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.36Lee s highly unusual outburst when Stuart did arrive confirmsthe depths of his anxiety, as does his indirect reproof of Stuart in hisofficial report on the campaign.Lee missed the vital intelligence itwas Stuart s job to give him, but he also feared for the man and hiscommand.In sum, the battle started well for the Confederacy.Lee had athree-day head start on Meade on the march into Pennsylvania, buthe wasted two days waiting to hear from Stuart.Even so, Lee s army 130 the battle as it unfoldedwas one day closer to being concentrated in the right place than wasMeade s.But Lee was unaware of this and failed to take advantage ofhis favorable position.The battle was forced on Lee, and he seemedto have no plan of how to fight it until the picture became clear onthe second day, by which time events had forced his hand.By thetime he knew he was confronting the main Union force, his op-portunity for a battle of maneuver was gone.The thread that runsthrough all his actions in this opening phase is hesitancy and uncer-tainty, traits distinctly unlike Lee in all his earlier battles.Acceptingthat Lee was in poor health changes nothing.This same uncertaintybecause of his intelligence gap would have been present and theconsequences the same even had Lee been in robust health.The Cavalry Fight on July 3The most authoritative account of their meeting in Gettysburg onJuly 2 has Lee telling Stuart that he needed his help to beat thesepeople : the Union army.And in a matter of a few hours he hadindeed given Stuart and his men a new and potentially importantassignment: they were to move so as to threaten the right rear of theUnion line as the Confederate army assaulted it from the front.Stuart had arrived in midafternoon, ahead of his men.By thenight of July 2 Stuart s entire raiding party (three brigades) was incamp near Gettysburg.Gen.Albert Jenkins s brigade had also joinedStuart in Gettysburg by the night of July 2, but Beverly Robertson, Grumble Jones, and John Imboden still had not been heard from.The rearmost of his brigades, that of Wade Hampton, had gottendrawn into a sharp fight at Hunterstown on the way into Gettys-burg and did not make camp near Gettysburg until late that night.This Hunterstown battle was another brief, fierce, and completelyaccidental cavalry skirmish.On July 2 Gen.George Custer s brigadehad been protecting the extreme right of the Union line supportingthe Union corps defending Culp s Hill and the fishhook. Custerhad not been engaged by the enemy, and on orders from Gen.Jud-son Kilpatrick, he moved on the Confederate flank toward Hunter- the battle as it unfolded 131stown, hoping to create a diversion and relieve Confederate pres-sure on Culp s Hill.When Custer encountered the rear elementsof Hampton s brigade moving toward Gettysburg, he assumed theywere only scouts on the Union flank, so he attacked vigorously.Stung by this sudden threat, Hampton halted, faced about, andcountercharged, driving Custer back.Though neither side pursuedthe fight, Custer was rebuffed, so he rode back and took position insupport of the Union right flank and rear as before.The Confederate cavalrymen had little time to rest and were upearly the next day to prepare for the new assignment.At midday onJuly 3 Stuart led his four brigades, with Jenkins s men (now com-manded by Col.Milton Ferguson) in the lead, down the York Roadtoward the Union right flank.It is not entirely clear what Lee had in mind with this movementby Stuart; his orders were not in writing, and none of the later ac-counts by his staff officers discuss this issue.Stuart s account writtenafter the battle is unhelpful, saying that he was merely protectingthe left flank of the Confederate army and that he never intendedan offensive move.This makes little sense, since the subsequent ac-tion took place several miles from the end of the Confederate lineand actually in the rear of part of the Union line (remembering the fishhook shape of the battle line around Culp s Hill).As StephenStarr says flatly, This is not worth a moment s credence. 37Actually, Stuart s report tries to have it both ways, since he alsosays, Had the enemy s main body been dislodged.I was in pre-cisely the right position to discover and improve the opportunity.I watched keenly and anxiously the indications in his rear for thatpurpose, while in the attack which I intended.his cavalry wouldhave separated from the main body and gave promise of solid re-sults and advantages. 38 This suggests a considerably larger objec-tive than merely protecting the flank
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