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By Root 268 0

based on the novel have given Longstreet's role at Gettysburg high and favorable visibility. Nevertheless, his monument has not escaped controversy. The careful observer will note that one hoof of the horse is off the ground. Yet Longstreet was not wounded in the battle, so the monument does not conform to the Gettysburg pattern. The sculptor wanted to portray Longstreet as reining in his galloping horse as he arrives to deal with a crisis. He received permission from the Park Service to show the left front hoof of the horse in the air as its rider pulls back the reins. Fair enough. The sculptor also placed the monument at ground level instead of on a pedestal, for greater realism. Many visitors like that notion. But in a milieu where all of the other equestrian statues of generals are on pedestals, conveying an idea of heroic stature, the down-to-earth Longstreet seems to some observers to be somehow demeaned.

And almost everyone notices that the horse is too small in comparison with the man. Curiously, that was intentional. I dropped in on the sculptor one day when he was working on the clay model for this bronze sculpture. He explained that Longstreet was full size and the horse four-fifths size so that when one looked up at the monument on its pedestal, the proportions would appear correct. But then why put it at ground level? If that was a later idea, why not then make the horse full size? There is a mystery here that no one has yet explained to me. In any event, a colleague commented that the Virginian Jubal Early, an unreconstructed rebel who led the postwar campaign against Longstreet's reputation, would have selected precisely this kind of monument for Longstreet.

We must now cast our imagination back to 1863. It is almost 4:00 P.M. on July 2 of that year. Longstreet's troops have finally arrived and deployed for attack after their roundabout march of several miles to avoid detection from enemy observers on Little Round Top. One of Longstreet's brigades, Alabamians commanded by Evander Law, had marched twenty-five miles since breaking camp at 1:00 A.M. Our walk will take us only four-tenths of a mile south from the Long-street monument to climb the observation tower, which is located near the site of Longstreet's headquarters during the ensuing attack. From the tower we get a panoramic view of the southern half of the battlefield, and can even see the Eternal Light Peace Memorial more than three miles to the north. Behind us as we face to the east is the Eisenhower National Historic Site, a beautiful farm to which Dwight Eisenhower retired after his presidency. Tickets to visit the farm can be obtained at the park visitor center.

But our concern is with the events that took place in our front during the three hours after 4:00 P.M. on July 2, 1863—some of the most intense fighting and concentrated carnage of the whole Civil War. One-third of a mile due east is the famous Peach Orchard. The peach trees there today cover less than half the acreage of its historic predecessor. A quarter-mile south of the orchard we see the surviving buildings of the Rose farm, where some of the most famous photographs of Confederate soldiers killed in the battle were taken. Visible a half-mile east of the Peach Orchard is the Trostle farm, where the most famous wartime photographs of dead artillery horses were taken.

Beyond the woods behind the Rose farm was the Wheatfield, a thirty-two-acre field over which attacks and counterattacks surged back and forth, leaving so many dead and wounded that one soldier afterward said (no doubt with some exaggeration) that he could have walked over it without touching the ground. Beyond the Wheatfield, a mile southeast of our tower, is Devil's Den, a geological marvel of huge granite boulders tumbled together to form a strong defensive position that Confederates nevertheless managed to capture. From our tower the woods block our view of the Wheatfield and Devil's Den. But another five hundred yards east of Devil's Den we can see the steep and rocky rise of Little Round Top, open and mostly free