Page:Confederate Portraits.djvu/117

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could not imagine that there could be any other. He acted on it at once — and found himself, among thousands of old comrades, all alone.

And now, surely, we are eager to probe the " wonder- ful majesty" of this ** immovable Gibraltar" for what was human under it, to thrust below the stolid Dutch phleg- matic surface of grim work and rocklike confidence and find the emotions of mortality.

They were there. Let us take the unsighdy ones first and be rid of them. They had a grip on the man's soul that forbids us to pass them by. He was jealous, he was harsh, he was bitter to his enemies. Much there was, un- doubtedly, to bring out these feelings in him. But others have borne as much in a different spirit.

To begin with his attitude towards Lee — or Lee's ad- mirers. Immediately after Gettysburg, perhaps under the influence of Lee's example, he wrote the noble letter to his uncle in which he says: "As we failed, I must take my share of the responsibility. In fact, I would prefer that all the blame should rest upon me. As General Lee is our commander, he should have all the support and in- fluence we can give him. If the blame, if there is any, can be shifted from him to me, I shall help him and our cause by taking it." ^6 But this mood did not last. On which side the fault-finding began is disputed, but it soon grew into bitter recrimination. Longstreet's course, justly or unjustly, was condemned by many, and he retorted with the utmost acridity, in the Philadelphia ** Times"

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