James
Longstreet’s triumphs and travails on the battlefield and in the Southern
society he inhabited after the Civil War are the subject of an upcoming
symposium in metro Atlanta.
The Center
for the Study of the Civil War Era at Kennesaw State University on March 18
will feature talks by historian and author Jeffry D. Wert, history professor
Keith Bohannon and Brian Wills, director of the center. The program is entitled "Longstreet to Redemption."
Wills told
the Picket he will focus on the Confederate general’s independent campaigns at
Suffolk, Va.; and Knoxville, Tenn., in 1863.
“Longstreet struggled to replicate success on his own,”
away from the Army of Northern Virginia and Gen. Robert E. Lee, Wills said. “His
inability to achieve results in these operations did not negate his
performances before or after those campaigns, but exposed limitations for
Longstreet in working under such circumstances.”
Bohannon, who teaches at the University of West Georgia, will summarize
Longstreet’s actions in the 1863 Chickamauga campaign – including a
fortuitously timed attack that sent thousands of Federals fleeing before Major.
Gen. George Thomas stemmed the disaster.
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| Statue in Gainesville, Ga. |
“I'm hoping to explore first how various historians have interpreted
Longstreet's desire in 1863 to go west and reinforce (Gen. Braxton) Bragg's army,”
Bohannon said. “Was Longstreet hoping to get command of the Army of Tennessee?”
The historian said he will discuss
William Glenn Robertson’s view that Longstreet did not have a grand strategy at
Chickamauga. “Lastly, I plan on concluding with some thoughts about the
acrimonious relationship that developed between Longstreet and Bragg in the weeks following Chickamauga.”
Wert – who wrote a 1993 biography of the controversial general -- will examine the “criticism
that Longstreet received following the war, largely associated with the
Confederate defeat at Gettysburg, Longstreet's criticisms of General Lee and
his postwar career as a Republican,” the Civil War Center said in a press
release. “(Longstreet) was, as he stated, arraigned before the world as the "only
one responsible for the loss of the cause."
Wert
and other historians have done much to bring a new assessment of Longstreet’s
tarnished postwar reputation.
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| Piedmont Hotel, the general's Gainesville residence. |
The
Longstreet Society works to rehabilitate the image of Lee's "War Horse." It argues he has
been unfairly vilified by postwar detractors.
