From Manassas to Appomattox: Memoirs of the Civil War in America

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[Illustration: James Longstreet]




  FROM MANASSAS TO APPOMATTOX

  MEMOIRS OF THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA


  BY JAMES LONGSTREET,
  LIEUTENANT-GENERAL CONFEDERATE ARMY


  _ILLUSTRATED WITH PLATES, MAPS, PORTRAITS, AND ENGRAVINGS
  SPECIALLY PREPARED FOR THIS WORK_


  PHILADELPHIA
  J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
  1896




  COPYRIGHT, 1895, BY
  J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.


  _All Rights reserved._


  ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA,
  U.S.A.




  THIS WORK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO THE
  OFFICERS AND SOLDIERS OF THE FIRST CORPS OF THE ARMY
  OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA

  TO THE LIVING AND THE DEAD

  In Memory of

  THEIR BRAVE DEEDS, THEIR TOILS, THEIR TRIBULATIONS,
  AND THEIR TRIUMPHS




PREFACE.


Immediately after the surrender of the Confederate armies engaged in the
war between the States, General Lee undertook to write of the campaigns of
the Army of Northern Virginia while under his command, and asked such
assistance as I could give in supplying reports, despatches, and letters
of his, the originals of which had been lost or destroyed. Under the
impression that they could not be put to better use, such as were then in
hand were packed and sent him. He gave up the work, and after a few years
his death made it impossible that the world should ever receive the
complete story of the Confederate campaigns in Virginia from the noble
mind that projected and controlled them.

Possibly, had I not expected our commander to write the history of those
campaigns, I should have written it myself a decade or so earlier than I
have done. But, personally, I am not sorry that I write of the war thirty
years after its close, instead of ten or twenty.

While I am so constituted, temperamentally, that I could view then almost
exactly as I do now the great struggle in which I bore a part, I do not
know that others, in any considerable number, might have so regarded it at
the earlier periods to which I refer.

I believe that now, more fully than then, the public is ready to receive,
in the spirit in which it is written, the story which I present.

It is not my purpose to philosophize upon the war, but I cannot refrain
from expressing my profound thankfulness that Providence has spared me to
such time as I can see the asperities of the great conflict softened, its
passions entering upon the sleep of oblivion, only its nobler--if less
immediate--results springing into virile and vast life. I believe there is
to-day, _because of the war_, a broader and deeper patriotism in all
Americans; that patriotism throbs the heart and pulses the being as
ardently of the South Carolinian as of the Massachusetts Puritan; that the
Liberty Bell, even now, as I write, on its Southern pilgrimage, will be as
reverently received and as devotedly loved in Atlanta and Charleston as in
Philadelphia and Boston. And to stimulate and evolve this noble sentiment
all the more, what we need is the resumption of fraternity, the hearty
restoration and cordial cultivation of neighborly, brotherly relations,
faith in Jehovah, and respect for each other; and God grant that the happy
vision that delighted the soul of the sweet singer of Israel may rest like
a benediction upon the North and the South, upon the Blue and the Gray.

The spirit in which this work has been conceived, and in which I have
conscientiously labored to carry it out, is one of sincerity and fairness.
As an actor in, and an eyewitness of, the events of 1861-65, I have
endeavored to perform my humble share of duty in passing the materials of
history to those who may give them place in the records of the
nation,--not of the South nor of the North,--but in the history of the
United Nation. It is with such magnified view of the responsibility of
saying the truth that I have written.

I yield to no one as a champion of the Southern soldier wherever he may
have fought and in whatever army, and I do not think I shall be charged
more now than in war-time with "underestimating the enemy." Honor to all!
If I speak with some particularity of the First Corps of the Army of
Northern Virginia, it must be ascribed in part to the affection of a
commander, and in part to my desire to relieve its brave officers and men
in the ranks from unjust aspersions. After General Lee's death, various
writers on the Southern cause combined with one accord to hold the First
Corps and its commander responsible for all adversity that befell the
army. I being under the political ban, and the political passions and
prejudices of the times running high, they had no difficulty in spreading
their misrepresentations South and North until some people, through their
mere reiteration, came to accept them as facts.