THE CHRISTIAN PATRIOT LOVED THE SOUTH TO THE LAST
When General Longstreet quit fighting, he quit fighting for good. He considered that the South was back in the Union to stay. There is no doubt in the minds of many with whom I have talked that General Longstreet’s conciliatory course, because of its effect in holding thousands obedient to the laws of the government, prevented the confiscation of much property in the South immediately after the war, and greatly alleviated the trials of that distressing period. The local ostracism of that day and subsequently cut General Longstreet deeply. He loved the South with all the tenderness of one who was willing to die for it. In all the quiet hours that he discussed the misrepresentations of the Southern people, the resentment they bore him, the criticisms and slanders that had been hurled at him, I never heard him utter a word against them or give expression to a note of bitterness. But I think towards the last, exhausted by much suffering, he had a pitiful yearning for complete reconciliation with all his people. Not many months before he died an officer of the Northern armies was calling on him at his hotel in Washington, and in discussing the Civil War and subsequent events, and General Longstreet’s part therein, said, “The Southern people have not appreciated you since the war, General, but when you are dead they will build monuments to you.” General Longstreet said nothing, but his eyes slowly filled. While he bore unjust criticism in silence, he was visibly moved by any evidence of affection from the Southern people.
I recall two very beautiful press tributes that appeared last summer while he was lying desperately ill at his home in Gainesville, Georgia; one was from the pen of Hon. John Temple Graves, in the Atlanta, Georgia, News; the other by Mrs. W. H. Felton, an old-time friend, in the Atlanta Journal. Mr. Graves, a representative of the splendid new South, spoke of the new generations as worthy descendants of the heroic days, and the place General Longstreet would always hold in their hearts; and Mrs. Felton, one of the important figures of the old South, told of the undying love for him of the soldiers of the Confederacy, and of the place he had worthily won in the affections of all the people; she wanted to speak these words to him for the comfort they would give him; and because he had nobly earned the right to hear them, and ten thousand times more from the people whose battles he had fought. When he seemed out of immediate danger, and strong enough to understand, I read these tributes to him, and he wept like a child.
The forbearance of the man and his generous feeling towards those who used him harshly finally became a wonder, and is to-day a joy for me to remember. I will here give an instance or two touchingly illustrative of this side of his character. General Wade Hampton, as stoical as ever a Roman was, felt very bitterly against General Longstreet because of his Republican politics. He expressed his feelings freely both in public and private, and was embittered to the extent that he refused to speak to General Longstreet. When General Longstreet succeeded him as United States Commissioner of Railroads, he would not come to the office to turn it over to his successor. General Longstreet went to the office, took the oath alone, and endeavored as best he could to make himself acquainted with the duties of the position. When he came home that evening and told me, with evident surprise, that General Hampton was still bitter against him, I asked, rather in the hope of getting a reply in criticism of General Hampton, “What sort of a soldier was General Hampton, since he seems so intractable in civil life?” General Longstreet replied, without a moment’s hesitation: “There was not a finer, braver, more gallant officer in the Confederate service than Wade Hampton.” And when General Hampton died, I think the most splendid tribute paid him came from the pen of General Longstreet.
Years ago there were political differences between General Longstreet and Judge Emory Speer, now of the Federal Bench of Georgia, then a member of Congress from the old Eighth District of Georgia. General Longstreet felt that he had been wronged. The summer before his death we were at Mt. Airy, Georgia, for a short time. One day I saw Judge Speer in the hotel where we were stopping, and asked General Longstreet how he was going to receive him if Judge Speer should come to speak to him, in view of their past differences. The General replied, “As I would receive any other distinguished American. And as for our past differences, that has been a long time ago, and I have forgotten what it was all about.”
General John B. Gordon, during recent years, did General Longstreet injustice. I know he caused him much pain. At a time when General Longstreet was suffering horribly,—one eye had already been destroyed by the dreadful disease; he had long been deaf and paralyzed from war service; the wound in his throat was giving him severest pain,—at this sad time General Gordon revived the old, threadbare story that he had disobeyed orders at Gettysburg. But when a reporter from one of the New York dailies called to interview him about General Gordon and his charges, he refused to say one word. It was then that I said, “If you will not reply to General Gordon, I will. And in the future, so long as I shall live, whenever your war record is attacked, I will make answer.” And so it happened that the little story of Gettysburg was written while General Longstreet was nearing the grave. During these last, sorrowful days he had heard that General Gordon was not in good health, and he asked me, with touching concern, about his condition. I expected to tell General Gordon of these occurrences, but I never saw him again. The Reaper gathered him in, ten days after General Longstreet answered the call.
General Longstreet was a most devout churchman. In early life he was an Episcopalian, and he regularly attended that church in New Orleans until the political differences developed between himself and his friends. After that he noticed that even his church associates avoided him. They would not sit in the same pew with him. Cut to the quick by such treatment, he began to wonder if there was any church broad enough to withstand differences caused by political and sectional feeling. He discovered that the Roman Catholic priests extended him the treatment he longed for. He began to attend that church, and has said that its atmosphere from the first appealed to him as the church of the sorrow-laden of earth. He was converted under the ministration of Father Ryan. After accepting the faith of the Catholic Church he followed it with beautiful devotion. He regarded it as the compensation sent him by the Almighty for doing his duty as he saw it. He clung to it as the best consolation there was in life. He went to his duties as devoutly as any priest of the church, and was on his knees night and morning, with the simple, loving faith of a little child.