Mr. Valiant summoned. His will. His last words.
Then, said he, “I am going to my Father’s.... My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it.” ... And as he went down deeper, he said, “Grave, where is thy victory?”
So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.—Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress.”
The personal letters and official reports of Robert E. Lee, reproduced in this work, clearly established that from Gettysburg to Appomattox Longstreet continued to be Lee’s most trusted Lieutenant; their mutual affection and admiration had no diminution.
The official reports of Lee and Pendleton herein given make it clear as noonday that Longstreet disobeyed no orders of his chief at Gettysburg, and was at no time “slow” or “obstructive” on that great field.
The man who, under the weight of official evidence massed in this little story, can still raise his voice to assert that “Longstreet was slow and balky” at Gettysburg, takes direct issue with the official reports of Robert E. Lee and the Rev. Mr. Pendleton, and his becomes a quarrel with the war records.
Longstreet had unhesitatingly thrown up his commission in the old army and joined the Southern cause at the very outset. He was a chief participant in the first and last great scenes of the drama in Virginia. He had copiously shed his blood for the South. The sum of General Longstreet’s offending was,—
1. When the war was over he placed himself on the high plane of American citizenship, where all patriots now stand. He accepted office at the hands of a Republican President (pardonable offence in this good day); these were crimes which the temper of the South could not condone some forty years ago.
2. He had protested against wrecking the Confederate cause on the rocks of Cemetery Hill. In sheer self-defence he was compelled to recapitulate in plainest terms General Lee’s tactical mistakes and their fatal consequences. To many that was a crime never to be forgiven. Yet at the time and on the spot General Lee was morally brave enough to place the blame where it belonged,—on his own shoulders. Lee never sought a scape-goat for the mistakes of Gettysburg.
This is the story, short enough for the busy; clear and straight enough for the young. It is the story of sentiment as well as reverence and admiration, growing up from childhood, of him who led the forlorn hope at Gettysburg.
But behind the sentiment is the unassailable truth. It is undeniably the story of the records, of the events exactly as they occurred. It is fully corroborated by all the probabilities; in no part disputed by one. It is the story told by General Longstreet himself, and nobody familiar with his open character and candid manner of discussing its various phases can doubt for one instant that he tells the details of Gettysburg exactly as they occurred, in so far as his personal part was concerned.
