He was the “War-Horse of the Confederacy.”
He was in the thickest of the fight from Manassas to Appomattox.
He was familiarly known throughout the army as “Old Pete,” and was considered the hardest fighter in the Confederate service.
He had the unbounded confidence of his troops, and “the whole army became imbued with new vigor in the presence of the foe when it became known down the line that ‘Old Pete’ was up.”
Why, then, did not the Wilmington camp pass those resolutions?
Because General Longstreet was a Republican. For this reason he was
He was charged with disobeying General Lee’s most vital orders at Gettysburg, causing the loss of the battle and the ultimate destruction of the Confederacy.
“So long as Lee lived no one attacked Longstreet’s military honor.”
General Longstreet was a great general. He was an able strategist, a hard fighter, and a faithful soldier. So long as Lee lived no one charged Longstreet with failure to make the fanciful sunrise attack on the second day at Gettysburg. But when Lee had died, this calumny was started, and it was used in hounding him to the day of his death--on that day certain misguided Daughters of the Confederacy refusing to send flowers for his bier. Longstreet was the victim of a foul persecution by a partisan press--the like of which we see nowadays at ever-increasing intervals. They did not approve his ideas, and they ruined him. He advised the South to accept the results of the war; his business was taken from him, his friends were estranged, and his life was made a burden.
His magnificent services deserved better reward. But history will give him his place; intolerance even now is departing; and as for Longstreet himself, he stands to-night before the Judge of all the world.
“Republicanism does not necessarily involve treason to the South.”
One aspect of General Longstreet’s career from Appomattox till his death the other day brings out a very unlovely attribute which was obtrusive in the South during these years. That was the ostracism to which he was subject because he joined the Republican party and accepted two or three offices from Republican Presidents. This antagonism towards him by a large portion of the old Confederate element gradually diminished as a new generation in the South appeared on the scene. Some of the feeling, however, remained to the close of his days, and evinced itself in the obituaries of many of the Southern papers.