Cory Pfarr's "Longstreet at Gettysburg" Is a Must-Read

Recently I enjoyed reading Cory Pfarr’s Longstreet at Gettysburg: A Critical Appraisal.  This must-read book clears away decades of assumptions, conjectures and surmises and leaves a more factual picture of Longstreet as a dutiful soldier doing his best to carry out Robert E. Lee’s orders.  Longstreet gets an ‘A’ from Pfarr.  Lee, Ewell/Early, Hill and Stuart do not fare as well.

The book could have been better.  Its analysis of July 2 rightly puts responsibility for that day’s delays on Lee, Ewell/Early and Stuart but breaks down, as Longstreet’s attack did, with Posey’s and Mahone’s brigades of Anderson’s division.  There’s no excuse for that.  Civil War Talks: Further Reminiscences of George S. Bernard [12^th Virginia] and His Fellow Veterans (the sequel to Bernard’s 1892 War Talks of Confederate Veterans) was published in 2012 and contains accounts of the activity of Mahone’s brigade around nightfall on July 2, particularly shift to the right followed by an advance toward Emmitsburg Road.  A Pair of Blankets [61^st Virginia], published in 1911, also notes this movement.  Hampton Newsome, who drew the map below, has excerpts from CWT at his blog at https://hamptonnewsome.blogspot.com/2017/12/gettysburg-mahones-night-attack-july-2.html?m=1

Credit: The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil War, A History of the 12^th Virginia Infantry from John Brown’s Hanging to Appomattox (Savas Beatie, 2019), map drawn by Hampton Newsome[1]

Likewise, Longstreet at Gettysburg places the ultimate responsibility for Pickett’s Charge on Lee and criticizes Hill for contributing some of his most exhausted units rather than his freshest.  However, if Pfarr had read Civil War Talks, he would have known that like Wilcox’s and Lang’s brigades on July 3, Mahone’s and (almost certainly) Posey’s and Wright’s brigades advanced in support of Pickett’s Charge.  Unlike Wilcox’s and Lang’s brigades, Mahone’s, Posey’s and Wright’s brigades had the good fortune to receive orders to halt almost as soon as they started.  Under Both Flags (1896) also indicates that Mahone participated very briefly in Pickett’s Charge.  Pfarr argues that Longstreet had no second wave, but Longstreet’s ability to call on Anderson’s division for support in case of success adds up to the same thing.  Longstreet could have committed Anderson’s division whenever he pleased.  That he wanted to only in the case of success makes sense, but he waited too long for Anderson’s division to have made any difference at all.

The maps are as good as the research permits.  The map on page 137 should have Mahone's brigade in front of Davis' brigade.  In Civil War Talks, one of Mahone's men described Davis' men stepping over them on the way to Cemetery Ridge on July 3.  

The perfect must not become the enemy of the good, though.  All students of the Civil War, not just Gettysburg aficionados, should read Longstreet at Gettysburg.

John Horn

Author, The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil War: A History of the 12^th Virginia Infantry from John Brown’s Hanging to Appomattox (Savas Beatie, 2019), which cites all the above sources except Longstreet at Gettysburg, also published in 2019

[1] Hampton Newsome is the author of Richmond Must Fall and The Fight for the Old North State.