This question is actually representative of various questions I get about The Longstreet Society, and I'll use it as an illustration. I should make it clear that this website is not affiliated with the Longstreet Society of Gainesville, Georgia in an official capacity. What that means is that I cannot speak for them nor give the kind of information you might want about the organization. This website is the sole creation of Brian Hampton, with the valued assistance of many individuals and organizations, including, but not limited to, The Longstreet Society.

The Longstreet Society maintains its own website at : http://www.longstreet.org

Or, you can contact them by mail by writing to:

The Longstreet Society
P.O. Box 191
Gainesville, Georgia 30503

2. Where is General Longstreet buried, and how do I get there?

General Longstreet is buried in Alta Vista Cemetery in Gainesville, Georgia. I've actually never been there myself, and I do not live in Georgia, so it would be difficult for me to give directions. I would recommend contacting someone at The Longstreet Society, which is based in Gainesville, for detailed directions. Or, if you're going to Gainesville, I'm sure just about anyone on the street could tell you how to get to the cemetery.

3. When will you be doing updates?

I'll update the Chronicles when I get time and inspiration. (Getting both concurrently is often a very difficult thing.) Updates in the future will not be nearly as frequent as they were when I first put the Chronicles online because I don't daily run across new information I think needs to be here.

4. Can I quote you?

I get this kind of question far more often than I thought I ever would. I have a couple answers, depending on the circumstances.

If you're a student working on a paper for a class and want to quote something in the Chronicles, you need to be aware that I, personally, do not have the kind of credentials that would lend weight to your paper. I myself am a college student and thus cannot be considered an authority that your professor or teacher would recognize as such. If you're using the Chronicles for research of this variety, consider the Chronicles a guide to further research.

You can, of course, quote the various primary documents I keep on the site, but you should provide some kind of bibliographic reference for them. I include information on where I got most of these documents. Those for which I don't specifically provide citation probably came from the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion. (Reports and correspondence would come under this heading.) You may be wondering why I don't provide bibliographic citations for everything. I deal with this in the next question.

If you're wanting to quote me for some other purpose, you may feel free to do so provided you quote me precisely and give proper credit. I also prefer not to be quoted out of context, but then I suppose determining what is and is not out of context is sometimes difficult. If you intend to quote me personally, I would appreciate it if you'd leave me e-mail and let me know for what purpose you are using the quote.

5. May I use the photographs on your site?

The historical pictures, the ones available from the Library of Congress, etc., you are free to use provided you give proper credit for them. In other words, however you use the pictures, make sure you note that they are courtesy of the Library of Congress, etc. If you're wanting to use one of the other pictures taken by me or someone who allowed me to use them, ask me first. Some of these pictures are part of private collections I've been allowed to use, but my being allowed to use them for the Chronicles does not provide anyone else with license for their use as well.

6. May I use the graphics on your site?

Ask me first. You may not use the Longstreet Chronicles logo, the banner at the tops of the pages. The rest of the graphics were either made by me, made by friends who allowed me to use them, or taken from public domain graphics depositories. Please ask before using them, indicating what graphic you'd like to use and for what purpose you plan on using it. I don't envision many circumstances that you couldn't use the graphics, but if the graphic was made by a friend of mine, you'll need their permission as well. In addition, I do not want my graphics on certain websites, such as sites run by white supremacist organizations. If you run one of those, seek elsewhere for assistance.

7. Do you think Longstreet was flawless as a general?

No.

This is actually not a question I am often asked directly, but comments people make to me sometimes indicate they think I believe this. So, to set the record straight, allow me to tell you what I do think.

Longstreet was, in my opinion, the finest corps commander of the Confederacy, possibly the finest corps commander on either side. Yes, I rate him higher than Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, but this does not mean I think Jackson was a bad general. I simply believe his talents were more limited than Longstreet's.

That said, I could, without too much difficulty, detail any battle in which Longstreet took an active role and find mistakes that he made. At some battles, such as Seven Pines, the siege of Chattanooga, and Knoxville, these mistakes would be substantial and glaring. I also believe that Longstreet made several severe errors at Gettysburg, but not the errors for which he has been so loudly criticized, and not errors that affected the outcome of the battle in a dramatic way. I, personally, view Gettysburg much as General Pickett viewed it and think that the Yankees had something to do with why the Confederates lost.

I have no intention of deifying Longstreet in the manner Lee's fans lifted that individual's image in the years after the war. What I want is a simple, honest, objective accounting of his efforts, which has been sorely lacking in the histories of the Civil War up until very recently. I also want to correct the historical record on the simple things, such as the often repeated assertion in earlier times that Longstreet was short and fat, that he drank too much (I found this bit of untruth in a recent article in the magazine "America's Civil War"), that he slurred his speech (one of my professors recently made the outlandish and utterly false claim that the problems between Lee and Longstreet at Gettysburg revolved around the notion that no one, including Longstreet's staff, could understand anything the man was saying), etc.

I am, in other words, not a Longstreet "fan" in the sense that I will shout his praises even in those areas where he doesn't deserve him. Yes, I respect the man greatly, and I think, as stated, that he was an excellent general and a man. But, he was human. He was not flawless, and nothing in this website should be taken to indicate I believe that.

8. Should Lee have listened to Longstreet at Gettysburg?

I think everyone should form his or her own opinion about that by closely studying the battle and considering all the possibilities. But, because I am very frequently asked a question along these lines, and because I don't state it directly in the website, I'll give a brief version of my opinion. (A full version of this opinion would require an essay.)

I think Lee should have listened to Longstreet at Gettysburg on two things. Lee should not have attempted the flanking movement (and it was a flanking movement, despite what the movie Gettysburg might imply) on July 2nd with such a small force and without having better information of the enemy's position. (Longstreet faced twice his number and went into battle with no knowledge of the enemy's position until only moments before the first guns were fired.) With more certainty, I think Lee should have listened to Longstreet's advice and not have ordered what came to be known as Pickett's Charge. That order was possibly one of Lee's most severe mistakes as a general.

I do not, however, think Longstreet's advice to try to move around the Federal army and interpose the ANV between Meade and Washington D.C. was a viable option. Lee was correct not to accept this alternative, and I believe the fact that this option was the only one Longstreet gave that led to Lee's decision to embark on the failed plans he did. The reasons for my opinion on this are long and complicated. Suffice to say I don't think the Confederates could have managed it without being stopped in mid-movement. Even if it could have worked, if we remove hindsight from the equation, it would have been the height of folly for Lee to have tried it, knowing as little as he did of the Federal army's position and direction of movement. Lee simply didn't have enough intelligence information to take such a risk.

9. What was the name of Longstreet's horse?

The horse Longstreet rode into battle at Gettysburg and throughout much of the war was named Hero. After returning to the ANV from duty in the West, Robert E. Lee presented Longstreet with the present of another horse named Fly-By-Night.

10. How do I find out information about my ancestor?

I am afraid I am generally unable to field these kinds of questions with any degree of competence. Genealogy is not one of my major interests. I know a little about my own ancestors, but this information has been imparted to me by others. I have not done the research myself. In all honesty, you would get a better answer from one of the multitudes of genealogy sites on the Internet that specialize in this subject.

XX. Why do these pages look funny?

Well, I don't know exactly. It could be that my stylistic decisions seem odd to certain individuals, or it could be a browser incompatibility problem. The most common reason that a page does not appear as I thought it appeared when I designed it is that the browser someone is using doesn't recognize an HTML command I used.

I've built this site over a period of about five years, and in that time the Chronicles have gone through many changes as has the World Wide Web and HTML, the "standard" markup language used to create web pages. I try to keep my HTML tags as generic as possible so as to be consistently interpreted by most browsers, but, alas, even though HTML is supposed to be standardized, different browsers interpret some things slightly differently.

These pages were created "by hand" for the most part, meaning I typed in most of the HTML codes myself, and this has led to some mistakes, a few of which may still be present. I have since begun using an HTML editor called FlexED32, which automates many of the most tedious processes of HTML editing. I have written the pages to conform with standard HTML and have tested them using NETSCAPE 4.x and Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 (IE). There are some differences in the way the pages display between these two browsers, but nothing dramatic, I don't think. The pages were specifically designed to display correctly using Netscape with a display screen using 64,000 colors at least and a display size of 800x600, so some of the text may appear differently when a browser is using IE or when using a larger or smaller screen size.

In short, if you want to see the pages the way I intended them to be seen, use Netscape.

If your question is not answered here, or if you'd like an expansion or clarification on one of these answers, feel free to send e-mail to : lchronicles@cox.net

The Longstreet Chronicles: Copyright 2000, Brian D. Hampton