General Lee is fresh from perhaps his greatest battle, a victory in Chancellorsville that displayed a genius of tactical warfare but that victory had come at a great cost, the loss of General Stonewall Jackson. Lee now relied even more upon Lieutenant General James Longstreet who Lee privately described as ‘the staff in my right hand,’. Longstreet had last served with Lee in the Second Manassas campaign, and he considered that battle Lee’s masterpiece, the ideal mix of a strategic offensive and a tactical defensive. But now Longstreet was stunned to see the difference in philosophy in Lee's tactics since they had last served. Longstreet felt that their efforts should have been directed to engage General Grant army in Kentucky, fighting a defensive battle and capitalizing on the growing demand for a peace treaty in the North.
However, Longstreet is overruled and the Southern forces start their advancement into the North. They then encounter Union General Mead's army in a little town called Gettysburg.
After the first day of battle on July 1st, 1863, Lee's Army of Northern Virginia had soundly beaten the Union Army. Lee and Longstreet meet that evening to discuss the next days tactics and that is when Longstreet vehemently argues for a defensive posture, holding onto their current positions and waiting on the Alabama regiments to reinforce their position. Lee pushes back and stakes his position on the need to attack before Mead's five other infantry corp show up on the battlefield. Momentum is on their side and along with the element of surprise that would accompany a sunrise attack he felt the battle could be won before the next afternoon. Lee "orders" Longstreet to attack in the morning as they will have the advantage of numbers and surprise. Longstreet leaves the meeting in great distress, not just because of their disagreement about tactics for July 2nd, but also because he feels that Lee has disregarded their previously agreed upon vision of how to win this war and was being reckless in his desire to attack the North on their own soil. So, to recap, Lee was convinced that if Longstreet attacked early in the morning victory would belong to the South.
But that sunrise attack never took place.
So it was that “the sunrise attack order” of July 2, 1863, entered American history as a fact, and was treated as such for the next 100 years. Instead of following Lee’s orders, Longstreet was stewing in his tent, “eating his heart away in sullen resentment.” This failure to obey a direct order became part of the "Lost Cause" lore and the South was left to wonder about the great "what if" that might have been.
Now here comes the problem with this story, there is no proof that Lee ever ordered Longstreet to attack at sunrise. No one has ever found a copy of the order and no one who was present with Lee and Longstreet when Lee allegedly gave the order remembers him doing so. So, as historians have since learned, the reason Longstreet disobeyed Lee’s “sunrise attack order” is because, manifestly, Lee almost certainly never actually gave it.
So, what really happened?
Some claim that the story of Longstreet's failure to attack was created not just because of his performance at Gettysburg, but because of what he did after it—or more properly, because of the political choices Longstreet made after Lee surrendered his bedraggled, defeated army at Appomattox in 1865. After Lee’s surrender, Longstreet moved to New Orleans, where he went into the cotton business. So far so good, but in 1868 Longstreet joined the Republican Party—then the party of the North—endorsed former Union Army Gen. Ulysses S. Grant (who was his best friend before the Civil War) for the presidency, attended his inauguration and received an appointment in Grant’s administration as the surveyor of customs at the port of New Orleans, a plum posting in those days.
It is probably not too far removed to state that many in the South regarded Longstreet as a traitor to the cause. And after Lee's death in 1870, many of his former commanders strived to advance his legend, and Longstreet made a ideal scapegoat for Lee's greatest defeat. We can see the motivation behind some of the arguments made against specifically Longstreet in the battle of Gettysburg.
But we return to our original question, is that what really happened?
Lee, by all historical knowledge, had not issued specific orders to Longstreet before he departed, but the latter undoubtedly understood what Lee intended — and what role was intended for Longstreet’s own I Corps in the assault. Undoubtedly, too, Longstreet was troubled by the plan. He ‘failed to conceal some anger,’ wrote Major G. Moxley Sorrel, his chief of staff. To General Hood, Longstreet confided, ‘The General (Lee) is a little nervous this morning; he wishes me to attack. I do not wish to do so without [George] Pickett. I never like to go into battle with one boot off.’
The next morning, Lee returned to Seminary Ridge around 11 o’clock. Longstreet had done virtually nothing to implement the movement of his forces, except to order Colonel E. Porter Alexander to find a concealed route to the right for the artillery. He neither conducted another reconnaissance, nor checked with Alexander to ascertain if he had located a route, nor conferred with his subordinates. ‘There was apparent apathy in his movements,’ admitted Sorrel. ‘They lacked the fire and point of his usual bearing on the battlefield.’ Because of this reluctance, some might argue disobedience, the South lost a golden opportunity to advance to victory in Gettysburg.
It is beyond debate that Longstreet allowed his disagreement with Lee’s plans to affect his generalship, and he deserves censure for this. While he may have opposed the idea of an offensive, he was still in a position of responsibility. What Lee expected of Longstreet on the morning of July 2nd is uncertain, but Lee expected something. Without specific orders, duty required that Longstreet attend to the preparations for a movement. On that morning, Longstreet was not the same general who had performed so capably on previous battlefields. His judgment about the offensive may have been correct, but he owed more to Lee than he gave on that fateful day.
There has been a reevaluation of Longstreet's military career viewed through the lens of modern historians who have been less inclined to blame him for his failings at Gettysburg. I think the truth, as it usually does, lies somewhere in the middle. If you look at the span of his military career there were at least four battles where it was noted that he was either late in accomplishing his orders or at the very least he displayed reluctance to fulfill orders he disagreed with. He had conflicts with almost every commanding officer that he served under and though his military prowess is beyond dispute, his relational skills and his maturity in dealing with conflicts is less than acceptable. It is obvious that he had great respect for Lee, [Interesting sidebar: Longstreet had a son born in October 1863, three months after the Gettysburg battle and named him Robert Lee Longstreet] but he also blamed Lee for the defeat at Gettysburg, not himself. This was also a trend in Longstreet's military career, later in the war when he was the commander of the Southern forces in Georgia, with each defeat he always blamed his subordinates, never himself.
By the time Longstreet forced Lee to order him to move his men and attack the Northern positions, precious time had passed, and the Union army was better prepared and had been reinforced with fresh soldiers. It can be argued that from the moment Longstreet finally attacked and his forces were decimated, the battle was effectively over and with it the hope of the Confederacy.
