Longstreet didn’t want to order that charge. He appealed to Lee to reconsider. Lee should have listened.
Nice essay! Thanks for posting this.
Story goes that Lincoln was angry with his generals for not capturing General Robert E. Lee. One of them (alledgingly) remarked: “Capture him? We have to climb a big (A. P.) Hill, march down a (James Longstreet) and go over a Stonewall (Jackson) just to get to see Lee!”.
Don’t know if it’s true, but the sentiment is correct.
Doe vindice
BTW, Longstreet wrote an epic book (From Manassas to Appomattox) after the war. It’s a great read about the movements and strategies of the Army of Northern Virginia.
Longstreet, having learned much at Fredericksburg, passionately opposed doing battle at Gettysburg. He rightly knew that the best strategy was to somehow get between the Army of the Potomac and Washington. It would have then forced the Federals to attack on ground chosen and favorable to the Confederates. After the debacle at Gettysburg, Lee was tormented that he did not appreciate Longstreet’s insight and advice. It was no accident that Lee , ever the gentleman, sent Longstreet with his Corp to fight in Tennessee and northern Georgia.
Catholic ping!
But if Lee had listened to Longstreet, the outcome of Gettysburg -- and the war -- might have been very different.
And he was one of US Grants best supporters and friend both before and after.
Bookmark
I’ve noticed that in the last 30 years 2 civil war generals’ reputations are going way up while 1 is dropping. Grant & Longstreet are on the rise. Lee is on the decline.
“I never heard of any other cause of the quarrel than slavery.” -Longstreet
What is not mentioned here is at the time that Longstreet was collaborating with federal occupiers, Southern voters had been disenfranchised. Occupation governments filled with corrupt carpet baggers and Northern Republican Party flunkies were in the process of committing theft on an absolutely massive scale. First their corrupt state puppet governments propped up by federal bayonets jacked up taxes to 200-300% of their pre-war levels at a time when the South’s economy was wrecked. Then they used the tax money that was raised to line their own pockets. When people could not pay these absurdly high taxes, they were dispossessed of their land which was then sold to these same carpet baggers and corrupt Republican Party flunkies at knockdown prices.
There is a reason why from the end of the Occupation until Nixon almost 100 years later, the Republican Party could not win hardly a single election in the South.
Like what? That like thousands of Southerners he took up arms against a duly elected government?
Ping
Longstreet’s view of Lee’s order to assault Cemetery Ridge
“General,(Lee) I have been a soldier all my life. I have been with soldiers engaged in fights by couples, by squads, companies, regiments, divisions, and armies, and should know as well as any one, what soldiers can do. It is my opinion that no fifteen thousand men ever arrayed for battle can take that position.”
I have read quite a bit about the Marble Man myth making, the Longstreet excuse and the conflicts in general. Longstreet, IMHO, was made a scape goat by Jubal Early and others that were the failures at Gettysburg.
He was one of the best Generals of the Confederacy.