Page:Confederate Portraits.djvu/107

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note to General Lee, urging him to order Hill away and concentrate at Sharpsburg. To that note I got no answer." ^^ Do you wonder why?

But Gettysburg is the best of all. And observe, I take no part in the controversy as to what Longstreet actually did. It does not become an outsider and a civilian to do so. His judgment as to possibilities before and as to events after may have been wise, may have been correct. What interests me solely is Longstreet' s character as displayed in Longstreet' s own words.

To begin with, then, he is opposed to the campaign from the start, believing that the main operations should be carried on in the West. However, finding Lee unwill- ing to agree to this, Longstreet permits his commander to enter upon his project. " I then accepted his proposal to make a campaign into Pennsylvania, provided it Judge of his disgust when they found themselves at Gettysburg and the commander ventured to overstep the lines which his mentor had laid down for him. " I sug- gested that the course seemed to be at variance with the plan of the campaign that had been agreed on before leaving Fredericksburg. He said, * If the enemy is there to-morrow, we must attack him.' ... I said that it seemed to me that if, during our council at Fredericks- burg, we had described the position in which we de- sired to get the two armies, we could not have expected to get the enemy in a better position for us than he then

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