In the South, one can find any number of bronze monuments to the
Confederacy featuring heroic images of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall
Jackson, J. E. B. Stuart, and many lesser commanders. But while the
tarnish on such statues has done nothing to color the reputation of
those great leaders, there remains one Confederate commander whose
tarnished image has nothing to do with bronze monuments. Nowhere in
the South does a memorial stand to Lee's intimate friend and
second-in-command James Longstreet.
In "Lee's Tarnished Lieutenant," William Garrett Piston examines
the life of James Longstreet and explains how a man so revered
during the course of the war could fall from grace so swiftly and
completely. Unlike other generals in gray whose deeds are familiar
to southerners and northerners alike, Longstreet has the image not
of a hero but of an incompetent who lost the Battle of Gettysburg
and, by extension, the war itself. Piston's reappraisal of the
general's military record establishes Longstreet as an energetic
corps commander with an unsurpassed ability to direct troops in
combat, as a trustworthy subordinate willing to place the war
effort above personal ambition. He made mistakes, but Piston shows
that he did not commit the grave errors at Gettysburg and elsewhere
of which he was so often accused after the war.
In discussing Longstreet's postwar fate, Piston analyzes the
literature and public events of the time to show how the southern
people, in reaction to defeat, evolved an image of themselves which
bore little resemblance to reality. As a product of the Georgia
backwoods, Longstreet failed to meet the popular cavalier image
embodied by Lee, Stuart, and other Confederate heroes. When he
joined the Republican party during Reconstruction, Longstreet
forfeited his wartime reputation and quickly became a convenient
target for those anxious to explain how a "superior people" could
have lost the war. His new role as the villain of the Lost Cause
was solidified by his own postwar writings. Embittered by years of
social ostracism resulting from his Republican affiliation,
resentful of the orchestrated deification of Lee and Stonewall
Jackson, Longstreet exaggerated his own accomplishments and
displayed a vanity that further alienated an already offended
southern populace.
Beneath the layers of invective and vilification remains a
general whose military record has been badly maligned. "Lee's
Tarnished Lieutenant" explains how this reputation developed--how
James Longstreet became, in the years after Appomattox, the
scapegoat for the South's defeat, a Judas for the new religion of
the Lost Cause.
General
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