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connected with his staff who were without experience but very zea- lous and desirous to do their duty thoroughly. Sometimes they undertook to change General Twiggs' orders, and would fail to do what he told them to do, or would do it not as the general had ordered it to be done. If General Twiggs remarked upon such lib- erties being taken with his orders, these gentlemen were always ready to show that they were right and that General Twiggs' order was wrong.
" The General bore with this without complaint or rebuke for some time, but one day a young officer came to report his execution of an order General Twiggs had given him, and reported that when he reached the place where the thing ordered by General Twiggs was to be done, he had found that circumstances were so entirely different from what General Twiggs had supposed that he thought that the General would not have given the order had he known the facts, and was proceeding to satisfy General Twiggs that what the young officer had done was the best under the circumstances. But General Twiggs interrupted him by saying: ' Captain, I know you can prove that you are right, and that my order was wrong, in fact you gentle- men are always right, but for God's sake do wrong sometimes.' '
Although General Lee was satisfied with what I had done on this occasion, he wished to impress the lesson of a literal obedience to orders on my mind, and you may be sure that I never forgot it, when it was possible to refer any doubtful matter back to him for further instructions.
So I think if some of the writers of whom I am speaking would put themselves in the position in which they were when the things of which they write occurred, they would not be perhaps as infallible and as tar-seeing as they now make themselves appear, but the truth of history would suffer less if they would " do wrong sometimes."
Let us then consider the history of the movements that culminated in the battle of Gettysburg, in the light of the facts as they were known and appeared to General Lee at the time, in order that we may form a judgment of his conduct which will be more just to him than if that conduct be judged as if he knew what we now know.
Of course, this involves the inquiry as to the accuracy of his knowledge, as to the means he took to inform himself, and as to the discernment he showed in arriving at the truth from a consideration of such facts as were brought to his attention. I think one of the most striking traits of General Lee's mind was his ability to form a correct judgment from all the facts and circumstances that came to
