Col. Taylor, in the Thursday morning’s issue of your paper, is made to say that “Pickett’s command alone entered the enemy’s lines at Gettysburg;” and on Sunday morning, Gen. Lee’s report says that “McLaws’ division fell back.” Both these statement do injustice to McLaws’ division, as I will show. The order of attack that came to me was that General Barksdales (Mississippi) brigade, which was on the right of Hill’s corps, should attack the enemy’s battery placed on the enemy’s left on Cemetery Hill, to be supported by Wofford’s brigade of Georgia troops. When the order for the advance was given, Barksdale’s brigade charged and took the battery; but, owing to the long distance charged (by General Lee’s report, three-quarters of a mile), the exhaustion of the men and the loss of killed and wounded in making the assault, the enemy’s reserves retook their guns, leaving General Barksdale mortally wounded at the battery he had just taken and lost. Had Wofford’s brigade supported Barksdale and been ready to meet the advance of the enemy’s reserve, the battery taken would have been held.
Wofford’s brigade, by some misunderstanding of the orders to support Barksdale, was hurried by a double quick step into the line of battle, which was some distance in advance, owing to the belief of the Colonels of the brigade that they were to support Barksdale; and when this brigade struck the enemy they (the enemy) were disorganized and retreating, so much so that they threw up their hands and hats, and twice I ordered the Sixteenth Georgia to cease firing on them. Their commanding officers twice rallying a small number of their men, they opened fire upon us, when I ordered my men to fire and continue to fire until we were engaged hand to hand with the enemy’s color guard--men of Cobb Legion and the Sixteenth Georgia fighting for the colors, which were eventually taken by a man of the Cobb Legion. We killed ten or twelve men before the flag was taken. After this contest there was no enemy in front of the Sixteenth, only a battery of four pieces about two hundred and fifty yards in our front, from which the enemy had been driven.
The position, then, of the Sixteenth Georgia and the Cobb Legion was a little in the rear of the enemy’s lines and Cemetery Hill, and on our left of the Round Top Mountain, with no force of the enemy on Round Top, and resting securely behind a stone wall, and they remained thus until ordered to retire by Gen. Longstreet. From this it is plain that Col. Taylor is mistaken as to Pickett’s being the only men that penetrated the enemy’s lines, for Barksdale was killed in their works, and the Sixteenth Georgia and Cobb’s Legion took a flag from the hands of the color bearer of the enemy in a hand-to-hand fight. And if Gen. Lee, when he says that McLaws’ division fell back, means that they were driven back by the enemy, he unknowingly did injustice to McLaws’ division.
I believe at the time I was ordered to fall back, and now, after reading all the reports that have recently appeared on the battle of Gettysburg, that had Simms’ and Wofford’s Brigades held their positions, we could that night have occupied the Round Top Mountain with Confederates, and thus held the key of the position. I say there was no strong force of the enemy on the Round Top, for if there had been the position of the Sixteenth Georgian and Cobb Legion would have been untenable, for the stone wall behind which they were resting was flanked by the hill and would have been a very unsafe resting place. The truth is that Pickett’s command never fought at all on the second day’s fight. Mr. J. A. Anderson, a courier of Longstreet, and now editor of the Coving Star, was sent back twenty miles on the second day, to hurry up General Pickett’s command, and I presume Col. Taylor, in his report, must refer to the third day’s fight. -- Goode Bryan