(Jacksonville, Florida, Times-Union.)

*****

“Peace and honor to his storm-driven soul.”

Now that James Longstreet is no more, the South should forgive the estrangement that followed long years of service.Perhaps he was wiser than we—perhaps to-day we are not very far from the position he took a generation ago. Perhaps his greatness as a soldier was largely due to the same qualities which set his people in opposition to him in civil life—he had utter confidence in his own judgment, and he went straight for what he thought was right regardless of all prudential considerations.

We have accepted the result of the war in good faith—let us accept all that goes with it in our hearts and minds. Others advised while Longstreet acted—once we hated him because he headed our foes to make us keep order; were the riots against which Longstreet stood in New Orleans to be repeated in Atlanta, we know Gordon or Wheeler would head the regulars to restore peace and order if their counsels were disregarded. The time makes a difference to the sufferers—but not to the historian through whose glasses we can now afford to look. Longstreet is dead—weave violets and amaranth in his wreath of laurel—peace and honor to his storm-driven soul.

*****

“Hero of two wars punished for his politics in days of peace.”

A camp of United Confederate Veterans at Wilmington, at a regular meeting, declined to send resolutions of condolence and sympathy to the family of General Longstreet on his death.

And yet General Longstreet was a

Hero of two wars.

He was the “War-Horse of the Confederacy.”

He was in the thickest of the fight from Manassas to Appomattox.

He was familiarly known throughout the army as “Old Pete,” and was considered the hardest fighter in the Confederate service.

He had the unbounded confidence of his troops, and “the whole army became imbued with new vigor in the presence of the foe when it became known down the line that ‘Old Pete’ was up.”

Why, then, did not the Wilmington camp pass those resolutions?

Because General Longstreet was a Republican. For this reason he was

Hated,

Abused,

Slandered.

He was charged with disobeying General Lee’s most vital orders at Gettysburg, causing the loss of the battle and the ultimate destruction of the Confederacy.

*****

“So long as Lee lived no one attacked Longstreet’s military honor.”

General Longstreet was a great general. He was an able strategist, a hard fighter, and a faithful soldier. So long as Lee lived no one charged Longstreet with failure to make the fanciful sunrise attack on the second day at Gettysburg. But when Lee had died, this calumny was started, and it was used in hounding him to the day of his death—on that day certain misguided Daughters of the Confederacy refusing to send flowers for his bier. Longstreet was the victim of a foul persecution by a partisan press—the like of which we see nowadays at ever-increasing intervals. They did not approve his ideas, and they ruined him. He advised the South to accept the results of the war; his business was taken from him, his friends were estranged, and his life was made a burden.

His magnificent services deserved better reward. But history will give him his place; intolerance even now is departing; and as for Longstreet himself, he stands to-night before the Judge of all the world.

*****

“Republicanism does not necessarily involve treason to the South.”

One aspect of General Longstreet’s career from Appomattox till his death the other day brings out a very unlovely attribute which was obtrusive in the South during these years. That was the ostracism to which he was subject because he joined the Republican party and accepted two or three offices from Republican Presidents. This antagonism towards him by a large portionof the old Confederate element gradually diminished as a new generation in the South appeared on the scene. Some of the feeling, however, remained to the close of his days, and evinced itself in the obituaries of many of the Southern papers.

A few facts are sufficient to expose the absurdity of this Southern antagonism to Confederates who cast their fortunes with the Republicans after the Confederacy fell—this feeling that an adherent of the lost cause must cling everlastingly to the Democratic party through evil and good reports under the penalty of eternal proscription. In the score of years from Longstreet’s graduation from West Point to his resignation, shortly after Sumter’s fall, he was in the army, and a participant in the wars in Mexico and along the frontier in which the army was engaged. The probability is that until after Appomattox he never cast a ballot in his life. Moreover, at the time of his graduation, many of the South’s most prominent statesmen—Tyler, Brownlow, Toombs, Legare, Bell, Clayton, Upshur, Henry T. Wise, Botts, Alexander H. Stephens, and others—were Whigs. The Whig, Zachary Taylor, of Louisiana, carried more Southern States than did his Democratic antagonist, Cass.

