HIS COUNTRY HOME IN PICTURESQUE NORTH GEORGIA
Next to the smoke of battle in the cause of his country, he loved nature in her gentlest and most quiet moods. He was fond of the forest and farm. He owned a small farm near Gainesville, Georgia, which was one of the delights of his life. Here he set out an orchard and a vineyard on a scale somewhat extensive, in which he found much pleasure. It is a hilly, uneven country, this rugged Piedmont section of north Georgia, noted for its red clay, its rocks, its mighty trees, the wild honeysuckles that carpet its woods, and the purity of the air that sweeps over it and the water that gushes in abundance from its depths. General Longstreet made his little farm in this picturesque section as productive and attractive as he could. It was mostly hills, and had to be terraced extensively to keep it from washing away. He had it terraced with much care, and laid off something after the manner of a battle-field. Thereupon the people around jokingly called it “Gettysburg.”
Here he had built and lived in a splendid home of the old colonial style of architecture, such as has long been popular in the South. The house was richly furnished. He had one of the finest libraries in the South, and had collected interesting and valuable souvenirs, and furnishings from all over the world. His residence was situated on a lordly eminence; beyond, the everlasting mountains stretched in unbroken length; in the valley between, the placid waters of the mountain streams wound lazily to the sea. The location was most beautiful, and has often been called “Inspiration Point.” Amid these romantic surroundings General Longstreet dispensed a hospitality characteristic of the most splendid days of the old South. He often laughingly said that his house became a rendezvous for old Confederates who were hastily going West, and needed a “little aid.” They never knocked in vain at his door. He has said that a favorite tale of theirs was that they “had just killed a Yankee, and had to go West hurriedly;” thinking, of course, that this plea would strike a sympathetic chord.
Some twenty years ago General Longstreet’s home and everything it contained, save the people, vanished in flames. After that he lived in one of the out-houses, a small frame cottage such as any carpenter might build and any countryman might own.
Some years ago Hamlin Garland visited Gainesville for the purpose of calling on General Longstreet. After talking with him Mr. Garland wrote a very interesting article about him. He especially marvelled that he should find so great a man, so colossal a character, living in such modest fashion, seemingly almost forgotten by all sections of the country in whose destiny he had played so important a part. He said he found a world-famous general pruning grape-vines on a red hill-side of the picturesque mountain region of Georgia. He was delighted with his versatility, his information, and, most of all, with his glowing love of country and his broad ideas of the future greatness of America.
When the imposing house stood and when he afterwards occupied the cottage, his home was still the boasted “show-place” of Gainesville. He was Gainesville’s grand historic character, her first gentleman, and her best-loved citizen. Whatever resentment towards him because of political views may have been felt in other parts of the country where men were striving to be at the head of state processions, in his little home city there was never a break in the loving and proud esteem in which he was held by his home people.
Here life remained interesting to him to the last. His heart was ever young; when he died he was eighty-three years young. Only a day or two before he was taken away he was planning things that were to take place years in the future. Blindness, deafness, paralysis, the decay of physical faculties, failed to move his dauntless courage or quell his splendid determination.
General Longstreet’s last days were spent in revising his memoirs of the Civil War, as were Grant’s in writing his. The two colossal characters passed away suffering the excruciating pains of the same dread disease,—cancer,—both disdaining death, heroic to the end.
On the eve of the Spanish-American War General Longstreet was invited by the New York Herald to contribute to its columns a paper on the subject of the threatened trouble with Spain.