James Longstreet’s grave in Gainesville’s Alta Vista Cemetery
A United States flag proudly flies night and day above this grave in Alta Vista Cemetery in Gainesville, Georgia. The irony is the man under the large stone memorial fought against that flag for four years during the Civil War. He was James Longstreet, whom Robert E. Lee deemed as his “old warhorse.” Longstreet and Lee did not share the same philosophy about how to conduct the Battle of Gettysburg, and after Lee’s death Longstreet quarreled in print and public about the reasons for the South’s defeat.
Longstreet shares this plot with his first wife and some of his children.
