Lee and His Men at Gettysburg: The Death of a Nation by Clifford Dowdey

started westward from Gettysburg, but work had not progressed beyond a deep cut for the roadbed. There was, however, one item in the Gettysburg stores which Pettigrew coveted for his men: shoes.
    Pettigrew mentioned to Heth his desire to get those shoes, and his superior officer approved. In one sense, the invasion was a commissary raid, and Heth had kept his men busy requisitioning supplies. In fact, the newly promoted major general had used the hours in Cashtown to obtain a hat for himself. The supplies in the village stores were too limited for Harry Heth to get a fair fit, but one of his headquarters clerks had stuffed folded paper into the sweatband to hold the new finery to his head. Having thus replenished his own wardrobe, General Heth was only too willing to look after his men’s raw feet. He told Pettigrew that he would take up the matter with the corps commander, A. P. Hill.
    This minor item in the chain of command, from brigadier to lieutenant general, involved three men new to their positions—Pettigrew new to the army, Heth to division command, and Hill to corps command. All of an age (Pettigrew was thirty-five, Hill and Heth both thirty-eight), they typified the background common to general officers of the Army of Northern Virginia. Hill and Heth had been classmates at West Point, graduating a year behind Heth’s cousin George Pickett. Neither man possessed any considerable estate for the support of his family after relinquishing a career in the old army.
    A. P. Hill, though of a plantation background in Virginia’s horse country, was one of the army’s intense disbelievers in slavery. But, then, Powell Hill was intense about everything. Slightly built and of middle height, he had a lean, mobile face that, even with the full beard of convention, reflected his high-strung nature. He was more sensitive than the average professional soldier, courtly in his manner, genial, easily approachable. His personal warmth made him well liked in the army and a social favorite in Richmond. He was particularly liked by ladies, though sharing none of Stuart’s tendencies to squander his favors.
    He had courted the girl who married the Union’s General McClellan—whom Hill had known pleasantly at West Point—and he was married to the sister of John Morgan, the Kentucky cavalry raider. Contemporary comments about Powell Hill and the ladies all concerned his quite lovely wife: she stayed too long, too close to the lines, in order to be with him.
    After a good record in the old army, Hill started with the Confederate armies as colonel of a volunteer Virginia regiment. His troops belonged to the brigade that first gave the Rebel Yell, going in on the Federal flank late in the afternoon at First Manassas. Promoted to brigadier after the battle, he was soon advanced to major general and at the Seven Days commanded the army’s largest division, six brigades, which was inversely called the “Light Division.”
    He was an indifferent administrator, but, as he was extremely attentive and even indulgent to his troops, the men loved “Little Powell,”as they called him, and he handled them superbly in battle. Some of his own intensity was communicated to his soldiers, and the Light Division built one of the most notable combat records in the army. At the Battle of Sharpsburg the previous summer the division had reflected lasting glory on their leader and a curious distinction.
    “And then A. P. Hill came up,” said the report of his movement that saved the day, and, remembering, both Lee and Jackson called for him in their dying deliriums. “Tell A. P. Hill he must come up,” the Old Man murmured on his deathbed in Lexington, Virginia, years after Hill had been killed and his fierce brigades were ghosts in men’s memories.
    At the army’s reorganization in May 1863 it was accepted that one of the new corps would go to Powell Hill on the record of his performance and the general liking with which he was regarded. To his