James Longstreet - Legacy

Legacy

Knudsen maintains that because Longstreet became a "reconstructed rebel", embraced equal rights for blacks, unification of the nation, and reconstruction, he became the target of those who wanted to maintain racist policies and otherwise could not accept the verdict of the battlefield. Criticism from authors in the Lost Cause movement attacked Longstreet's war career for many years after his death. The attacks formally began on January 19, 1872, the anniversary of Robert E. Lee's birth, and less than two years after Lee's death. Jubal Early, in a speech at Washington College, exonerated Lee of his failure at Gettysburg and falsely accused Longstreet of attacking late on the second day and of being responsible for the debacle on the third. The following year William N. Pendleton, Lee's artillery chief, claimed in the same venue that Longstreet disobeyed an explicit order to attack at sunrise on July 2. Both of these allegations were fabrications; however, Longstreet failed to challenge these lies publicly until 1875. The delay was damaging to his reputation, as the Lost Cause mythology had taken hold in common opinion by this time. In the 20th century, Lost Cause "disciple" Douglas Southall Freeman, kept criticism of Longstreet foremost in Civil War scholarship in his biography of Lee. Clifford Dowdey, a Virginia newspaperman and novelist, was noted for his severe criticism of Longstreet in the 1950s and 1960s.

After Longstreet's death, his second wife Helen privately published Lee and Longstreet at High Tide in his defense, in which she stated "the South was seditiously taught to believe that the Federal Victory was wholly the fortuitous outcome of the culpable disobedience of General Longstreet."

The publication of Michael Shaara's novel The Killer Angels in 1974, based in part on Longstreet's memoirs, followed by its 1993 film adaptation, Gettysburg, have been credited with helping to restore Longstreet's reputation as a general and to dramatically raise his public visibility. The 1982 work by Thomas L. Connolly and Barbara L. Bellows, God and General Longstreet, provided a "further upgrading of Longstreet through an attack on Lee, the Lost Cause, and the Virginia revisionists."

Jeffry D. Wert wrote that "Longstreet ... was the finest corps commander in the Army of Northern Virginia; in fact, he was arguably the best corps commander in the conflict on either side." Richard L. DiNardo wrote "Even Longstreet's most virulent critics have conceded that he put together the best staff employed by any commander, and that his de facto chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel G. Moxley Sorrel, was the best staff officer in the Confederacy." DiNardo cited the effective way in which Longstreet delegated responsibilities for control of battlefield movements to his staff and how they were able to communicate with him more effectively during battles than the staffs of other Confederate generals during the war.