Longstreet AGAIN

We all know about the post war squabble concerning the "Old War Horse" and how he allegedly sabotaged Lee's efforts at Second Manassas and Gettysburg, etc. Writers like Freeman and especially Dowdey carried on the attack well into the 20th century.
Have y'all read Robert Krick's article in Gallagher's SECOND DAY AT GETTYSBURG? This guy must be a fan of Clifford Dowdey. He relies mostly on comments from Moxley Sorrell (a long time friend of Longstreet) and McLaws, who was on good terms with Longstreet until Gettysburg.
McLaws in a letter to wife after Gettysburg: "During the battle <Longstreet> was very excited, giving contrary orders to everyone, and was exceedingly overbearing..." "I consider him a humbug, a man of small capacity, very obstinate, not at all chivalrous, exceedingly conceited, and totally selfish."
Sorrell at Gettysburg told McLaws, "Yes, I gave you the order to retire, and it was given to me by Longstreet himself, but now he denied giving it."
The article goes into Longstreet's failure at Fort Sanders (Knoxville) where he wound up jailing McLaws and others without charges. McLaws insisted on charges and a military trial which he was vindicated.
An article well worth reading.

I met Bob Krick on a tour - a total gentleman - and THE MAN when it comes to the ANV. (IMHO) But for sure, he's not a Longstreet fan. So, with that bias aside - Longstreet's an interesting person, had his good points, and his bad points, and a hot temper - but Marse Robert thought a lot of him, which is a good reference. I often wonder (I know - another what-if) if Lee had lived, what his take on Longstreet's detractors would have been.
P.S. And I do like Gallagher's books - (pro or con), he always gives you food for thought by the articles and authors he chooses. (By the way - Gallagher co hosted the same tour with Bob Krick).

I think the fact that Early et. al., waited until Lee was safely dead before putting their agenda in full production, says a lot about how most of those 'lost causers' thought Lee would respond to their campaign to deify the Legend of 'Marse Robert'' and the 'Lost Cause'.

Lee was in command; not Longstreet. And for 150 years, the neo-confederates have conspired to protect Lee and his decision to invade Pennsylvania. In the end, practically every confederate general was at some fault; Longstreet, Hood, Pendleton, Ewell, Iverson, O'Neal, Heth, Joseph Davis, Pickett, Edward Johnson, Rodes, Archer, Beverly Robertson and William Jones, cavalry, Col. James B. Walton. And others that got some blame, but I missed their name on the first pass through the order of battle.

Everything done, I always suspected, so Lee was blamed for nothing at Gettysburg. And of course, Lee's action in sending two corps, on one road to Gettysburg, without calvary protection, is never blamed. Poor Heth is known, as if he determined that his division was to lead the menagerie into Gettysburg.

As the neo-confederates would say of Lee; he surrendered at Appomattox; he never lost a battle or lost the war. Only his too numerous subordinates, too numerous to blame even for a Lee, were the ones to blame for Gettysburg.

Of course Jubal Early never took any blame. He had only been in Adams County and Gettysburg days before any of the armies arrived. If only he had warned Lee not to come to Gettysburg, because of a meagre supply of water and forage in the area. But what amateur blames lack of water and forage for a lost battle. With all the future monuments, how were the amateurs to say Lee should never have come to Gettysburg. Gettysburg became a beautiful place; a beautiful place with monuments. A wonderful place to blame so many generals.

Yes, it's really tough for me to poke my nose in here given how little I have to back up a 'case'. It has always just seemed to me that Shaara's summation on Longstreet ( in 'Killer Angels', sorry... ) couldn't be so completely dismissed as I've heard it ( not here ) . He wasn't just a novelist, he was an historian also, a very respectable one. Yes, that's 'just' his take on history, but he based it on his interpretion of the evidence, as does I gather Krick.

These poor guys are never going to RIP, wonder if they're up there re-hashing battles when they cross paths?

What major general in the Civil War, other than Lee, didn't have their critics within their own ranks? In Jan. 1863 there was a virtual mutiny within both the AoT and the AoP, and that's only two (rather large) examples. Jackson couldn't seem to start a campaign without one or another of his senior subordinates under arrest for failure to follow orders.

In success these rivalries tended to be subordianted, but when an army has experienced a major defeat (or a string of defeats), it seems like every officer above the rank of Captain thinks he could have done the job better than the commanding general.

I know that Longstreet had a series of problems with Laws and Robertson. "Old Polly" Robertson was tired and worn out, and his relief from command for failure to obey orders was long overdue by the time of the Murfreesburogh campaign (following Knoxville). Laws was critical of Longstreet, from at least Gettysburg onward, blaming him for the loss of Lookout Mountain and therefore Chattanooga, and for the failed Knoxville campaign.

