First Corps, Army of Northern Virginia

• 1. Introduction

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  The First Corps, Army of Northern Virginia bore a simpler name among those who fought under it: Longstreet's Corps. For most of the Civil War, that name meant James Longstreet, the lieutenant general who shaped it, argued with it, bled for it, and survived it. This unit fought in nearly every major engagement of the Eastern Theater, from Fredericksburg to the final days at Appomattox, and it also crossed into Tennessee to help decide the bloodiest battle the Western Theater ever produced.

  The questions worth asking about this corps are not just which battles it fought, but how it fought them. Why was its commander detached from Lee's army when the Battle of Chancellorsville was decided? What did Longstreet predict about Pickett's Charge, and what happened when Lee ordered it anyway? And how did a flanking maneuver in the tangled Wilderness of Virginia end with Longstreet himself shot by his own men? The answers reveal a corps that was central to Confederate strategy yet repeatedly caught at the wrong moment, the wrong distance, or the wrong side of a friendly volley.

• 2. Origins and Organization

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  On the 1st of June 1862, Robert E. Lee took command of the Army of the Potomac following General Johnston's wounding at the Battle of Seven Pines. Lee reorganized that force into two wings before the Confederate Congress formally authorized corps on the 18th of September 1862. Longstreet commanded the Right Wing; Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson held the Left. When the law caught up with the structure, the Right Wing was redesignated the First Corps.

  At the moment of that redesignation, the corps was substantial. Twenty-one brigades spread across five divisions under major generals Lafayette McLaws, Richard H. Anderson, George E. Pickett, and John B. Hood, plus Brigadier General Robert Ransom, Jr. That count would shift across the war, but the essential character of the corps as a heavy offensive and defensive instrument was set from the start. Anderson's division would eventually be transferred out, and Ransom's moved to North Carolina in January 1863, but McLaws, Hood, and Pickett would carry the corps through its most consequential fights.

• 3. Fredericksburg's Defensive Line

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  The First Corps reached Marye's Heights on the 18th of November 1862, weeks before the shooting started at Fredericksburg. Longstreet's men deployed along the ridge to contest any Union crossing while Lee waited to confirm what Major General Ambrose Burnside actually intended. Anderson's division took position near Banks Ford on the Rappahannock; the rest held Marye's Heights. Lieutenant Colonel E. Porter Alexander placed the artillery along the crest.

  When Burnside's engineers tried to bridge the Rappahannock in the early morning of December 11, William Barksdale's brigade was waiting along the city's riverfront. Confederate fire drove the Union pontooners off their work shortly after five in the morning. Union artillery from Stafford Heights, on the far bank, hammered Barksdale's positions for hours without dislodging them. Only around three in the afternoon did small groups of Union soldiers cross the river by ferry and push the Confederates back through the streets. Barksdale withdrew to the main Confederate line shortly after seven that evening, having bought the Army of Northern Virginia most of a day. The eventual Federal assault on Marye's Heights proved fruitless against that prepared position, and the battle concluded on December 15 as a clear Confederate defensive success.

• 4. Suffolk and the Missed Battle

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  On the 26th of February 1863, Longstreet and two of his divisions, Hood's and Pickett's, were detached from Lee's army and sent south to Suffolk, Virginia. The mission had two purposes: contain the Federal IX Corps pressing from that direction, and allow Confederate authorities to gather supplies from the surrounding region. Longstreet served as head of the Department of Southern Virginia and North Carolina during these months.

  Starting on April 11, Longstreet put his two divisions to work besieging Suffolk, primarily to improve Confederate access to the area's supplies. He was ordered after roughly three weeks to break off and return to Lee. He was still in transit when the Battle of Chancellorsville ended. The First Corps arrived too late to contribute to what turned out to be one of Lee's most celebrated victories, and too late to witness the death of Jackson, which would fundamentally reshape the army.

• 5. Gettysburg: Three Days, Three Failures

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  Following Jackson's death in May 1863, the Army of Northern Virginia restructured into three corps. Longstreet kept McLaws, Hood, and Pickett, but lost Anderson's division to A.P. Hill's new Third Corps. Two of Pickett's three brigades were separately detached to North Carolina and the Richmond defenses, leaving that division thin.

  The First Corps began crossing the Potomac into Maryland on June 25, finishing the following day. The corps then camped near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, while Lee's army used the Blue Ridge Mountains to screen their movements from Union cavalry. Hood and McLaws were far from Cashtown when the battle opened on July 1, and Pickett's division, left to guard the supply lines through Chambersburg, would not arrive until late on July 2.

  Late on July 2, Hood and McLaws attacked the Union left flank. Hood's men took Devil's Den from Sickles' III Corps and reached Big Round Top, but Colonel Strong Vincent's brigade stopped them at Little Round Top. Hood himself was wounded and lost an arm. McLaws struck an hour later, north of Hood's position, colliding with the III and V Corps and drawing in Union II Corps reinforcements. Despite partial support from Anderson's division on the left, McLaws bled out in the Wheatfield and the Peach Orchard without breaking through.

