Lee's Tarnished Lieutenant

Epilogue

Epilogue I HE VANITY, JEALOUSY, AND overt desire for selfadvancement which marked Longstreet's postwar prose were a product of his controversies with Early and his supporters and did not characterize Longstreet during the war. The assumption that they were lifelong characteristics has been a major historical error. But no single person or factor created Longstreet's negative image. It resulted from a complex combination of personalities and circumstances . Contributing factors included Jubal Early's guilt for having fled the South in 1865 and his obsession with Confederate history as a means of assuaging that guilt and compensating for the disgrace in which his career had ended. They included the desires of William Nelson Pendleton and John William Jones to bask in the reflected glory of Robert E. Lee and to win among Confederate veterans in peacetime a status that they had not enjoyed as soldiers. Also implicated was the sensitivity of Lee's staff to their chief's reputation and the assumption that to suspect him of any error was to do a disservice to his memory. It involved officers such as John B. Gordon and Fitzhugh Lee, who endorsed the Lost Cause and exploited Lee's name to further their postwar political careers. And it involved the entire Southern reaction to the defeat and Reconstruction, which made Longstreet's Republican affiliation appear to be an abomination and made his role of scapegoat believeable. Finally, and most important of all, it included Longstreet's reaction to his accusers. Although the Lost Cause maintained a firm grip T 187 i88 Epilogue on historians for generations, Longstreet's image would probably not have emerged from the centennial so little changed since the 18705 had not historians and the reading public been able to see in the General 's writings apparent confirmation of his alleged wartime nature and behavior. In the final analysisthe anti-Longstreet faction had no greater ally than Longstreet himself. James Longstreet's negative image is not likely to change. His role in Southern culture has been that of villain, not hero, and cultural roles cannot be overturned by scholarship. The most laudatory biography imaginable could not give Longstreet anything to compare with the hundred years of adoration accorded Lee and Jackson. The artificiality of the stereotypical Confederate hero is not the issue. Longstreet's picture did not hang in schoolrooms for generation after generation. His birthplace did not become a shrine nor his grave a place of pilgrimage, and his birthday was not made a state holiday.As long as Southern history remains something that is lived and felt as much as read, Longstreet will be remembered primarily as Lee's tarnished lieutenant. ...