James Longstreet

James Longstreet was a Confederate lieutenant general and one of Robert E. Lee’s principal corps commanders in the American Civil War. He fought in many of the Army of Northern Virginia’s major campaigns and was also sent west, where his troops helped win the Battle of Chickamauga.

Longstreet’s conduct at Gettysburg became the subject of bitter post-war controversy, especially after he joined the Republican Party and accepted federal appointments during Reconstruction. Later Lost Cause writers often blamed him disproportionately for Confederate defeat, a judgement modern historians have substantially revised.

Jeff Shaara’s Gone for Soldiers shows Longstreet as a younger American officer in the Mexican War, before the sectional crisis makes him a Confederate commander. Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels places him at the centre of Gettysburg, increasingly uneasy with Lee’s offensive plan and forced to direct the assault later known as Pickett’s Charge. Gingrich and Forstchen’s alternate-history Gettysburg uses Longstreet as one of the senior Confederate commanders whose changed decisions redirect the campaign. Hourly History’s Battle of Chickamauga explains how the arrival of Longstreet’s corps and his assault through a gap in the Union line helped produce the Confederate victory. The Gettysburg Campaign sets his battlefield decisions within Lee’s wider invasion of Pennsylvania and the command disputes that followed defeat.