HEROIC CITIZEN OF THE RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD
Longstreet entered the Confederate service as brigadier-general, and reported for duty to General Beauregard at the first Manassas. After the baptism of fire at Antietam, in 1862, Longstreet was made lieutenant-general, next in rank to Lee. This rank he retained to the end of the war, ranking even Stonewall Jackson. This fact is especially mentioned, because the last generation of the South have often confused the rank secured by their fathers in the war with the paper ranks given by the Confederacy when the war was over and that government, heroic in its ruins, had nothing else to give.
I have heard it said by many Union officers that Longstreet’s corps, the First Corps, was the terror of the Union army. I have heard it said that Longstreet was the only officer in the Confederate army whom Grant and Lincoln wholesomely feared. He was Lee’s right arm in very truth. The morning of the battle of the Wilderness, while President Lincoln was at the War Department, some one asked him, “What is the best thing that can happen to the Union to-day?” He answered, “To kill Longstreet.” It nearly happened, but by the bullets of Longstreet’s own men, because in so gallantly leading them he went too far in front.
After the fall of the curtain at Appomattox General Longstreet went to New Orleans and engaged in the cotton and insurance business. He developed in business the splendid ability that marked him as a soldier. He was making ten thousand dollars a year at the time the celebrated difference of opinion came up as to the course the South should pursue in the rehabilitation of the war-wasted land. It was then that he wrote the famous political letter of 1867 that turned the South against him and made it practically impossible for him to do business in that section of the country. The idea that this letter was written to secure political preferment from the powers in authority is perfectly absurd. He was making more in business, and would have made still more and more as the years went on, than he could make then or ever afterwards in politics. Besides, to me, and to any one who ever knew the real man, the idea of his changing his convictions a hair’s breadth for any sort of gain is too far-fetched for serious discussion. The very head and front of his offending consisted in his belief that it was better for the South to accept the situation then presented; better for the high-class men of the South to hold the offices than to have the negroes and scallawags hold them; better for the South to keep faith with its Appomattox parole, which promised obedience to constituted authority. It was a few years after this letter that President Grant appointed him Surveyor of the Port at New Orleans. He never asked for this appointment, and was not consulted about it. President Grant, in the generosity of his heart, voluntarily sent his name to the Senate, and the first news General Longstreet had of it came through the press.
General Longstreet never affiliated with the controlling element of the Republican party in the South. He believed in a white man’s Republican party in the South, and therefore was never in favor with the dominant Republican party in that section that believed differently. The political appointments that came to him came because of his high character and his record of substantial achievement, and in spite of the opposition of miscellaneous competitive place-seekers. He led a political movement that has had no following in the Southern section. It would seemingly have been easy for him to have acquiesced in the methods of the Republican machinery in the Southern States which would naturally have made him the head and front of the Southern Republican party. It would have seemed easier in an earlier day for him to have gone with the Democracy, which would have made him the political idol of the South, as he had been its military idol. Is is so much easier to be a demagogue than it is to be a man. It requires no unusual moral caliber to take a seat on the band-wagon and go with the crowd. Conscience compelled James Longstreet to oppose politically, for their own good, as he saw it, his Southern fellow-countrymen. He announced his convictions and stood by them. He never profited, as we measure material benefits; he lost. The qualities he exhibited in these crucial periods of his life differentiated the man from the time-server and place-seeker.
One who loved him and was close to him in life said, regretfully, not long ago, in speaking of him, that he never did anything after Appomattox that “turned out for his own good.” I felt a sudden tightening about my heart at this criticism. Perhaps as we view worldly honors and earthly goods the things he did after Appomattox did not “turn out for his own good.” But to me he has always been a figure of more sublime courage in the gathering storms of ’67 and the years that followed than on any of the brilliant fields of the Civil War. And I love best to think of him, not as the warrior leading his legions to victory, but as the grand citizen after the war was ended, nobly dedicating himself to the rehabilitation of his broken people, offering a brave man’s homage to the flag of the established government, and standing steadfast in all the passions, prejudices, and persecutions of that unhappy period. It was the love and honor and soul of the man crystallized into a being of wonderful majesty, immovable as Gibraltar.
“There be things, O sons of what has deserved birthright in the land of freedom, the ‘good of which’ and ‘the use of which’ are beyond all calculation of earthly goods and worldly uses—things that cannot be bought with a price and do not die with death;” these, gathering strength and beauty in James Longstreet’s character, through the four terrible years of warfare, assumed colossal proportions in the dark reconstruction era. And when the story of his life has finally been told, in all its grandeur, the finer fame will settle not about the valorous soldier, but about Longstreet, the patriot-citizen.