On July 2, 1863, at Gettysburg, General John Bell Hood led his division into one of the most brutal assaults of the Civil War. His attack on the Union left flank, centered on the rocky heights of Little Round Top and the boulder-strewn chaos of Devil’s Den, became legendary for its savagery and its cost. But Hood himself carried a bitter conviction about that day for the rest of his life: the attack should never have been made the way it was. He believed he had seen a path to victory that his superiors had refused to take, and he spent years haunted by what he considered a fatal mistake.
Twelve years after the battle, in 1875, General James Longstreet reached out to Hood. Longstreet had drifted from his old Confederate comrades over his post-war politics, and he wanted Hood’s personal recollections of Gettysburg for the historical record. Hood’s reply, written from memory and framed by the perspective of a man who had lost an arm and, later, a leg in Confederate service, provides a rare firsthand account of command under fire. It is also the only time Hood ever claimed to have formally protested a military order.
Hood’s account begins in the early morning hours of July 2. His division had arrived on the battlefield and taken position in a meadow near the Confederate lines, where his men stacked their weapons and rested under the growing heat. General Robert E. Lee and General A.
P. Hill were present, studying the Federal positions through field glasses. Lee, fully uniformed with his collar secured and sword belt in place, moved slowly under the shade trees. He paused often to examine the enemy lines, projecting a hopeful demeanor but frequently sinking into deep reflection.
Nearby, the British observer Colonel Freemantle sat perched in a tree, scanning the Union high ground with his binoculars. Hood was convinced that Lee wanted to attack that morning. Lee told him plainly: “The foe waits here. Unless we break them, they’ll break us.
” But Lee also judged it wise to delay until General George Pickett’s division, still absent, could arrive. Longstreet, seated near a tree trunk, remarked to Hood that the commanding general appeared restless. “He wants my attack, but I refuse without Pickett,” Longstreet said. Hood shared Longstreet’s cautious instincts, noting that he never liked to enter a fight unprepared.
“I never marched to war half booted,” he said. The morning crawled by in tension and suspense. The attack did not come until around three in the afternoon, and when it did, Pickett’s men had still not arrived. The decision was made to swing the Confederate right flank wide and launch an assault down the Emmitsburg Road.
General Lafayette McLaws pushed ahead, and Hood followed closely with his division. Orders soon arrived for Hood to quicken his pace and overtake McLaws, so he sent pioneers ahead to smash fences and clear the way. His instructions were plain: position his unit across the Emmitsburg Road, form battle lines, and prepare to charge. Before reaching the road, Hood dispatched his trusted Texas scouts to locate the enemy’s far left flank.
What they reported changed Hood’s assessment of the entire situation. The Federal flank was anchored on Round Top Mountain, and the ground between the Confederate position and that height was open and wooded, offering a possible route to swing around the mountain and strike the enemy from the side and rear. The scouts also reported that Federal wagons were packed tightly behind the Union lines, exposed to such a flanking movement. Hood reached the Emmitsburg Road and immediately placed two artillery batteries into action, eager to engage and shift the battle’s momentum.
The Federal cannon fire quickly revealed their positions. The enemy’s left flank sat near Round Top, with their lines bending backward to form a hollow curve as the Confederates advanced. A body of troops was camped ahead of the main Federal force, positioned between the Emmitsburg Road and Round Top Mountain, standing battle-ready on a slope near an orchard. Hood now faced a grim calculation.
Charging straight up the Emmitsburg Road meant first driving back this forward line. Beyond it, Round Top’s base and slopes were covered with massive stacked boulders that created narrow passes. Climbing that rocky incline would shatter his ranks as the men struggled upward. Worse, the enemy’s main line sat on the high ground of Round Top, anchoring their far left and curving inward.
An attack up the road would expose Hood’s division to murderous fire from the front, the sides, and even the rear. The Federal lines bent in such a way that his men would be caught in a crossfire. Hood judged the position practically unassailable. He later wrote that the enemy could have repelled his men simply by tumbling boulders down the hill as they climbed, even without firing a shot.
He concluded that success would require horrific sacrifice from even the bravest soldiers in history. Believing he had a better option, Hood acted on his own initiative. He sent an aide to Longstreet requesting permission to swing around Round Top and strike the Federal flank instead of charging up the Emmitsburg Road. The answer came back quickly: “General Lee orders attack up Emmitsburg Road.
” Hood sent a second officer, stressing his fear of failure and repeating his plea for a flanking move. Again, the response was the same. Hood kept his artillery firing while he grew more certain that the Federal line stretched all the way to Round Top. The planned assault, he concluded, could not succeed.
A third time, Hood dispatched an officer, this time his adjutant general, Colonel Harry Sellers, a brave and skilled officer, to explain the situation and ask Longstreet to come see the ground for himself. Sellers returned with the same orders: attack up the Emmitsburg Road. Almost immediately, Longstreet’s own aide, Colonel Fairfax, arrived echoing the same command. That was the end of Hood’s protest.
He later described it as the only time in his military career that he objected to an order. He gave the word for his lines to advance. As the troops moved forward, Longstreet himself approached and spoke briefly with Hood. Hood again expressed his regret over the denied flanking movement.
Longstreet replied simply, “We must follow General Lee. ”
Hood pressed onward under heavy fire. About twenty minutes after reaching the orchard, he was struck in the arm by a bullet. The wound was grave, and he was carried from the field on a stretcher.
His part in the Battle of Gettysburg was over. As he was borne away, Hood felt profound mental anguish, not for himself but for his soldiers, men he regarded as among the finest in the Army of Northern Virginia. He remained convinced that had he been allowed to flank Round Top, the Confederates would have taken that ground and crushed the enemy. Hood survived his wound but lost the use of his arm.
He later lost a leg at Chickamauga and finished the war leading the Army of Tennessee through some of the Confederacy’s darkest campaigns. He died in New Orleans in 1879, just four years after writing his letter to Longstreet. His account of Gettysburg remains a vital piece of historical testimony, offering a rare window into the mind of a Confederate general in the chaos of battle. Written a decade after the event, it naturally raises questions about the reliability of memory.
Human recollection falters, and details blur with time. Hood did not record his thoughts immediately after the battle, leaving gaps in the record. Yet his letter stands as a powerful firsthand account of command, courage, and frustration during one of the most consequential hours of the Civil War. The ground he attacked, Devil’s Den and Little Round Top, remains etched into American memory as symbols of ferocious combat and enormous loss.
Hood’s personal testimony gives that ground a human voice, capturing the weight of command, the burden of duty, and the lasting ghosts of a war that refused to fade.