Because General Longstreet was a Republican. For this reason he was
Hated,
Abused,
Slandered.
He was charged with disobeying General Lee’s most vital orders at Gettysburg, causing the loss of the battle and the ultimate destruction of the Confederacy.
*****
(Biblical, North Carolina, Record.)
“So long as Lee lived no one attacked Longstreet’s military honor.”
General Longstreet was a great general. He was an able strategist, a hard fighter, and a faithful soldier. So long as Lee lived no one charged Longstreet with failure to make the fanciful sunrise attack on the second day at Gettysburg. But when Lee had died, this calumny was started, and it was used in hounding him to the day of his death—on that day certain misguided Daughters of the Confederacy refusing to send flowers for his bier. Longstreet was the victim of a foul persecution by a partisan press—the like of which we see nowadays at ever-increasing intervals. They did not approve his ideas, and they ruined him. He advised the South to accept the results of the war; his business was taken from him, his friends were estranged, and his life was made a burden.
His magnificent services deserved better reward. But history will give him his place; intolerance even now is departing; and as for Longstreet himself, he stands to-night before the Judge of all the world.