It seems strange that General John B. Gordon should have so bitterly attacked General Longstreet, and it is charity to say that he did it from political reasons, and not by way of challenging war records.
With his fresh grave denied its laurel wreath at the hands of the Savannah Daughters, and his lifeless lips beyond reply to carping critics, it is refreshing to see that the loyal wife, who walked with him in the evening of life, brings her own wreath of the roses of love, dewy with her tears, and places it upon the grave that holds his valiant dust.
*****
(Birmingham, Alabama, Ledger.)
“In the military annals of the Anglo-Saxon race there is nothing finer than his fighting record.”
The author of the article on Longstreet, which recently appeared in the Ledger and which we republish below, has been a close student of military history, and was personally observant of great movements in Virginia during the war:
“Men of Southern blood who recall the days when the civilized world was thrilled with the renown of those great Confederate captains, ‘Lee, Longstreet, and Jackson,’ can scarcely realize that the grave has just closed over all that is mortal of the stoutest, the steadiest, the most practical, pushing, resolute, and stolidly unimaginative fighter of that goodly and immortal group. In the military annals of the Anglo-Saxon race there is nothing finer than the fighting record of this Old Lion of the South. It does not need the formal observances of official commemoration to perpetuate the memory of a man who led the stanch legions of the Confederacy in victorious fellowship with Jackson and Lee. Tradition alone will uplift and applaud his name long after monuments have crumbled and Camps and Chapters have ceased to exist. None knew better than the great Virginian leader that the neck of the ‘Old War-Horse’ was always clothed with thunder when the shock of battle came. Lee never dreamed that Longstreet was faithless.
“Every American who is proud of our common race must deplore the openly manifest disposition of Southern veterans and sons of veterans to discredit for all time the great historic soldiers of the South. It needs not the perspicacity of a Verulam to inform us that the highest virtues are not visible to the common eye. The disposition to suspect and besmirch a glorious soldier—a man whose leadership immortalized the armies that he led—not only betokens a radical change in popular ideals, but apparently marks the decadence of that traditional sentiment of chivalry which is truly ‘the unbought grace of life,’ and that generous martial spirit which for generations has characterized the great Southern branch of the Anglo-American race.
“The humblest citizen of this republic has an inalienable interest in the heroic memories of the South. Let the Dead Lion sleep in peace. Nothing is alien to the true American heart that in the least degree concerns the glory of the Old South or the interest of the New. It is precisely this sentiment that was expressed in the fine chivalry of Grant at Appomattox and won for that iron conqueror the lasting affection and respect of the men that he had fought. The heroic Longstreet needs no higher eulogy than the single phrase, He was the friend of Grant and Lee.”
*****
(Macon, Georgia, Telegraph.)
“No reproach can be cast upon his bravery and devotion.”