What warrant had the South for proscribing Longstreet, because he, a soldier who never had any politics in the old days, joined the Republican party just as soon as he became a civilian and got a chance to exercise his privileges as a citizen? Mosby, Mahone, and many other ex-Confederates who had been civilians before the war, and who, presumably, had taken some part in politics, also joined the Republican party, though they did not do this quite so promptly as did Longstreet. When Foote, of Mississippi, and Orr, of South Carolina, both of whom had been prominent in Democratic politics before the war, the latter of whom had been Speaker of the House in part of Buchanan’s days in the Presidency, and both of whom had been in the Confederate service, became Republicans soon after the Confederacy collapsed, their neighbors ought to have grasped the fact that there must have been something in this party which appealed to intelligent public-spirited men of all localities, and that membership in it by a South Carolinian, a Georgian, or a Louisianian did not necessarily and inevitably involve treasoneither to the South’s interests or to its traditions. Mixed in with the many shining virtues of the people below Mason and Dixon’s line, there was, as shown in their attitude for many years towards Longstreet, one very unattractive trait.

*****

“There was no more magnificent display of heroism during the entire war than at Gettysburg.”

As truly as Warwick was the last of the barons of the feudal era, was Longstreet the last of the great Confederate commanders. He rose to prominence in the early engagements of the war—his was a household name as one of the chief hopes of the cause, when those of all the remaining survivors of like rank were colonels and brigadiers. At the first Manassas, Williamsburg, Seven Pines, Seven Days’ fight, the second Manassas, Sharpsburg, and Fredericksburg he was the chief subordinate figure except where he divided the honors with Stonewall Jackson. And after the death of that very Napoleon of war, until theultimo suspiroat Appomattox, Longstreet was Lee’s right hand; or, as our great commander fondly called him, “my old war-horse.” How highly he was held at head-quarters and the war department was shown in his being made the senior lieutenant-general, even over Jackson, after the 1862 test by fire.

At Gettysburg Longstreet was in charge of the fighting line, of placing the divisions in action, on the second and third days of that Titanic struggle. Whatever may be said of the result,—of the errors which misinformation and sycophancy have attempted to make him the scapegoat of,—there was no more magnificent display of heroism during the entire war.

It has not been the Southern fashion of late years to praise, or even practise justice towards, Longstreet. But now that the stout warrior is dead and gone to eternal judgment, all should speak of his virtues, his glorious deeds of arms, without thought or reference to that sad error of judgment that, no smaller in its intent and inception than “a man’s hand,” grew to a dark cloud between Longstreet and his people. This will be appreciated by survivors of the old First Corps, no good soldier ofwhich has ever failed to repeat with pride, “I followed Longstreet.” As one of that band the editor of theHeraldhas always left criticism of our old chief’s politics to others. If ever the inclination came to us, there rose up two pictures of the past that forbade,—the heroic and inspiring figure of Longstreet as he rode up to Colonel Humphreys of the Twenty-first Mississippi, towards the close of that grand “centre rush” of Barksdale’s brigade that swept Sickles and his Third Corps off of the “Peach-Orchard Hill,” at Gettysburg, to tell him that Barksdale was killed and to take command of the brigade; and Longstreet as he was borne from the front at the Wilderness, all faint and bloody from what seemed a death wound.

Longstreet is now no more. But there is a thrill in the name that carries his surviving followers backward forty years—recalling the roar of cannon, the charging column, the “rebel” yell, the groans of wounded and dying comrades. For,

“There where Death’s brief pang was quickest,And the battle’s wreck lay thickest—There be sure was Longstreet charging,There he ne’er shall charge again.”

*****

“Robbed of the laurels won in peerless campaigns.”

The death of General Longstreet at his Gainesville home the other day removes one of the few grand actors of the war drama of the sixties. He was known as the “old war-horse of the Confederacy,” and perhaps in point of military ability he ranked next to the great Lee himself. His soldiers had the most remarkable confidence in him, and he it was who could inspire them to deeds of valor unparalleled. At times since there have been those who have attempted to cast aspersions on his illustrious name, saying that he disobeyed Lee’s orders at Gettysburg. A timely article has just been published, and curiously in the same paper that conveyed the sad intelligence of his death, from the pen of Mrs. Longstreet, presumably composed with the aid of the General in his last feeble days, that answers completely and satisfactorily all charges of stubbornness or disobedience at that famous battle. It is a pity that sogreat a soldier and military genius should not have been allowed to have worn the laurels of so many peerless campaigns undisturbed and without envy. Now that he is dead his memory should be enshrined in the hearts of a grateful people for whose cause he did battle, and the remembrance of his illustrious deeds should be handed down to future generations as those of the knights of the round table.

