“Where beyond these voices there is peace,” the old hero is at rest. Little it recks whether men praise or blame him now—“The peace of God which passeth all understanding” is upon him, and history will write him down as he was, a brave, able, faithful soldier, who so loved his native land as to pour out his heroic blood in its defence. Than this he asks no higher praise.
*****
(Atlanta, Georgia, Constitution.)
“Truth will take hold upon the pen of history.”
A great soldier, in the ripeness of years and yet enduring to the latest breath the pangs of the wounds of four decades ago, has fallen upon earth’s final sleep.
In the brave days of his earlier soldiership, and then in the strenuous years of one of the world’s most tragic wars, wherein his genius lifted him to the next highest rank of generalship, General James Longstreet was a conspicuous figure and always a force to be reckoned with. The finest and justest military critics of America and Europe have pronounced him a commander in whom were combined those abilities of initiative, strategy, and persistent daring that make the historic general of any age or people.
While to others who were concerned in the great campaigns and battles of which he was a distinguished factor there may have appeared in his acts some incidents for criticism, yet to his immediate officers and men he was ever the ideal soldier and the peerless commander. But in the presence of his shrouded frame, in the revived memories of his loyalty and his heroism, and in the knowledge that the seeming errors of men in pivotal crises are often the misunderstood interferences of the Supreme Ruler, judgments cease and reverence, gratitude, and honor form the threnody at the tomb.
The war record of General Longstreet will always remain a theme of laudation by the sons of Southerners. For the reward of it thousands refused to sanction the rebukes his subsequent career sometimes engendered among his compatriots. Who that witnessed it can forget the embrace given Longstreet by ex-President Davis here in Atlanta and the tremendous ovation that greeted the old hero in his veteran gray uniform as he joined in the gala-day made in honor of his disfranchised chief?
General Longstreet’s taking of office under President Grant has been always a misunderstood transaction. It was not a surrender of his Southern sentiments or an act of disloyalty to the Southern people. At the time when General Grant, feeling the impulses of former comradeship, tendered an office and its emoluments to General Longstreet, whose fortunes were in sore straits, the old soldier refused to consider acceptance of the offer until urged to it by his later fellow-soldiers in New Orleans, including Generals Hood, Beauregard, Harry Hayes, Ogden, and even Jefferson Davis himself. He accepted it in the belief that it was his duty to take any occasion for public service that otherwise would be held in the hands of alien carpet-baggers and haters of the Southern people. But the occasion was too soon—the passions of the people yet too inflamed. Without full knowledge of the inwardness of his conduct the people whom he loved heaped upon him a penetrating scorn and livid coals of indignation. He was too brave to complain; too considerate to expose his advisers, and his heroism was never more chivalrous than the long patience with which until now he has endured the misjudgments of his Southern fellow-men.
But these things are naught now to the flown spirit. Hereafter truth will take hold upon the pen of history and rewrite much that has been miswritten of this great son of the South. His stainless integrity, his devotion to the cause of his militant people, his incomparable bravery in battle, his superb generalship on campaign, and his later chivalry in the calm conduct of his citizenship and public service remain as wholesome memories of a world-acclaimed Southern hero.