The Sun.
London, England, 1863-08-18 00:00:00

THE BATTLES OF GETTYSBURG,

(From the Special Correspondent of the Times.)
HEADQUARTERS OF GEN. LONGSTREET,
NEAR GETTYSBURG, July 2.
It was not till 4 in the afternoon that the battle
commenced. Upon the extreme Confederate right
advanced Gen. Hood and the Texans, who would
follow his tall form up to Gehenna's gates, and the
day's disasters commenced by a wound which he at
once received, shattering his left arm below the
elbow and forcing him from the field. His division
fell to the command of the senior Brigadier-General,
Robertson, who swiftly shared Gen. Hood's fate,
and resigned the command to Gen. Law. On Hood's
left advanced, hardly with sufficient promptitude,
the division of Gen. M‘Laws. Observing some de
lay in their advance, Gen. Longstreet threw him-'
self at the head of Wofford's brigade, and led them
under such a fire as has rarely been witnessed right
up the slope. Repressing the disposition of his men
to cheer him as he took his place at their head by
the brief exclamation of " Cheer less, men, and
fight more," Gen. Longstreet, mounted upon the
same charger which he hes ridden in a score of
battlefields, without either horse or rider, both
recklessly and constantly exposed, encountering
even a scratch, plunged into the thickest of the
fight. There are in all wars undemonstrative, un-
selfish, and natural men, whose worth is chiefly
known to their soldiers, who seldom attract and care
nothing for public applause, but on whom in the
direst stress of critical battle the sternest and most
hazardous role devolves. To this order belongs
Gen. Longstreet—a man fighting not for praise, or
civil or social distinction, with a repugnance to
those self-seeking politicians (a class happily almost
unknown to England) who manipulate for their own
advancement the reputation of such generals as con-
descend to become their creatures. Few, indeed,
among the generals of Lee's army are such self-
seekers—least self-seeking of all Generals Lee
and Longstreet themselves. It was natural
that one of the Federal prisoners brought
back in this very charge by Wofford's Brigade
should, upon learning that the big man who led
the advance was none other than Gen. Longstreet,
have exclaimed, "No wonder we are thrashed upon
every field ; there is not in the whole of our army
in
such Lieut.-General who would have risked his life
such a charge." Against the first position of the
Fedecais the advance of Longstreet's two divisions
was completely successful; against the second and
stronger position he had not men enough to essay
seeriously upon this day to prevail.
Meanwhile on the Confederate centre and left
Generals Hill and Ewell mingled in fierce conflict
with their sternly-resisting enemy. Vain indeed
would be the attempt to portray in language the
scene which the Cemetery-hill, held by the Federal
centre, and the lines of their right wing, lying im
mediately behind Gettysburg, presented to the spec-
tator. If it had not been reserved for me to listen
next day to a still more awful din, I should have
fancied that no such scene had ever before saluted
mortal eye or ear. A thick canopy of smoke, con-
stantly rent by bright darting flashes of flume, cast
its dense pall over the struggling, bleeding thou-
sands who toiled and died in its centre, while out
of the omue gloom, as though from the bowels of
the earth, one deep prolonged bellowing roar never
ceased to issue. Through the deepening twilight
and on far into the night the fierce struggle c ,n-
-tinned, until, in the gloom, the dazzling parabolas
of flame, bursting into sparkling jets and cerusca-
nous as the shells cracked and exploded, made a
vastly pyrotechnic display. It was not untill ate
is the night that it was learnt that the divisions of
Rocks and Early had at one time actually carried a
part of the Cemetery-hill, and had sent down a
peremptory entreaty for support to Generals Pinder
and Anderson of A. P. Hill's corps. But General
Pinder lay at the moment desperately wounded.
The request was, for some unknown reason, unheeded
by. Gen. Anderson. Bodes and Early fell back to
their old positions, and the only advantage gained
by the Confederates consisted in the carrying by
Gen. Longstreet of the first position of the Federais
upon the extreme.right of the Confederate line.
JULY 3.

