Posted on 07/04/2019 7:04:21 AM PDT by Antoninus
One of the advantages of the present media-driven furor to remove or demolish monuments to the Confederacy is that it is forcing numerous Americans, myself included, to dig deep into the history of the Civil War. And what a strange, convoluted period of history it is! The primary sources are plentiful, rich and deep which makes for endlessly fascinating reading. If the aim of the iconoclasts was to push this period of history even further from the national consciousness, or gloss over it with cherry-picked anecdotes allowing for knee-jerk verdicts, they have failed miserably.
For my own part, I have started looking into the lives and characters of the generals of the Confederacy—and a more intriguing group of characters is seldom to be found. Having done some research into the Cherokee Confederate general, Stand Watie, I next moved on to another atypical rebel officer, General James Longstreet. As I was doing so, CNN published an article asking the question: “Where are the monuments to Confederate Gen. James Longstreet?” It's an interesting question. In truth, there are two that I was able to find. One at Gettysburg, and another in Gainesville, Georgia. Given his bio, however, the man deserves more recognition.
Most people’s familiarity with Longstreet stems from his role as Lee’s second-in-command at Gettysburg, and thus his prominent place in popular historical entertainment such as the movie Gettysburg and Michael Shaara’s novel, The Killer Angels upon which the movie was based. Longstreet’s virtues and flaws as a military leader have long been the subject of spirited debate. But his career on the battlefield is not primarily what interests me here. Longstreet’s life after the war is, if possible, even more interesting than his deeds as Lee’s lieutenant.
During Reconstruction, Longstreet became a pariah to his southern compatriots. In the election of 1868, Longstreet endorsed his old friend from West Point, Ulysses S. Grant, and became a Republican. After winning the election, Grant appointed Longstreet to a customs position in New Orleans, and he was subsequently made a general in charge of the Louisiana state militia. As a result, he was ostracized by many in the South, who considered him a scalawag and a collaborator with carpet-bagging Union profiteers.
It was in his role as head of the Louisiana militia that Longstreet participated in an action that caused his name to be blackened even further within former-Confederate circles. Following a contested election in 1874, a Democrat mob known as the White League attempted to remove the Republican administration from New Orleans by force. Descending on the city in numbers greater than 5,000, they were confronted by a smaller number of largely Black police and militia headed by General Longstreet. As the two sides lined up for battle, Longstreet rode out to meet the rioters in an attempt to quell the matter before the sides came to blows. One White League leader later claimed that it was only with the greatest difficulty that he restrained his men from shooting Longstreet dead on the spot. Instead, they pulled him from his horse and took him prisoner. In the resulting fight, known to history as the Battle of Liberty Place, the White League caused Longstreet’s men to retreat, with about 100 dead and injured on both sides.
Federal troops were later called in to suppress the White League, free Longstreet and restore order. But Longstreet’s days as a military officer were now over, and his role in the affair attracted even more vituperation from those still attached to the Lost Cause. This rancor from his countrymen wounded him. In 1877, he had a religious awakening, as recorded in the book, Lee and Longstreet at High Tide (1904), by his wife, Helen Dortch Longstreet:
“General Longstreet was a most devout churchman. In early life he was an Episcopalian, and he regularly attended that church in New Orleans until the political differences developed between himself and his friends. After that he noticed that even his church associates avoided him. They would not sit in the same pew with him. Cut to the quick by such treatment, he began to wonder if there was any church broad enough to withstand the differences caused by political and sectional feeling. He discovered that the Roman Catholic priests extended him the treatment he longed for. He began to attend that church, and has said that its atmosphere from the first appealed to him as the church of the sorrow-laden of earth. He was converted under the ministration of Father Ryan. After accepting the faith of the Catholic Church he followed it with beautiful devotion. He regarded it as the compensation sent him by the Almighty for doing his duty as he saw it. He clung to it as the best consolation there was in life. He went to his duties as devoutly as any priest of the church, and was on his knees night and morning, with the simple, loving faith of a little child.” [Lee and Longstreet at High Tide, page 118]
Longstreet passed away of cancer in 1904 at the age of 82. He was buried in Gainesville, Georgia where the impressive statue shown above may be found today. By the time of his death, any animosity his Confederate comrades had felt for him was gone. Newspaper reports of the funeral service mentioned vast throngs of mourners arriving to pay their last respects. Lavish tributes to Longstreet poured in from all corners of the country. Following the funeral Mass, an oration was given by Bishop Joseph Keily of Savannah, Georgia who had fought under Longstreet during the Civil War. In that eulogy, Bishop Keily gave the man a fitting tribute, saying:
“Having passed the span which Providence ordinarily allots as the term of human life, General James Longstreet has answered the roll-call of the great God. What a brilliant page in history is filled with his grand career….When the Southern States withdrew from the Union by reason of attacks on their reserved rights which were guaranteed by the Constitution, and were forced into the war between the States, James Longstreet offered his services and sword to the cause of self-government. No history of the war may be written which does not bear emblazoned on every page the story of his deeds…“It is my duty as a priest of God to call your attention to the obvious lesson of this occasion—the vanity of mere earthly greatness and the certainty of death and the necessity of preparation for it. James Longstreet was a brave soldier, a gallant gentleman, but better still—a consistent Christian. After the war between the States, he became a member of the Catholic Church, and to his dying day remained faithful to her teaching and loyal to her creed…” [Lee and Longstreet at High Tide, page 219]
This seemed to sum up Longstreet in a nutshell. He was a man disappointed by political creeds offered to ephemeral temporal powers, who found fulfillment in loyalty to an eternal creed professed to an everlasting power.
