32 2

THE STRUGGLE FOR “ROUND TOP.”

and the extension of our right wing from that point across the enemy’s leftand rear, being not only practicable, but easy. 4. That such a movementwould compel a change of front on the paid of the enemy, the abandonmentof his strong position on the heights, and force him to attack us in position.

General Hood called up Captain Hamilton, of his staff, and requested meto repeat the protest to him, and the grounds on which it was made. Hethen directed Captain Hamilton to find General Longstreet as quickly as pos-sible and deliver the protest, and to say to him that he (Hood) indorsed itfully. Hamilton rode off at once, but in about ten minutes returned, accom-panied by a staff-officer of General Longstreet, who said to General Hood, inmy hearing, “ General Longstreet orders that you begin the attack at once.”Hood turned to me and merely said, “You hear the order?” I at oncemoved my brigade to the assault. I do not know whether the protest everreached General Lee . From the brief interval that elapsed between the timeit was sent to General Longstreet and the receipt of the order to begin' theattack, I am inclined to think it did not. General Longstreet has since saidthat he repeatedly advised against a front attack and suggested a movementby our right flank. He may have thought, after the rejection of this adviceby General Lee , that it was useless to press the matter further.

Just here the battle of Gettysburg was lost to the Confederate arms. It lSuseless to speculate upon the turn affairs might have taken if the Confeder-ate cavalry had been in communication with the rest of the army, and dGeneral Stuart had kept General Lee informed, as he should have done, ofthe movements of the Federal army. In considering the causes of the Con-federate failure on that particular field, we must take the situation just as ”' vefind it. And the situation was as follows: The advance of the two arnrie®encountered each other on the 1st of July. An engagement ensued in whichthe Confederates were victorious. The Federal troops retired through GettyS'burg and took position along the height east of the town—a position which)if properly defended, was practicably impregnable to a direct attack.

The whole matter then resolves itself into this: General Lee failedGettysburg on the 2d and 3d of July because he made his attack preciselywhere his enemy wanted him to make it and was most fully prepared f°receive it. Even had he succeeded in driving the Federal army fromstrong position by a general and simultaneous assault along the whole froid(which was the only possible chance of success in that direction), he wom (lhave found his army in very much the same condition in which Pyrrlm®found his, when, after driving the Romans from the field of Asculum, d eexclaimed, “Another such victory, and I am undone!”

The failure of General Ewell to seize Cemetery Hill and adjacent p° s1 'tions, on the evening of July 1st, has been frequently assigned as one ofcauses of our loss of the battle. It is very doubtful whether General E^ elcould have occupied those heights had he made the attempt, for Genei’ aPleasonton has asserted very positively that, on the night of the 1st of July>“ we [the Federals] had more troops in position than Lee .” And General L eequalified his instructions to General Ewell to seize the heights by the words