Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 3.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[600] so well performed at Manassas and Chancellorsville? This last supposition is justified by the part which Lee will take in the direction of the battle, and which we should be tempted to designate as insignificant, if we could do so without intending to cast blame upon him. Once the game opened, he continues to leave an extraordinary latitude to his lieutenants, just as if Jackson were still living: the absence of a sufficient general staff—the great defect of American armies—made this, perhaps, a matter of necessity on his part. After having allotted to each man his separate role in the action which is about to take place, he will remain, so to speak, a spectator of the struggle, receiving hardly any message and scarcely issuing any order. The intricacies of the machine he has to manoeuvre make it too difficult for him to guide it properly when it is on the march.

The plan adopted by Lee has the inconvenience of increasing this very defect by making success dependent upon the combined action of several corps between which there is absolutely no connection; thus he commits, in his turn, the fault he made Hooker and Sedgwick pay so dearly for on the banks of the Rappahannock; and this fault, the consequences of which we shall see developed during each phase of the battle, will be aggravated, as it frequently happens, by the hesitations of his lieutenants, who are obliged, for the first time, to manoeuvre in sight and under the fire of the enemy: this will prove to be the principal cause of his defeat.

Longstreet, as we have stated, did not approve of the plan of attack which he was charged to execute, and, before receiving detailed instructions, did not display much alacrity in preparing himself for it: he found his forces reduced, at that time, to six brigades, altogether insufficient for such a task, and he was in hopes that the attack would be deferred till next day, in order to allow time for Pickett's division and Law's brigade to join him. If Lee had given him a formal order, or if he had himself felt the necessity of beginning the action as soon as possible, he could have brought seven brigades into line by nine o'clock in the morning. At this hour, indeed, the sixteen pieces of artillery of his artillery corps, which had left Greenwood under the direction of Colonel Alexander, arrived at Seminary Hill, while