The Unfettered Curmudgeon

JULY 2, 1863…GETTYSBURG DAY TWO General Longstreet Robert E. Lee’s most trusted soldier and his second in command, his “old war horse,” Lieutenant General James Longstreet, known affectionately to his troops as “Old Pete,” and to his friends simply as “Pete,” arrived at Gettysburg ahead of his 1 st Corps, still on the march, just in time to witness the end of the first day’s fighting. Unlike the jubilant Confederate troops at the scene of the action, he was not pleased at all. As he looked through his field glasses he could see the Yanks digging in on the high hills south of the town, in the better positon of the high ground, supported by a wall of artillery arrayed all along the hilltops along Cemetery Ridge. Unlike “Stonewall” Jackson, killed just that past May at Chancellorsville, Longstreet was a somber man, having lost three of his children, all under the age of six, during one week of a scarlet fever outbreak in January of 1862. With his knowledge of modern warfa...

A DIFFERENT FOURTH OF JULY The July 4 th holiday is upon us with its barbecues, parades, fireworks, as well as its grand auto and furniture sales! To be quite honest, I really resent that! My patriotism does not include buying a sofa or a pick-up truck on the 4 th and I am tired of being bombarded by TV advertisements to buy things as if were my patriotic duty! That having been said, especially of late, my thoughts on the 4 th of July have extend in a different direction ― more toward considerations of our War of Independence, the Declaration of Independence and the promises it held, and the Constitution, particularly the Preamble . I have been doing a lot of research for a novel I am writing, a western novel, which has its roots not in the Wild West but actually in the Civil War, and it is because of this research that my thoughts today, and over the next few days this year, will, focus more on that; particularly on the Battle of Gettysburg. In early 1863 the Army...