Resolved, That when wrongs and passion disrupted the nation, and his native State withdrew from the Union and united with the Confederate States of America, he felt that his allegiance no longer belonged to the other States of the Union, but to the one of which he was a citizen, and he resigned his office in the United States army and offered his services to the government of the Confederacy. He received the rank of brigadier-general, and, being always in the front when campaigns were most important and the enemy the most powerful and battles were furious, he was promoted for distinguished bravery, conduct, and generalship to be major-general, lieutenant-general, and second in command of the great Army of Northern Virginia, under the great commander Lee.

As brigadier-general at Manassas he held the left wing of the enemy, by his boldness, so that it could not give assistance to the defeated right wing. As major-general he covered General Johnston’s retreat in the Peninsula before the advance of McClellan, and fought the victorious battle of Williamsburg. As major-general he commanded the right wing in the bloody battle of Seven Pines, and with D. H. Hill drove the enemy from the field. In the Seven Days’ battle around Richmond no general gained greater renown, and soon thereafter, when Congress directed the President to appoint seven corps commanders with the rank of lieutenant-general, Major-General Longstreet was made the ranking lieutenant-general and second in command of the army under Lee, which position he held through the great battles and campaigns of that army for three years, until with Lee and the remnant of his heroes he surrendered at Appomattox.

At the second battle of Manassas he commanded the right wing of the army, and with Jackson on the left drove Pope into the fortification of Washington. At South Mountain he held McClellan with a death grip until Jackson could storm Harper’s Ferry, and commanded the right wing at Sharpsburg and fought more than double his number under McClellan from early dawn until darkness spread her sombre shadows over the bloodiest scene in American history. It was here that Lee knighted him as his “War-Horse” as the last guns were sending their hoarse echoes among the mountains. Next, at Fredericksburg he commanded the left wing, and at nightfall on the 13th of December, 1862, eight thousand of the enemy were stretched out dead or bleeding in front of his corps.

At Gettysburg, riding by the side of Lee, without expecting nor desiring at that time to join battle with the enemy, they heard the thunder of Hill’s and Ewell’s guns, and hastened to their assistance. The first day’s battle was fought and won before Lee or Longstreet could take an active part. On the second day Longstreet commanded the right wing and fought one of the bloodiest battles of the war, driving almost the entire army of Meade before him, and leaving more than ten thousand of the enemy slain or wounded on the field. The third day of this great battle he exhibited the loftiest courage.

Next, he and his corps were sent from Virginia to Georgia and joined Bragg in the terrible battle of Chickamauga, where he commanded the left wing and routed the right wing of Rosecrans’s army. When Grant and Meade, with their forty thousand veteran soldiers, were advancing upon Lee in the Wilderness of Virginia, the great commander of the Army of Northern Virginia called Longstreet with his men back from Tennessee, and with panting breath and quick step and double ranks he headed the Texas brigade and rushed upon the cheering and triumphant enemy on the second day in the Wilderness, and drove them over their works amid the blazing woods, and a great victory was in the grasp of Lee, when a bullet from our own men, by mistake, crashed through his body and he was carried from the field desperately wounded. The guiding hand of the great general and fighter was gone, and victory fled as the fatal opportunity was lost.

In the long siege and through the many battles around Richmond and Petersburg, lasting nearly twelve months, Longstreet commanded the left wing on the north side of the James, and stood like an immovable mountain between the enemy and the Confederate capital.

When the sad day of Five Forks came, and Lee’s lines were broken about Petersburg, Longstreet was called from Richmond with his men to the assistance of his great commander, and covered the retreat and gave blow for blow to the charging enemy, and when the sun rose on the day of the 9th of April, and Grant was about to offer terms for the surrender of the Southern army, Longstreet told General Lee that if the terms were not honorable they would fight again and die fighting. Thus he fought and stood by his chief to the bitter end, retaining the confidence of his commander and his President to the last; and if they who knew him best and trusted him most, and were with him day and night and knew his thoughts and opinions, and witnessed his deeds and actions throughout all the vicissitudes and trials of those days that measured the souls of men,​—​if they believed in him, trusted him, leaned on him, and kept him second to Lee, who shall have the temerity to criticise, to condemn, and to throw stones at this imperial soldier?

Those of us who have heard the thunder of his guns; those of us who have seen him leading his warriors in battle; those of us who have seen him stand like a Gibraltar against the charging thousands of a fierce foe, will honor him as a great soldier who has added to the fame of Southern manhood, and who is worthy to stand through the ages with Lee and Johnston and Jackson and Stewart, and all the brave men who laid their bare breasts to the storm of war in the name of freedom and independence. We honor ourselves by honoring such a man.

Resolved, That these resolutions be spread upon the minutes of this Camp and a copy be sent to Mrs. James Longstreet by the adjutant.

A. W. Nowlin.
J. R. Cole.
J. W. Taylor.
T. C. Bailey.
Milton Park.