*****

“Would have been court-martialed for disobeying orders at Gettysburg.”

It is passing strange that any one should make such a charge against General Longstreet, in view of the fact that General Lee never made any such charge; and any sane man knows that he would have made the charge had it been true, and no doubt General Longstreet would have been court-martialed for such an offence, especially as it is charged that this probably lost the battle to the Confederates.

General Longstreet was one of the greatest and bravest of the Confederate generals, and no man should endeavor to dim the lustre of his brilliant military record or cast reflections upon his good name as a citizen or doubt his loyalty to the South. No hero that wore the gray deserves more honor and thanks than this gallant Southern hero, who, like Lee, Jackson, Johnston, and a long list of other loyal Southern sons resigned a position of prominence in the army of the United States and cast his fortunes with his Southern brethren in defense of Southern rights, homes, and firesides, and many of whom died for Southern honor. Sleep on, noble and illustrious soldier and patriot! Thy good name and record as a soldier is safe from the attacks of politicians, rivals, and so-called Daughters of the Confederacy of Savannah!

*****

“He was superior to human vanity or ambition.”

It should not be forgotten that when the war began General Longstreet, like General Lee and many others of the South’s illustrious leaders, was an officer in the army of the UnitedStates. Had he adhered to the Union, high command awaited him; the siren voice of ambition whispered to him of a splendid future of fame and honor and rich reward, while he knew more doubtful was the issue if he heeded the call of duty and offered his sword to the South. Yet he did not hesitate. To his mother’s cry he responded like the faithful son and hero that he was, and proved superior to human vanity or ambition.

This being true, it is but fair to presume that whatever step he took afterwards was inspired by the high sense of duty, and that he took it only after having taken counsel with his conscience and with due regard for the requirements of patriotism and honor.

In every position in civil life, many and responsible as they were, he bore himself with ability, dignity, efficiency, and with stainless honor; there was never a spot upon his official record, but the civilian, as was the soldier, was without reproach.

If any man or woman doubts or calls in question the record of James Longstreet as a soldier, let him or her ask the veteran Southern soldier who followed him (and there are a number in Houston) what they think of him, and with one voice they will say, “He was Lee’s ‘war-horse.’ When we heard Longstreet was in the lead or in command, or was coming, we knew that victory would follow the fighting; we trusted him; Lee trusted him; the army trusted him.”

“Where beyond these voices there is peace,” the old hero is at rest. Little it recks whether men praise or blame him now—“The peace of God which passeth all understanding” is upon him, and history will write him down as he was, a brave, able, faithful soldier, who so loved his native land as to pour out his heroic blood in its defence. Than this he asks no higher praise.

*****

“Truth will take hold upon the pen of history.”

A great soldier, in the ripeness of years and yet enduring to the latest breath the pangs of the wounds of four decades ago, has fallen upon earth’s final sleep.

In the brave days of his earlier soldiership, and then in the strenuous years of one of the world’s most tragic wars, whereinhis genius lifted him to the next highest rank of generalship, General James Longstreet was a conspicuous figure and always a force to be reckoned with. The finest and justest military critics of America and Europe have pronounced him a commander in whom were combined those abilities of initiative, strategy, and persistent daring that make the historic general of any age or people.

While to others who were concerned in the great campaigns and battles of which he was a distinguished factor there may have appeared in his acts some incidents for criticism, yet to his immediate officers and men he was ever the ideal soldier and the peerless commander. But in the presence of his shrouded frame, in the revived memories of his loyalty and his heroism, and in the knowledge that the seeming errors of men in pivotal crises are often the misunderstood interferences of the Supreme Ruler, judgments cease and reverence, gratitude, and honor form the threnody at the tomb.

The war record of General Longstreet will always remain a theme of laudation by the sons of Southerners. For the reward of it thousands refused to sanction the rebukes his subsequent career sometimes engendered among his compatriots. Who that witnessed it can forget the embrace given Longstreet by ex-President Davis here in Atlanta and the tremendous ovation that greeted the old hero in his veteran gray uniform as he joined in the gala-day made in honor of his disfranchised chief?

