Later, Hood wants to go around the Round Tops, and Longstreet agrees that Hood is right, but he won't change Lee's orders. It's the impossible situation. Longstreet is sending his men to their deaths, to do the very things he disagrees with, and it's killing him. But he will no longer fight Lee. Longstreet just wants to get on with it. He reflects on the preciousness of his men and that they should be used carefully. He struggles with this and cannot even look Hood in the eye as he orders him to attack.
Lee also continues to manipulate Longstreet. He speaks again to Longstreet of his health, of getting older, of needing Longstreet, and of wanting total honesty from him. Lee says the things he knows will tug at Longstreet's emotions in the hope that Longstreet will agree with him. Lee needs Longstreet's friendship as much as Longstreet needs the father figure in Lee.
One of the problems with this battle is that Lee is executing very complex strategies, something that requires flawless, close, and constant communications and precise timing. Instead, because the communications here are verbal ones delivered by messengers, they are fragmented, ineffective, and confusing. Lengthy and costly delays result.
There is again the mention of the oath to defend the Union being broken. Longstreet feels it. Lee pushes it away. The higher duty to Virginia is Lee's guiding force, the indication that in that time, one's state came before anything else, even before an oath to God.
Longstreet recognizes that the men they are battling are old friends, not an "enemy." And he knows they will not be easy to take. He cannot shake the futility of this whole affair.