  On July 3, Pickett's diminished division finally rejoined the army. Longstreet, commanding the attacking force that day, predicted the assault would fail and said so. He was ordered to proceed regardless. Under Colonel Alexander, one of the largest artillery barrages of the war opened the attack; then a column estimated at 11,000 to 15,000 men advanced nearly a mile over open ground toward the Union II Corps and parts of the I Corps. Pickett's division alone lost over 2,600 men, all three brigade commanders, and all but one regimental commander. The army retreated to Virginia, reaching it ten days after the assault.

• 6. Chickamauga and the Western Transfer

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  On the 9th of September 1863, most of the First Corps was transferred to the Department of Tennessee. Pickett's division and the brigade of "Tige" Anderson stayed behind. The journey west required sixteen railroads on a route of nearly 800 miles, running through North and South Carolina to reach the Army of Tennessee in northern Georgia. The different rail gauges of the surviving Southern network made a direct route impossible, and the trip took three weeks.

  The lead elements arrived early. Three brigades of Hood's division, grouped with a western division under Brigadier General Bushrod Johnson, opened the Battle of Chickamauga on September 18 by crossing Chickamauga Creek at Reed's Bridge. Longstreet had not yet arrived, so Hood commanded the corps while Brigadier General Evander Law took over Hood's division. Longstreet reached the field on September 20, accompanied by two brigades from McLaws's division; because McLaws himself had not arrived, those brigades were led by Brigadier General Joseph B. Kershaw.

  Bragg reorganized his army into wings on September 20, putting Longstreet in command of the left, which included his own corps under Hood, Buckner's corps, and Hindman's division. The breakthrough Longstreet achieved that day is remembered as the most significant Union defeat in the entire Western Theater. Total casualties on both sides exceeded 34,000.

• 7. The Knoxville Siege and Winter Quarters

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  After Chickamauga, the First Corps became entangled in the Knoxville Campaign. Longstreet left Chattanooga on November 4 and laid siege to Knoxville on November 17. A series of smaller engagements preceded the main assault: the fight at Campbell's Station on November 16, an engagement at West Knoxville on November 18 that mortally wounded Union General Sanders, and skirmishing at Armstrong's Hill on November 25.

  On the night of November 28, General McLaws drove in the Union pickets at Fort Sanders, triggering a general alarm at eleven in the evening; the anticipated Confederate assault did not come that night, and the defenders slept on their guns in the mud. The assault on Fort Sanders finally came at sunrise on November 29. Confederate artillery opened on the fort, then the infantry charged. The attack collapsed in fifteen minutes.

  About an hour after that failure, a telegram from President Jefferson Davis arrived informing Longstreet of Bragg's defeat at Chattanooga and directing the corps to rejoin the Army of Tennessee. Logistical problems with crossing the mountain ranges argued against an immediate move, and a Union message captured by Confederate cavalry on December 1 indicated three relief columns were headed for Burnside at Knoxville, a report that later proved to be a ruse. Acting on that false intelligence, Longstreet began moving his 15,000 infantrymen eastward on December 4, marching through heavy rain. The corps passed through Bean's Station and halted at Rogersville in Hawkins County, Tennessee, on December 9. On December 13, Longstreet learned Union forces were at his rear and turned to strike them the following day at Bean's Station.

• 8. The Wilderness and Longstreet's Wound

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  By May 1864, the First Corps had returned to Virginia. When Grant launched the Overland Campaign and the Battle of the Wilderness opened on May 5, the corps was 25 miles away at Gordonsville, guarding rail lines. Longstreet received orders before four in the morning on May 4 to move and support A.P. Hill's Third Corps.

  By midday on May 6, Hill's corps was close to being overrun by the Union II Corps when the First Corps arrived and plugged the gap. Longstreet pushed the II Corps back nearly a mile. Shortly after stabilizing the Confederate line, a Confederate engineer discovered an unfinished railroad bed that offered access to the Union left flank. Longstreet assembled a flanking force of four brigades drawn from both the First and Third Corps. The initial flanking attack routed the Union left, but the attackers quickly lost cohesion in the dense forest. At that moment, Longstreet was hit in the neck by friendly fire and seriously wounded. Command passed temporarily to Major General Charles W. Field, who reorganized into a defensive line. Lee replaced Field with Richard Anderson on May 7.

  Anderson moved the corps through the night toward Spotsylvania Court House, deciding to start at ten in the evening rather than at three in the morning as Lee had specified. That early start mattered. When the First Corps arrived, Major General J.E.B. Stuart was holding off Warren's V Corps on Brock Road and needed reinforcements. Anderson sent brigades under Henegan and Humphreys, who held the crest of Laurel Hill. A courier from Fitzhugh Lee then brought word of Federal cavalry at the Court House; Anderson dispatched the brigades of Bryan and Wofford to help drive them off. The corps spent most of the Battle of Spotsylvania defending Laurel Hill against the V Corps and elements of Hancock's II Corps. On the 2nd of April 1865, the remnants of Hill's Third Corps, after Hill's death at Petersburg, were folded into the First Corps. The corps surrendered with Lee at Appomattox on the 9th of April 1865.