By way of a postscript, I will mention the two extraordinary women in General Longstreet’s life. His first wife, Maria Louisa Garland Longstreet, passed away in 1890 after 40 years of marriage and 10 children. Surprisingly, he married again in 1897 at the age of 76 to Helen Dortch Longstreet. It was Helen who recorded many anecdotes about the general in the abovementioned book, Lee and Longstreet at High Tide. Interestingly, Helen lived to be nearly 100 years old, surviving until 1962 – a full century after her husband’s famous exploits during the Civil War.
These are truly amazing people worthy of remembrance.
In Lee, Longstreet, and Jackson the South had what might be argued as the best war leadership team of all time. (Not demeaning the reputation of Patton, who in my eyes was THE BEST!!!).
They were outgunned, undermanned, did not have economy to back their war effort, and the planned and much sought alliances of their political leaders did not pan out.
But from the first skirmish at Manassas Creek the Union Army knew that this was going to be no picnic in the glen as the media, (they were wrong back then also?), thought it was going to be.
Supporters of Lee in the South had to have a fall guy, and unfortunately “Pete” fit that bill. He was not responsible for the poor decisions at Gettysburg, but was too much of a gentleman to blame his dead commander who could not defend himself.
D.H. Hill was also Stonewall Jackson’s brother in law. Both married daughters of the President of Davidson College.
The lost cause had a good a good run.
Thank you, and Happy 4th of July.
So has the Constitutional Republic. I pray that this cause has many more years to run.
That says, it feels like early 1865.
I had forgotten that! Thanks! A pretty good general in his own right, but I think he clashed with Lee and got shipped off to guard the Carolina coast, or something.
What is not mentioned here is at the time that Longstreet was collaborating with federal occupiers, Southern voters had been disenfranchised. Occupation governments filled with corrupt carpet baggers and Northern Republican Party flunkies were in the process of committing theft on an absolutely massive scale. First their corrupt state puppet governments propped up by federal bayonets jacked up taxes to 200-300% of their pre-war levels at a time when the South’s economy was wrecked. Then they used the tax money that was raised to line their own pockets. When people could not pay these absurdly high taxes, they were dispossessed of their land which was then sold to these same carpet baggers and corrupt Republican Party flunkies at knockdown prices.
There is a reason why from the end of the Occupation until Nixon almost 100 years later, the Republican Party could not win hardly a single election in the South.
“Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late… It means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern schoolteachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision… It is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties.” Maj. General Patrick R. Cleburne, CSA, January 1864
Only by a few idiots at this point.
Longstreets vindication has been pretty thorough by this point.
I don’t agree that Longstreet was the great visionary of the war. When he was given independent command, he did not do well. I think Lee and Grant were the great strategists of the Civil War. Lee gets the credit but, sadly, Grant often does not. If you read E.P. Alexander’s book, he thinks Lee made two [potentially] disastrous mistakes. Pickett’s Charge and the frontal attack on the breastworks at Chancellorsville, after Jackson’s flanking attack had forced the Army of the Potomac to retreat. Fortunately (per Alexander), Hooker had already fled the fortifications back to Washington.
Right you are. If Lee had followed Longstreet’s suggest guidance, Picket’s Charge would not have happened and who knows how the Civil War would have ended.
Pretty sure Harvey Hill had already been moved to North Carolina.
They should have gone around to the right.
I believe that if the South had won the war he would have been the third president of the CSA after Lee.
Like what? That like thousands of Southerners he took up arms against a duly elected government?
With a billion civil war books written, only something new and exciting sells books, vs the 34th biography with same old same old, of any major subject. So after 100+ yrs of bashing, Gen Longstreet (and Gen John Bell Hood) gets a fresh look, from angles other than the last 30 biographies in 100 yrs.
With a billion civil war books written, only something new and exciting sells books, vs the 34th biography with same old same old, of any major subject. So after 100+ yrs of bashing, Gen Longstreet (and Gen John Bell Hood) gets a fresh look, from angles other than the last 30 biographies in 100 yrs.
Ping
He appealed to Lee multiple times to the point of insubordination to outflank the Union left which was in hindsight brilliant and correct. Moreover, he had also asked to be granted leave so he could be at what he (correctly) surmised as the more important battle at Vicksburg, which may have changed the course of the war. Longstreet was a consistent, cautious military genius (look at his performance at Fredericksburg vs. Jackson, fore example).
Longstreet vs (against) Jackson??????
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