defenses. On Little Round Top, Col. Joshua
Chamberlain conducted a magnificent de-
fense with the 20th Maine Infantry and defied
all Confederate attempts to capture it. On July
3, Lee then ordered Longstreet to launch a
frontal assault on Cemetery Ridge involving
the II Corps and George E. Pickett’s division.
As Longstreet predicted, the Confederate of-
fensive failed with staggering losses.
After the Confederate retreat back to Vir-
ginia, Longstreet and two divisions were dis-
patched westward to assist the army of Gen.
Braxton Braggin Georgia. Exploiting a gap
in the Union line, his attack at Chickamauga
on September 20, 1863, shattered William S.
Rosecrans’s army and sent it reeling. In No-
vember, Bragg sent Longstreet to capture
Knoxville with Gen. Joseph Wheeler, but,
moving slowly, he failed to defeat Burnside’s
army in the field and settled for an unproduc-
tive siege. The approach of Union reinforce-
ments under William Tecumseh Sherman in-
duced Longstreet to retire from his position
within a month.
Longstreet rejoined Lee in Virginia to fight
in the fierce Battle of the Wilderness in May
- He marched to the assistance of Am-
brose P. Hill’s faltering troops, and his coun-
terattack stopped the army of Winfield Scott
Hancock in its tracks. In the confusion
Longstreet was shot and severely wounded by
his own men. He could not resume campaign-
ing until November, when he took control of
Richmond’s defenses. Despite the futility of
the struggle, Longstreet remained by Lee’s
side until his surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at
Appomattox on April 9, 1865.
After the war, Longstreet worked as a busi-
nessman and gained the undying enmity of his
former rebel compatriots by joining the Re-
publican Party. President Grant, a West Point
classmate, appointed him surveyor of cus-
toms in New Orleans in 1869 and postmaster
in 1873. He also briefly served as U.S. minister
to Turkey in 1880. Longstreet wrote exten-
sively after the war, and his memoirs are re-
garded as among the best written by a senior
Confederate officer. However, when he criti-
cized Lee’s leadership, particularly at Gettys-
burg, he himself was bitterly assailed in his-
tory journals by Jubal Early and Fitzhugh Lee
for slowness and insubordination. Longstreet
died at his home in Gainesville, Georgia, on
January 2, 1904.Bibliography
Dinardo, Richard L., and Albert A. Nofi. James
Longstreet: The Man, the Soldier, the Controversy.
Conshohocken, PA: Combined, 1998; Gallagher,
Gary W., ed. The Second Day at Gettysburg: Essays
on Confederate and Union Military Leadership.
Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1993; Gal-
lagher, Gary W., ed. The Wilderness Campaign.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1997; Hal-
lock, Judith L. General James Longstreet in the
West: A Monumental Failure.Forth Worth: Ryan
Place, 1995; Longstreet, James.From Manassas to
Appomattox: Memoirs of the Civil War in Amer-
ica.Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1896; Piston,
William G., and Richard W. Hatcher. Lee’s Tarnished
Lieutenant: James Longstreet and His Place in
Southern History.Athens: University of Georgia
Press, 1987; Ritter, Charles F., and Jon L. Wakelyn,
eds. Leaders of the American Civil War: A Bio-
graphical and Historiographical Dictionary.West-
port, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998; West, Jeffrey.
General James Longstreet: The Confederacy’s Most
Controversial Soldier.New York: Simon and Schus-
ter, 1993.LONGSTREET, JAMES