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 his trial, according to the 2002 history A Soldier’s General, by John C. Oeffinger, “which if crossed could have given us no advantage—and the superior who failed for lack of sound judgement in the whole campaign receives the thanks of Congress.”

And, in the end, Longstreet succeeded in having Gen. Lee order McLaws replaced. McLaws would command troops in the defense of Savannah, GA until the war was over.