For the better part of a century, much of what was written about James Longstreet relied on evidence presented by a select group of men, alternately known as the "Lee Cult" or the "anti-Longstreet cabal." Foremost among these was Jubal Early who, in a speech at Washington and Lee College in 1872 commemorating Robert E. Lee’s birthday, leveled the first attack on Longstreet’s war record by accusing him of disobeying Lee’s orders for the assault on July 2nd at Gettysburg. (It is notable that this charge did not come until two years after Lee’s death, thus ensuring that the General would not be able to comment.) This came to be known as the "sunrise attack" theory, so named for Early’s insistence that Lee had expected Longstreet to launch his attack at or near daylight on that day. The second assault on Longstreet’s reputation came from William N. Pendleton, who essentially repeated Early’s charges in a speech a year later.
Initially, Early and Pendleton spoke mostly alone. In his delayed response to this charge, Longstreet solicited commentary from several members of Lee’s staff, notably A.L Long, Charles Marshall, and Walter Taylor. All three stated that they had never heard of such an order. On its face, this would seem to have destroyed Early’s argument; however, owing to Longstreet’s criticisms of Lee and the sometimes inept manner in which he both reported and defended his record, many other former Confederates, including Lee’s staff, would join the chorus in condemning Longstreet’s actions at Gettysburg. The specifics of their criticisms differed in subtle ways from Early’s initial attack, but they all amounted to the same thing: Longstreet lost the battle; Longstreet lost the war.
The primary vehicle used in this systematic destruction of Longstreet’s reputation was the Southern Historical Society (SHS) and its journal, The Southern Historical Society Papers (SHSP). The Rev. J. William Jones in his capacity as secretary of the SHS and editor of the Papers, worked closely with Early and others in setting down for the historical record their version of the war. That version included the argument that Longstreet had been responsible for the loss at Gettysburg and that the magnanimous Lee could in no way be faulted. For over two decades Jones published article after article condemning Longstreet, the majority of these having been solicited with the direct intent of doing so. The men who wrote these articles did not agree with one another accidentally. They worked with a degree of cooperation in laying the blame for Gettysburg at Longstreet’s feet that would have served them well on the battlefield.
As the veterans of the war died, a new breed of author came into being, one who had not been witness to the war but who desired to research and analyze the stories these soldiers had told. One of the most notable was Douglas S. Freeman, who wrote what is considered by many to be the most expertly written biography of Robert E. Lee. In this work, Freeman relied extensively on the articles in the SHSP as well as other articles and books inspired by them, and in doing so propagated the myth of Longstreet’s blame to a vast audience. Others, inspired by both Freeman and the SHSP, continued with this line of thought in histories that are still studied even today.
Those writers who did not blindly follow the Lee’s Cult’s version of Gettysburg are few but noteworthy. In 1934, Donald Sanger submitted a dissertation in consideration for a PhD in history that provided the first researched, independent account of Longstreet’s war record that argued Longstreet had, indeed, not been the one to blame for the loss at Gettysburg. Two years later, and before Sanger’s thesis had been published in book form, Hamilton Eckenrode and Bryan Conrad published a biography of James Longstreet called James Longstreet: Lee’s Warhorse that was a partial reappraisal of Longstreet’s reputation, but which agreed in many important aspects with the Lee Cult’s image of him. The noted historian William G. Piston has referred to this work as "a hatchet job."
Things began to look up for Longstreet’s reputation when, in the 1950’s and 60’s, an historian named Glen Tucker wrote and published two books, High Tide at Gettysburg and, inspired by the Longstreet controversy to focus more directly on it, Lee and Longstreet at Gettysburg. Tucker argued passionately not only that Longstreet had not been at fault, but that if his ideas for the battle, rejected by Lee, had been followed, the ANV could have possibly won, and won decisively. His works are notable primarily for the fact that they were the first widely read studies of the Gettysburg controversy that did not indict Longstreet.
However, it was not until 1977 that the role of the Lee Cult in shaping the image of both Longstreet and the Southern perspective of the war received serious attention. Thomas Connelly in The Marble Man exhaustively researched how Early, Jones, and others shaped and molded history to be presented to future generations as they wanted it to be seen. Connelly argued conclusively that the image of Lee, and by extension the image of the Confederacy’s war effort, was purposefully distorted in the pages of the SHSP and elsewhere. Later, William G. Piston, Connelly’s student, would apply the lessons taught by Connelly in a focused work on how the Lee Cult’s efforts shaped the image of James Longstreet himself. Dr. Piston’s work, titled Lee’s Tarnished Lieutenant: James Longstreet and His Place in Southern History, stands as the authoritative work on that subject and is an essential element to the understanding of both Longstreet and how all of history can be written.
In recent years, Longstreet’s image and especially the question of his culpability for Gettysburg have been studied more closely than ever. In 1993 Jeffry Wert published a biography of James Longstreet that far exceeds the short standard set by Eckenrode and Conrad. Wert was able to draw on both Connelly’s and Piston’s research, as well as another work on Lee by Alan Nolan called Lee Considered, in order to write a biography that is both balanced and complimentary of Longstreet as a soldier. In addition more recently published histories of the battle of Gettysburg have begun to question the Lee Cult’s version of it. Edward Coddington’s 1979 book, The Gettysburg Campaign, while not leaving Longstreet completely faultless (and it would be difficult to argue that any Confederate commander performed perfectly on that field, Longstreet included), presented a version of the battle with which Early and others would take strong exception. Harry W. Pfanz’s intensive work on the second day at Gettysburg, published in 1987 and titled, appropriately, Gettysburg: The Second Day strongly argues that the delays of Longstreet’s opening assault were not so much delays as necessities. Pfanz challenges the notion of that the attack could have possibly begun prior to early afternoon. Longstreet’s reputation has been somewhat enhanced, at least in academic circles, by these and other similar works.
The lasting impact of Early’s speech and the flood of criticism against Longstreet that followed not long after is difficult to measure. Noted professionals such as Robert Krick and Emory Thomas still argue without apology that Longstreet not only deserves much criticism for his performance at Gettysburg but that he was not as valued a member of the ANV as the works by Piston, Wert, etc. have argued. A recent work by Thomas Buell, titled The Warrior Generals repeats charges that Longstreet was slow, insubordinate, and ambitious to the point his ambition negatively affected his service to Confederate arms. While Buell offers little in the form of support for these criticisms, those familiar with the image of Longstreet as a traitor cannot help but see the influence of the anti-Longstreet cabal. However, the public image of Longstreet, exemplified no better than by the efforts to place a maker at his birthplace in South Carolina and a monument to him at Gettysburg 135 years after the battle, has altered significantly since the days when Jones, Early, Pendleton, and their cohorts held the ear of the public in the telling of history. Still, this battle of historical interpretation is not over and likely never will be. Those of us who concern ourselves with such things would do well to continue our studies, hone our arguments, and be ready face the challenges that will certainly arise.
Author: Brian Hampton