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SCAPEGOAT IN VICTORY: JAMES LONGSTREET AND THE BATTLE OF SECOND MANASSAS Gary W. Gallagher James longstreet watched as long lines of his infantry poured eastward toward shaken Federal units deployed on both sides of the Warrenton turnpike. It was about 4:30 on the afternoon of August 30, 1862, and the battle of Second Manassas was entering its final phase. Gathering his horse, which pranced and reared in response to the tumult of the massive Southern counterattack, Longstreet turned to see R. E. Lee riding toward him. Longstreet had anticipated his commander's order to press an enemy unnerved by Confederate cannon that shredded their exposed left flank, and now the fighting had turned decisively in favor of the Army of Northern Virginia. For a few minutes the commanders observed the action together. Off to their left, "Stonewall" Jackson's troops, who had carried the brunt of the combat for two brutal days, prepared to add their weight to the assault. Lee presently rode off, but Longstreet remained to watch. Terrain and events conspired to provide him and his staff with a memorable panorama of triumph, as Confederate infantry and artillery moved up and then down and then up again across undulating ridges in furious pursuit of the Union forces. By nightfall Southern arms had secured a second great victory on the ground where thirteen months earlier the war had begun in earnest.1 Following closely the successful defense of Richmond during the Seven Days, Second Manassas ignited the imagination of the people of the Confederacy. Optimism replaced the awful memories of the spring 1 James Longstreet, From Manassas to Appomattox (1896; reprint ed., Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana Univ. Press, 1960), 188-89; Gilbert Moxley Sorrel, Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer (1905; reprint ed., Jackson, Tenn.: McCowet-Mercer Press, 1959), 91-92; Douglas Southall Freeman, fi. £. Lee: A Biography, 4 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1934-36), 2:334-35. Civil War History, Vol. XXXIV, No. 4, © 1988 by the Kent State University Press 294CIVIL WAR HISTORY of 1862, when a seemingly endless series of disasters had befallen their western armies. Tributes from the Southern press lauded the performances of Lee and Longstreet and Jackson. From the welter of divisional leaders who had fought in the Seven Days, Longstreet and Jackson emerged as Lee's principal lieutenants. Lee himself gave equal praise to his two wing commanders, who had confirmed his faith in their abilities to handle large numbers of men.2 Under the guidance of this triumvirate, the Army of Northern Virginia had made a critical passage toward maturity. Fifteen years after the victory at Second Manassas, James Longstreet's conduct at the battle came under severe criticism. With both Lee and Jackson in their graves and thus unable to testify, a coterie of former officers in the Army of Northern Virginia claimed that Longstreet had failed his chief and placed at peril his fellow wing commander. Their charges were very serious: Longstreet was slow to reach the battlefield; three times he refused Lee's call for an attack on August 29 while Jackson 's hard-pressed brigades fought alone; he failed to commit his troops as quickly as possible on August 30; and he claimed far more than his share of credit for the success on that day. In sum, they argued, Longstreet gave ample evidenceof the plodding, stubborn, and self-centered behavior that would be repeated at Gettysburg. These criticisms deserve close review because they have colored subsequent treatment of Longstreet 's part in the campaign. Without an appreciation of their origins and the extent to which they were accurate, a full understanding of the Confederate side of the battle is impossible. Disputes about Longstreet's performance at Second Manassas grew out of the larger Gettysburg controversy that raged from the early 1870s into the twentieth century. At the January 1873 dedication of the Lee Chapel in Lexington, Virginia, William Nelson Pendleton, Lee's former chief of artillery, blamed Longstreet for the defeat at Gettysburg. Jubal A. Early, J. William Jones, Fitzhugh Lee, Richard Taylor, and others seconded Pendleton, who alleged that Longstreet's slowness to attack on 2 On the Virginia press, see Douglas...

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