Why do you criticize McLaws unfairly? I cannot think of a serious mistake. He participated in the Seven Days, Second Manassas, Sharpsburg and Fredericksburg with distinction. On the first day of Chancellorsville, he helped Jackson repulse Hooker's brief offensive and at the third day of that battle he helped General Lee oust Sedgwick from Fredericksburg.
McLaws didn't participate "with distinction" at Antietam/Sharpsburg, his command skills were only marginally tested at Fredericksburg (so its hard to tell if he's worthy of any credit with so little done to give him a rating for), and as for Chancellorsville I'll let Freeman describe it:
"McLaws -- shown to hesitant and unaggressive." - page 515 of the one volume abridged version of Lee's Lieutenants.
And Freeman is not known for casually making such comments about Confederate officers.
Nor is Lee leaving someone's name off the list of those praised something he did without very good reason. If you want to say you know better about McLaws's performance there than General Lee, I'd happily listen to a well reasoned argument.
At Gettysburg, he attacked alongside Hood and did his best. If Longstreet had done what his subordinates did, Gettysburg's outcome would be very different.
If Longstreet had done what his subordinates did, he would have been incapacitated early in the fight (if talking Hood), ineffectual (if talking Law, whose control over Hood's division was minimal on day 2), largely irrelevant (Pickett - his division was not in a position where his leadership could change very much) or ordinary at best (McLaws).
How is this going to change anything substantially?
1st Corps fought magnificently, but this battle showed little tactical acumen for the generals in gray (along with several in blue, but if we're talking Longstreet's subordinates what Slocum did is kinda beside the point).
At Chickamauga, McLaws behaved bravely and contributed to the Confederate victory.
Finally, I don't see an error he committed during Longstreet's Fruitless Expedition to Knoxville. Longstreet wanted a scapegoat for his failure and found two: McLaws and Robertson. Later, Longstreet confessed that what he had done to them was pure injustice.
Civil War Scholar.
http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=moawar;cc=moawar;q1=McLaws;rgn=full text;idno=waro0051;didno=waro0051;view=image;seq=509;page=root;size=100 Given when Kershaw reports McLaws resuming command of the division relative to the fighting, you might want to reconsider claiming McLaws contributed to the victory.
If that's not convincing enough, he's mentioned just four times in Peter Cozzen's book on Chickamauga (over five hundred pages long not counting endnotes and the order of battle) - none of which are during the battle.
So where the heck is the notion of him behaving bravely from when there's little sign of him even being present?
As for Knoxville, I leave that to those who know it better than I do to properly analyze his performance there, but there's nothing about it I can think of that stands out as praiseworthy.
And Longstreet confessed that when according to what source? If you say Foote I'm going to treat that the same as "So, we don't have an actual source for this." given the inability to tell where Foote got anything he claims was said or happened from.
Frankly, the man (McLaws) failed to live up to expectations. That doesn't mean he was a horrific failure, but the only major consequence to him not being present in 1864 was that Kershaw's brigade not having a permanent replacement of the appropriate rank when the 20th South Carolina Infantry joined it meant that the green colonel of said green regiment was its senior colonel and was not prepared for the situation of 1864.
But as far as division command goes, McLaws showed no sign that he would have guided the division better than Kershaw.
(It'll pass.) Don't think Longstreet would have had a chance to make a difference, in this particular campaign. However, I regret that Davis made that insistence. Except for his actions at Chickamauga, the remainder of Longstreet's stint in Tennessee was the waste of a good officer to Lee.
Bringing the