"Not very long after sunrise Gen. Pendleton came up & paid me a visit and commended all of my arrangements. In his official report of the battle he says, "On Longstreet's line by Alexander's activity [I found] much already accomplished.
I mention this because among the very unjust, &, indeed, absurd criticisms which poor Gen. Longstreet's detractors have brought against him, in connection with this battle, is one to the effect that Gen. Lee's orders were disobeyed & neglected the handling of our artillary in Pickett's Charge. Now the orders which I received, both from Longstreet and Pendleton, were quite specific, & were carried out to the letter, as I will show, & even more effectively, I think, than could have been reasonably expected beforehand. Moreover they were identical with the usual practice, both of our army and the Federals, in attacking each other in position, from the beginning of the war to the end of it. And, as things turned out, the result of any other method would probably been the loss of our artillery, &, possibly, a rout of the whole army. I will go a little more into detail in this matter for there has been a great deal of most "egregious folly" written in some of the books & papers published on the subject. My orders were as follows, First, to give the enemy the most effective cannonade possible. It was not meant simply to make noise, but to try & cripple him-to tear him limbless, as it were, if possible. Note Gen. Longstreet's expression in a note to be quoted in full presently, "drive off the enemy or greatly demoralize him." When the artillery had accomplished that, the infantry column of attack was to charge. And then, further, I was to "advance such artillery as you can use in aiding the attack." Now, I could not hope to bombard effectively with anything less than the whole force of artillery at my disposal, for my range was to be generally over 1,200 yards & I had not the ammunition to make it a long business. It must be done inside of an hour if ever.
And now I may return to the visit paid me by Gen. Pendleton in the early morning, when he looked over & approved my dispositions. As I rode with him & talked over matters he told me that COL. R. L. Walker A.P. Hill's chief of arty., had 12 pr. howitzers for which he had no Special use as their range was to short. Gen. Pendleton asked me if I could make use of them." I jumped at the idea, & thanked him and & said, "yes, I had the very place for them." And I rode on with him immediately, and had them turned over to me, under the command of Maj. Richardson. I did not tell Gen. Pendleton what I wanted with them & he probably supposed that I was going to stick them somewhere around my firing line, like all the rest of my guns. But I had another purpose in view. I intended not to let them fire a shot in the preliminary cannonaide, & to keep them under cover & out of view, so that with fresh men, & full chests of ammunition, these 9 light howitzers might follow Pickett's infantry in the charge, more promptly, & also, perhaps more safely than guns from out of the firing line could do."
E. Porter Alexander
Fighting for the Confederacy
Pg's 245, 245 and 247
I paraphrased.
There was a follow up plan. The problem was the infantry never made it far enough for Alexander to follow up with his howitzers. He had to focus on protecting the retreating infantry instead.
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