Longstreet becomes target of Lee's admirers

WashTimes ^ | July 12, 2003 | Ken Kryvoruka

[stainlessbanner]

He was, at the war's end, the senior lieutenant general in the Confederate Army, Lee's trusted friend and second-in-command of the Army of Northern Virginia --- yet it was not until 1998 that a statue was erected anywhere to honor James Longstreet. This slight can be traced to his membership in the Republican Party during Reconstruction, but even more damaging to his reputation was the image created by his postwar enemies: He became a villain in Southern eyes, a scapegoat for the Confederate defeat, and one of the South's most controversial figures.

[KC Burke]

Like you, I admired the accomplishments of Longstreet and was puzzled by his post war treatment.

It was brought about, many current historians believe by his association with the Republican party after the war and the elevation of Lee as a marble man during the promotion of the Lost Cause legacy theory. Much of that promotion was by weak-sisters Jubal Early and others wishing to deflect from their own shortcomings.

A good trade-paper summary of much of this new scholarship is available in Lee's Tarnished Lieutenant by William Garrett Piston.

Longstreet worked for the present good and unfortuantly didn't realize what was being done to his service record until much too late. When he did, he reacted vainly and self-servingly, something he never did during the war, and further dug his hole in history.

[Grand Old Partisan]

Don't forget about South Carolina's Francis Marion and Thomas Sumter, who kicked Briitish ass. Still, support for the patriots was much weaker in the South than in the North.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Reverence is not limited to God. Some of us revere the truth. I have seen precious little of that amongst those attempting defense of the Slavers' Revolt.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Oh, I don't. They were an exception, though and as you are aware most of the War was fought in New York and New Jersey.

[wardaddy]

My 14 year old daughter voluntarily sat thru the first half of Gods and Generals on VHS with me and Mrs Wardaddy last nite and endured my rambling commentary...lol

My wife's great great great uncle WP Barksdale shot the hell up out of your bunch on the banks in Fredericksburg....course ya'll got him later didn't ya?

I'm working overtime to deflect the efforts of your tribe with my own progeny...wish me luck!

[rustbucket]

At Kings Mountain, North and South Carolinians soundly whipped tory Carolinians and their British commander. At Cowpens, Carolinians whipped the heck out of Banastre Tarleton and his dragoons and destroyed a wing of Cornwallis' army.

Cornwallis then wisely left South Carolina. However, he subsequently lost another big portion of his army at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in North Carolina. He kept traveling north but then lost the war at Yorktown, Virginia.

Without the South, Partisan, there might not have been a US of A.

The climactic battle in the Mel Gibson movie, The Patriot is actually a mix of things that happened at Cowpens and Guilford Courthouse, causing some to call the movie battle, the Battle of Guilford Cowpens.

[Grand Old Partisan]

My bunch, the United States Army, is right now in Iraq battling your bunch, enemies of the United States of America.

[Grand Old Partisan]

Gibson's movie would have been MUCH better as a straightforward story about Francis Marion.

[stainlessbanner]

Confederate American = Iraqi? Now I know you lost, son.

[stainlessbanner]

< continuing > lost your marbles, that is

[Grand Old Partisan]

You're not even trying to make sense.

[southern cross forever]

Lincoln started the war and is responceble for the death of over 600,000 Americans . That is why he is so hated , if he would have just let the first 7 states go in the begining none of that carnage would have happended and they might have come back into the union at a later date ,and we might not have the racial problems that we have now .

[labard1]

The New England states threatened to secede from the Union during the War of 1812, and well might have, if that war had not ended when it did. Nothing like the consistency of New England slave traders who became abolitionists after the importation of slaves into the US was prohibited.

[stainlessbanner]

---

To: Grand Old Partisan

Friendly Reminder - Post 24

86 posted on 07/14/2003 9:55 PM EDT by stainlessbanner (Have a Nice Day)

[LS]

I know, but I'm a writer, and you look for synonyms out of boredom.

[rustbucket]

I like movies that portray history as it actually happened. One concern I have with the Gibson movie was the scene where the movie's Col. Tavington (a stand-in for British Col. Tarleton) burns people alive in a church. Tarleton burned farm animals alive in a barn, not people. However, some British and their Indian allies did burn people alive in their cabins in Pennsylvania during the war.

I guess it is movie license to throw facts into a blender and show on the screen whatever comes out.

I'd be happy to see a movie on Francis Marion. Wasn't there an old Disney TV series about him? Of course, Disney has gone on to make far less wholesome movies these days.

[Grand Old Partisan]

Attempts at secession would have been just as treasonous in 1814 as in 1860-61.

[Grand Old Partisan]

Marion captured one British fort by having a soldier shoot flaming arrows at it and another by erecting a sharpshooters' tower above the wall. Talk about made for the movies!

[Ohioan]

Blue and Grey implies they were equivalent -- which is false. During the Civil War, American patriots enlisted in the United States Army and Navy, while American traitors joined the rebels.

So, you not only deny the plain meaning of legal terms in your absurd Constitutional argument, you deny the nobility of the Confederate Man at Arms.

Consider then these words from Douglas MacArthur's classic address at West Point, May 12, 1962:

The long gray line has never failed us. Were we to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray would rise from their white crosses, thundering those magic words: duty, honor, country.

As anyone who understands the context will explain to you, the first gray refers to the corps of cadets at West Point. The second, coupled with the blue, refers to the gallant Southerners--many of whom were West Point graduates--whose honor you besmirch.

You, Sir, are no patriot. The very term patriot, as George Washington used it, can never apply to you, since your mantle and purpose is one of sectional antagonism. There are few things which the greatest of all American Patriots warned against so clearly in his Farewell Address as the very sort of sectional politics that you advocate.

But then, you see yourself as a greater "patriot," I suspect, than were either Washington or MacArthur. Funny thing is, I suspect you would find few who would support such a notion.

William Flax

[sine_nomine]

The problem with counter-factual history is that we just do not know. I think the slavery issue could have been solved, following the British example. But it was not. I think a few Southern Baptists could have read Paul's letter to Philemon a little more carefully.