Taking James Longstreet and Confederates Seriously

This coming November, Simon & Schuster will publish Elizabeth Varon’s biography of James Longstreet. I’ve been looking forward to this book for some time and luckily I was able to get hold of an advance copy for review. I am about 100 pages in and thoroughly enjoying it thus far.

Varon does a great job of situating Longstreet squarely in the pro-slavery Southern nationalist camp—a result of the influence of his uncle, Augustus Longstreet, who took responsibility for raising him.

The chapters on the war years will likely surprise few people familiar with the military history of the Civil War. Varon relies on a number of scholars, especially Jeffry Wert, to frame her narrative. What I do appreciate, however, is her emphasis on Longstreet’s understanding of the importance of slave labor to the Army of Northern Virginia and its role in rounding up African Americans during more than one campaign.

This is a hefty book, with a narrative that tops 360 pages. Varon’s focus is overwhelmingly on Longstreet’s postwar career in contrast with the last full-length biography written by Jeffry Wert, which focused mainly on his military record and includes just one chapter on the remainder of his life—twenty pages in a 400+ page book.

I was first struck by the cover art, which features Longstreet in civilian clothing, rather than in his Confederate uniform. No doubt, this choice reflects the fact that most of the book focuses on Longstreet’s rich postwar life. As many of you are aware, Longstreet embraced Reconstruction, including the major constitutional amendments, and accepted positions in the Grant administration. As a result, Longstreet was considered a traitor to the South by Lost Cause advocates and former Confederates.

Perhaps the publisher was concerned that a uniformed Longstreet would turn away certain readers at the sight of a Confederate uniform.

Either way, we need books like this given the tenor of discussion surrounding the memory of the Confederacy. I worry that there is a cloud of suspicion hovering over people who choose to write about important Confederate military or political leaders.

The public discourse around Confederates typically begins and ends with slavery. That may be sufficient when arguing over Confederate monuments, but it makes for an overly simplistic understanding of history.

The point is not to excuse the cause for which they fought and defended or engage in some sort of twenty-first century reconciliation with the past, but to acknowledge that their lives are worthy of serious study as much as those on the opposite side of the fight, along with the millions of enslaved people that the Confederacy hoped to maintain as property.

Any lessons that can be gleened from this period in American history will only be discernible as a result of careful investigation of everyone involved, one that challenges our ability to engage in critical analysis and empathize with people that may hold views that we find abhorrent.

James Longstreet’s wartime record and committment to the independence of a slaveholding republic certainly qualifies as abhorrent, but his long post-war life is a reminder that history is always more complex and points to the importance of change over time. Longstreet is certainly not alone in this respect.

We can and should explore the diversity of the lives of Confederates from the rank and file and those attempting to survive the war on the home front to those serving in the highest echelons of the military and political office.

The serious study of history demands nothing less.