Farewell, Longstreet! I shall follow you very soon. May we meet in the happy realm where strife is unknown and friendship is eternal!
Back of the day that opened so auspiciously for the Confederate cause at the first Manassas, and of the four years that followed, lies Longstreet’s record of a quarter of a century in the Union army, completing one of the most lustrous pages in the world’s war history. That page cannot be dimmed or darkened; it rests secure in its own white splendor, above the touch of detractors.
The detractors of General Longstreet’s military integrity assert that, being opposed to fighting an offensive battle at Gettysburg, he was “balky and stubborn” in executing Lee’s orders; that he disobeyed the commanding general’s orders to attack at sunrise on the morning of July 2; that, again ordered to attack with half the army on the morning of July 3, his culpably slow attack with only Pickett’s division, supported by some of Hill’s troops, caused the fatal Confederate defeat in that encounter.
General Gordon has seen fit, in a recent publication, to revive this cruel aspersion.
When General Longstreet surrendered his sword at Appomattox his war record was made up. It stands unassailable--needing no defenders. Back of the day that opened so auspiciously for the Confederate cause at the first Manassas, and of the four years that followed, lies the record of a quarter of a century in the Union army.
In those times General Longstreet, at Cerro Gordo, Molino del Rey, and Chapultepec, was aiding to win the great empire of the West; in subsequent hard Indian campaigns lighting the fagots of a splendid western civilization, adding new glory to American arms and, in the struggles of a nation that fell, a new star of the first magnitude to the galaxy of American valor, completing one of the most lustrous pages in the world’s war history. That page cannot be dimmed or darkened; it rests secure in its own white splendor, above the touch of detractors.
General Longstreet has of late years deemed it unnecessary to make defence of his military integrity, save such as may be found in his memoirs, “Manassas to Appomattox,” published nearly ten years since. He has held that his deeds stand on the impartial pages of the nation’s records--their own defender.