[Muncle]

Steve, I have to agree with you strongly about "The Killer Angels". I didn't read it until the late 90's and found it one of the most interesting and easily read books on the War of Northern Aggression. I'd been to Gettysburg a couple times and kinda knew my Civil War history. And I was quite familiar with the area from Chambersburg, PA to Hanover (home of Utz chips and Snyders pretzels) and on down to DC. Anyway, the book reminded me of a cross between a Cornelius Ryan WWII book and "Red Storm Rising" and "Team Yankee" on the fiction side. So easy to read, so exciting, so hard to put down. You actually found yourself telling the characters to do or not do stuff because you knew the outcome, like a Saturday morning serial.

Yeah, without doubt, Chamberlain came across as the hero. I thought I knew history, but to be honest, I'd never heard of him. But to me, the real hero -- no, not hero, certainly not villain, and not really a "tragic hero" is the traditional sense, I guess hero does best fit --- was James Longstreet. I found in him all the honorable traits one romantically imagines in such a character, only to be done in by his own sense of honor, loyalty, and obedience.

When I read this book, two of my best friends at work (in DC) were retired Army guys from the south who had extensive knowledge of the Army and that conflict. I asked one afternoon what happened to Longstreet. We have a Ft. Lee, Ft. Pickett, Ft. Stuart, Ft. Hood, Ft Early, Ft. Gordon, but not Fort Longstreet. In 1863, he was arguably #2 behind Lee in the pantheon of Confederate military. And nothing he did at Gettysburg was his fault or could be blamed on him. Any objective analysis would show it was Lee's fault with a heavy dose of Stuart. My friends pointed out that objectivity had nothing to do with it, that no aspersions could be cast up Robert E. Lee, and that James Longstreet took full blame. It turns out that it was years before most Confederate military men accepted that Longstreet was not the villain, well too late to salvage his reputation.