Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South

[mahatmakanejeeves]

8 recent Civil War history books by UVA authors
By Sam Grossman

Civil War history has always been a UVA strength, especially as home to the Nau Center devoted to the subject. These recent works by alumni and faculty may teach even the most avid history buffs something new about this complex, pivotal era.

{snip}

Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South (2023)
By Elizabeth R. Varon



In her latest biography, UVA history professor Elizabeth Varon dissects the surprising political conversion of Confederate general James Longstreet. He served as second-in-command to Robert E. Lee—who referred to Longstreet as his “old war horse”—and directed Confederate forces to capture Black people for slavery or imprisonment. In what Varon posits is one of the most remarkable political about-faces in American history, after the war Longstreet supported Black suffrage, endorsed Reconstruction and became commander of Louisiana’s multiracial militia. He was branded as a “Confederate Judas,” she writes. The story of his life and career, she argues, represents “American culture’s unfolding contest over the Civil War’s legacies.”

[Cirsium]

1. So where are Longstreet's statues?

Thanks.

Where are the monuments to Confederate Gen. James Longstreet?

General James Longstreet was an important figure in the Confederate Army; as important as Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, J.E.B. Stuart or A.P. Hill; nearly as critical to the Confederate cause as Robert E. Lee.

...

Yet outside of a roadside sign near his birthplace in Edgefield, South Carolina, one statue in Gainesville, Georgia, where he died, and his name on a few streets in a handful of Southern towns, there are virtually no memorials to Longstreet throughout the South – or the entire country, for that matter.

...

At a time of debate over the removal of Confederate monuments and amid charges that some protestors want to “erase history,” Longstreet’s near-expungement raises questions about whose history is being scrubbed away and why that history was created in the first place. It underscores that history – and particularly the history of the Civil War – is not simply an objective chronicling of facts. It is often shaped by people to promote particular political agendas and ideologies.

https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/23/opinions/where-are-monuments-to-confederate-general-longstreet-opinion-holmes/index.html

[Wonder Why]

3. You never heard of Longstreet Intl Airport? Or

Longstreet Hwy?
Longstreet Library?
Longstreet Battlefield National Park?
Fort Longstreet?
USS Longstreet?
Longstreet statue in the hall of Congress?
Longstreet High School?
Longstreet Military College?
Longstreet Federal Building?

Well, neither have I.

☹️☹️☹️

[Cirsium]

5. Also Farragut and Thomas

Farragut and Thomas were both war heroes from the South. Why aren't they honored "down yonder?" In many parts of the Confederacy - western North Carolina, northern Alabama, eastern Tennessee more men were loyal than were traitorous. Where are their memorials "in the land of cotton where old times are not forgotten?"

Where are the monuments down there to the 100,000 African American soldiers that fought in the Civil War? Don't they count as part of "our southern heritage" that needs to be diligently preserved?

[NNadir]

2. A CSPAN lecture by Dr. Varon on Longstreet.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?531808-1/longstreet

[Dale in Laurel MD]

4. I recommend Varon's book

It situates Longstreet well in terms of the Civil War, and especially the reconstruction and post-reconstruction South.