General Longstreet’s taking of office under President Grant has been always a misunderstood transaction. It was not a surrender of his Southern sentiments or an act of disloyalty to the Southern people. At the time when General Grant, feeling the impulses of former comradeship, tendered an office and its emoluments to General Longstreet, whose fortunes were in sore straits, the old soldier refused to consider acceptance of the offer until urged to it by his later fellow-soldiers in New Orleans, including Generals Hood, Beauregard, Harry Hayes, Ogden, and even Jefferson Davis himself. He accepted it in the belief that it was his duty to take any occasion for public service that otherwise would be held in the hands of alien carpet-baggers and haters of the Southern people. But the occasion was too soon—the passions of the people yet too inflamed. Withoutfull knowledge of the inwardness of his conduct the people whom he loved heaped upon him a penetrating scorn and livid coals of indignation. He was too brave to complain; too considerate to expose his advisers, and his heroism was never more chivalrous than the long patience with which until now he has endured the misjudgments of his Southern fellow-men.

But these things are naught now to the flown spirit. Hereafter truth will take hold upon the pen of history and rewrite much that has been miswritten of this great son of the South. His stainless integrity, his devotion to the cause of his militant people, his incomparable bravery in battle, his superb generalship on campaign, and his later chivalry in the calm conduct of his citizenship and public service remain as wholesome memories of a world-acclaimed Southern hero.

*****

“Ostracised by men who did no fighting.”

The pestiferous pertinacity with which certain women of the South seize every opportunity to fan the embers of a dying sectional animosity, and to blazon their adherence to the principles of the “Lost Cause,” is again illustrated in the refusal of the Savannah Daughters of the Confederacy to send a wreath to be laid on General Longstreet’s grave. Next to Robert E. Lee, Longstreet had the reputation of being the ablest of the officers who fought on the Southern side in the Great Rebellion. But at the close of the war, satisfied that the Lost Cause was lost forever, and that it was useless to attempt to keep alive a spirit of revenge,—heart-won, too, by the splendid generosity of Grant in his dealings with the defeated army of Lee,—he “accepted the situation;” accepted, too, from the Republican soldier-president the office of surveyor of the port of New Orleans, and addressed all his powers to the work of healing the wounds of war and of reuniting the sections. For this he was ostracised by the ultra element of Southern irreconcilables—an element made up principally of women and of men who did no fighting, and which nurses its bitterness with the unsatisfied spirit of the child who, not having finished his cry yesterday, inquires to-day, “What was I crying about?” in order that hemay indulge in the luxury of tears once more. The men who fought under and with Longstreet honor his later loyalty to the Union as much as they do his steadfast courage and ability under the “Stars and Bars” in the bloody sixties. The women who refuse his bier a tribute dishonor only themselves.

*****

“One of the most gallant spirits of the century.”

With the death of General James Longstreet, who was the first ranking general of the Confederate army, passes one of the most gallant spirits of the nineteenth century.

Of all the men who fought with conspicuous valor and prowess for the Confederate cause, there was none who possessed more leonine courage or inspired in his men a greater degree of enthusiastic affection than this chieftain whom Lee dubbed with the title of “My Old War-Horse” on the battle-field. That remark of Lee’s was like the touch of an accolade upon his shoulders, and no subsequent misunderstandings or criticisms have ever been able to rob him of the place among the chivalrous souls of the South to which he was elevated by their irreproachable King Arthur, General Lee.

And, in view of the fact that the most choice and master military spirits of his age esteemed him to possess tactical ability and military judgment equal in degree to his undisputed qualities of persistent bravery, such criticisms as there were are scarcely worthy of mention and demand no refutation now in any backward glance at his brilliant career. The South can point to his record with pride, as his military associates have ever pointed to the man himself with a quick and affectionate appreciation. No note of apology should mingle with the praise and grief of those who look to-day with tear-blurred eyes upon the soldier’s bier.

And the memory of his actions on the boisterous stage of battle and of the single-hearted, loyalrôlehe played through all the shifting scenes of that greatest war-drama of the century should in itself constitute a rebuke to those who have sought to rebuke him for certain generally misunderstood actions in his subsequent career. He became an office-holder under GeneralGrant, a very, very human thing to do. It was a very, very natural thing that General Grant, who had married the cousin of the “Old War-Horse,” and who was, besides, actuated by the spirit of a remembered, youthful comradeship, should give his friend, comrade, and relative an office when Longstreet was walking along thorny financial paths. And his acceptance, urged as he was to accept by his Confederate comrades, was, under the circumstances, very human and very natural. He made a good public servant—where could Grant have found a better in those reconstruction days, which were not noted for the excellence of their public servants? Where could Longstreet have better served his own people than by taking an office which might otherwise have been given to men who were still so inflamed by partisan prejudice as to hate those people? His motives were of the highest in this acceptance, and his attitude of silently bearing the remarks of those who criticised him under a misapprehension stamps his moral courage with the golden seal of a serene nobility.

