Gettysburg: The Last Invasion by Allen C. Guelzo Page B

to Porter Alexander, Longstreet sent a more ambiguous message:
    Hd. Qrs
., July 3rd, 1863.
    Colonel
. If the artillery fire does not have the effect to drive off the enemy, or greatly demoralize him, so as to make our efforts prettycertain, I would prefer that you not advise Gen. Pickett to make the charge. I shall rely a great deal on your good judgment to determine the matter & shall expect you to let Gen. Pickett know when the moment offers. Respectfully,
    J. Longstreet
, Lieutenant-General Commanding.
To Colonel
Alexander.
    Alexander at once recoiled from this message—not just because it suggested that Longstreet still had enough reservations about the attack to contemplate canceling it, but because it seemed as though Longstreet was saddling
him
with the responsibility for making the call. This was not quite the case: Longstreet was in the habit of giving staffers wide latitude for decision making, and even more so than Robert E. Lee. (Longstreet would do this to extremely good effect a year later in the Wilderness, when he allowed his chief of staff,Moxley Sorrel, to direct the attack that crushed Hancock’s2nd Corps along the Orange Plank Road.) And given Alexander’s expertise in artillery matters, this was not an imprudent—much less evasive—delegation. Longstreet would later admit that he had been “unwilling to trust myself with the entire responsibility.” But this was less a matter of sloughing the burden onto other shoulders as it was a calculation that Alexander was better fitted “to carefully observe the effect of the fire upon the enemy.”
    Alexander did not read the message that way. He wrote back, “I will only be able to judge of the effect of our fire on the enemy by his return fire … and thesmoke will obscure the whole field. If … there is any alternative to this attack, it should be carefully considered.” But instead of seizing on Alexander’s caution, Longstreet brushed hesitation away. “The intention is to advance the infantry if the artillery has the desired effect … When the moment arrives advise General Pickett, and of course advance such artillery as you can use in aiding the attack.” That settled the question, and Alexander determined in his own mind that once the artillery barrage began, Pickett would go forward at any hazard. “My mind was fully made up that
if the artillery opened Pickett must charge
.” And so he replied to Longstreet, “General: When our artillery fire is doing its best, I shall advise General Pickett to advance.” 14
    All of the machinery of the great attack was now in motion. Down at Sherfy’s peach orchard,James Walton turned toBenjamin Franklin Eschleman, the major commanding the ten-gunWashington Artillery battalion, and ordered the firing of the two signal guns. The first one, a Napoleon (and not a Whitworth, as the soldier in the 82nd New York thought) from the Washington Artillery’s No. 2 Company, “rang out upon the still summer air”; then there was a clumsy pause. The friction primer inserted in the touchholeof the other gun was a dud, and there had to be some fumbling around to pull it out and replace it with one that worked. The second gun was “immediately followed by all the battalions along the line.” Over on the other side of the town, a captain in the14th Virginia Cavalry “heard the big gun—way in the distance—miles to our right.” And then, after only a momentary pause, “we heard the firing grow nearer and nearer,” as batteries chimed in, one after another, rippling from right to left around the crescent of artillery aimed atCemetery Hill, “till the whole line was firing.” The hill itself became shrouded in “dense smoke … which was cleared every now and then, for a Small space, by the explosion of a Caisson that circled through the cloud of smoke.” 15
    When the formidableHenry Knox first recommended toGeorge Washington the organization of an artillery arm for theContinental Army in 1776, his