we propose hereafter to ventilate), and will doubtless have a wide sale both at the North and at the South. While there are some notable exceptions, the book seems, in the main, much freer from bitterness towards the South than might be expected in the biography of one who thought proper to side with the enemies of the State which gave him birth, the section in which he had so long lived, and the people from whom he had received so much kindness. And while deeply regretting that any son of the South should have brought himself to draw his sword against the land of his birth, yet it is a source of a certain sort of pride that the North was compelled to bestow her highest naval honors on this Southron, while she owed so much of her success in the field to Winfield Scott, George H. Thomas, Canby, Blair, Sykes, Ord, Getty, Anderson, Alexander, Nelson, and other Southern officers, and the 400,000 Southern born men (chiefly from Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, West Virginia and Tennessee), not counting the negroes, who served in her ranks. How different the result might have been if all these had been true to their section and the principles of their fathers!
General Longstreet's Paper in the Philadelphia Times of March 13th in reply to Generals A. L. Long and Fitz. Lee will excite attention and elicit wide comment. We make here no criticism upon the article, and express no opinion upon the merits of the questions at issue.
But there is one statement made by General Longstreet which we feel called on to notice, for reasons which will appear. In reference to General Lee's "Final and full report of the Pennsylvania campaign and the battle of Gettysburg," which we published in our papers for July, 1876, General Longstreet says: "Since his [Lee's] death another account has been published by unofficial parties as his official report. But it is a paper prepared after both sides were known and for the special purpose of readjusting the original reports so that it might be so construed as to meet the wishes of those who have combined to throw the responsibility of the failure upon my shoulders."
Now if this statement is true, we made a very serious blunder in publishing as General Lee's report something patched up for a purpose after his death, and a grave suspicion is cast upon the authenticity of the reports we publish. But we think that even General Longstreet, had he done us the honor to read our introduction to the report (vol. II, pp. 33-34), would be compelled to admit the overwhelming proofs of the genuineness of this report. We have only space to repeat them very briefly:
- The report was originally published in 1869—nearly two years before General Lee's death—by Mr. Wm. Swinton (author of the "Army of the Potomac") in the February number of the Historical Magazine, New York.
- In April, 1869, General Lee told General Early that he had received the published copy of the report, and that it was "substantially correct."
- Colonel Charles Marshall, General Lee's Military Secretary, stated that he had lent Mr. Swinton the original rough draft of the report from which a copy had been made for General Lee, and which was the same as that published in the Historical Magazine.
- The copy from which we printed was a MS. found among the papers of Michael Kelly, who was a clerk in General Cooper's office, and was identical with the copy printed in the Historical Magazine (and afterwards reprinted in the Southern Magazine, Baltimore, for August 1872) except that it corrected several verbal errors, and added several paragraphs at the close in reference to the conduct of our officers and men and our captures at Gettysburg. Our MS. is evidently a copy of the finally corrected report of General Lee, and its authenticity seems to us beyond all doubt.
We have not space, nor is it necessary, to make any comment.
