The sweltering heat of July 3rd, 1863, hung over Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, as thousands of Confederate soldiers lined up along Seminary Ridge. Across a mile of open fields, the Union Army waited on Cemetery Ridge, entrenched and ready. This was the moment before Pickett’s Charge, the assault that would become the Confederacy’s high-water mark and its breaking point.
Lieutenant General James Longstreet saw the disaster coming before it began. He begged his commander, Robert E. Lee, to reconsider. No one listened.
Longstreet was Lee’s old warhorse, his most trusted subordinate. Born in 1821 in South Carolina, Longstreet grew up on a Georgia plantation and graduated from West Point in 1842. He earned bravery citations during the Mexican-American War, including a wound at Chapultepec that left him with a limp.
When the Civil War erupted in 1861, Longstreet joined the Confederacy and rose quickly. His bond with Lee was forged in battle. At the Seven Days Battles in 1862, his corps saved Richmond. At Second Manassas, his counterattack crushed the Federals. At Antietam, he held the line against overwhelming odds. At Fredericksburg, his defenses turned Marye’s Heights into a slaughterhouse.
But Longstreet was a strategist who favored defensive warfare. He believed in letting the enemy come to you, wearing them down on your terms. He later wrote of “offensive strategy, but defensive tactics.” That philosophy clashed with Lee’s aggressive instincts at Gettysburg.
The road to Gettysburg began after the Confederate victory at Chancellorsville in May 1863. Lee proposed invading the North, shifting the war from battered Virginia and gathering supplies in Pennsylvania’s fertile farmlands. Longstreet had doubts. He pushed instead for reinforcing the Western Theater, but Lee overruled him.
Longstreet agreed to the invasion with a caveat. It should be defensive in nature. In his post-war memoirs, he claimed Lee promised as much. Lee later denied this, calling it absurd, but the disagreement hinted at tensions to come.
As the Army of Northern Virginia marched north in June, Longstreet’s corps trailed behind, guarding wagons. The Confederates were blind without Jeb Stuart’s cavalry, which was off on a raid.
July 1st began with unexpected clashes. Confederate brigades under A.P. Hill bumped into Union cavalry west of Gettysburg. What started as a skirmish ballooned into a full engagement. Union General John Reynolds rushed in reinforcements but was killed early on. By afternoon, Richard Ewell’s corps arrived, pushing the Federals through town to the high ground south.
Lee arrived that evening and ordered Ewell to take the hills if practicable. Ewell hesitated, a decision that haunted the Confederates. The Union, under new commander George Meade, dug in, forming a fishhook-shaped line from Culp’s Hill along Cemetery Ridge to the Round Tops.
Longstreet wasn’t there yet. But that night, he urged Lee to maneuver south around the Union left, positioning between Meade and Washington. “All we have to do is file around his left and secure good ground,” he argued. Lee refused. “If the enemy is there tomorrow, we must attack him.”
Longstreet pushed back. “If he is there, it will be because he is anxious that we should attack him. A good reason in my judgment for not doing so.” It was the first crack in their unity.
By July 2nd, Longstreet’s divisions arrived after a grueling march. Lee planned echelon attacks, with Longstreet hitting the Union left and Ewell the right. Delays plagued them. Longstreet had to countermarch to avoid detection, arriving late afternoon. He again suggested flanking around the Round Tops, but Lee pointed to the map.
When the assault finally launched, it was ferocious. Hood’s men charged into Devil’s Den and the Wheatfield, clashing in hand-to-hand combat. McLaws hit the Peach Orchard, where Union General Dan Sickles had foolishly advanced his corps. Hood was wounded early, his arm shattered. Longstreet rode among the troops, steadying lines under fire.
They pushed the Union back but couldn’t seize Little Round Top, where Colonel Joshua Chamberlain’s 20th Maine held with a desperate bayonet charge. On the Union right, Ewell’s attacks gained ground but faltered at dusk. Longstreet later praised his men’s effort as “the best three hours fighting ever done by any troops on any battlefield.” But it wasn’t enough.