I am not in a position to judge whether Longstreet or Laws were right in their arguments. I've read some of the original reports, along with Law's criticisims. Sometimes Laws criticized Longstreet for things which may have been outside Longstreet's control (Laws couldn't have known about discussions solely between Bragg and Longstreet, for example). But for the most part his criticisms were too general to pin down to specific points - either he assumes that the reader already knows the facts behind the discussion, or he is intentionally using the ad hominum attack which was rather common in those days.

His open discussions of his feelings had long passed the point of insubordination and were detrimental to moral. He had to go, for one reason or another, and the handling of the resignation (i.e., official correspondence) was a good a reason as any.

Lee regularly found reason to transfer "trouble-makers" in the first two years of the war to commands in the west, but after Gettysburg and Chattanooga that solution wouldn't work. The Confederate War Dept. needed officers in the field with lots of experience and who were generally competent in their jobs, even if they were quarrelsome. Davis understood this, but this also ran against the need to preserve discipline and order within the armies.

Courts-martials were extraordinarily difficult to convene and time-consuming, in that they needed an officer of higher rank as the presiding officer, and a jury composed of officers of similar rank as the defendant. By the time you are talking about a courts-martial of an officer in command of a division or a corps, it was virtually impossible to convene the appropriate number of officers of sufficient rank, without causing considerable disruption to the duties of each member of the courts-martial. Then there is the matter of having the witnesses available to produce testimony, which can tie up those officers (frequently divisional and corps staff officers). By the time you get everybody together, a number of such witnesses might well be dead or recovering from serious wounds, sometimes forcing extended recesses of the courts-martials until a witness or their reports are available. After experiencing a couple of years of such attempted courts-martials, both Davis and Lee generally preferred to have such matters handled by transfers or other means, if possible.

One of the reasons why a lot of these arguments against Longstreet didn't appear publically in print until after Lee's death is that he would not abide such bickering, and would come down hard on anyone engaged in such conduct. It was his position that he bore the responsibility for any mistakes, and it was not the place of his subordinates to finger-point against one another. He correctly knew that such conduct was detrimental to the morale of the army, but that also seems to be a general personality trait which he carried with him to his death. As he said after viewing the dead caused by a mistake on the part of one of his seasoned generals: "We will speak no more about this."

to read this post as well as the one above it by Opncoronet, it would seem that it is the collective opinion of the two of you that those of us who aren't "Lost Causers" are "NeoConfederates"..... Mods, do any of you see a problem with these posts??

I doubt many of them do...

I beg your pardon, I do not understand your comment. Please clarify.

The "Lost Cause" as well as Longstreet will stay a topic as long as the ACW will be studied and discussed ... though I´m curious if the Neo-Confederates will get a substitute one day. In many areas the world can only get worse, so we´ll see.

i am still confused as to whom you are aiming your comments.. and the reason for them

Is it me, or are some of the members speaking in tongues?

No, no one is speaking in tounges.. apparently I have a disconnect between my eyes and my brain.... I did not understand your comments at all and could not figure out who you were talkin to or what you meant... sorry to have created confusion

There are those on this board who, apparently, want to make a distinction between 'lost cause' and 'neo-confederate' arguments. But, while I personally, believe that there is no real difference in their arguments, nor the intent of those arguments, I do, from time to time, according to a particular post, assume the distinction (with no real substance IMO) in order to further a discussion, in order not to bog the discussion down into a pointless argument(IMO) over minor discrete differences that might seem exist between one or the other.

si

boy did you misread my post. I don't make a distinction, I despise both terms because they are designed to denigrate another person and like the charge of racism, it is in the eye of the accuser. I find it amazing that those who demand fairness and equality. Those who are setting themselves up as being on the side of the angels are the ones throwing these terms around like candy at a parade.. and you wonder why we get honked off

Here's where I genuinely do not know 'stuff'. What's a neo-confederate, why is that an insult ( or not one, I couldn't tell? ) and what is the lost cause, please? Please know if there's an argument going on I'm not partaking in it, I've just got my notepad out and pen clicked. Yes, there really are people this uninformed, besides which I'm on the blond side.

Just from context, I can get enough to be able to say I did think Lee the man hated the bejeesis out of the whole pedestal/Diety thing, didn't he? I may not have loved the whole Napoleonic Pickett's Charge deal, etc., but everything I've read about Lee the person leaves one with the impression there was a truly 'God fearing', and non-ego-maniacal personality there. Likable, in fact, not at all impressed with his own legend.

I really do not know what those terms mean?