At Gettysburg Longstreet was in charge of the fighting line, of placing the divisions in action, on the second and third days of that Titanic struggle. Whatever may be said of the result,—of the errors which misinformation and sycophancy have attempted to make him the scapegoat of,—there was no more magnificent display of heroism during the entire war.
It has not been the Southern fashion of late years to praise, or even practise justice towards, Longstreet. But now that the stout warrior is dead and gone to eternal judgment, all should speak of his virtues, his glorious deeds of arms, without thought or reference to that sad error of judgment that, no smaller in its intent and inception than “a man’s hand,” grew to a dark cloud between Longstreet and his people. This will be appreciated by survivors of the old First Corps, no good soldier of which has ever failed to repeat with pride, “I followed Longstreet.” As one of that band the editor of the Herald has always left criticism of our old chief’s politics to others. If ever the inclination came to us, there rose up two pictures of the past that forbade,—the heroic and inspiring figure of Longstreet as he rode up to Colonel Humphreys of the Twenty-first Mississippi, towards the close of that grand “centre rush” of Barksdale’s brigade that swept Sickles and his Third Corps off of the “Peach-Orchard Hill,” at Gettysburg, to tell him that Barksdale was killed and to take command of the brigade; and Longstreet as he was borne from the front at the Wilderness, all faint and bloody from what seemed a death wound.
Longstreet is now no more. But there is a thrill in the name that carries his surviving followers backward forty years—recalling the roar of cannon, the charging column, the “rebel” yell, the groans of wounded and dying comrades. For,
“There where Death’s brief pang was quickest,
And the battle’s wreck lay thickest—
There be sure was Longstreet charging,
There he ne’er shall charge again.”
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(Bainbridge, Georgia, Searchlight.)
“Robbed of the laurels won in peerless campaigns.”
The death of General Longstreet at his Gainesville home the other day removes one of the few grand actors of the war drama of the sixties. He was known as the “old war-horse of the Confederacy,” and perhaps in point of military ability he ranked next to the great Lee himself. His soldiers had the most remarkable confidence in him, and he it was who could inspire them to deeds of valor unparalleled. At times since there have been those who have attempted to cast aspersions on his illustrious name, saying that he disobeyed Lee’s orders at Gettysburg. A timely article has just been published, and curiously in the same paper that conveyed the sad intelligence of his death, from the pen of Mrs. Longstreet, presumably composed with the aid of the General in his last feeble days, that answers completely and satisfactorily all charges of stubbornness or disobedience at that famous battle. It is a pity that so great a soldier and military genius should not have been allowed to have worn the laurels of so many peerless campaigns undisturbed and without envy. Now that he is dead his memory should be enshrined in the hearts of a grateful people for whose cause he did battle, and the remembrance of his illustrious deeds should be handed down to future generations as those of the knights of the round table.
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