Between the first and second positions originally
held by the Federal left intervened a large bare
sloping meadow, nearly a mile in width. Across
this Valley of the Shadow of Death the Confede-
rates' advance, committed this morning to the divi-
sions of Generals Pickett and Pettigrew, had no
option but to proceed, swept by the concentrated fire
of the countless Federal guns, and exposed whets
nearing those guns to hailstorms of musketry bul-
lets. The distance was too great to advance at the
double; it was necessary to move slowly and deli-
berately, that, as the men approached the batteries,
there might be some dash left for the final on-
slaught. Early in the morning General Longstreet's
lice stood thus :—On the extreme right the division
of General Hood, commanded by General Law;
next to him the division of M'Laws—these two divi-
sions being by General Longstreet held in hand to
launch against the Federals should success attend
the onward movement to their left. Next to M'Laws
came the apes gregis of the moment—the division of
General Pickett, supported and assisted on its left
by the far larger division of General Pettigrew,
belonging to A. P. Hill's corps, and ordinarily com-
manded by General Heth, who received a singular
wound on the first day. He was struck in the
centre of his forehead by a Minie bullet, which laid
bare the bone, and then glided off. He attributes
his escape to the fact that he was wearing a Yankee
hat which was too large for him, and in front of
the forehead he had inserted a thick wad of paper,
which was strong enough in its resistance to the
bullet to save the General's life. It should be
noticed that most of Pettigrew's division consisted
of men who had never been seriously engaged
before. They have recently been drawn from
North Carolina, where for months and months they
have been engaged in watching the fantastic me-
naces of Generals Hunter and Foster, and others in
the neighbourhood of Newbern—menaces which
must have caused the Federal Government untold
millions of dollars, and which have been productive
of no good to them beyond the larceny of a few
negroes mid the sack and pillage of sundry houses
of non-combatants. It would have been easy to
secure the only material advantage sought by the
Federals on that coast—the suppression of the shad
and herring fi
eheries in Pamlico and Albemarle
Sounds—by the
presence in those waters of a few
sloops of war.
The division
of Gen. Pickett shorn of two of its
brigades, lately
left in
ay to join
vicinity of Suffolk, but
likely, I believe, shortly
join Lee's army, did not
in number much exceed 4,000
men. The strong
division of Pettigrew,
its engagement of
the Ist, against Gen.
liei
Reynolds, sustained incon-
siderable loss, numbered, with the
addition of AV, il-
cox's Brigade, temporarily attached
to it,
aoout
10,000 men. It was naturally desirable before their
attack was delivered that a heavy cannonade from
the Confederate batteries should, as far as possible,
exhaust and perhaps silence some of the Federal
guns. Accordingly, under the instructions of col.
'Walton, Chief of Artillery to Gen. Longstreet, and
Col. Walker, Chief of Artillery to Gen. A. P. Hill,
battalions of artillery, numbering in all 140 guns,
were got into position, while similar arrangements
were made by Gen. Ewell on the left, so that in all
-upon the Confederate side alone there must have
been a con cert of about 200 guns. It can hardly be
doubted that their thunder was echoed back from a
similar number of pieces on the Federal side, and to
-
the reader's im-giaation must it be left to conceive
the diapason at 400 guns. Toe thundering roar or
ail the accumulated battles ever fought upon earth
rolled into cne volume could hardly h lve rent the
skies with fiercer or more unearthly resonance and
die. Far back into the mountains the reverbera-
tions rolling from hillside to hillside startled strange
and unmusical echoes, Vast cumuli of cloud, such
as would have shrouded 10,000 Homeric goddesses,
had they cared in these days of villainous saltpetre
to mingle' in the ',wee, floated over the strife;
horses, the. suffering and tortured ministers of man's
fury and Waal, lay thickly dead or horribly muti-
lated upon the' ground ; constantly from out of the
white pall of va pear issued wounded and mangled
men, and rumou that this or that General was
killed, that this 0 c that regiment was reduced to a
corporal's guard, traceable to no authentic source,
neither believed nc `+r disbelieved by the listeners,