At the Right Hand of Longstreet: Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer

Sorrel, G. Moxley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0803292678 ISBN 13: 9780803292673

Publisher: Bison Books, 1999

As a young man in Georgia, G. Moxley Sorrel enlisted in a cavalry unit even before the Civil War erupted, so eager was he to serve his home state. During the war, as an aide-de-camp on Brigadier General James Longstreet’s staff he fought in many battles, including those at Chickamauga and Chattanooga. He was at Longstreet’s side when Longstreet was struck down in 1864.  Sorrel’s “rough jottings from memory” provide vivid and detailed descriptions of many of the war’s chief participants and events. His military career was cut short when he was shot in the lungs at Hatcher’s Run. Although he survived, the war ended before he could return to duty. In his declining years he wrote, “For my part, when the time comes to cross the river like the others, I shall be found asking at the gates above, ‘Where is the Army of Northern Virginia? For there I make my camp.’”

Review:

“Longstreet was then a most striking figure, about forty years of age, a soldier every inch, and very handsome, tall and well proportioned, strong and active, a superb horseman and with an unsurpassed soldierly bearing, his features and expression fairly matched; eyes, glint steel blue, deep and piercing.”―G. Moxley Sorrel Source: G. Moxley Sorrel

From the Author:

Introducer Peter Carmichael, a professor of history at Western Carolina University, is the author of Lee’s Young Artillerist: William R. J. Pegram.