Captain Johnston lead the Second Corps on its march to the south end of the battlefield. It is not quite clear if Lee had ordered this or Longstreet. The latter of which followed at the column's rear, perhaps because "something had not gone to suit him", Lee had rejected his flanking maneuver, and he was sulking. As the crow flies it was three miles from Lee's headquarters to the jumping off point, but with the need to stay concealed the march was six miles. Or at least it would have been had it not been discovered, almost too late, that the southern soldiers would march over the top of a bald hill making there presence known to the flag waving signalmen of the Federal Army who now occupied Little Round Top.

Johnston had not reconnoitered west of Seminary Ridge and must have been playing it by ear. He later wrote, "I had no idea that I had the confidence of the great General Lee to an extent that he would entrust me with the conduct of an army corps moving within two miles of the enemy line."

The column stopped and waited for Longstreet to reach its head where he ordered a countermarch. That doubled the six miles to twelve for some. The march is described to have "moved with the fluidness of an accordion." If Longstreet was in bad humor before, he must have been fuming now. His anger must have given way to sadness, because a soldier that saw him ride by recorded, "His eyes cast to the ground, as if in deep study, his mind disturbed." and that Old Peter had, "more the look of gloom", than he had ever seen him wear before.

"There was a kind of intuition, an apparent settled fact," one of the members of the First Corps later declared, "that after all the other troops had made their long marches, tugged at the flanks of the enemy, threatened his rear, and all the display of strategy and generalship had been exhausted in the dislodgment of the foe, and all these failed, then when the hard, stubborn, decisive blow was to be struck, the troops of the First Corps were called on to strike it."

McLaws division went into position on the left of First Corps line west of the Emmitsburg Road and was already engaged in an artillery duel with the Federal cannons in the Peach Orchard, when Hood's division got into their position on the right. It was 4pm.