Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South, by Elizabeth R. Varon

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Longstreet by Elizabeth Varon

No statues of Confederate General James Longstreet have been removed from their pedestals—because he was never honored by Southern racists with a statue. Longstreet was one of the Confederacy’s leaders, one of its most successful military commanders, and yet, after the Civil War, he promoted civil rights for Blacks and defended their right to vote in Louisiana as head of a multiracial militia. White supremacists deemed him a traitor, and when all those Confederate memorials were erected early in the last century, Longstreet was rejected as an apostate to the Southern cause.

As Longstreet’s biographer Elizabeth R. Varon puts it, the general’s journey from ardent Confederate to civil rights advocate “was an exceedingly unlikely one.” The University of Virginia history professor cites Ulysses S. Grant’s generous clemency of the defeated Robert E. Lee as motivating Longstreet’s pivot. Grant was his West Point classmate and an old friend. Had Grant been more Draconian, Longstreet might not have reconsidered his position.

“More so than any other prominent Confederate, Longstreet accepted the war’s verdict as final,” Varon writes. And as a man who enjoyed command, he wanted to find a place for himself in a nation where the Union won. Although it’s never possible to fully understand the ideas, emotions and desires of historical figures, much of the evidence Varon gathers points to Longstreet’s pragmatism and grasp of reality. Unlike the Confederates cut in stone and bronze, Longstreet knew he lost. And he was OK in defeat.

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