The cold historian of our Civil War of a hundred years hence will not go for truth to the picturesque reminiscences of General John B. Gordon, nor to the pyrotechnics of General Fitzhugh Lee, nor yet to the somewhat hysterical ravings of Rev. Mr. Pendleton and scores of other modern essayists who have sought to fix the failure of Gettysburg upon General Longstreet. The coming chronicler will cast aside the rubbish of passion and hate that followed the war, and have recourse to the nation’s official war records, and in the cool, calm lights of the letters and reports of the participants, written at the time, will place the blunder of Gettysburg where it belongs. Longstreet’s fame has nothing to fear in that hour.
But for the benefit of the present--of the young, the busy, who have neither time nor inclination to study the records, and for that sentiment that is increasingly shaped by the public press,--for these and other reasons it appears fitting that in this hour historical truth should have a spokesman on the Gettysburg contentions. In the absence of one more able to speak, this little story of the truth is written. The writer belongs to a generation that has come up since the gloom of Appomattox closed the drama of the great “Lost Cause” of American history--a generation that seeks the truth, unwarped and undistorted by passion, and can face the truth.
In the prosecution of my researches for the origin of the extraordinary calumnies aimed at General Longstreet’s honor as a soldier, two most significant facts have continually pressed upon my attention.
First, not one word appears to have been published openly accusing him of disobedience at Gettysburg until the man who could forever have silenced all criticism was in his grave--until the knightly soul of Robert Edward Lee had passed into eternity.
Second, General Longstreet’s operations on the field of Gettysburg were above the suspicion of reproach until he came under the political ban in the South, for meeting in the proper spirit, as he saw it, the requirements of good citizenship in the observance of his Appomattox parole, and, after the removal of his political disabilities, for having accepted office at the hands of a Republican President who happened to be his old West Point comrade,--Grant.