Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 23.djvu/244

 238 Southern Historical Society Papers.

[From the Richmond (Va.) Times, Feb'y 2, 1896.]

LONGSTREET AND STUART.

Highly Interesting Review by Colonel John S. Mosby.

CAUSE OF THE LOSS OF GETTYSBURG.

Many of Longstreet's Statements in His Book Combatted by Colonel

Mosby The Want of Cavalry Had Nothing to Do

with the Result of the Battle.

General Longstreet, having acted a great part as a soldier, now appears as the historian of the war. His book will soon be buried in the dust of oblivion, but, fortunately for him, his fame does not rest upon what he has written, but what he has done. No doubt he has had to endure much, as he says, for the sake of his opinions, as every man must who goes in advance of his age, and he has had strong provocation to speak with bitterness of some of his contem- poraries, if he spoke of them at all. But his better angel would have told him that much that he has written about his brothers-in- arms would injure his own reputation more than theirs, and that if he had suffered injustice in defending the right, he had the consola- tion of knowing that

" Only those are crowned and sainted, Who with grief have been acquainted."

He will not be able to pursuade anyone but himself that he was ever the rival of General Lee and Stonewall Jackson, or that Jack- son's fame is factitious and due to his being a Virginian. It is not because he was a Virginian that his monument stands on the bank of the "father of waters," and that a great people beyond the 5ea gave his statue, in bronze, to the State that will cherish his fame as a possession forever.

THE CAVALRY.

I only propose, however, to review that portion of his book that relates to the management of the cavalry in the Gettysburg cam- paign. He says that on June igth, "under the impression that the