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| Lt. Gen. James Longstreet |
A lot of ink has been spilt over the decades on Gen. James Longstreet and the Gettysburg campaign. Believing that they were just fighting defensive battles, Longstreet was opposed to the attacks on July 2 and 3. He wanted to find a defensive position and let the Federals attack them. Frequently lost in the discussion is the fact that Longstreet did not even really want to be on this campaign.
Following Chancellorsville, Confederate Army of Northern
Virginia commander Robert E. Lee sought to once again invade the North. He had
many reasons, including a dwindling supply of foodstuffs and wanting to pull
the enemy army out of Virginia. A Confederate victory on Northern soil might
just galvanize the beginning peace party in the North to press for an end to
the war. Elsewhere in the Confederacy, the primary Confederate army of the
western theater was locked in a siege at Vicksburg, Mississippi. There were
some who believed that a portion of the Army of Northern Virginia should be
detached and sent to help defeat the Federal forces.
Longstreet was one of those who wanted to ship a portion of
the Virginia army west. Writing in the Philadelphia Weekly Times in 1897,
Longstreet recalled visiting the Secretary of War James Seddon as he passed
through Richmond following his assignment in the Suffolk area. Seddon asked
Longstreet his views on the matter of sending part of the ANV west. “I replied
that there was a better plan, in my judgement, for relieving Vicksburg than by
direct assault upon Grant. I proposed that the army then concentrating at
Jackson, Mississippi, be moved swiftly to Tullahoma, where General Bragg was
located with a fine army, confronting an army of about equal strength under
General Rosecrans, and that at the same time two divisions of my corps be
hurried forward to the same point. The simultaneous arrival of these
reinforcements would give us a grand army at Tullahoma. With this army General
Johnston might speedily crush Rosecrans, and that he should then turn his force
towards the north, and with his splendid army march through Tennessee and Kentucky,
and threaten the invasion of Ohio.”
When Longstreet met with Lee, “I laid it before him with the
freedom justified by our close personal and official relations. . . . We
discussed it over and over, and I discovered that his main objection to it was
that it would, if adopted, force him to divide his army. He left no room to
doubt, however, that he believed the idea of an offensive campaign was not only
important, but necessary.”[1]
Longstreet brings up the same argument in 1896 when he pens
his autobiography, From Manassas to Appomattox.[2]
Why not reinforce Pemberton in Vicksburg? “Grant seems to be
a fighting man, and seems to be determined to fight. Pemberton seems not to be
a fighting man. . . the fewer troops he has the better,” Longstreet wrote
Wigfall on May 13, 1863.[3]
Historians are mixed on Longstreet’s motivation. Freeman speculates
that “It is impossible to say how far his ambition influenced his proposal or
to what extent his plan stirred his ambition. Perhaps he dreamed of supplanting
Bragg and of winning the decisive victory.”[4]
Piston found Longstreet’s proposal “strategically sound,” but questioned his
motives. Did Longstreet wish to replace Bragg? Johnston out-ranked Bragg. Maybe
Longstreet still preferred serving under Joseph E. Johnston. Piston goes on to
agree with Jones and Connelly who wrote that Longstreet was a part of the “western
concentration bloc.” This group of men feared that the industries in East
Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama were susceptible to Federal attacks and Bragg
should be reinforced by portions of Lee’s army. Longstreet actually wrote Texas
Senator Louis T. Wigfall about such a proposal in February 1863 concerning this
concentration of troops.[5]
Wert argues that Longstreet was not a member of that “western concentration
bloc.” He bases this assertion on the letter that Longstreet wrote Wigfall on
May 13, 1863. Longstreet told the senator that if a forward movement was
ordered, “we can spare nothing from this army to re-enforce in the West.”
Instead, the Army of Northern Virginia should be reinforced. “If we could cross
the Potomac with one hundred & fifty thousand men, I think we could demand Lincoln
to declare his purpose. . . . When I agreed with the Secy & yourself about
sending troops west I was under the impression that we would be obliged to
remain on the defensive here. But the prospect of an advance changes the aspect
of affairs to us entirely.”[6]
Would the proposal of a combination of men and commanders in
central Tennessee have reaped the benefits that Longstreet proposed? Maybe. The
plan of Lee moving north certainly did not work to the best advantage of the
Confederates.
[1] The
Annals of War written by Leading Participants North and South, 416-17.
[2] 330-31.
[3] Wert,
General James Longstreet, 245.
[4] Freeman,
R.E. Lee, 3:20.
[5] Piston,
Lee’s Tarnished Lieutenant, 42, 44.
[6] Wert,
General James Longstreet, 244-45.
