Longstreet by Elizabeth Varon

Author:Elizabeth Varon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2023-11-21T00:00:00+00:00

PART III

Reconciliation

Chapter 8

RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL

I

In January 1876 Longstreet began in earnest to defend his war record by providing the New Orleans Republican with a copy of the letter he had written to his uncle A. B. Longstreet from Culpeper, Virginia, on July 24, 1863, just three weeks after the Battle of Gettysburg. Longstreet, it will be recalled, had confided to Augustus that “the battle was not made as I would have had it. My idea was to throw ourselves between the enemy and Washington, select a strong position, and force the enemy to attack us.” Professing his abiding loyalty to Lee, Longstreet added, “As we failed of success I must take my part of that responsibility…. As General Lee is our commander, he should have all the support and influence that we can give him.” Longstreet closed the letter with the prediction “The truth will be known in time.” The Republican printed the letter in full, editorializing that Lee was responsible for the “rash policy” that resulted in defeat, and saying of Longstreet that although he “was overruled by his commanding officer,” he “did the best he could to turn the mistake into success.” Longstreet fed the paper a second claim: namely, that in January 1864 Lee had written him a letter confessing regret at having not chosen defensive tactics. Lee’s letter purportedly told Longstreet, “Had I taken your advice at Gettysburg, instead of pursuing the course I did, how different all might have been.”1

It is unlikely but not inconceivable that Lee wrote such a letter to Longstreet. On the one hand, as historian Earl Hess has put it, “It is quite possible that there is a germ of truth in the notion that Lee went through a period of analysis and concluded, too late, that a flanking movement might have been worth trying.” In an 1889 private letter to Longstreet, a former staff officer named Erasmus Taylor vouched for the existence of the January 1864 letter, recalling that Longstreet received Lee’s missive while in winter quarters at Morristown in East Tennessee, and that Longstreet had called Taylor into his tent and read him the letter, “saying that it some time might be important for some other than [Longstreet] to remember it.” On the other hand, the fact that Longstreet never produced the text of the entire letter, and that he relied initially, in 1875, on hearsay (Lawley’s and Goree’s reports) rather than citing a Lee letter militate against the existence of such a document. Longstreet’s references to the letter were sporadic and tentative, suggesting a lack of confidence in his own memory of it.2

The conservative Southern press called the Republican article “a vain attempt” by Longstreet to restore his damaged reputation, and Jubal Early and Fitzhugh Lee led the way in assailing Longstreet for slandering Lee. Both cast doubt on the existence of the January 1864 letter. Early suggested that if Lee wrote something like “Had I taken your advice,” he was doing so to humor or console

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