Lee and His Men at Gettysburg: The Death of a Nation (51 page)

Jones, Rev. J. William:
Personal Reminiscences of General Robert E. Lee
(New York, 1875). This old-fashioned anecdotal collection was written by the
SHSP
secretary, a personal friend of Lee and intimately associated with him when Jones was chaplain at Washington College and the general was its president. With nothing specific on Gettysburg, the book is useful for its firsthand impressions of Lee and for revealing the attitude of his contemporaries to him.

Lee, Robert E., Jr.:
Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee
(New York, 1905). Quoted.

(Lewis, John H.:
Recollections from 1860—1865.
This is said to be an accurate account of the charge by a lieutenant with Armistead, but I was unable to obtain a copy of the book.)

Loehr, Charles T.:
History of the 1st Virginia Regiment
(Richmond, 1884). A standard for Kemper’s brigade. Brief but graphic on the third day.

Macon, T. J.:
Reminiscences of the 1st Company of Richmond Howitzers
(Richmond).

Marshall, Charles:
An Aide-de-Camp of Lee. …
Edited by Major General Sir Frederick Maurice (Boston, 1927). A thoughtful book, very helpful on Lee and, though incomplete, on Gettysburg.

McCarthy, Carlton A.:
Detailed Minutiae of Soldier Life in the Army of Northern Virginia
(Richmond, 1882). Nothing specific on Gettysburg but indispensable for physical details of life in Lee’s army.

McClellan, H. B.:
Life and Campaigns of Major-General J. E. B. Stuart
(Richmond, 1885). To Stuart what Henderson is to Jackson.

McKim, Randolph H.:
A Soldier’s Recollections
(New York, 1910). The aforementioned Dr. McKim is, in his book, a source on the Confederate action at Culp’s Hill.

Meade, George Gordon:
Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade
(New York, 1913). Indispensable. As generous in spirit as he was crotchety in manner.

Moore, Edward A.:
The Story of a Cannoneer under Stonewall Jackson
(New York, 1907). Another private’s-eye view, and a good one, by a gunner with the Rockbridge Battery. With Ewell at Gettysburg.

Morgan, W. H.:
Personal Reminiscences of the War, 1861—65
(Lynchburg, Va., 1911). With Kemper at Gettysburg.

Oates, William C:
The War between the Union and the Confederacy
(New York and Washington, 1905). Among the best and fullest accounts of the second day, and a thoughtful survey of the entire action on the Confederate right. Colonel Oates was one of the few to place the blame on Longstreet specifically for the nature of his failures in the battle. Not diverted by the generalities in the controversy, Oates, on page 223, develops his charge that Longstreet “was responsible and at fault for the negligent and bungling manner in which it [the attack] was done.” With Law, Hood, Kershaw (all cited), and to some extent McLaws, Oates served as the basis for the stress, in the “Lee’s Warhorse” chapter, on Longstreet’s specific failures in command as opposed to the more familiar pros and cons over his alleged strategy.

Owen, William M.:
In Camp and Battle with the Washington Artillery of New Orleans
(Boston, 1885). An artillery standard by a member of the battalion that fired the signal gun for the charge.

Pickett, George E.:
Soldier of the South … Pickett’s War Letters to His Wife
(Boston, 1928). These letters have evidently been doctored for publication. It can only be assumed that Mrs. Pickett included in her version of her husband’s letters material which he had told her, as some of the questionable passages (and the spurious Lincoln letter of 1842) equate with the known facts.

Pickett, LaSalle Corbell:
Pickett and His Men
(Atlanta, 1899). Highly sentimentalized narrative by the widow, who typified the Victorian age in romanticizing her “hero.” To my knowledge, there is no biography of Pickett and very scant material. The numerous members of die present Pickett clan are curiously un-Virginian in their apathy toward anti-quarianism, and no effort has been made to organize the material of the prominent nineteenth-century Pickett family in relation to its member who is best known outside the state. However, I wish to acknowledge that I have received every personal courtesy from Mr. George E. Pickett III, of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and Mr. Charles Pickett, of Fairfax, Virginia, the grandson of Major Pickett, the general’s aide and younger brother.

As for his contemporaries, it must be stressed that Pickett was to them only another division commander, though a colorful personality. Gettysburg did not loom as a decisive battle to Confederates until years after the war when the states of the Union made so much of it. At the time, the moment by which history knows Pickett was, in a general failure, a personal defeat the first time he took his division into action. Although it is doubtful that any major general in either army could have done better in the conditions at Gettysburg, Pickett’s post-Gettysburg war record was indifferent, he made some articulate enemies, and the more the historical view tended to glorify him as the leader of “Pickett’s charge,” the more some ex-Confederates tended to derogate his part in the third day.

