Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 23.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

Points established.

2. After the brilliant victory of the first day, the Confederates ought to have pressed forward and occupied the Gettysburg heights, and General Lee ordered General Ewell to do so, but excused him when he afterwards explained that he was prevented by a report that the enemy were advancing on his flank and rear.

3. We would have won a great and decisive victory on the second day had Longstreet obeyed the orders which there is overwhelming proof General Lee gave him, to attack early in the morning, or, had he carried out the orders which he admits he received to attack at 11 o'clock that morning, but which he managed to put off until 4 o'clock that afternoon.

4. With the great results to be attained, and the confident expectation of winning, General Lee made no mistake in attacking on the third day.

5. We should have pierced Meade's centre, divided his army, smashed to pieces his wings before they could have reunited, and captured Washington and Baltimore, had Longstreet obeyed orders on the third day, and made the attack at daybreak simultaneously with that of Ewell; or made it, as ordered, with his whole corps, supported by A. P. Hill, instead of with a bare 14,000 men against Meade's whole army, while the rest of our army looked on, admired, and wondered while this ‘forlorn hope’ marched to immortal glory, fame, and death.

But I did not mean to go into any discussion of these points, and will only add, as completing the history of the controversy, that Longstreet afterwards continued the fight by publishing in the Century several articles, in which he bitterly criticises General Lee, [348] ridicules Stonewall Jackson as a soldier, belittles A. P. Hill, and makes light of nearly every other Confederate soldier, except—General James Longstreet; who ‘knew it all,’ and virtually did it all—that he submitted to several newspaper interviews, in which he said many unlovely things, and that he has now published his book, which has so fully shown the philosophy of the proverb, ‘Oh, that mine enemy would write a book!’

It will thus be seen that instead of being the meek martyr whom his critics have persecuted and goaded into saying some ugly things, General Longstreet began the controversy, and kept it up—that his attacks upon General Lee have been as unjust as they have been unseemly and ungrateful; and that the only thing ‘politics’ has had to do with the controversy has been that ever since Longstreet became a Republican, a partisan Republican press has labored to make him the great general on the Confederate side, and to exalt him at Lee's expense.

So far as I am personally concerned, while I would not pluck a single leaf that belongs to the laurel crown of the brave leader, the indomitable fighter, the courageous soldier who commanded his old brigade, his old division, his old corps of heroes on so many glorious fields of victory, yet I shall not stand idly by and see him or his partisans criticise and belittle our grand old chief, Robert Edward Lee—the peerless soldier of the centuries—without raising my humble voice or using my feeble pen in indignant burning protest.