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

ITTYSBITEG,

(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-Generall
Roberteon, who swiftly shared Gen. Hood's rate,
and resigned the command to Gen. Law. Oa Hood's
left advanced, hardly with sufficient promptitude,
the division of Gen. 111‘Laws. Observing some do
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 ha took his place at their head by
the brief exclamation of " Cheer less, men, and
l'33h t more," Gen. Longstreet, mounted upon the
charger which he hes ridden in a score of
I;.ctlefields, without either horse or 'rider, both
recklessly and constantly exposed, encountering
even a scratch, plunged into eae
light. Toere are in all wars thickest of the
undemonstrative, un-
sellibli, and natural men, 'whose worth is chiefly
linovorn to their soldiers, 'who seldom attract and care
nothing for public a
itplause, but on whom in the direst,stress of critical battle the sternest and most
hazardous role rfrevolves. To this order belongs G:fla. Lougstreee—a man fighting not for praise, or
civil or social, distinction, with a repugnance toi
those self-seekieg politicians (a class happily almost
unknown to England) who manipulate for their own
advancer
dent the reputation of such generals as con-
descends 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
beck 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 a
Lieut.-General who would have risked his life in
such a charge." Against the first position of the
Federals the advance of Longstreet's two divisions
was completely successful ; against the second and
stronger position he had not men enough to essay
seriously 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 inn
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 flame, cast
its dense pall over the struggling, bleeding thou-
sands who toiled and died in its centre, while out
of the opaque 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 con-
tinued, until, in the gloom, the dazzling parabolas
of flame, bursting into sparkling jets and corusca-
tions as the shells cracked and exploded, made a
ghastly pyrotechnic display. Itwas not untill ate
in the night that it was learnt that the divisions of
nodes 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. Rodes 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 Federals
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 when
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 spec 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 is 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 nun 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
mast have caused the Federal Government untold
millions of dollars, and which have been productive
(2r oe good to them beyond the larceny of a few
uo;grees and the sack and pillage of sundry houses
"11-combatants. It would have been easy to
seelirt' the
pederia only material advantage sought by the
and 011 that coast—the suppression of the shad
sounds herringb fisheries in Pamlico and Albemarle
sloops of „lathe presence in those waters of a few
The divialo;
brigades, we, of Gen. Pickett, shorn of two of its
likely, I believe left in the vicinity of Suffolk, but
in number mush' sieaartly to join Lee's army, did not
division of Petti zoeed 4,000 men. The strong
the Ist, against grew
Gee. ,eeice in its engagement of
siderable loss, numb, Reynolds, sustained incon-
ered, with the addition of Wil-
cox's Brigade, tempoe„,ii
attached to it, about
10,000 men. It was
natth7:3l:ltYbdesirable before their
attack was delivered
savY cannonade from
the Confederate batteries eh
°4l`ll as far as possible,
exhaust and perhaps silence some
the Federal
ttrn:ctions of Col.
guns. Accordingly, under thee
cliertngAstri,eet, and
Walton, Chief of Artillery to
141140. Hill,
Col. Walker, Chief of Artillery to
battalions of artillery, numbering in
were got into position, while similar arrangentlT
were made by Gen. .Ewell on the left, so that in all
upon the Confederate aide alone there must have
been a concert 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 imagination must it be left to conceive
the diapason of 400 guns. The thundering roar of
ail the accumulated battles ever fought upon earth
rolled into one volume could hardly have rent the
skies with fiercer or more unearthly resonance and
din. 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 melee, floated over the strife;
horses, the suffering and tortured ministers of man's
fury and wrath, lay thickly dead or horribly muti-
lated upon the ground; constantly from out of the
white pall of vapour issued wounded and mangled
men, and rumours that this or that General was
killed, that this or that regiment was reduced to a
corporal's guard, traceable to no authentic source,
neither believed nor disbelieved by the listeners,

JULY 4.
A steady downpour of rain from a low brooding
Leaden sky—a day in keeping with the fortunes of
the nation whose once joyous national holiday,
the 80th since the acknowledgment by England
of its independence, was rolling gloomily
_and
unobserved away ; the sight in every grove and
almost under every tree of burying parties, some-
times with tears of convulsive and agonised
grief, rendering the last sad offices to the fallen,
depressed every heart; nor was the prospect of a
night march in such weather known to be immi-
nent so soon as darkness should fall, calculated
to cheer or elevate the spirits. All day long, while
the big guns on either side frowned at each other in
angry silence, Gen. Ewell's enormous train, swollen
to vast bulk by the plunder in horses and wagons
which on their first incursion into Pennsylvania he
had abundantly collected, was filing off behind the
Confederate centre and right, and pushing into a
pass of the South Mountains (not the same as we
had traversed when advancing from Chambersburg),
which leads obliquely to Hagerstown. Towards
evening the wagon train of A. P. Hill's corps, which
occupied the centre, followed Ewell; and it was not
till long after midnight that the train of Longstreet's
corps got under weigh. From 7 in the evening till
3 in the morning we lay silent and moody upon the
Socking muddy ground, clinging to the log fire
which the damp and chilly night made most accep-
table,
.deluged by frequent dashes of heavy rain,
walked
sailorso:.
bicg Gen. Longstreet as, in deep thought, he
ceaselessly backward and forward like a
spirits his quarterdeck. Presently we were joined
would have dr,,Z_rt.
It cannot be pretended that the
cf the
y, under circumstances which
night came an end at last.
as
as nrallaciavily on the resources of Mark
of glutinous V
TaPleY, were
at..
gloomlt, wast
h
usual, but even to this
to witness. The thick
sometimes haesatvryanrgaeins,cethnee
up
aboveba ait le To o
ttmhe due ,d s'ko
knee,
eneed:
all-pervading sea
alfounrgtthhe through it knee deep,
times with trousers turned
tramping file after file of men, while
road-
side the bright camp fires, stretching
of yards, dazzled and bewildered the rider'sa ands
eye.
sight, as he tried to steer his way through droves of
oxen goaded with much shouting fiercely forward,
among flocks of terrified sheep, and through the in.
terstices of mile after mile of wagons, and caissons,
and guns, and attendant camp-followers.
At length, on the morning of the sth, the rain