He was misjudged, but he happily lived to see most of those who misjudged him silenced by an exposition of facts which he was too proud to set forth himself.

The debtor years have rendered back to him the refined coin of a fixed fame for his life labor. He is dead, and his place—a high one in the world’s history—is enduring.

*****

“The bravest of the brave.”

The Savannah Daughters of the Confederacy, whose custom it is to send a laurel wreath for the tomb of deceased Confederates, refused to send one upon the death of General Longstreet a few days ago.

The Daughters at Savannah have, we suppose, satisfactorily to themselves, settled the mooted question of the Gettysburg controversy, but we do not believe their action will find applause generally among the ex-Confederate soldiers. Whatever may have been the fact at Gettysburg, it is beyond dispute that his actions there did not estrange his loyal soldiers, nor impair the esteem in which he was held by General Lee. The close of thewar found him in command of the left wing of the army, and he joined General Lee on the way to Appomattox. In referring to his death the RichmondTimes-Dispatchsays,—

“We recall General Longstreet as one of the bravest of the brave, one who struck many blows for the Confederacy, and one on whom General Lee often leaned and whose name is identified with world-famous battles. These are things we cannot forget, nor do we wish to.”

Whatever may be said of the attitude of the South since the war towards General Longstreet, the fact remains that his espousal of the Republican cause in politics did most to invite criticism, and this he always felt was unjust to him.

It seems strange that General John B. Gordon should have so bitterly attacked General Longstreet, and it is charity to say that he did it from political reasons, and not by way of challenging war records.

With his fresh grave denied its laurel wreath at the hands of the Savannah Daughters, and his lifeless lips beyond reply to carping critics, it is refreshing to see that the loyal wife, who walked with him in the evening of life, brings her own wreath of the roses of love, dewy with her tears, and places it upon the grave that holds his valiant dust.

*****

“In the military annals of the Anglo-Saxon race there is nothing finer than his fighting record.”

The author of the article on Longstreet, which recently appeared in theLedgerand which we republish below, has been a close student of military history, and was personally observant of great movements in Virginia during the war:

“Men of Southern blood who recall the days when the civilized world was thrilled with the renown of those great Confederate captains, ‘Lee, Longstreet, and Jackson,’ can scarcely realize that the grave has just closed over all that is mortal of the stoutest, the steadiest, the most practical, pushing, resolute, and stolidly unimaginative fighter of that goodly and immortal group. In the military annals of the Anglo-Saxon race there is nothing finer than the fighting record of this Old Lion of the South. It does not need the formal observances of official commemoration to perpetuate the memory of a man who led the stanch legions of the Confederacy in victorious fellowship with Jackson and Lee. Tradition alonewill uplift and applaud his name long after monuments have crumbled and Camps and Chapters have ceased to exist. None knew better than the great Virginian leader that the neck of the ‘Old War-Horse’ was always clothed with thunder when the shock of battle came. Lee never dreamed that Longstreet was faithless.“Every American who is proud of our common race must deplore the openly manifest disposition of Southern veterans and sons of veterans to discredit for all time the great historic soldiers of the South. It needs not the perspicacity of a Verulam to inform us that the highest virtues are not visible to the common eye. The disposition to suspect and besmirch a glorious soldier—a man whose leadership immortalized the armies that he led—not only betokens a radical change in popular ideals, but apparently marks the decadence of that traditional sentiment of chivalry which is truly ‘the unbought grace of life,’ and that generous martial spirit which for generations has characterized the great Southern branch of the Anglo-American race.“The humblest citizen of this republic has an inalienable interest in the heroic memories of the South. Let the Dead Lion sleep in peace. Nothing is alien to the true American heart that in the least degree concerns the glory of the Old South or the interest of the New. It is precisely this sentiment that was expressed in the fine chivalry of Grant at Appomattox and won for that iron conqueror the lasting affection and respect of the men that he had fought. The heroic Longstreet needs no higher eulogy than the single phrase, He was the friend of Grant and Lee.”

