Soon Longstreet was the cause of all the Confederate army’s defeats. The keepers of Lee’s “sacred memory,” including his former artillery chief the Episcopal Reverend William Pendleton, invented a series of outright fabrications accusing Longstreet of disobeying Lee’s command to attack earlier, thereby losing the Battle of Gettysburg, and with it the cause of Southern independence. When James Longstreet died in 1904 the good ladies of the United Daughters of the Confederacy voted not to send flowers to the funeral. His recognition as a great general far ahead of his time would have to await
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