Page:Confederate Portraits.djvu/119

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book much later still, could express himself in this venom- ous fashion : ** There was a man on the left of the line who did not care to make the battle win. He knew where it was, had viewed it from its earliest formation, had orders for his part in it, but so withheld part of his com- mand from it as to make cooperative concert of action impracticable. He had a pruriency for the honors of the field of Mars, was eloquent, before the fires of the bivouac and his chief, of the glory of war's gory shield ; but when its envied laurels were dipping to his grasp, when the heavy field called for bloody work, he found the placid horizon, far and beyond the cavalry, more lovely and inviting." ^^

This spirit is even more apparent in Longstreet's re- marks about Jackson and Virginia. Here again one should read Colonel Allan's noble expression of Virginia's opinion about Longstreet.^^ This only emphasizes such remarks as the following, in regard to Harper's Ferry:

    • Jackson was quite satisfied with the campaign, as the

Virginia papers made him the hero of Harper's Ferry, although the greater danger was with McLaws, whose service was the severer and more important" ; ^^ or this other, when Jackson declined Longstreet's assistance in the Valley : " I had been left in command on the Rapidan, but was not authorized to assume command of the Val- ley district. As the commander of the district did not care to have an officer there of higher rank, the subject was discontinued." ^^ These things make one recur to

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