“Every American who is proud of our common race must deplore the openly manifest disposition of Southern veterans and sons of veterans to discredit for all time the great historic soldiers of the South. It needs not the perspicacity of a Verulam to inform us that the highest virtues are not visible to the common eye. The disposition to suspect and besmirch a glorious soldier—a man whose leadership immortalized the armies that he led—not only betokens a radical change in popular ideals, but apparently marks the decadence of that traditional sentiment of chivalry which is truly ‘the unbought grace of life,’ and that generous martial spirit which for generations has characterized the great Southern branch of the Anglo-American race.

“The humblest citizen of this republic has an inalienable interest in the heroic memories of the South. Let the Dead Lion sleep in peace. Nothing is alien to the true American heart that in the least degree concerns the glory of the Old South or the interest of the New. It is precisely this sentiment that was expressed in the fine chivalry of Grant at Appomattox and won for that iron conqueror the lasting affection and respect of the men that he had fought. The heroic Longstreet needs no higher eulogy than the single phrase, He was the friend of Grant and Lee.”

*****

“No reproach can be cast upon his bravery and devotion.”

The Savannah Chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy has made itself ridiculous by throwing a brick at the dead lion at Gainesville!

It seems a pity that the enterprising news gatherers in the Forest City should have given out to the public the silly action of these young women. Their offence was a resolution “refusing” to send a wreath to lay upon the grave of General Longstreet “because he disobeyed orders at Gettysburg.”

The causes for the drawn battle at the critical point in the history of the struggle of the ’60’s will be debated while time lasts. So will the causes for the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. This debate has been and will be participated in by the great commanders of the world. But no reproach has been, can, or will be cast upon the bravery or devotion of the famous old fighter whose courage knew no abatement in the hundreds of engagements participated in during the trying experiences ofthree wars. Alexander and Cæsar and Napoleon and Grant and Lee made their mistakes. So did Longstreet. But how does it seem for a bevy of young women to pounce upon the cold remains of this battle-scarred veteran and hero lying in state and attempt to punish him for an alleged mistake made forty years ago in the midst of the roar and clash of the greatest battle in history! Their mothers knew better.

We are not surprised that veterans in Savannah feel aggrieved, as they must feel everywhere that the action is known.

General Gordon believes that Longstreet made a mistake at Gettysburg, but Lee said, “It is all my fault.” The great chieftain in command made no charge against his great fighting arm. Touching this controversy, Colonel McBride, writing to the AtlantaConstitution, says, “Longstreet, although a prudent and cautious fighter, was not only always ready to fight, but he was always anxious and wanted to fight. On the second day he was not slow, but was simply putting himself in shape to do the bloodiest fight of the war. At least two-thirds of the casualties in America’s greatest battle happened in front of Longstreet’s corps. Reports show this. The records also show that he only obeyed Lee’s orders to the letter.”

Grant, however, that Longstreet made a costly mistake, there are times other than those at the grave to discuss them; there are persons other than young women unborn in those days to administer rebuke or punishment.

If these young women who sit in judgment at the tomb could not lay a flower on the new-made grave of an old war-horse of the Confederacy, it seems as if they might have restrained their tongues while the muffled drum passing by rolled its last tattoo.

*****

“After a while Southern capitals will be adorned with statues of Longstreet; upon his grave ‘his foeman’s children will loose the rose.’”

At the age of eighty-three General Longstreet has passed away—a noble character, a good soldier, one of the hardest fighters of the Civil War. General Longstreet was pretty badly treated by the people whose battles he fought with so great courage and capacity. He was no politician—just a soldier, and at the close of the war committed the error of “fraternizing”with all his countrymen. He “accepted the situation,” not wisely, but too early. With a fine and generous unwisdom he laid away the animosities of the war-time and put himself at once where all stand now,—on the broad, high ground of American citizenship. No part had he in the provincial conceit of the thing that has the immodesty to call itself a “Southern gentleman.” It probably never occurred to him that the qualities distinguishing a gentleman from a pirate of the Spanish Main had so narrow a geographical distribution as the term implies. He paid for his breadth of mind—became a kind of social outlaw and political excommunicant in “the land once proud of him.” Briefly, his shipmates marooned him. Well, he has escaped—he has “beaten the game,” as, sooner or later, we all conquer without exertion. After a while Southern capitals will be adorned with statues of Longstreet and upon his grave posterity will see “his foemen’s children loose the rose.”

*****

Lee and Longstreet.

