Augusta, GA., June 12, 1879
My Dear General,--Absence prevented an earlier response to your favor of the 5th. My recollection of the events is as follows : My command, the artillery, got orders to move about noon on May 4, 1864, being in camp near Mechanicsville, some four or five miles west of Gordonsville. We marched about four P.M., and with only short rests all night and all next day till about five P.M., when we halted to rest and bivouac at a point which I cannot remember; but our cavalry had had a skirmish there with the enemy's cavalry just before our arrival, and I remember seeing some killed and wounded of each side. Your whole corps, Hood's and McLaws's, and the artillery, I think, was concentrated at that point, and my recollection is that we had orders to move on during the night, or before daylight the next morning, to get on the enemy's left flank on Brock road.
But whatever the orders were, I remember distinctly that during the night news of the fight on the Plank road came, and with it a change of orders, and that we marched at on A.M., or earlier, and turned to the left and struck the Plank road at Parker's Store, and pushed rapidly down it to where the battle had already begun. I remember, too, that the march was so hurried that at one point, the head of the leading division (I forget which it was, however) having lost a little distance by taking the wrong road, the rear division was not allowed to halt, but pushed right on, so that it got abreast of the leading division, and the two came down the road side by side, filling the whole road and crowding the retreating men of the divisions which were being driven back into the woods on each side.
These are facts as I recollect them, and while I don't know what your orders were, I remember that there was a change in them during the night, according to my understanding, and that the change was promptly and vigorously and successfully carried out as time and distance could possibly permit. There was certainly no loss of time from the moment we received orders to the moment we went under fire in the Wilderness, as the distance covered will show.
Very truly yours,
E.P. Alexander.
Source: Annals of War, essay by Longstreet