08/31/2026
James Longstreet survived two wars, a bullet through the neck, and the collapse of the Confederacy—but the longest battle of his life was the fight over his own name.
Born January 8, 1821, in South Carolina’s Edgefield District, Longstreet was raised largely in Georgia and Alabama. At nine, he was sent to live with his uncle Augustus in Augusta and prepare for a military career. He entered West Point in 1838 and graduated near the bottom of the Class of 1842. His friends there included George Pickett and Ulysses S. Grant.
Longstreet proved himself in the Mexican War. Serving with the 8th U.S. Infantry, he earned brevet promotions for bravery. At Chapultepec, a bullet struck him in the thigh as he carried the regimental colors; he handed the flag to Pickett, who continued forward. Longstreet married Maria Louisa Garland in 1848. They had ten children, five of whom survived to adulthood. He spent much of the 1850s on the frontier and rose to major in the U.S. Army.
When the Civil War began, Longstreet resigned and entered Confederate service. His steadiness under fire carried him from brigadier general to lieutenant general. Robert E. Lee called him his “Old War Horse” and entrusted him with the First Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia.
Behind his stern exterior was terrible grief. In January 1862, three of Longstreet’s young children died from scarlet fever within days. The loss left him quieter and more religious.
His wartime record held both brilliance and failure. Longstreet performed poorly at Seven Pines but became one of Lee’s most dependable commanders during the Seven Days. At Second Manassas, his huge counterattack crushed the Union left. At Antietam, he helped hold Lee’s battered line; at Fredericksburg, his fortified position at Marye’s Heights repulsed repeated Federal assaults.
Gettysburg made him famous—and later infamous. Longstreet favored maneuvering around the Union left and forcing the Federals to attack, but Lee chose battle. Longstreet obeyed: his July 2 assault nearly broke the Union line, while the July 3 attack remembered as Pickett’s Charge ended in disaster. After the war, Lost Cause writers—especially Jubal Early—claimed Longstreet’s slowness had caused the defeat. Lee, however, had not condemned him in his reports or private papers.
Sent west in 1863, Longstreet directed the breakthrough that helped win Chickamauga, then failed in an independent campaign against Knoxville. Returning to Virginia, he launched a powerful attack at the Wilderness before Confederate fire struck him through the shoulder and neck. He recovered, returned during the Petersburg siege, and remained with Lee through Appomattox.
His postwar choices proved even more controversial. Longstreet settled in New Orleans, joined the Republican Party, supported Reconstruction and Black male voting rights, and endorsed Grant for president. In 1874, while commanding Louisiana’s largely Black militia against the white-supremacist White League, he was wounded and captured during the Battle of Liberty Place.
Longstreet later served as customs surveyor, U.S. minister to the Ottoman Empire, U.S. marshal, and railroad commissioner. After Louisa died in 1889, he published From Manassas to Appomattox in 1896 and married Helen Dortch the next year. He died in Gainesville, Georgia, on January 2, 1904—six days before his eighty-third birthday.
Sources:
James Longstreet, From Manassas to Appomattox (1896)
Jeffry D. Wert, General James Longstreet (1993)
William Garrett Piston, Lee’s Tarnished Lieutenant (1987)
National Park Service, “James Longstreet”
Encyclopedia Virginia, “James Longstreet (1821–1904)”
