1209 St. Paul Street.

 

C C Buel Esq

          

New York,

                       

Dear Sir,

                                               

Your letter of 26^th ult: did not reach me until today in consequence of my absence from home.

 

I have read the communication enclosed in your letter, (which I return herewith) and have only to say that its statements with reference to Gen Lee are merely imaginative. Gen Lee's position at the time of the attack of July 3^rd was on a ridge in rear of the line of battle, & on the edge of / a wood. A wide valley lay between him and the advancing line, which he watched from that position, until it became evident that his troops were retiring from the attack. He then rode forward & met them. The first man nearly he encountered was General Kemper (afterwards Gov Kemper) of Va who was being borne to the rear very badly wounded, and it was to Gen K that Gen Lee said that the responsibility & blame were all his. true. He occupied himself & all his staff were engaged after the retreat of the attacking force, (which was composed only in part of Picketts division,) in rallying and / reforming the troops, expecting that the enemy would pursue.

 

Gen Lee was not in the building referred to in the communication of Mr Clegg, during the engagement of July 3^rd. He went on the morning of July 2^nd (I think, but) possibly July 3^rd, into a building that was called a "College" to make an observation of the field. At that time, there was no fighting going on, beyond an occasional shot on the picket line, and whether it was the 2^nd or 3^rd of July, Pickett's division had not then reached the battlefield. Gen Lee took the position in rear of the line of battle before any artillery fire opened, and did not have it until he saw that our men were falling back. 

 

My attention has been called once before to something similar to the paper of Mr Clegg, but I do not now recall the circumstances. I can only say that what he writes does not seem new to me, and that as far as it concerns Gen Lee, and as far as it undertakes to describe the advance of Pickett, it is a pure fiction.

 

Yours very truly

Charles Marshall

 

I venture to suggest that a formation by brigades "about 800 feet square" for the purpose of an assault upon a line of infantry & artillery, never occurred to the imagination of any one but Mr Clegg. He can probably tell you what use the brigades behind the first brigade of such a formation would be in such / an attack, and can explain how any man, not a lunatic, would expose such a mass to such a fire which none but the first of the mass could return.

 

You will readily see that if men advanced to an attack, formed as Mr Clegg describes, the only possible result would be to intensify the effect of the fire of the force they attack, without in the least increasing the strength of their attack in proportion to the number of troops used in making it. What he writes is such trash.

                                                                                   

C. M.

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