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.
Click for the original review.
Background Information
When the seceding states met in Montgomery, Alabama, to form the Confederacy in February 1861, secession without war still seemed possible. James Longstreet was one of the leading generals in the army of the Confederate States and after the war became a Republican and a friend of Ulysses S. Grant. The Battle of Gettysburg represented the high water mark of the Confederacy when it was fought in July 1863. Reconstruction was brought to an end in 1877 as part of an informal deal through the Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes became President in exchange for a promise to remove federal troops from the Democratic South. General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to General Ullysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, effectively ending the Civil War.