McLaws was correct, if embittered, in describing the assault as “what is known as Pickett’s charge.” Several officers of the division were careful in post-war writings to refer to their part as “the charge of Pickett’s division.”

Yet, his men, uninvolved in the sharing of historic glory, felt very sentimentally about him, and, with all the superior leadership the division enjoyed at brigade and regimental level, no division could have performed with such efficiency and morale without capable leadership at the top. Trying to strike a balance would be another case of factualists fighting a losing battle against legend. Nothing will stop people from calling the third-day assault “Pickett’s charge.” Even the battlefield authorities are baffled over a proper designation to replace the inaccurate title.

A sound biographer would be working against an American myth, and no more welcomed than the biographer who, by proving the egotistical blundering of Custer at Little Big Horn, made lies of the memories of a generation whose lasting impressions were formed by the lithograph of “Custer’s Last Stand” which decorated the walls of turn-of-the-century saloons, ice-cream parlors, and general stores.

Poindexter, James E.:
Address on the Life and Services of General Lewis A. Armistead
(Richmond). The best of the slim material on this greatly loved soldier.

Polley, J. B.:
Hood’s Texas Brigade
(New York, 1908). Including firsthand accounts of the Gettysburg campaign by other members of Hood’s Texas (Robertson’s) Brigade, this book contains the most detailed and informative material on Devil’s Den and Little Round Top.

Ross, Fitzgerald: A
Visit to the Camps and Cities of the Confederate States
(Edinburgh and London, 1865). Contains a chapter on Gettysburg sidelights by (despite his name) an Austrian military observer attached to Longstreet’s entourage.

Sanger, Donald Bridgman:
James Longstreet: Soldier,
and Hay, Thomas Robson:
James Longstreet: Politician, Office-holder, Writer
(Baton Rouge, 1952).

Sorrel, Moxley G.:
Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer
(New York, 1917). Excellent narrative by Longstreet’s chief of staff and very valuable on Gettysburg.

Stewart, William H.:
A Pair of Blankets
(New York, 1911). Some useful observations on Gettysburg by a lieutenant colonel of Mahone’s brigade of Anderson’s division.

Tankersley, Allen P.:
John B. Gordon
(Atlanta, 1955). Little on Gettysburg but several illuminating personal details about the impressive Georgian during the battle.

Taylor, Walter H.:
Four Years with General Lee
(New York, 1877). Intelligent and informative on personal observations and on general appraisals during the whole war and at Gettysburg.

Thomas, Henry W.:
History of the Doles-Cooke Brigade
(Atlanta, 1903). Fine account of Rodes’s division in the first day’s fighting.

Thomason, John W., Jr.:
Jeh Stuart
(New York, 1930). This colorfully written biography contains what amounts to an apologia of Stuart in the Gettysburg campaign. The cavalry leader was a hero to the late marine colonel.

Wellman, Manly Wade:
Rebel Boast
(New York, 1956). A narrative based upon and using the war letters of a group of North Carolinians who fought with Junius Daniel in Rodes’s division on the first and third days. Informative detail of march and fighting, and of Confederate personnel of that period.

West, John C: A
Texan in Search of a Fight
(Waco, Texas, 1901). More on Hood’s (Robertson’s) brigade on the second day. The brigade was still called “Hood’s” after the Texan by adoption was an army general in the west—indeed, after he was in his grave.

Wood, William Nathaniel:
Reminiscences of Big I.
New edition edited by Bell Irvin Wiley (Jackson, Tenn., 1956). This sprightly narrative in the unheroic tradition, by an unsentimental lieutenant in Garnett’s brigade, was so long a collector’s item that its contributions have been somewhat overrated. A few pages are valuable for placing Pickett’s men and describing their sensations in the hours immediately preceding the attack. Revealing sidelights on the army and the attitude of the men are scattered throughout.

Worsham, John F.:
One of Jackson’s Foot Cavalry
(New York, 1912). On the invasion, depleted Company “F” halted at Winchester to guard prisoners taken by Ewell and did not get to Gettysburg. Despite its omission of the battle, Private Worsham’s book is one of the really indispensables in a study of Lee’s army, and is especially interesting for its depiction of the effects of war on a
corps d’élite
from Richmond.

Appendix

Organization of the Army of Northern Virginia as of the Gettysburg campaign, after the chart compiled by General Jubal A. Early. The dates are the dates of rank.