JOHN BANKS' CIVIL WAR BLOG: 'No man ... more honored': Longstreet's 1888 Getty...: In an enlargement of the William Tipton image below, Civil War commanders (from left) Joshua Chamberlain, Daniel Butterfield, James Long...
FTA: For sheer star power, no gathering of Union and Confederate veterans rivaled the Grand Reunion at Gettysburg in 1888. "There are so many Generals and other chieftains here," a newspaper marveled, "that a catalogue of them would be as long as Homer's list of ships."
Former Army of the Potomac commanders Dan Sickles, Fitz-John Porter, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Henry Slocum, Abner Doubleday, and Francis Barlow, among other Union luminaries, were joined in Pennsylvania by ex-Army of Northern Virginia generals Wade Hampton, Fitzhugh Lee and John B. Gordon.
But the biggest celebrity at the event clearly was the man sporting massive, white whiskers and a cleanly shaven chin: James Longstreet, who commanded the Confederates’ First Corps at Gettysburg on July 1-3, 1863. Nearly everywhere Robert E. Lee’s “Old War Horse” went he drew appreciative, and often awestruck, crowds.
"No man now in Gettysburg," a New York newspaper reported, “is more honored nor more sought than he."
For Longstreet, the visit to Gettysburg – his first since he commanded troops there – stirred a wide range of emotions. And led to the shedding of many tears...
