The relationship between General Robert E. Lee and his most trusted lieutenant, General James Longstreet, was tested to its breaking point during the Gettysburg campaign. Eyewitness accounts and Longstreet’s own writings reveal a commander who saw disaster coming and marched toward it anyway.
Longstreet’s doubts began long before the first shots were fired. In May 1863, he met with Lee at the Army of Northern Virginia’s winter encampment. The two discussed the recent Battle of Chancellorsville and the mortal wounding of Stonewall Jackson.
With the Second Corps leaderless, Lee turned to Longstreet to plan their next move. Longstreet pushed for a defensive strategy, arguing that Confederate forces should fight from strong positions. He also proposed sending divisions to Tennessee to relieve pressure on Vicksburg.
Lee favored a bold offensive into Pennsylvania instead. Longstreet later reflected that it became useless to keep pushing his alternative plan. He worried that Vicksburg might fall before they could act.
Despite his private reservations, Longstreet showed surprising confidence in the invasion. In a letter to Senator Wigfall, he wrote that crossing the Potomac with 150,000 men could force Lincoln to declare his intentions, peace or extermination.
Tensions simmered beneath the surface. Lee reorganized the army, promoting Richard Ewell and creating a new third corps under A.P. Hill. Longstreet approved of Ewell but privately doubted Hill’s leadership.
A fraught conflict arose with Lafayette McLaws, whose division remained under Longstreet’s command. Lee considered reassigning McLaws after illness at Chancellorsville. Longstreet, though skeptical, accepted responsibility for McLaws’s performance.
The army began its advance on June 3rd. Longstreet’s First Corps pushed forward under the blazing summer sun. An officer noted Longstreet’s exhaustion, but the general brusquely replied that he had never known tiredness in his life.
By June 27th, part of Lee’s army reached Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. British observer Arthur Fremantle noted the close bond between Lee and Longstreet, writing that their relationship was quite touching. Yet some officers grumbled about the constant proximity of the two generals.
On June 28th, a scout named Harrison arrived at Longstreet’s headquarters with urgent news. The Union Army was advancing fast. Lee abruptly changed course, declaring they would head to Gettysburg to see what General Meade was up to.
On July 1st, Union and Confederate forces clashed outside Gettysburg. Lee spotted federal troops regrouping on high ground beyond the town. He remarked that they could not have drawn the enemy into a more favorable position.
Longstreet, ever cautious, countered that if the enemy was there, it was because they wanted to be there. Lee was resolute. He declared that if the enemy was there tomorrow, they must attack him.
On the morning of July 2nd, Lee finalized plans for an all-out assault. Longstreet urged a flanking maneuver instead of a frontal attack. Lee dismissed the idea, striking a map with his finger and giving his order.
Captain Samuel Johnston and Major John Clark scouted southeast toward Little Round Top and the Peach Orchard. They reported only four federal cavalrymen. In reality, Third Corps infantry lurked unseen in the mist.
McLaws requested permission to verify the terrain himself. Longstreet refused, snapping that he did not want McLaws leaving his division. The inaccurate report claimed the Union left was vulnerable.
Lee traced a perpendicular line across the Emmitsburg Road on his map, ordering McLaws to attack head-on. McLaws protested, recommending a parallel line to envelop the flank. Lee overruled him.
As Lee rode off to consult Ewell, Longstreet lingered, visibly uneasy. He confided to Hood that they should swing past the Union left and put themselves between Meade and Washington. But he grudgingly prepared for battle.
The Confederate assault lurched forward at 4 p.m. Hood’s division targeted Devil’s Den and Little Round Top while McLaws’s men advanced toward the Wheatfield and Peach Orchard. Longstreet insisted Hood wait for a delayed brigade, losing precious daylight.
McLaws discovered too late that Union positions had been misrepresented. Federal forces were already entrenched ahead. Observers noted Longstreet lacked his usual vigor. He did not approach this duty with the same energy he had shown at Second Manassas or Fredericksburg.
