’s summit, and because their position curved inward, Hood’s division would face murderous fire from the front, the sides, and the rear all at once. He judged it near hopeless to scale those boulders under crossfire while still repelling the defenders. Victory, he believed, would demand horrific sacrifice.
Hood felt duty bound to warn Longstreet. He sent an aide requesting permission to skirt Round Top and strike the enemy’s flank instead. The answer came back fast: General Lee orders the attack up the Emmitsburg Road. Hood sent another officer, stressing his fear of failure and repeating his flanking plea.
Again the response was the same: General Lee orders the attack up the Emmitsburg Road. Hood continued shelling the enemy, growing more certain that the Federal line stretched all the way to Round Top. He could not realistically expect success through the planned assault. The ground was so naturally strong that he later called it unassailable, noting that the enemy could repel an attack simply by tumbling boulders downhill as the Confederates climbed, even ignoring their flanking shots.
A third time, he sent an officer, this time his adjutant general, Colonel Harry Sellers, a brave and skilled officer, to detail the situation and suggest that Longstreet come see for himself. Colonel Sellers returned with the same words: General Lee orders the attack up the Emmitsburg Road. Almost immediately, Longstreet’s aide, Colonel Fairfax, arrived echoing the same order. After this urgent protest, which he later described as the only military protest he ever made, Hood ordered his lines forward.
As the troops began to move, Longstreet approached him directly. They spoke briefly, and Hood again shared his regret about the denied flanking maneuver. Longstreet replied simply, “We must follow General Lee. ” Hood pressed onward under heavy fire.
Roughly twenty minutes after gaining the orchard, he suffered a grave wound to his arm and left the field. The injury ended his part in the battle. Carried off on a stretcher, he felt profound mental anguish for his soldiers, whom he considered among the finest in the Confederate army. He truly believed that had he been allowed to flank Round Top, his men would have taken that ground and crushed the enemy.
Hood wrote these words in a letter to Longstreet in 1875, ten years after the war ended. By then, Longstreet had distanced himself from many former Confederates over his changed politics, and he contacted Hood seeking his recollections of Gettysburg. Hood’s reply, quoted at length, offers a rare firsthand account from a Confederate general at a critical hour of the battle. His description of the morning, the repeated refusals of his flanking proposal, and the order to charge straight into the enemy’s strongest position paints a vivid picture of the leadership burdens and battlefield chaos of that day.
His graphic details and emotion convey the horror soldiers endured around Devil’s Den and Little Round Top, sites that became infamous for their savagery and carnage, among the Civil War’s most brutal chapters. The letter also raises questions about memory. Hood wrote it a decade after the events, and human recall falters with time. Details blur.
Hood did not record his thoughts immediately after the battle, so the accuracy of every specific remains uncertain. Still, his account offers invaluable insight into his experience during that decisive hour, and his protest stands as a notable moment: a general who saw disaster coming, argued against orders three times, and was overruled each time before leading his men into the fire. John Bell Hood died in New Orleans just four years after writing that letter, in 1879. His Gettysburg actions and his broader military career continue to fascinate historians and Civil War students.
His firsthand story of July 2, 1863, with its clear warning, its repeated refusal, and its costly outcome, remains one of the most compelling personal accounts of that battle, showing how a single decision, made at a distance from the fight, shaped the fate of thousands on the slopes below Round Top.