Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South
By Elizabeth R. Varon
Simon & Schuster, 2023
At the very end of her timely and thought provoking biography of Confederate general James Longstreet, University of Virginia history professor Elizabeth Varon wrote:
Longstreet’s story is a reminder that the arc of history is sometimes bent by those who had the courage to change their convictions…. (and) he commands our attention as one of the most enduringly relevant voices in American history (363).
“Longstreet’s” journey through three distinct stages of the general’s life story portrayed him first as a slave-owning true believer in the southern cause and followed his Civil War exploits with an emphasis on the events on July 2-3, 1863 at the Battle of Gettysburg. At war’s end, Longstreet became a Republican supporter of federal Reconstruction; he accepted a number of patronage jobs and pursued a relatively progressive path integrating the police force in New Orleans. The final chapter showed an increasingly isolated older man, aided by a much younger second wife, trying to regain his reputation within the more conservative elements of the southern population which viewed him as a traitor. There was a strong historiographic tone throughout “Longstreet;” Varon made copious use of other historians’ viewpoints on all sides of the issues at hand, a real plus for this reviewer, whose knowledge of US history is broader than deep. She did much the same with various editorial viewpoints of the nation’s (most Southern) newspapers. Both gave “Longstreet” a nice sense of editorial balance; Varon clearly focused more on story telling than axe grinding.
She nonetheless presented the journey as a commendable evolution in Longstreet’s personal outlook, and it’s hard to argue that point. In terms of his “enduring relevance,” however, one is tempted to substitute “frustratingly irrelevant” for how little he actually bent history to create real and lasting change. Indeed, given Varon’s expert accounts of countervailing attitudes during and after Longsteet’s life, right up to the present day, he probably never had a chance of success.
Varon showed how Longstreet was driven by one of his greatest strengths, an abiding pragmatism that allowed him to accept the outcome of the Civil War and move forward in conjunction with his former foes:
There can be no discredit to a conquered people for accepting the conditions offered by their conquerors….we have made an honest….creditable fight, but we have lost. Let us come forward, then, and accept the ends involved in the struggle (xviii).
It could also be argued that Longsteet’s view that the reconstructed South should be led by white, Republican men like himself (and not by Southern Democrats,) Black politicians or Northern carpetbaggers (who) did not understand the “colored man” or his characteristics (260) was a logical compromise even if, given his past, Longstreet was an imperfect messenger of thai position. Whether it would have long term staying power was left open to question. Varon noted Lonstreet’s similarity to Booker T. Washington’s; both men were asking Blacks and Whites to “cast down your bucket where you are.”
The success of Longstreet’s ideas of course required buy-ins from both races. Washington’s Atlanta Compromise was repudiated by a newer generation of Black civil rights leaders and it’s hard to imagine Longstreet succeeding. Moreover, Varon’s accounts of the White forces opposing Longstreet made it seem practically impossible. They ranged from (mostly verbal) adherents of the Lost Cause to those who more aggressively fought back against integration and reform.
The romantic power of the Lost Cause was immense, rendering any pragmatic assessment of, say, Longstreet and Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg almost totally irrelevant. William Faulkner wrote about Southern boys imagining themselves on the field at Gettysburg, realizing they were at an historical tipping point when the risks of moving forward with Pickett’s Charge – “that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave” – were far outweighed by the possible rewards – “Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself” – much like Columbus risking sailing off the edge of the world to find new lands (Intruder in the Dust).
Longstreet criticized Lee, caught up in the heat of the moment, for ordering the Day 2 assaults on the Roundtops and Day 3’s Pickett’s Charge instead of heeding his advice to maneuver the Army of Northern Virginia onto more favorable ground between the Union Army of the Potomac and Washington, DC and forcing General George Meade into a repeat of the disastrous Battle of Fredericksburg. Fair enough, but how could it compete with the Lost Cause narrative? Varon cited the 1993 movie Gettysburg’s sympathetic portrayal of Longstreet to present a fellow historian’s view that he was a better general than Lee, who was more of a noble anachronism (358). Whatever the technical merits of that argument, the movie’s own epilogue (reviewer’s emphases) rendered it somewhat meaningless:
“....Longstreet is wounded severely in 1864 but returns to remain Lee’s most reliable soldier. He dies in 1904 at the age of 83….Lee serves until the end of the war, almost two years later. He dies in 1870, perhaps the most beloved general in US history.” (Gettysburg)
Varon also presented ample evidence of physical opposition to Longstreet’s views, centered primarily on the 1874 Canal Street Coup, an armed attack against the integrated police force led by Longstreet. Even so, she may have waited too long to provide background on the broader racial environment — i.e. Jim Crow, etc. – in which Longsteet was operating and which certainly made his desired role as change agent more difficult to achieve.
One final strength of “Longstreet,” sadly, was its modern relevance. She mentioned the 2020 election in the context of the Canal Street uprising (362) and it’s easy to see former Vice President Mike Pence as a latter day Longstreet, generally loyal to the cause until he realized the election was lost, doing the right thing when it came time to certify the election results and being overwhelmed by Donald Trump’s grievance-fueled, racially tinged stolen election narrative and relegated to an afterthought in the current political climate. The lesson for Longstreet: good intentions and deeds may bend history, but in this case it would have taken a lot more to break it.