Professor Kevin Waite, who is originally from Pasadena, California, wrote an article for the Washington Post in 2018 in the Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer that ran under the headline, The missing statues that expose the truth about Confederate monuments. Through the miracle that is the internet, I found his article while I researching James Longstreet’s extraordinary life, which saw him go from a Confederate war hero to Confederate pariah after the Civil War.
By coincidence, we were both drawn to Longstreet’s story from reading about his role in the battle of Gettysburg in the novel, The Killer Angels, written by Michael Shaara. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1975.
Longstreet, who was second-in-command to Gen. Robert E. Lee, had disagreed with some of Lee’s key strategic decisions. Intrigued by his depiction in Shaara’s novel, I delved into his life story and was stunned to learn that he had later led Black troops in New Orleans after the war, and advocated for rights for Black former slaves. For that, he was vilified and shunned by former colleagues, friends and even men who had served under and admired him during the war.
“While Longstreet was a remarkable soldier,” Waite wrote, “he was also an agent of federal Reconstruction - and black suffrage - in the postwar South. For that, his former comrades purged him from memory, thereby reinforcing the link between white supremacy and Confederate iconography.”
I am grateful to Professor Waite for providing me with very helpful background and his incisive perspective on the life of James Longstreet.
Share this post