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The original text contained images of three handwritten letters and one typed letter. Their positions are indicated here as “Illustrations”, identified as “fac-simile”, and followed by printed transcriptions. The identifications were not in the original text and have been copied from the List of Illustrations. The transcriptions were not in the original text and have been added to this eBook by the transcribers.
[Illustration: Yours Truly James Longstreet Lieutenant-General]
GETTYSBURG IN THE LIGHT OF THE OFFICIAL RECORDS
Electrotyped and Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia
FROM HER WHO SINCE CHILDHOOD HAS HELD HIS HEROIC DEEDS AS SOLDIER AND CITIZEN AMONG THE PRICELESS INHERITANCES OF THE GREAT REPUBLIC
This brief story of a gigantic event, and General Longstreet’s part therein was arranged for publication in book form in the fall of 1903, before his death, which occurred January 2, 1904. It is the carefully sifted story of the records and contemporaneous witnesses, and for clearness I have here and there introduced General Longstreet’s personal version of some of the disputed points. But the reader will perceive that at last it is the _story of the records_.
For my undertaking I drew liberally from General Longstreet’s memoirs of the war, “Manassas to Appomattox;” from his stores of knowledge in the military art, and his treasure-house of memories of the Titanic encounter on the field of Gettysburg. The war-pictures included herein are also from the above-mentioned volume. And I am gratefully indebted to Captain Leslie J. Perry, formerly of the War Records Office, Washington City, for valuable assistance.
An appendix, added since General Longstreet’s death, includes a small selection from the thousands of tributes from every quarter of the republic.
One of the last of the brilliant generals of the Civil War, whose valor and skill in the command of great armies, is to-day the common glory of the restored Union, has contributed an introduction. No survivor of the great struggle has a better right to speak of Gettysburg than General Daniel E. Sickles. In this connection the following letter is appreciatively reproduced.