Longstreet's Evil Twin?

samgrant

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Retired Moderator
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A secret source suggests the following:

"Did you know there were two James Longstreets? There were. There was the one Lee relied on, and there was the one he took with him to Gettysburg."

I'm not sure what to make of this. Is something sinister implied?

Now I'm thinking, why didn't he take the right one?
 
Longstreet's problem was that his PR man hadn't been born yet.

Michael Shaara did a very nice job in that capacity when he finally came along.
 
In the church of Saint Robert E. Lee, it is not possible for Bobby Lee to have done anything wrong. So somebody had to be blamed for the defeat at Gettysburg. So old Pete got the blame. The truth is Lee's tactics were faulty. Lee knew it and he never blamed Longstreet.
 
Cousins?

I have a theory that James Longstreet and Nathan Forrest might have been distant cousins. Both knew a dumb plan when they saw one.
 
nope.....

Ah-Ah!!!! General Ewell was the evil twin brother. Everyone just pointed at the wrong brother.
 
Who to blame

With defeat, Lee was the only remaining general to honor.

Poor Lee marched his entire army into Adams County, a county with too few farms with too little forage for his huge army and too few wells to supply water for long.

With too little forage and water for such a large army, the Union had a blocking action, that forced Lee to attack.

We "honor" Gettysburg for the battle that was fought there. We should never think well of Gettysburg as some kind of logistics center.
Gettysburg was a good place for the Confederate army to wind up dead.
 
Well, what was Lee to do?

His advance units found a small to middling size bunch of Federals down the road.

Well, might as well explore this.

With Stuart off away somewhere, he could not know that the whole F...ing Union Army was coming up to that place.

OK, so that's the first day; so far, so good.

Now, the next morning he still doesn't know just how many Federals are ensconced on those heights, but ther is more tan there were yesterday.

Well, he has always had sucess attacking.

........


Please continue this scenario as you see it!
 
Well he should have thought about Marye's Hights before he ordered a frontal assault against troops holding high ground with time to dig in.
 
Maybe Lee was a trendsetter?

rivrrat said:
Well he should have thought about Marye's Hights before he ordered a frontal assault against troops holding high ground with time to dig in.

cos plenty of First World War Generals did the same old thing...........
 
Should've put a tongue-in-cheek emoticon on that one.

The question has been asked before, but the "not taking away from Marse Robert" is the closest answer. When the war ended, a criticism force-field dropped around Bobby Lee. History developed around this shield. Now that the shield is weakened and penetrable, some critical examinations of Lee's generalship have slipped through. The shield still manages to suppress much criticism.

Don't know if you'll ever feel safe to stand up in a Charleston SCV meeting and say, "Lee screwed up badly on several occasions."

Ole
 
I probably wouldn't either, he did an incredible job for four years was probably doomed from the start. It just seems to me that Longstreet and Hood catch a lot of flak. Lee doesn't. As I mentioned in a previouse post, a lot of Lee's subordinates were company grade officers at the beginning of the ward and rose to General in a short span of time. that is a lot to learn in such a short time. It is a miricale they did as well as they did.

PINCKNEY
 
PINCKNEYUSMCRET said:
I probably wouldn't either, he did an incredible job for four years was probably doomed from the start. It just seems to me that Longstreet and Hood catch a lot of flak. Lee doesn't. As I mentioned in a previouse post, a lot of Lee's subordinates were company grade officers at the beginning of the ward and rose to General in a short span of time. that is a lot to learn in such a short time. It is a miricale they did as well as they did.

PINCKNEY

Not only true of Lee's officers. For example George Armstrong Custer Class of 1861 was a Major General of Volunteers by 1864. After the war he reverted to his permanent rank of Captian USA.

If I remember correctly, someone once aske Lee who was responsible at Gettysburg and he replied "I beleive the Yankees had somthing to do with it." At least that is how the story goes.
 
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