The death of General James Longstreet, as was to be expected, has revived to some extent the controversies which have raged over certain memorable incidents in his military career. For the last twenty-five years persistent efforts have been made to throw on General Longstreet’s shoulders responsibility for Lee’s defeat at Gettysburg. Not a few Southern writers have gone so far as to accuse him, if not of insubordination, at least of culpable inattention to orders given him by the Confederate commander-in-chief. General John B. Gordon, in his recently published reminiscences, revived and amplified these charges against Longstreet, stating explicitly—as his own conclusion and as that of impartial military critics generally—that Longstreet’s blunders had blasted Confederate hopes at Gettysburg, and that General Lee “died believing he had lost by Longstreet’s disobedience.” Strangely enough, General Longstreet’s wife had prepared an elaborate refutation of General Gordon’s theories, and had arranged for its publication on January 3—the day following General Longstreet’s death.

We do not think that history will sustain the contentions ofGeneral Longstreet’s critics. They are interesting enough as post-mortem demonstrations of what might have been. But they ignore actual conditions. They picture a situation which could have existed only as a military after-thought. General Longstreet cannot be made a scapegoat for all the sins of hesitation or omission chargeable to Confederate commanders at Gettysburg. General Gordon is himself disposed to censure General Lee for not vigorously attacking the Federal forces in their new position on the evening of July 1. He condemns utterly Longstreet’s failure to assault the Federal left wing early in the morning of July 2. But he waves aside entirely the exhaustion of A. P. Hill’s corps at the conclusion of the first day’s battle and the physical impediments to forming and executing an attack on the Federal left wing before noon of July 2. That Longstreet’s assault suffered in effectiveness from the delays of July 2 is greatly to be doubted. The fighting done by his corps far excelled in dash and brilliance anything done at Gettysburg by Ewell’s corps or A. P. Hill’s. Longstreet bore the brunt of both the second and third day’s struggle and emerged from the conflict with his reputation as a corps commander unimpaired. There is no reason to think that he could have fought more brilliantly or more successfully if he had attempted the attack which General Gordon philosophizes about in the early morning of the second day.

General Lee at the close of the battle justly and honorably assumed entire responsibility for the Confederate defeat. Lee lost at Gettysburg because on the offensive he seemed incapable of rising to the full height of his military talent. His generalship in his two brief invasions of Northern territory was commonplace.

In Lee’s own lifetime not a word of criticism was aimed at Longstreet. It is needless to inquire what influences have conspired to foist on him the blame for the Confederate failure at Gettysburg. Another generation of Southern writers will do him more impartial justice. He will certainly be classed hereafter by open-minded critics as one of the ablest and most intelligent of the commanders who fought under the South’s flag in the Civil War.

*****

“No Southern man suffered more or deserved it less.”

The death of General Longstreet removes from the world’s stage of action one who in time of war had his name and his deeds sounded by the trumpet of fame throughout the civilized world. He was a conspicuous figure in the eyes of the world, and his name was at one time familiar to and honored in every Confederate household. He was Lee’s Rock of Gibraltar that never failed to stem the tides of assault, and when he led, in his turn, the attack, he was a thunder-bolt of war that never failed to strike with terrible effect. In council he was calm and calculated well and closely all the chances of conflict, in scales well balanced, and, as a rule, with almost unerring exactness.

He was essentially a soldier, whose education, training, and services for a generation in years made his enforced change to civil life practically the adoption of a new life at total variance to that in which he has always been a conspicuous and a noted figure. His was a lovable nature, loyal to principle and to truth, and when his confidence was secured his trust was sure to follow.

That trait in his character was the cause of the ban under which he suffered for such a long period from the Southern people, and, as many an old Confederate veteran will now say, with such injustice.

At the time the storm of ostracism first burst in fury over his head I was an official of the State of Mississippi and resided at Jackson, the State capital, and I was then, as I am now, familiar with the cause of the outbreak of public sentiment against him. Let me explain that there had been on the part of the Southern people a practical nullification of the Federal laws regarding the negro and his rights so recently conferred, and it was hard for Southern people to swallow the doctrine of equality in anything where the negro was concerned.

The entire South was in a tempestuous turmoil that threatened the very foundations of society, by rising like the storm-tossed waves of tempestuous seas and sweeping away the barriers that had been erected against the domination of the Southern whites. At this juncture prominent and influential leaders of public thought, who saw the coming storm, at a conference heldin New Orleans explained the situation to certain popular and influential ex-Confederate generals then residents of that city, and represented to them that an appeal by them to their old soldiers to accept the situation, obey the Federal laws, and maintain peace and order would result in great good and assist in allaying the suppressed, indeed often open, excitement of the people. They were appealed to as patriots to come to the rescue of their people and lead them in peace as they had in war.

