Paris and the general historian, had they relied upon these statements, instead of finding the true solution of this, the great problem of the war, would have had it involved in more profound obscurity.
In my first article I declared that the invasion of Pennsylvania was a movement that General Lee and his council agreed should be defensive in tactics, while, of course, it was offensive in strategy; that the campaign was conducted on this plan until we had left Chambersburg, when, owing to the absence of our cavalry, and our consequent ignorance of the enemy's whereabouts, we collided with them unexpectedly, and that General Lee had lost the matchless equipoise that usually characterized him, and through excitement and the doubt that enveloped the enemy's movements, changed the whole plan of the campaign, and delivered a battle under ominous circumstances. I declared that the battle of the 2d was not lost through the tardiness of the First corps, but through the failure of the troops ordered to co-operate to do so; that there was no order ever issued for a sunrise attack; that no such order could have been issued, and that the First corps could not possibly have attacked at that time; that when it did attack its movement was weakened by the derangement of the directing brigade of support under General Wilcox, and was rendered hopeless by the failure of Ewell's corps to co-operate, its line of battle having been broken through the advice of General Early, and that in this attack Hood's and McLaws' divisions did the best fighting ever done on any field, and encountered and drove back virtually the whole of the Army of the Potomac. I held that the mistakes of the Gettysburg campaign were:
First, the change of the original plan of the campaign, which was to so manœuvre as to force the Federals to attack us; second, that if the plan was to have been changed at all it should have been done at Brandy Station, near Culpeper Courthouse, when we could have caught Hooker in detail and probably have crushed his army; third, that Stuart should never have been permitted to leave the main route of march, and thus send our army into the enemy's country without cavalry for reconnoissance or foraging purposes; fourth, that the crushing defeat inflicted on the advance of the Federal army in the casual encounter of the 1st at Willoughby's Run, should have been pushed to extremities, that occasion furnishing one of the few opportunities ever furnished for "pursuit pell-mell"; fifth, the army should have been carried around to Meade's right and rear on the night of the 1st, and placed between him and his capital, and thus forced him to attack us, as he certainly intended doing; sixth, when I attacked the enemy's left, on the 2d, Ewell should have moved at once against his right and Hill should have threatened his centre, and thus prevented a concentration of the whole Federal army at the point I was assaulting; seventh, on the morning of the 3d we should still have moved to the right, and manœuvred the Federals into attacking us; eighth, the assault by Pickett, on the 3d, should never have been made, as it could not have succeeded by any possible prodigy of courage or tactics, being absolutely a hopeless assault.