That night, Longstreet met with Lee and proposed withdrawing his divisions to swing around the Union flank. Lee demurred, eyeing the center of Cemetery Ridge. “The enemy is there,” he said, “and I am going to strike him.”
Dawn on July 3rd brought more bad news. Ewell’s men had lost ground on Culp’s Hill after a Union counterattack. Lee adjusted. Everything would focus on the center. Longstreet would command the assault using fresh troops: Pickett’s Virginia division, plus brigades from Hill’s corps under Pettigrew and Trimble, about 12,500 men total.
Longstreet was aghast. He rode with Lee that morning, pleading his case. The terrain was a killer, an open field swept by Union guns with no cover for a mile. The Union position was too strong, entrenched infantry and massed artillery.
“General,” Longstreet said, “I have been a soldier all my life. I have been with soldiers engaged in fights by couples, by squads, companies, regiments, divisions, and armies, and should know as well as anyone what soldiers can do. It is my opinion that no 15,000 men ever arranged for battle can take that position.”
He warned of exposed flanks if troops were pulled from the right. Hood and McLaws were holding a mile against 20,000 men, he explained, who would follow their withdrawal and crush the assaulting column. Longstreet suggested at least 30,000 men for any chance. Lee waved it off.
Overconfident from past victories, Lee believed his men invincible. “They will go through anywhere,” he insisted. Longstreet’s depression deepened. He later confided to his staff, “Never was I so depressed as upon that day.”
Still, he tried to mitigate. He sent a note to Colonel E.P. Alexander around noon. “If the artillery fire does not have the effect to drive off the enemy or greatly demoralize him so as to make our effort pretty certain, I would prefer that you should not advise General Pickett to make the charge.”
Around 1:00 p.m., the cannonade erupted, the largest in the war. One hundred fifty to 170 Confederate guns thundered for nearly two hours. Smoke blanketed the field, but Union batteries replied fiercely. Alexander’s ammunition ran low. He urged Pickett forward.
At 3:00 p.m., the charge began. Thirteen thousand gray-clad soldiers stepped out, flags waving, bands playing. They dressed ranks and advanced steadily across the fields. Union artillery tore gaps. Men fell in heaps, but they closed ranks, yelling the rebel cry.
Halfway, fences slowed them. Then the Emmitsburg Road, where crossfire intensified. Pettigrew’s left crumpled under enfilade. Pickett’s Virginians angled right, focusing on the angle. Lewis Armistead led a final rush, hat on sword tip, over the wall into a hand-to-hand frenzy.
For a moment, they breached. The high-water mark. But Union reinforcements poured in. Armistead fell mortally wounded, hand on a Union cannon. It was over in 30 minutes.
Survivors staggered back, leaving fields carpeted with dead and wounded. Pickett’s division lost two-thirds of its men. Total Confederate casualties that day exceeded 6,000.
When Lee met the remnants, he said, “All this has been my fault. It is I that have lost this fight.” Longstreet, watching from the ridge, felt vindicated but heartbroken.
The retreat started July 4th, amid rain and mud. Meade pursued cautiously, missing a chance to destroy Lee. Combined casualties at Gettysburg reached 51,000, making it the war’s bloodiest battle. Lee’s invasion was shattered. Vicksburg fell the same day, splitting the Confederacy.
In the aftermath, blame swirled. Lee took responsibility in his report, but post-war, the Lost Cause mythmakers scapegoated Longstreet. They accused him of sulking and delaying on July 2nd. Longstreet’s real sin was becoming a Republican and supporting Reconstruction.
Historians now side with him. His cautions were sound, Lee’s hubris costly. What if they had listened? A flank maneuver might have drawn Meade out, prolonged the war, or forced negotiations. Instead, Gettysburg marked the turning point.
Longstreet lived to 1904, serving as a diplomat and railroad commissioner, but always shadowed by Gettysburg. His legacy is that of a brilliant tactician who knew the price of folly. As we reflect on those fields today, preserved as a national park, we honor the fallen and ponder the roads not taken.