78 CONFEDERATE PORTRAITS
nates, McLaws, Law, and Robertson. The dramatic genius of Sophocles could not have devised a finer cli- max than that situation. At Gettysburg, just before, as second in command to Lee, the general had thoroughly disapproved of his chiefs action and had not hesitated to say so. Likewise, he had failed to carry out his chief's wishes, through either indifference or inability. Lee, with supreme generosity, intent on the future, not on the past, had accepted the latter solution and found no word of fault with his lieutenant's motives in any way whatso- ever.
Then Longstreet goes West and is placed in charge of the Knoxville expedition. His second in command, McLaws, disapproves of the assault on Fort Loudon, exactly as Longstreet disapproved of the assault at Get- tysburg. Hear McLaw's own words : " I object to being put forward as a blind to draw attention away from the main issue, which is the conduct of the campaign in East Tennessee by General Longstreet. I assert that the enemy could have been brought to an engagement be- fore reaching Knoxville ; that the town, if assaulted at all, should have been on the first day we arrived or on the next at furthest ; that when the assault was made on Fort Loudon it was not called for by any line of policy
If he had been endowed with divination, could he have anticipated more perfectly Longstreet's later atti- tude with regard to Gettysburg?
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