Perry's brigades were to render assistance, and also Wright's and Posy's brigades, but he received orders from General Longstreet to stop the movement. (Young, p. 307.)
Strange, is it not, that Colonel Walter H. Taylor, Lee's adjutant General, Colonel Venable, and General Long, of Lee's staff, and General Fitz Lee—to name no more—should testify that it was within their knowledge, that Lee directed that the assaulting column on July 3d, should have been very strongly supported; yet Mr. Jesse Bowman Young says, "and with confidence, having gone over the data in the case," that Lee had no such intention!
Perhaps any student who may be inclined to accept his conclusion on this point, will reconsider the idea, when he learns that that accomplished English military critic, Colonel G. F. R. Henderson, says, that after a careful study of the records, he was convinced that it was Lee's intention that the great charge should have been made by 30,000 men.
But the evidence in the case is conclusive. General Fitzhugh Lee tells us: "Three of General Lee's trusted staff officers—Taylor, Venable, and Long—have recorded that the plan of assault involved an attack by Longstreet's whole corps, supported by one-half of Hill's, or all of it, if he called for it. * * * A consummate master of war, such as Lee was, would not drive en masse, a column of 14,000 men * * * to attack an army, of one hundred thousand, and give his entering wedge no support."—Fitzhugh Lee's Life of Lee, p. 289.
There was no serious fighting after the repulse of the great charge on the 3d of July. During the night General Lee withdrew his left wing from Culp's Hill, and the morning of July 4th found his army in line of battle on Seminary Ridge. Here he stood throughout the day ready to receive General Meade, but Meade made no attempt to attack him.[1]
- ↑ Colonel Henderson in his lecture on the Battle of Gettysburg, delivered nearly twenty years after the event, falls into two serious errors. He says. (p. 16), that during the night of July 3d, "slowly followed by his adversary. Lee fell back through the South Mountain passes, and away southward across the Potomac into Virginia." But in fact Lee did not begin his retreat until the night of July 4th. and did not cross the Potomac until July 13th. On p. 14, he says, of July 3d, "The day opened ominously. As the sun rose, a vigorous attack of
