Summary—Chapter 5: Longstreet
Thing is, if anything bad happens now,
they all blame it on you. I seen it comin’. They can’t blame General
Lee.
See Important Quotations Explained
Evening, Confederate camp. Longstreet moves through the
makeshift Confederate hospital, which is overflowing with wounded from
the day’s battle. He sees General Hood, whose hand was injured during
the battle. The drugged Hood asks if the attack succeeded, and Longstreet
lies and says it did. One of Longstreet’s aides tells him that Hood’s
officers are blaming Longstreet for the failure of the attack. They
would never blame Lee for a failed attack, so they immediately turn
to Longstreet. Longstreet’s head aide, Sorrel, reports that the
casualties are heavy. Nearly half of the men in Hood’s division, 8,000 men,
have been killed, wounded, or captured in two hours of fighting.
Longstreet thinks that there are no longer
enough men for another frontal assault and that Lee will therefore
not order one the next day. Longstreet orders Sorrel to get hard
counts of the casualties and the amount of ammunition and weapons
remaining. As Sorrel rides away, another aide appears to tell Longstreet that
Pickett has finally arrived. Longstreet tells the aide he will meet
Pickett shortly.
Longstreet rides toward Lee’s headquarters
and finds Stuart waiting outside, surrounded by reporters and admirers
and enjoying the attention. Longstreet pays little attention. Longstreet
meets Lee, who draws him into the headquarters and away from the
press. Lee, thinking that the Union forces had nearly retreated,
tells Longstreet that he thought it was very close that day. Longstreet
thinks Lee is deluding himself. He tells Lee that there are three
Union corps dug into the high ground in front of him. Longstreet
pushes, one last time, for Lee to move the Confederate army around
to the right, to the southeast, and to put itself between the Union
army and Washington, D.C.
Another general appears and demands that Longstreet
persuade Lee to court-martial Stuart, who has left the Confederate army
blind to the Union’s movements. Longstreet says he will talk to
Lee, but that he does not think it will do any good. Fremantle appears
and tries to congratulate Longstreet on his “victory.” As they ride
along aimlessly, Longstreet realizes that Lee will attack
the next day, an idea he thinks is suicidal. Fremantle claims that
Lee is the most “devious” man he has ever met, and Longstreet replies
that the Confederacy does not win with tactics, it wins with sheer
determination. He is actually annoyed with the lack of
tactics in the campaign, and thinks Lee does not use enough strategy.
He says it will be a “bloody miracle” if the Confederates win the
war. He resolves to speak to Lee in the morning, to make one last attempt
to get him to move to the right.
Longstreet moves on and runs into Pickett and the other
officers. Longstreet speaks with Armistead, who is disgusted by
the fact that Fremantle thinks the Confederacy is fighting for slavery.
Longstreet shrugs—he believes that the war is indeed about slavery,
though that is not why he personally is fighting.
Armistead is old friends with Winfield Hancock, a Union
general whom Longstreet fought earlier in the day. Armistead says
that he had once vowed to Hancock that if he ever raised his hand
against Hancock, then God may strike Armistead dead.
Eventually, the two men return to the party with the
other officers, and forget their troubles for a few hours.
Summary—Chapter 6: Lee
Late evening, Confederate camp. Lee considers his options
for the following day. He recalls how he had once vowed to defend
the very land he was attacking, when he was part of the whole United
States army. Lee reflects on his past, and he tries to decide what
to do. He considers a retreat, but realizes he has never seen men
fight well after a retreat. He also knows his own army will never
be stronger.
Stuart appears, having been sent for by Lee. Lee gently
but firmly chastises the cavalry leader for joyriding and leaving
him blind. Stuart tries to resign from his commission, but Lee will
not accept his resignation and tells him to get back to work.
An aide reports to Lee that Ewell’s camp is in much disorder because
Ewell defers too much to Early. The aide tells Lee that Early and
Ewell got the men moving very late, almost when Longstreet had finished
his attack, thus ruining the plan to divide the Union’s forces.
It occurs to Lee that he has attacked the Union on both sides. The
smartest next move, he thinks, would be to attack in the center. He
decides to send his forces in to the center of Cemetery Ridge and break
the Union army in two, then send Stuart and his cavalry around to
the rear to finish the job.
Analysis—July 2, 1863: Chapter 5–6
Chapter 5 again
focuses on Longstreet, who has at this point become the protagonist
of the novel. It is tragic that Longstreet is completely aware of
how effective a defensive position would be, since it would likely
have allowed his side to win the war. Shaara’s characterization
of Longstreet is at times enigmatic. While we see much of the Confederate
perspective through him, he is a grim and quiet man, prone to responding to
his fellow officers with single syllables, shrugs, and grunts. He
has strong feelings about what the army should do, but he has been
weakened by the death of his children and the knowledge that Lee
has no intention of attempting his defensive strategies. Longstreet
can see the defeat approaching, but he makes no move to stand up
to Lee. He often agrees that Lee’s plans could potentially work,
though with heavy losses. His respect and admiration for Lee and
for the chain of command is too strong for him to try and override
Lee, and he knows Lee would ultimately censure him if necessary.
Shaara’s characterization of Longstreet
is probably overly sympathetic. In the second half of the nineteenth
century, many Americans—soldiers and historians alike—began to blame
Longstreet for the failure at Gettysburg, especially after Longstreet
wrote a book blaming Lee. The book gave Longstreet a negative reputation
all through the early twentieth century, until some historians began
to see Longstreet in a more positive light—particularly in what
they believed was his anticipation of modern warfare. Shaara perhaps
portrays Longstreet as knowing more about how to correctly conduct the
war than he actually did. Longstreet proposes the swing to the southeast
over and over to Lee, who stubbornly refuses. In the true history,
Longstreet was probably not so persistent in pushing for defensive
tactics, and Lee was probably not so obtuse in his decision not
to follow them.
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