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James Longstreet Quotes
1821–1904 United States
James "Pete" Longstreet (8 January 1821 – 2 January 1904) was an officer in the Confederate army during the American Civil War. Though he was a Confederate in the war, after the war, he joined the Republican Party and supported rights and freedoms for former slaves, a move that made him unpopular with many former Confederates.
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Great God! I thought to myself, how my heart swells out out to such magnanimous touch of humanity. Why do men fight who were born to be brothers?
That man Grant will fight us everyday and every hour until the end of the war.
Why do men fight who were born to be brothers?
General, I have been a soldier all my life. I have been with soldiers engaged in fights by couples, by squads, companies, regiments, divisions, and armies, and should know, as well as any one, what soldiers can do. It is my opinion that no fifteen thousand men ever arranged for battle can take that position.
General James Longstreet: The Confederacy's Most Controversial Soldier: A Biography (1993)
The highest of human laws is the law that is established by appeal to arms. The sword has decided in favor of the North, and what they claimed as principles cease to be principles, and are become law. The views that we hold cease to be principles because they are opposed to law. It is our duty to abandon ideas that are obsolete and conform to the requirements of law.
If it wasn't about slavery, then I don't know what else it was about.
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