Amid the chaos, Longstreet remained stoic on horseback, surveying artillery impacts through his spyglass. Kershaw’s brigade took devastating artillery fire after being funneled onto exposed roads. Johnston had urged using concealed fields, but Longstreet insisted on the predictable roadway approach.
When Hood’s scouts reported a chance to flank the Union right, Longstreet refused four requests to adjust tactics. As McLaws later wrote, it was there he realized they had been misled about enemy positions.
As dusk fell, federal prisoners captured earlier by Barksdale’s Mississippians stared in awe at Longstreet. One Yankee asked who commanded these rebels. Upon learning it was Old Pete, he muttered that he now understood why they were thrashed on every field.
Longstreet, his boots splattered with blood, snapped at his cheering troops. He told them that cheerless men fight more. The general who opposed Lee’s plan now bore the burden of its execution.
At sunrise on July 3rd, Lee rode to Longstreet’s headquarters demanding a renewed assault. Longstreet, who had spent the night scouting, argued fiercely. He said that 15,000 men could not take that ridge and asked to flank Meade instead.
Lee jabbed his fist toward Cemetery Ridge. He ordered the attack with Longstreet’s corps. Neither general informed Pickett that his fresh division would lead the charge.
For the first time since Antietam, Longstreet positioned himself dangerously close to the front. An aide noted his hands shook, not from fear but from helpless rage. That night he refused to personally report to Lee, sending only a casualty list.
As the morning fog burned away on July 3rd, Lee pointed toward Cemetery Ridge with iron resolve. Longstreet made one last plea, repeating that no 15,000 men could take that position. Lee’s response was a silent fist slammed toward the ridge.
At 11:45 a.m., Longstreet sent a desperate note to Colonel Edward Porter Alexander, his artillery chief. He wrote that if the fire did not drive off or demoralize the enemy, Alexander should not advise Pickett to charge.
Pickett’s Virginians formed in two gleaming lines, unaware they would spearhead the assault. Hill’s shattered brigades shuffled awkwardly to support Pickett’s left. Hood and McLaws were excluded, their divisions bled white from the previous day’s fighting.
At 12:15 p.m., 170 Confederate cannons opened fire in the largest artillery duel of the Civil War. Alexander later wrote that smoke obscured everything and he could not judge if they had silenced the Union guns.
As Pickett’s men stepped off at 3 p.m., Longstreet turned away. His final words to Alexander were that he did not want to make this charge. Not now. Not here.
When Pickett approached for final orders and asked if he should advance, Longstreet could only bow his head silently. Soldiers would later call the gesture the death warrant of the Confederacy.
As 12,500 men stepped off, Brigadier General Kear warned Longstreet that a dozen men were cut down every second. Fremantle marveled at Pickett riding like a parade ground dandy into the storm while Longstreet sat frozen, a man watching his own funeral.
At 2:45 p.m., a courier sprinted through cannon fire with Alexander’s desperate note. It read, for God’s sake, come quick. We can’t support you. Pickett never saw it. His division was already shattered.
As shattered remnants of Pickett’s division stumbled back to Seminary Ridge, Longstreet met a shaken staff officer. When the officer said the men needed the devil, Longstreet growled that he would have liked to miss this very much.
With Union cheers rolling across the field, Lee and Longstreet ordered the bloodied Army of Northern Virginia to retreat. Lee rode among the survivors, saying it was all his fault and asking them to help save the men.
Longstreet silently counted empty spaces in the ranks. Every face missing was a man who had followed orders he opposed. Fremantle observed that the Southerners looked like ghosts walking out of their own graves.
In the weeks that followed, Longstreet grappled with history’s judgment. Would his caution be remembered as wisdom or cowardice? Could flanking Meade have changed the war? Did thousands of men die for a general’s pride?
Gettysburg was not the end for Longstreet. His later service with the Union Army proved his crisis was not about loyalty. But for Longstreet and Lee, July 3rd, 1863, was the day the war and their reputations changed forever.