The story of Confederate General James Longstreet is one of the most intriguing stores to come out of the war. As far as I can tell, this is the best biography of Old Pete. Longstreet's story is about how he eventually became the Confederacy's whipping boy, blamed for the loss of the war more than anyone else.
P. ix Despite the plethora of Confederate statues in New Orleans, there is not a single one of General James Longstreet. Indeed, there isn't a statue of General Longstreet anywhere despite the fact that he was Lee's second in command.
P. 63 The Gettysburg disaster was enormous. Lee is to blame. He wouldn't listen to Longstreet. After the first day he thought his army could do anything. Frontal assault was Lee's only modus operandi. The historical tragedy of blaming Longstreet and exonerating Lee is amazing to me.
P. 99 Longstreet's image coming out of the war was both credible and favorable. Longstreet and Lee were understood to have worked closely together. Lee considered Longstreet's generalship the best in the world. In no way at this point did Longstreet demean Lee in any way. Longstreet was more low-profile, uncouth frankly, and not good copy as were some other Confederate generals. His uncouthness was not considered cute.
P. 100 Longstreet and Lee kept in touch after the war even though Lee was in Virginia and Longstreet had settled in New Orleans. Lee continued to show his affection toward Longstreet.
P. 103 Both Lee and Longstreet were never to write their histories of the way. Perhaps this was unfortunate for Longstreet, for through Lee the South might have known Longstreet as he really was: the man Lee, Johnston, and Beauregard thought he was, Lee's principal right-hand man, trusted advisor, and intimate friend.
P. 108 Eventually Longstreet became a full-fledged Republican, accepting a government job in New Orleans. which doomed him in the eyes of extant Confederacy as the Lost Cause and the deification of Robert E. Lee took off. What his fellow Southerners never seemed to realize is that Longstreet remained a white supremacist. He thought that Southerners were better off cooperating with Republicans to best protect the dominance of whites. Longstreet went further than other Southerners in supporting Radical Republican reconstruction in 1867, the years his troubles began. Until then he was highly regarded. Lee kept his mouth shut; Longstreet naively didn't.
P. 117 The attack on Longstreet's military record began only after Lee's death. Lee's defenders built up his reputation by attacking Longstreet's. The latter became Lee's scapegoat. Lee's mistakes and failures were transferred to Longstreet. This fact along with the building of the Lost Cause mythology buried James Longstreet's reputation. Lee emerged as the stainless hero who did no wrong.
P. 118 There was a concerted campaign led by Jubal Early to defame Longstreet. Part of it was to turn Gettysburg into the THE turning point of the war and to blame Longstreet for the loss. Early was the leading culprit. In writing Southern history Early was atoning for his many failures as a soldier as on July 1 when Cemetery and Culp's Hills were there for the taking and he hesitated, one of the big Southern mistakes at Gettysburg.
P. 119 Early fled the country after the war but returned in 1869 and thru his various positions like head of the Lee Monument Association and his involvement with the Southern Historical Society he regained his reputation by defending the Lost Cause and attacking Longstreet. Lee was no longer alive to set the record straight.
P. 150 Longstreet had a controversial career as a Republican
P. 159 Popular fiction after the way effectively removed Longstreet from the pantheon of Confederate heroes and made him into an unpopular Scalawag.
P. 160 After the war Longstreet was the most popular Southern speaker in the North. He offered Grant full credit for his accomplishments.
P. 174 "Dependent upon biased sources, historians of the early 20th Century blamed Longstreet not only for losing Gettysburg but for fatal errors on other fields as well. By 1934, Longstreet was more of a scapegoat for the South's loss of the war than ever before. The extreme vanity, jealousy, egotism, and obstinacy observable in his own postwar writings were incorrectly assumed to be characteristic of his wartime conduct as well. Nor did there seem to be any reason the question the accounts of such men as Early, Long, Marshall, or Pendleton, whose only motive seemed to be defense of the saintly Lee."
P. 177 The great Douglas Southall Freeman in his 4-volume biography of Lee and his 1943 screed on Lee's Lieutenants did as much as anybody to unfairly undermine Longstreet's reputation. I am naturally sympathetic to Longstreet given what I've learned about how the Lost Cause army after the war promoted Lee at the expense of Longstreet.
P. 184 The artificial Lee of the Lost Cause. Longstreet the scapegoat for Gettysburg. Longstreet hurt by not having strong attraction to any particular state. Gainesville appreciated Longstreet but the state of Georgia ignored him.
P. 185 "Lacking partisans associated with his place of birth or residence, and lacking the cavalier, aristocratic image which so lent itself to commercialization, Longstreet was largely omitted from the centennial. The process began by Early and his followers in the 1870's was complete. With his role as scapegoat for the Confederate defeat firmly entrenched as an integral part of the Lost Cause, James Longstreet, a man during acknowledged to be one of the South's foremost combat commanders, emerged from the centennial as a figure of pity and scorn."
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