Tag Archives: Gen. Lafayette McLaws

A Soldier’s General

One of the better books on Gen. Lafayette McLaws is John C. Oeffinger’s 2001 A Soldier’s General. It’s a “translation” of McLaws’ awful handwriting in his collected letters home. Therein you find not only McLaws’ side of Gen. Longstreet’s decision … Continue reading

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Reprise: Longstreet’s faulty recon

At least one reviewer of the novel has complained about Gen. Longstreet’s apparent mistake in insufficiently reconnoitering Fort Sanders before his Mississippians and Georgians attacked. Indeed, after the battle, Longstreet tried to pin the blame for the mistake on his … Continue reading

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Rebel Gen. McLaws’ Union brother-in-law

Another major Civil War figure whose family life buttresses my fictional division between Unionist Parthenia Leila Ellis and her Confederate husband Clayton Ellis, was Gen. Lafayette McLaws. McLaws, whose division was the first in the attack on Fort Sanders, joined … Continue reading

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Longstreet to McLaws: “a want of confidence”

Gen Lafayette McLaws protested his relief by Gen. James Longstreet and eventually won reinstatement. And then lost it. Here is Longstreet’s reply to McLaws’ initial protest. Headquarters Near Bean’s Station, December 17th, 1863. Major-General McLaws, Confederate States Army General: I … Continue reading

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McLaws on court-martial politics

He would be vindicated by review of the court martial, but he was embittered by the whole process against him: “I am charged with not having ladders to cross a ditch,” he wrote his wife in an undated letter before … Continue reading

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Bayonets

Fixed bayonets was part of Confederate Gen. Lafayette McLaws’s order for the attacking troops. So those who still had their bayonets fitted them to the barrels of their Enfields and Springfields in preparation for the assault on Fort Sanders. More … Continue reading

Posted in "Knoxville 1863", Civil War accoutrements, Civil War armament, Fort Sanders, Gen. Lafayette McLaws | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Rich man’s war, poor man’s fight

In a letter to his wife on Oct. 1, 1863, shortly before his division marched for Knoxville, Gen. Lafayette McLaws told how Gov. Brown of Georgia, who was then running for reelection, visited the Georgia troops in Gen. William Wofford’s … Continue reading

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Saving Longstreet’s headquarters

Sometime about 1985, I think it was, I drove south from visiting in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley into Tennessee in search of the First Corps’ winter camp near Russellville. Eventually, I drove past a state historic marker, turned around and went … Continue reading

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The court martial of Gen. Lafayette McLaws

Shortly before the Rebs retreated from Knoxville, Longstreet sent an aide, Moxley Sorrel, to notify McLaws that he had been relieved of command for failure “to make arrangements essential to success” in the attack on Fort Sanders. McLaws, who had … Continue reading

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Longstreet’s faulty recon

At least one reviewer of the novel has complained about Gen. Longstreet’s apparent mistake in insufficiently reconnoitering Fort Sanders before his Mississippians and Georgians attacked. Indeed, after the battle, Longstreet tried to pin the blame for the mistake on his … Continue reading

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