*****

“If Longstreet was disobedient, Lee was a traitor.”

Waco, Texas, January 12, 1904.

Mrs. Longstreet,
Gainesville, Georgia:

Dear Madam,​—​Enclosed I send you a brief tribute that I paid to General Longstreet.

General Longstreet’s fame is safe with all fair-minded men, but it is the duty of us, who knew him and served under him, to raise our voices in his defence, now that he cannot do so, as he formerly so ably and conclusively did, and I here make my defence of the charge that he failed to do his duty at Gettysburg.

If it is true that General Longstreet betrayed General Lee at Gettysburg, and that General Lee knew it, the legitimate and logical conclusions are that General Lee was a traitor, not only to the Confederacy, but to every man who served under him. All know that at Gettysburg Lee staked an empire on Longstreet’s corps, and all know that when it rolled back from those bloody heights, leaving its bravest and its best cold in death upon its grassy slopes, that the sun of the Confederacy, with battle target red, slowly sank into the bosom of eternal night. And to say that General Lee knew that General Longstreet was responsible for the loss of the battle, responsible for the death of so many brave men who had there died in vain, responsible for the ruin of a cause dear to so many hearts, and then permit the man who had brought all this about, to remain as the commander of the First Corps of his army, to lovingly speak of him as he did as his right arm, to send him in two months after the battle of Gettysburg in command of his corps to save the Army of Tennessee from the ruin brought upon it by the inefficiency of Bragg, to permit him to remain throughout that long and dreary winter that he spent in East Tennessee, to bring him back to Virginia and be his chosen lieutenant from the Wilderness to the banks of the James, and from the James to Appomattox, is to convict General Lee of a treason to both himself and his country, more damnable than that which so-called admirers of General Lee charge upon Longstreet.

I remain, very truly yours,
G. B. Gerald.

*****

“Denounced with bitterness the statement of Pendleton.”