The Unfettered Curmudgeon

JULY 2, 1863…GETTYSBURG DAY TWO General Longstreet Robert E. Lee’s most trusted soldier and his second in command, his “old war horse,” Lieutenant General James Longstreet, known affectionately to his troops as “Old Pete,” and to his friends simply as “Pete,” arrived at Gettysburg ahead of his 1 st Corps, still on the march, just in time to witness the end of the first day’s fighting. Unlike the jubilant Confederate troops at the scene of the action, he was not pleased at all. As he looked through his field glasses he could see the Yanks digging in on the high hills south of the town, in the better positon of the high ground, supported by a wall of artillery arrayed all along the hilltops along Cemetery Ridge. Unlike “Stonewall” Jackson, killed just that past May at Chancellorsville, Longstreet was a somber man, having lost three of his children, all under the age of six, during one week of a scarlet fever outbreak in January of 1862. With his knowledge of modern warfa...

JULY 1, 1863... GETTYSBURG DAY ONE Wednesday morning, July 1, 1863, one hundred and fifty five years ago today, began with a gentle rain as the eastern sky began to lighten just slightly; yet, as the sun rose in the sky everyone knew that it would be a typical hot and humid summer day in southern Pennsylvania. General Henry Heth, as promised, rose early and headed towards Gettysburg from Cashtown, eight miles away just as the sun poked above the horizon. In spite of his certainty that only a small number of Pennsylvania militia lay ahead of him, the same militia that had turned General J. Johnston Pettigrew around the previous day, his corps commander, General Ambrose Powell (A.P.) Hill sent not just one brigade as he had done the previous day, but rather Henry Heth’s entire division plus most of his corps artillery plus another division commanded by Major General Dorsey Pender for support: a total of 14,000 men. That was two-thirds of his 3 rd Corps, sent on what was basicall...