was made up. It stands unassailable​—​needing no defenders. Back of the day that opened so auspiciously for the Confederate cause at the first Manassas, and of the four years that followed, lies the record of a quarter of a century in the Union army.

In those times General Longstreet, at Cerro Gordo, Molino del Rey, and Chapultepec, was aiding to win the great empire of the West; in subsequent hard Indian campaigns lighting the fagots of a splendid western civilization, adding new glory to American arms and, in the struggles of a nation that fell, a new star of the first magnitude to the galaxy of American valor, completing one of the most lustrous pages in the world’s war history. That page cannot be dimmed or darkened; it rests secure in its own white splendor, above the touch of detractors.

General Longstreet has of late years deemed it unnecessary to make defence of his military integrity, save such as may be found in his memoirs, “Manassas to Appomattox,” published nearly ten years since. He has held that his deeds stand on the impartial pages of the nation’s records​—​their own defender.

The cold historian of our Civil War of a hundred years hence will not go for truth to the picturesque reminiscences of General John B. Gordon, nor to the pyrotechnics of General Fitzhugh Lee, nor yet to the somewhat hysterical ravings of Rev. Mr. Pendleton and scores of other modern essayists who have sought to fix the failure of Gettysburg upon General Longstreet. The coming chronicler will cast aside the rubbish of passion and hate that followed the war, and have recourse to the nation’s official war records, and in the cool, calm lights of the letters and reports of the participants, written at the time, will place the blunder of Gettysburg where it belongs. Longstreet’s fame has nothing to fear in that hour.