July 20, 1863, Oak Hill, Va. I am home at last. We are marching near here and General Longstreet in his kindness has allowed me return home for a couple of days. Mary Jane invited a few of our friends to join us for dinner tonight, and afterwards, they questioned me about the failed campaign in Pennsylvania. Oddly, this was one night that the men didn't go into one room and the ladies another room after dinner. I suppose their curiosity to hear my recollections and views of the last six weeks was just too tempting. The ladies simply would NOT retire and leave the men to their cigars and sweet port wine. I told them that the campaign had failed because we could not dislodge the Yankees, now under General George Meade (yet another new commander), from the good ground they took at Gettysburg. The campaign at first was a wonderful, happy, bloodless time. General Lee just pulled the entire Army out from our camps near Fredericksburg, and Orange and we marched north, leaving the Yankee Army behind. The Army was reorganized after General Jackson's death in May, and it now has three corps; General Longstreet still commands the First Corps, Generals R.S. Ewell and A.P. Hill command the Second and the new Third Corps, respectively. Up to Maryland and Pennsylvania we marched, gathering large quantities of food for us and the horses alike, and paying for it all! (The Yankees usually just take what they want from rebel civilians; of course we pay the Yankee civilians in Confederate money - HA!) It took the Yankees a few days to start after us, and Mary Jane pointed out that General Meade made this very house his headquarters for a night, just before he was elevated to command the whole Yankee Army. During that time, a regiment of men from Maine camped nearby and came to see the house. She said they were very impressed to see the house of President James Monroe--as it was he who first occupied what has been our home for 11 years. Mary Jane says she was treated kindly by the Yankees, and she was particularly impressed by the young commander of the Maine regiment, a college professor named Chamberlain. And she says the children were respectful, though young Henry--he's 13-- would have preferred to fight the Yankees rather than give them food and shelter. So on and on we went, with General Ewell nearly taking Harrisburg, before fate intervened. On the night of June 28, a scruffy young man was hauled to General Longstreet's headquarters by some of our pickets. He claimed to know the General and so the pickets delivered him into our hands. He was Harrison, a civilian scout (really, a spy) that has done the General some good work in the past. He told us that the Yankee Army was quite near, which we hadn't heard. General Stuart and our cavalry had been gone for days far to the east, and we were marching blindly as a result. The General asked Moxley Sorrel and I to take Harrison on to General Lee. General Lee doesn't take the reports of scouts very seriously, but Moxley and I vouched for General Longstreet's faith in Harrison's good work. The next day, the Army started moving to consolidate. Within two days, elements of General Hill's new Third Corps ran into Yankee cavalry and infantry near Gettysburg, and since General Ewell was now headed there too from the north, on July 1, they drove the Yankees from the town and onto high ground to its south. Those hills and ridges made up such a good defensive position that nothing we could do in the next two days could move them off. General Lee was passionate to attack . I heard him say he wanted to end the war by destroying the Yankee Army . . . make one more grand assault and then march on to Baltimore and Washington. But I have never seen General Longstreet so depressed. Our great victory at Fredericksburg last December, when we dug and killed so many attacking Yankees, is the kind of fight Longstreet likes. But at Gettysburg, General Lee told General Longstreet to attack on both the second and third days of the fight. Though we gained some ground on July 2, our big attack on the Yankee center on July 3 was simply destroyed. It was Fredericksburg in reverse. General Pickett's division is a mere fragment of itself, and nearly all his field commanders were killed, wounded, or captured. Of his three brigade commanders, General Garnett was blown to bits, I understand; General Armistead was shot and died in Yankee hands; General Kemper is badly wounded in Yankee hands, and is expected to die soon. The great attack looked from my view like a formal parade, nearly a mile of our soldiers marching as if they were showing off for the wives and children and sweethearts and parents. In a way, I guess that they were. But soon, the parade disappeared in smoke, fire, screams and explosions. The survivors, under Armistead, made it into the Union lines, but were then all shot down, captured, or hurled back. I will never forget the sadness on the faces of both General Longstreet and General Lee as they watched the acres of bloody scarecrows hobbling back to our lines under fire. Their leaders were gone, their flags were gone, and the surviving men were in ruins. Our losses throughout the battle and the rest of the campaign are horrifying. During the fight I was all over the field carrying messages to the commanders, and I discussed with General Hood a plan to go around the Yankee Army to its right. But General Longstreet put a stop to that and directed Hood to go forward as originally planned, saying we must do as General Lee ordered. General Hood was soon wounded (they say his arm is now useless), and though his division fought like wildcats until nightfall, they could not take those hills. One of his regiments fought that very same Maine unit that had camped in our home fields just a week earlier, and the men of Maine held on, despite all our troops could do. General Meade pursued us, but we got away across the Potomac and back to Virginia, and he has been very cautious about following us. The Army remains in good spirits despite our loss, though I have heard that many of the men are grumbling that so many of our finest officers and brave soldiers were sent to their deaths upon those horrible hills! Almighty God, have mercy.