The text of a letter to be written by each was then outlined, and at a second conference each submitted his letter. The substance of all the letters was identical, each with the others. They were published in the New Orleans papers simultaneously to insure the object in view, the influencing of public opinion. Their publication aroused a storm of reproach and denunciation that was without measure.

Instead of acting like oil on the troubled waters, they provoked the fury of the tempest, and the authors of the letters were overwhelmed with letters of protest and reproach.

Explanation after explanation by the authors (save General Longstreet) that amounted to public retraction, followed. Longstreet, firm as the rock of Gibraltar, bared his breast to the storm and proudly declared that he had nothing to retract. He explained the circumstances under which he had written the letter, cited its approval by leaders of public thought, and declared that the sentiment of the letter but expressed his honest convictions, and he stood by it. Every old veteran of Longstreet’s corps who reads this will say, “That’s just like old Pete.” He could have saved his popularity had he sacrificed principle. But like the noble Roman that he was, he could, in weighing one against the other, defiantly proclaim

“These walls, these columns flyFrom their firm base as soon as I.”

I was among the few who saw nothing then in any of the letters to merit the disapproval of the Southern people; and looking through “the vista of time” back to those days, I can say in all candor and sincerity that had the seed of Longstreet’s advice fallen in ground ripe for it, reconstruction would havebeen shorn of many of the evils that accompanied it and blighted the land. Some time after these occurrences General Longstreet made a trip through territory in Mississippi from which his mercantile firm derived much business. One day Governor Humphreys said to me, “General Longstreet is coming this way. If he comes here, what would you do?” Instantly I replied, “I would not wait for him to come, but I would insist on his coming, and tell him that he would be welcomed at the governor’s mansion.” He directed me to write the invitation, saying, “I had made up my mind to so act, for nothing could make me turn my back on ‘old Pete.’ I served under him too long to do that.” He accepted the invitation and was the guest of the governor. In honoring him the governor set an example that the whole town followed, and the period of his stay was almost a constant levee. On me was placed the special and agreeable duty of attendance upon him. I was with him much of the time and participated in conversations in which the letter that brought to him only woe was discussed. Never did a bitter word pass his lips in denunciation of those who led him to the slaughter and themselves stepped aside and raised no hand to help him. He declared that the letter expressed his true sentiments, and that it was written after deliberate thought. It proved to be unfortunate, and though he was then reaping only thorns from it, time would vindicate him and his course. He bore his fate like an ancient Stoic. I count my association with him at this time as among the most pleasant of a checkered life. I never saw him again.

General Joseph E. Johnston, of whose staff I was a member, told me with his own lips that the plan by which the army of Stonewall Jackson was withdrawn from the valley and hurled on the flank of McClellan was first suggested to him by Longstreet. He said that the idea had occurred to him, but at a time when it was not feasible. But just previous to the battle of Seven Pines, Longstreet submitted a plan that he had matured, that met his favor and determined him to adopt it. At the battle that almost immediately occurred he was incapacitated by wounds and General Lee assumed command. Shortly after, Jackson’s force was transferred from the valley and hurled on the Federal flank. We know with what result. The plan wascommunicated to General Lee shortly after his accession to command. The plan which General Lee adopted may have been his own, but the idea first originated in the soldierly brain of Longstreet. Again, at the second Manassas, when Longstreet, to the rescue of Jackson, debouched through “Thoroughfare Gap,” a glance at the field showed him Jackson’s peril, and his masterful, soldierly ability needed no general in command to direct him as to the placing of his battalions. Like a thunder-bolt of war his command struck the Federal army. Jackson was saved and the victory was won. Space forbids further prolixity, while the theme invites it. Let me say that no Southern man suffered more at the hands of the Southern people and deserved it less. I uncover my head in honor to his memory and bid him “all hail and farewell!” Little cares he now for the plaudits of the world or the censure of his critics. When a chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy refused a wreath to his remains, Jeff Davis, Lee, Stonewall Jackson, the two Johnstons, and a host of others gone before, were giving him brotherly welcome in the city of the living God, and his old corps who have crossed the river joined in shouts of welcome to his knightly soul. Let us all feel that

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