Why did General Longstreet take so long to carry out General Lee's order to take the Little Round Top on the

Question

2nd day of Gettysburg; General Lee sent the order at 11:00 while the hill was unoccupied and General Longstreet did not carry it out until 4:00 at which time northerners were occupying it.

Answer 1

Longstreet asked lee for permission to take the hill on the 1st day when no union forces were present, lee denied his request. On the 2nd day Lee ordered longstreet to take the high ground of Little Round Top. By this time several units of Longstreets corp were engaged elsewhere in the gettysburg area, it took time to put together sufficient forces to attempt to take Little Round Top.

I personally believe General Lee was suffering some form of health and mental illness during the gettysburg campaign. As he made so many blunders at gettysburg. Specifically ordering Pickett's Charge which destroyed an entire division in less than an hour.

Having visited the Battlefield at Gettysburg many times and specifically the cornfield where pickets division was decimated, i find it difficult to believe anyone in their right mind could order a charge (by infantry) accross that cornfield out in the open, and in the excessive heat of that day. Something was drastically wrong with Lee.

Everytime i visit that site, I know i walk on hallowed ground. To this day one can reach down into the dirt at the cornfield where picketts division met their end and pull up a handful and sort bone fragments and spent bullets.

Such a senseless carnage and all for not. If i had been president davis i would have ordered General Lee Relieved of command, court martialed and hanged.

Answer 2

Many argue that Longstreet took his time because he felt the decision was wrong to attack the Yanks posted on high ground. Longstreet urged a flanking movement further to the southeast, to strike the exposed artillery park and supply trains or to find better ground further south so the Union would be attacking the Confederates on ground of their own choosing. Longstreets division commanders also advocated for the flanking movement, especially Gen Hood, who attacked Devil's Den and Little Round Top under protest.

Without a cavalry screen, the reb army attacked in the dark and were unfamiliar with the roads through the forested area. The attack was meant to surprise the Yanks, therefore they tried to remain unseen. The original line of march would've exposed them to the Yanks, and Longstreet's soldiers had to backtrack through no fault of Longstreets, which cost some dear time by taking a more circuitous route.

Altho Longstreet may have not had his heart into it, i can hardly believe he would intentionally try to delay the attack, no matter how ill conceived. The fog of war nearly gave the Rebs a victory even after the costly delays, if it weren't for Gen. Govenor Warren's timely response to get infantry onto Little Round Top in the nick of time (only a Signal Corps detachment was there) . He saw the exposed risk and rushed Union infantry to the spot, most notably the 20th Maine regiment, which, as you may know, was commanded by Col. Chamberlain who gave the 'fixed bayonet' charge after his men were out of ammunition. The charge of the 15th Alabama and 4th & 5th Texas regiments came within a hair's breath of taking Little Round Top.

Answer 3

Also Most people forget that the North was already on Little Round Top on the 2nd day, The hill had a small group of signal corman. The hill was part of a communication chain up and down the Union Line.

Answer 4

General Longstreet's personal account can be found at the following source link. In it he states:

"It was fully 11 o'clock when General Lee arrived at this conclusion and ordered the movement. In the meantime, by General Lee's authority: Law's brigade, which had been put upon picket duty, was ordered to rejoin my command, and upon my suggestion that it would be better to await its arrival, General Lee assented. We awaited about forty minutes for these troops and then moved forward. A delay of several hours occurred in the march of the troops. The cause of this delay was that we had been ordered by General Lee to proceed cautiously upon the forward movement so as to avoid being seen by the enemy. General Lee ordered Colonel Johnson, of his engineer corps, to lead and conduct the head of the column. My troops, therefore, moved forward under guidance of a special officer of General Lee, and with instructions to follow his directions. I left General Lee only after the line was stretched out on the march, and rode along with Hood's division, which was in the rear. The march was necessarily slow, the conductor frequently encountering points that exposed the troops to the view of the signal station on Round Top. At length the column halted. After waiting some time supposing that it would soon move forward, I sent to the front to inquire the occasion of the delay. It was reported that the column was awaiting the movements of Colonel Johnson, who was trying to lead it by some route by which it could pursue its march without passing under view of the Federal signal station. Looking up toward Round Top I saw that the signal station was in full view and as we could plainly see this station, it was apparent that our heavy columns was seen from their position, and that further efforts to conceal ourselves would be a waste of time...."

Answer 5

Lee drafted the special order on September 9, 1862, during the Maryland Campaign. It detailed his specific plans for the movements of the Army of Northern Virginia during the early days of its invasion of Maryland. Lee divided his army into pieces, which he planned to regroup later: Maj. Gen. Stonewall Jackson to Harpers Ferry (along with other detachments) with the idea of capturing the Union garrison and supplies there, Maj. Gen. James Longstreet northward to Boonsborough, and the main body to Hagerstown.
Lee delineated the routes and roads to be taken and the timing for the investment of Harpers Ferry. His staff distributed copies of this document to various Confederate generals. Jackson in turn copied the document for one of his subordinates, Maj. Gen. Daniel Harvey Hill, who was to exercise independent command as the rear guard. However, unknown to Jackson, Hill had already received a copy directly from Lee; this second copy was either discarded or accidentally dropped by one of Jackson's staff.
About 10 a.m. on September 13, 1862, Corp. Barton W. Mitchell of the 27th Indiana Volunteers, part of the Union XII Corps, discovered an envelope with three cigars wrapped in a piece of paper lying in the grass at a campground that Hill had just vacated. Mitchell realized the significance of the document and turned it in to Sgt. John M. Bloss. They went to Capt. Peter Kopp, who sent it to regimental commander Col. Silas Colgrove, who carried it to the corps headquarters. There, an aide to Brig. Gen. Alpheus S. Williams recognized the signature of R.H. Chilton, the assistant adjutant general who had signed the order. Williams forwarded the dispatch to Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, the commander of the Army of the Potomac. McClellan was overcome with glee at learning planned Confederate troop movements and reportedly exclaimed, "Now I know what to do!" He confided to a subordinate, "Here is a paper with which, if I cannot whip Bobby Lee, I will be willing to go home."
McClellan stopped Lee's invasion at the subsequent Battle of Antietam, but many military historians believe he failed to fully exploit the strategic advantage of the intelligence because he was concerned about a possible trap (posited by Maj. Gen. Henry Wager Halleck) or underestimation of the strength of Lee's army.
The hill on the Best farm where the lost order was discovered is located outside of Frederick, Maryland, and was a key Confederate artillery position in the 1864 Battle of Monocacy. A historical marker on the Monocacy National Battlefield commemorates the finding of Special Order 191 during the Maryland Campaign.