Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of Lee’s battle plan for Day Three, as he conceived it that Thursday evening, is how barren and uninformed it was. There is no knowing what Longstreet’s and Ewell’s couriers may have said to Lee about the July 2 fighting, but they were surely poor substitutes for personal accounts delivered by the two generals themselves. It is thus astonishing how little General Lee knew of his own army, of the enemy’s army, and of the battlefield when he announced that his general battle plan was unchanged and that the attack would continue.
