His is a fascinating, but not altogether explicable, life ... Varon does a nice job of combing through the tangled web of Louisiana’s postwar politics ... While Varon brilliantly creates the wider context for Longstreet’s career, she leans, alas, far more toward historiography than biography ... Her book, then, is not so much about Longstreet’s character or his motivations or even how he came to possess the 'courage to change,' as she poignantly observes, but about a symbolic Longstreet who embodies incompatible postwar narratives.
It’s hard to see Elizabeth Varon’s new biography of James Longstreet becoming a runaway bestseller, and that’s a shame, because her study of the Confederate general...is insightful, well-executed, and sorely needed ... Varon’s narrative bears out this familiar portrait of a worrying, wounded commander, even if she rejects previous scholars’ contention that this attitude impacted his performance in the field ... While Varon’s biography sags somewhat in detailing Longstreet’s maneuvering during the war and in recounting the various political offices he held in the decades long after it, the book comes to life narrating Longstreet’s activities during Reconstruction and analyzing his possible motives for accepting the outcome of the war. Alone among leading Confederates, he bowed to the North’s right to dictate the terms of peace.
Longstreet has long deserved a full and balanced biography that treats both his crucial Civil War career and his perceived postwar apostasy in something approaching equal measure. Regrettably, the historian Elizabeth Varon’s Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South is not that book ... Varon’s study concentrates primarily on his post-Civil War activities and evaluates Longstreet’s significance in the context of today’s racial accounting ... It is perhaps not surprising that she devotes less than one-third of her biography to Longstreet’s Civil War years. But if her choice of emphasis offers the most comprehensive examination available of his postwar career, it comes at the expense of exploring his importance as one of the pre-eminent generals of the Civil War ... There is little in Longstreet for the student of Civil War history.
A new and impressive biography of James Longstreet, the Confederate general who not only accepted defeat but also its logical aftermath: Reconstruction of a rebellious South forced to reform its racist ways ... Ironies abound in this complex, compelling drama.
Varon...tells Longstreet’s story with authority and insight, and she portrays a man with complicated motives. Some of Longstreet’s postwar stances can be traced to political ambition, fostered by his West Point friendship with Ulysses S. Grant, but for the most part, he was considered a friend to Black citizens and leaders until his death at 82. Varon never quite defines what gave him the perspective to think independently, but she reclaims his reputation and does him justice. Her style is accessible, and her scholarship buttresses the narrative. Readers interested in the Civil War and the horrors of Reconstruction should not miss this book. Comprehensive, readable, and accessible.
