“I rode to McLaws, found him ready for his opportunity, and Barksdale chafing in his wait for the order to seize the battery in his front. Kershaw’s brigade of his right first advanced and struck near the angle of the enemy’s line where his forces were gathering strength. After additional caution to hold his ranks closed, McLaws ordered Barksdale in. With glorious bearing he sprang to his work, overriding obstacles and dangers. Without a pause to deliver a shot, he had the battery. Kershaw, joined by Semmes’s brigade, responded, and Hood’s men, feeling the impulsion of relief, resumed their bold fight, and presently the enemy’s line was broken through its length. But his well-seasoned troops knew how to utilize the advantage of their ground and put back their dreadful fires from rocks, depressions, and stone fences, as they went for shelter about Little Round Top.... The fighting had become tremendous, and brave men and officers were stricken by hundreds. Posey and Wilcox dislodged the forces about the Brick House.
“General Sickles was desperately wounded!
“General Semmes, of McLaws’s division, was mortally wounded!...
“I had one brigade--Wofford’s--that had not been engaged in the hottest battle. To urge the troops to their reserve power in the precious moments, I rode with Wofford. The rugged field, the rough plunge of artillery fire, and the piercing musket-shots delayed somewhat the march, but Alexander dashed up with his batteries and gave new spirit to the worn infantry ranks.... While Meade’s lines were growing my men were dropping; we had no others to call to their aid, and the weight against us was too heavy to carry.... Nothing was heard or felt but the clear ring of the enemy’s fresh metal as he came against us. No other part of the army had engaged! My seventeen thousand against the Army of the Potomac! The sun was down, and with it went down the severe battle.”
Surely these are not the utterances of one who had been slow, balky, and obstructive on that field. The ring of these sentences tells no tale of apathy or backwardness because his advice to pursue a different line of operations had been ignored by Lee.
General Gordon, continuing, very complacently assumes that “two of the largest corps of Meade’s army would not have been in the fight” of the 2d had Longstreet attacked early in the morning. He refers to the Union Fifth and Sixth Corps. That statement is correct only as regards the Sixth Corps, which, it is true, did not arrive on the field until late in the afternoon. But it took only a slight part at dark on the 2d, when the battle was over. Indeed, as it was so slightly engaged, the hour of its arrival at Gettysburg is unimportant. The losses of the different corps conclusively show what part the Sixth, which was the largest in the army, took in the battle of the 2d of July; as given in the Rebellion Records: