James Longstreet. From Manassas to Appomattox: Memoirs of the Civil War in America. 1891; Skyhorse, 2013.

Arthur James Fremantle. Three Months in the Southern States April-June 1863. 1863; Project Gutenberg, 29 Mar. 2007.

Longstreet’s and Fremantle’s memoirs are two primary sources that anyone studying the American Civil War in any detail goes to. Longstreet was a leading Confederate general, though after the war many Southerners considered him a traitor. Fremantle was a British army lieutenant-colonel dispatched to observe the Confederate government and army for England.

Longstreet’s memoir mostly follows the battles he was involved in, a few in the Mexican War and then detailed for the Civil War. He throws in many additional pieces of information that give us a sense of what things were like during the time he writes about.

He directly says, for example, that the 1844 election was largely about the annexation of Texas. When Polk, the Democrat, won, everyone knew that Texas would be admitted to the Union and that Mexico would not like it. While an agreement was being worked out with the Mexican government, the Mexican government was overthrown by a more nationalistic junta. So we had the war. To Longstreet it was simple and obvious.

After the Civil War, Longstreet went into business in New Orleans. Later, under Presidents Grant, McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt, Longstreet would have government jobs. His view was simply that the South lost the war, so let us put that in the past and work together. We can see such a matter of fact approach throughout his memoirs.

For example, at one point he quoted a fellow officer who believed that if the Confederacy lasted seven years, it would be a dictatorship. Longstreet quotes him without comment, but it is interesting that he quoted him at all.

Near the beginning, Longstreet names all the men on both sides that he went to West Point with or served in the Mexican War with. So many were friends and knew each other well. After his home state of Alabama seceded, Longstreet joined the Confederate Army. An army friend from the North asked him why since he knew what Longstreet believed about slavery and the other issues. Longstreet simply said, if your home state left the Union, you would go with them. His friend admitted that he would. Again, it was as simple as that.

Longstreet does note that he was born in South Carolina, his family moved to Georgia when he was quite young, and eventually moved to Alabama. He says that his father was from New Jersey and his mother from Maryland. He wants us to know that he is an American.

Generally, he believes that the only way the Southern army could be successful was what he calls a “defensive-aggressive” strategy. That is largely the way Lee operated and helps explain his success in many engagements despite being outnumbered. The defensive part was to take the most advantageous position under the circumstances to make it difficult for the enemy to attack. But at the same time, it had to be aggressive, to demoralize the enemy and divide the populace in its support of the war. Until Gettysburg, the South was largely successful doing just that, at least in the East.

The two defeats from 1861 through 1863 that Longstreet was involved with were both where the South did not do that. At Antietam, McClelland got a hold of some of Lee’s orders, so he knew what Lee was doing. Longstreet suggests that Antietam was more of a stalemate, but it was enough for Lincoln to issue a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Longstreet is even blunt about that. He sounds almost grateful to Lincoln for releasing it. Politicians could no longer be coy and claim Unionism or states’ rights:

This was one of the decisive political events of the war, and at once put the great struggle outwardly and openly upon the basis where it had before only rested by tacit and covert understanding. (290)

Yes, states’ rights might have been an issue, but mostly because certain states claimed the right to own people as property, to use Lincoln’s language.

The other battlefield loss Longstreet witnessed before 1864 was, of course, Gettysburg. There, Lee was certainly aggressive, but he was not as defensive as usual. The Union Army held the better ground, the better defensive position. Longstreet tells us that he thought Lee’s plan would not work even though Lee was being aggressive. Although he fully went along with it, he did feel that his proposal for the third day might have worked better.

Interestingly, he does not fault Meade as some do for not following hard on Lee’s army as it retreated. He notes two things in particular. One is simply that the Federals lost many men and had many casualties, that most of them were not in an especially good condition to keep fighting. He notes also that in its retreat, the Army of Northern Virginia camped on good ground, and any troops trying to dislodge them would have found it difficult. In other words, Lee was being defensive-aggressive, even in retreat.

Longstreet also notes the failure of Confederate intelligence prior to Gettysburg. Grant in his memoirs noted that Lee was successful in Virginia. It was his home state, he knew the territory, and most of the free people there supported him. He had plenty of intelligence most of the time there. He has access to better maps. In Pennsylvania, especially without Jeb Stuart’s information, Lee was fighting nearly blind. Longstreet’s spy Harrison (Longstreet does not give him a rank or first name) had the best information, but Lee was guessing, especially on the third day.

Because Longstreet was not there, he does not speak a whole lot about the fall of Vicksburg the day after the loss at Gettysburg. He does suggest that if the Confederate army command had made better use of its resources, they might have been able to repel Grant there. In the fall of 1863 Longstreet was ordered West to try to shore up the fighting in Tennessee and Georgia. He describes their success at Chickamauga, but it was not enough.

Early in 1864, Longstreet was sent back to the eastern front. He describes in some detail the Battle of the Wilderness. Until really the bitter end, when Richmond fell, Longstreet sounded optimistic. Some of that, of course, had to do with Federal politics. Lee was convinced that a battle victory in the North would so demoralize the Union Army and many of the Northern citizens so that Lincoln would have to sue for peace.

From Petersburg to Five Forks to Appomattox Court House, Longstreet describes the desperate end of fighting. When Lee surrendered, he was virtually surrounded and completely cut off from supplies.

Longstreet devotes a chapter to summarize his life after the war. This was written before he would be appointed as an ambassador under McKinley and Roosevelt. As noted before, many Southerners, especially the “Lost Cause” types, did not like Longstreet and considered him a traitor after the war in spite of the good things Lee would say and write about him. From Longstreet’s perspective, it had nothing to do with the war and his conduct in the war. It was his conduct after the war.

Not only did he believe that his side should accept the fact that they lost the war and face the new reality of a new country without slavery, but in 1867 he wrote an eloquent editorial supporting voting rights for black citizens. From that, white Southerners began to call him a traitor to the Lost Cause.

In the past two years, there has been a lot of news about people tearing down and destroying statues. Some of the statues were, in this writer’s opinion done out of ignorance, e.g. Frederick Douglass and Jesus. However, many places in the American South are dealing with the question of what to do about statues of Confederate soldiers. That is a non-issue for statues of Longstreet. I read that there were only two: one near his birthplace in South Carolina and one at Gettysburg that was not erected until 1998. I guess the Lost Cause never forgave him.

Another first person account of a slice of the Civil War is Fremantle’s Three Months in the Southern States. Arthur Fremantle was an English military officer who came to North America to gather information about the Confederacy. To skirt the Union naval blockade, he had to land in Mexico and cross into Texas that way.

Today people are mostly interested in this work because he ended up as an impartial military witness to the Battle of Gettysburg. Because he spent most of his time in the South, he actually wrote quite a bit about the siege of Vicksburg and the fighting in Mississippi at the time. He also wrote quite a few observations about Texas.

He spoke to veterans of the Texas war for independence and the Mexican War. He noted that he had only been in Texas for three hours when he observed his first lynching. The victim was white and no doubt a criminal, but it does call to mind Lincoln’s first major speech “On the Preservation of our Political Institutions,” (1838) in which the future president worried about vigilantism.

Fremantle even visited the King Ranch, already known for its size. He met Sam Houston, whom he described as being “much disappointed” not only by Texan secession but by his loss of status in the state as a result of his support of the Union.

He engaged in numerous conversations with Southerners defending slavery. It seemed he mostly listened and recorded their beliefs. He spoke several times of groups of slaves “escaping” Union soldiers. Again, he simply took what they said at face value. I am reminded of what Douglass wrote, that a slave would never say anything against his or her master for fear of what punishment might come. He did note that some escaped slaves helped the Union with intelligence.

He observed that Union troops would destroy “railroad, Government property, and arms, and paroled all men, both old and young, but they committed no barbarities.” (1138) He noted that nearly all free men in the South had some kind of title, sometimes judge or sheriff, but usually a military title. When asked about this General Joseph Johnston told him,

You must be astonished to find how fond all Americans are of titles, though they are republicans; and as they can’t get any other sort, they all take military ones. (1339)

Colonel Sanders, anyone?

He also noted that most educated Southern men spoke in an accent “exactly like an English Gentleman.” (1561) Even recordings from the early twentieth century make us realize that the British and American accents were very similar to one another until just a little over a century ago.

Fremantle also records rumors and speculation during this time that to us seem almost humorous. One Southerner, for example, told him that if the Confederacy won the war, that “Maine would probably try to join Canada.”

He arrived in Virginia shortly after the Battle of Chancellorsville. He noted that “Stonewall Jackson was considered a regular demigod in this country.” (2469)

De Tocqueville in his famous Democracy in America noted that the free states were very industrious and the people there hard working, but cross the Ohio River and all is lethargy and indolence. Fremantle quotes a Southerner admitting such: “Before this war we were a lazy set of devils.” (2488)

He called Winchester, Virginia, a “shuttlecock” between the two sides. I think the official tourist guide from Winchester claims it changed sides forty-three times in the course of the war.

Fremantle is best known today for his observations on the Battle of Gettysburg. He spent much of the time there up in a tree so he could get a better view of the action. To him it appeared the South had the advantage until the third day. He seemed to admire Longstreet as much as any of the officers of either side that he met. Fremantle also noted that the Southern army would have been more successful with a coordinated cavalry. (He may not have been aware of Jeb Stuart’s adventures.) He does mention a Southern spy, more than likely Harrison.

Fremantle also comes to a conclusion similar to Longstreet about the Battle of Gettysburg. There was, he wrote, “the universal feeling in the army was one of contempt for an enemy whom they have beaten so constantly, and under so many disadvantages.” (2806) They did indeed underestimate their enemy at both Gettysburg and Vicksburg. Like Longstreet, he also believed, probably correctly, that no one was expecting a fight at Gettysburg, and Lee was unable to draw up his usual defensive plans.

Fremantle was not the only foreign military officer observing the Confederate Army. On the third day at Gettysburg, he was joined by an Austrian colonel and a Prussian captain. Europe was curious. He also noted that some Yankee soldiers were “dressed in bad imitations of the Zouave costume.” (2869)

Fremantle, too, defends Meade in not going after the retreating Army of Northern Virginia.

I think, after all, that General Meade was right not to advance—his men would never have stood the tremendous fire of artillery they would have been exposed to. Rather over 7000 Yankees were captured during the three days. (3000)

We note that one difficulty the Confederate troops had at Gettysburg was a lack of artillery ammunition. It was still some miles behind the lines during the battle but could have been deadly if Meade had followed their retreat.

Fremantle also noted, contrary to what Southerners had been telling him, that the part of Maryland he passed through was “entirely Unionist.” He returned to England via Philadelphia and New York. He spoke highly of nearly every Southern officer he met, and he felt the same way about the few Union officers he met as well. “I can truly say that the only Federal officers I have ever come in contact with were gentlemen.” (3218)

One thing Fremantle noted about the North that may still be true about the United States in general is that the war did not affect the day to day life of most Northerners. Many of the men felt no pressure to join the army, and there seemed to be almost an indifference in the cities. Nowadays, some fifty years after the last military draft, things do not seem much different in spite of American military presence overseas.

Both books are among the better firsthand accounts of the Civil War. We know that anyone writing about Gettysburg or studying the battle in any detail will want to consult these books. Some of Longstreet’s writing can be dry as he discusses the ebb and flow of a particular battle, but he is an excellent primary source for those conflicts.

One aside concerning Hollywood we picked up on: Col. Fremantle is a character in the film Gettysburg. So that he stands out in the film, he is dressed in the red dress uniform of the British “redcoats.” His book tells us that he only had a gray business suit while he was in North America. But, I get it. If I were directing a film or play about Gettysburg, I would probably do the same for the visual effect and perhaps to help keep some of the characters straight.

N.B. The parenthetical citations from the Fremantle book are Kindle locations, not pages.