Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 27.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

In November, 1877, Longstreet made answer by publishing in the Philadelphia Times a detailed account of the campaign and battle of Gettysburg. This article was reprinted in Southern Historical Society Papers (January-February, 1878). In this he denied that Lee gave him the order to attack at sunrise on July 2, 1863. To sustain his assertion, Longstreet published extracts from letters written by members of Lee's staff and members of his own staff, declaring that they had no knowledge of Lee's order. Among these extracts there was one from a letter written to Longstreet by Hood, who commanded the rear division in Longstreet's marching column as the First corps drew nigh to Gettysburg. As the quotation from Hood's letter plays an important part in the later stages of the discussion, we may pause here long enough to say that this letter itself, as cited by Longstreet, bore no date. The extract ran thus:

“I arrived with my staff in front of the heights of Gettysburg shortly after daybreak, as I have already stated, on the morning of the 2d of July. My division soon commenced filing into an open field near me, when the troops were allowed to stack arms and wait until further orders. A short distance in advance of this point, and during the early part of the same morning, we (Longstreet and Hood) were both engaged, in company with Generals A. P. Hill and Lee, in observing the position of the Federals. * * * General Lee was seemingly anxious that you should attack that morning. He remarked to me: ‘The enemy is here, and if we do not whip him he will whip us.’ You thought it better to await the arrival of Pickett's division, at that time still in the rear, in order to make the attack, and you said to me subsequently, while we were seated together near the trunk of a tree: ‘General Lee is a little nervous this morning. He wishes me to attack. I do not wish to do so without Pickett. I never like to go into a battle with one boot off.’ ” (Southern Historical Society Papers, January-February, 1878, page 79.)

Upon its face this note is rather indefinite as to the time of the conversation among the officers, the time proposed for the attack, and the time of the arrival of Hood's infantrymen. It is interesting to mark the significance attached to Hood's statement by Longstreet himself. He held that it completed his chain of evidence to disprove