The Unfettered Curmudgeon

July 3, 1863 ...GETTYSBURG, THE LAST DAY The night of July 2 nd settled over Gettysburg but the smoke of battle hung in the air as though it were a shroud for the thousands of dead and wounded who lie on the field of battle. Some suffered in silence, others called out for their wives or their mothers, while others moaned plaintively for someone to come and end their misery. On the eastern slope of Cemetery Ridge, Commanding General George Meade held a “council of war” in his headquarters building, a tiny two-room farmhouse belonging to the Widow Leister. By the light of a single oil lantern, the Union generals analyzed the battles of the last two days and then discussed what was to be done the next day, July 3 rd , if Robert E. Lee decided to attack again. Meade anticipated another attack. He knew Lee had committed himself despite the lack of any decisive victory. Given the heavy casualties his side had suffered, the decision was made to stay on the defensive; furthermore...

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...