Shaara’s descriptions convey moods effectively. He describes Lee arriving in the rainy mists: “ . . . there was a ghostly quality in the look of him, of all his staff, ghost riders out of the past, sabers clanking . . .” In another interchange, there is no mistaking Lee’s mood and emotional power: “He looked back at Longstreet for one long moment, straight into his eyes, fixing Longstreet with the black stare, the eyes of the General . . . Longstreet drew his head in, like a turtle.” Without actually stating it, Shaara shows us there is no arguing with Lee.
On the other hand, Shaara uses some very jarring shifts in point of view. At the end of this chapter, Longstreet is in agony. The last paragraph starts with Longstreet closing his eyes and then suddenly shifts to Fremantle and what he is thinking. While these shifts are infrequent in the book, they are disorienting when they appear.
Shaara also portrays Lee and Longstreet’s father-son relationship: When Lee stares him down, Longstreet reacts like a child admonished by a stern father. Longstreet both needs to receive Lee’s paternal nurturing and needs to take care of Lee. He is afraid of displeasing the man, and at the same time, has a deep concern for Lee’s health and well-being. Longstreet will not abandon Lee even though he wants to quit.
In this chapter, Longstreet is in an emotional bind. He can barely contain his anger and despair at having to order men to their deaths, deaths he feels are preventable and useless, and deaths that happen in an attack he totally disagrees with. Longstreet wants to resign, but he won’t leave Lee alone or with the attack in the hands of Hill. He is stuck in a no-win situation. Longstreet tries to shift the command responsibility to Alexander, hoping that Alexander will say “yes” or “no” to the attack based on the success of the artillery barrage. That way, Longstreet doesn’t have to make the decision.
Longstreet also feels he knows how it will go. To him, there are not enough men to do this battle, and the enemy is too strongly entrenched. He can see when and how the different enemy weapons will take out large numbers of men, until few are left to storm wall. It is simple mathematics. And with Hancock up there . . . “We will lose it here.”
Lee, on the other hand, is determined to attack in spite of Longstreet’s input or Wofford’s comments about a reinforced enemy. Instead, Lee hears his men — their jokes, their comments — and he sees their high spirits. Their morale convinces Lee to attack. Lee will attack that hill because his men believe they can do it, and that is his most powerful weapon.
Once Lee has done all he can, he states that it’s all in God’s hands, and he is content with that. Longstreet isn’t. He does not think a God is listening, and even if one is, he does not feel it is God sending those men up that hill to their deaths. Longstreet concludes that maybe God wants it to work this way, but the men will die, and the South will lose it here.
There is no question Fremantle is a happy and pleasant man to have along on this campaign, and his heart is in the right place. But he is so lost in dreams of saber charges that he will never be capable of objectively assessing situations and reading them correctly. When he sees the completely agonized Longstreet, Fremantle wrongly concludes Longstreet is the master of calmness, resting before battle.
