H^d Qrs Near Gordonsville V^a

                                                                                                            May 2^d 1864

 

My Dear Uncle

                        Your letter of the 11^th ult is just received. There can be no impropriety in my endorsing favorably your friends, particularly if they have served with me. My desire was to advise you that nothing would be given to me upon requests &c. A favorable endorsement by me would not, probably, prejudice other claims, unless it appeared that I was myself included. So you may send any applications on the part of friends for the advancement of deserving individuals but the communications must be made by the friends of the individuals and sent to me for endorsation. In that way I will only appear in my official capacity and not as an interested party: which I really am not.

 

            You ask me whether the move into East Tennessee was made at my suggestion. It was not nor was it a move that would ever / have entered my mind as a practicable one, if I had not heard through some of the Staff Officers of Gen Bragg that he intended to make such a move. Upon hearing this rumor I set to work to study some means by which the move could be made with safety, and when called into council upon the matter suggested that it might be made by concentrating the Army in a strong position behind Chickamauga and then detaching a column of twenty thousand men against Burnside in E. T. so as to make the move strong enough and rapid enough to destroy Burnside before the enemy could advance in such condition as to injure our force in Ga. I opposed the move as Gen Bragg proposed it and as he attempted to execute it, upon the ground that his line would be too long and too weak to be held around the enemy concentrated in his midst, That the enemy’s force could be concentrated at Chattanooga and moved against any point of his line in twenty minutes, and that when he did move his (Bragg’s) long and weak line must be broken, and / I opposed the move into E. T. as too weak to accomplish the results hoped for, That the probabilities were that the expedition made with so weak a force would fail, and that the reduction in his force would be to great that he could not hold his lines. In short I told him that whole matter, if the move was made as it was made, would result just as it did result: In his defeat and my failure.

 

            Before leaving Chattanooga I wrote to Gen Buckner expressing this opinion. He happened to keep my letter, and after the battle of Mission Ridge he sent the letter back to me, as so remarkably true in my predictions as to be well worthy of preservation. I sent it to Louise to keep for me. If you wish it you are welcome to it and she will send it to you if you will mention it when next you write her.

 

            The Armies here seem to be quietly looking at each other. Neither quite [torn]dg to move I suppose. I don’t know / yet that we have adopted any plan or policy except it be to wait till the enemy is entirely ready. Our troops are in fine condition and full of confidence. I sincerely hope that we may be able to destroy Grant as reaily as we have the other Yankee Generals. We have never met one who has been able to stand against us yet.

 

            Give much love to Aunt and cousins when you see them or write them.

                                                            Your very Affectionate Nephew,

                                                                        J. Longstreet

D^r A B Longstreet

            Columbus Ga.

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