*****
(Macon, Georgia, Telegraph.)
“His record needs no defence.”
To The Editor of the Telegraph:
The able editorial in your issue of several days ago touching the Savannah incident in which the Daughters of the Confederacy refused to send flowers to the funeral of General Longstreet, assigning as the reason “that General Longstreet refused to obey the order of General Lee at Gettysburg,” met a responsive chord in the hearts of many old veterans of the Confederate army.
Longstreet’s war record, like that of Stonewall Jackson’s, needs no defence. History is replete with his grand deeds of chivalry, and places his name high in the ranks of the great commanders of the Civil War. The rank and file who fought under this great and intrepid commander know that he was incapable of such conduct, and the only tongue that could convince them otherwise was forever stilled when our peerless Lee passed over the river.
In the first battle of Manassas, at Seven Pines, when he lead the main attack, at Gaines Mill, Frazier’s Farm, Malvern Hill, and at second Manassas, when the illustrious Stonewall Jackson was being sorely pressed by the entire army of General Pope, he hurried to Jackson’s relief, and together gained one of the greatest victories of the war. He commanded the right wing of our army on the bloody field of Sharpsburg, and was in the thickest of the fight during the entire battle. At the battle of Fredericksburg he commanded the left wing of the army, where the assault proved most fatal to the enemy. In all of these battles, and others I do not now recall, General Longstreet participated, winning fresh laurels in each fight.
At Gettysburg during the second and third days of the battle he commanded the right wing of the army, and I never saw an officer more conspicuous and daring upon the battle-field. One of the most lasting pictures made upon my mind during the war, and which still lingers in my memory, was in connection with this officer. While in line of battle during the terrible cannon duel between the two armies, when at a signal our cannons ceased firing, I saw General Longstreet as he motioned his staff back, sitting superbly in his saddle, gallop far out in our front in full view and range of more than one hundred of the enemy’s cannon, stop his horse, and, standing up in his stirrups, place his field glasses to his eyes and deliberately and for some time view the enemy’s line of battle, while shells were bursting above and around him so thick that at intervals he was hidden from sight by the smoke from exploding shells. His object having been accomplished, he turned his horse and slowly galloped back to his line of battle. No officer upon the battle-field of Gettysburg displayed greater courage than Longstreet, and his presence upon the battle-field, like that of Lee and Jackson, was always worth a thousand men.
General Lee trusted Longstreet implicitly, and every act of his from the time he assumed command of the Army of Northern Virginia to Appomattox Court-House sustains this assertion. When President Davis requested General Lee to send to the relief of General Bragg, who was hard pressed by Sherman, he sent his old “war-horse,” and, true to his mission, Longstreet reached Chickamauga in time to turn the tide of battle in favor of the South. Afterwards he was ordered to drive the Federal army under General Burnside from East Tennessee, which he ably accomplished, driving him behind his entrenchment at Knoxville, Tennessee.
When General Grant attacked General Lee at the Wilderness—the second battle in magnitude of the war—and by overwhelming numbers was driving our army back, Longstreet by forced marches reached the field in time to snatch from Grant a victory almost won. Here he received a wound which nearly cost him his life, and which, perhaps, saved Grant’s army from being driven into the Rappahannock.