Editing James Longstreet (section)

==Legacy==
===Historical reputation===
Longstreet was subject to vigorous attacks over his war record beginning in the 1870s and continuing after his death. His widow published ''Lee and Longstreet at High Tide'' in his defense and stated that "the South was seditiously taught to believe that the Federal Victory was wholly the fortuitous outcome of the culpable disobedience of General Longstreet".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-881 |title=Helen Dortch Longstreet (1863–1962) |last=Gardner |first=Sarah E. |date=May 9, 2003 |publisher=New Georgia Encyclopedia |access-date=August 16, 2021 |archive-date=October 26, 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071026095142/http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-881 |url-status=live }}</ref>

In the first half of the 20th century, Freeman kept criticism of Longstreet foremost in Civil War scholarship in his biography of Lee. Speaking of Gettysburg on July 2, 1863, he writes: "The battle was being decided at that very hour in the mind of Longstreet, who at his camp, a few miles away, was eating his heart away in sullen resentment that Lee had rejected his long cherished plan of a strategic offensive and a tactical defensive."{{sfn|Gallagher|1998|p=62}} He called Longstreet's performance so sluggish that "it has often been asked why Lee did not arrest him for insubordination or order him before a court-martial".{{sfn|Gallagher|1998|p=62}} Freeman moderated his views in his later ''Lee's Lieutenants: a Study in Command'', where he states that Longstreet's "attitude was wrong but his instinct was correct. He should have obeyed orders, but the order should not have been given."{{sfn|Gallagher|1998|p=62}} [[Clifford Dowdey]], a Virginia newspaperman and novelist, was noted for his severe criticism of Longstreet in the 1950s and 1960s.{{sfn|Gallagher|1998|p=207}}

In 1974, [[Michael Shaara]]'s novel ''[[The Killer Angels]]'' about the Battle of Gettysburg was published, based in part on Longstreet's memoirs. In 1993 the book was adapted into a film, ''[[Gettysburg (1993 film)|Gettysburg]]''. Longstreet is depicted very favorably in both, significantly improving his standing in popular imagination.{{sfn|Hartwig|1996|p=2}} Historians [[Thomas L. Connelly]] and Barbara L. Bellows' book ''God and General Longstreet'' (1982) also upgraded Longstreet "through an attack on Lee, the Lost Cause, and the Virginia revisionists".{{sfn|Wakelyn|1998|p=258}} In 1993, Wert published a new Longstreet biography, stating that his subject was "the finest corps commander in the Army of Northern Virginia; in fact, he was arguably the best corps commander in the conflict on either side."{{sfn|Wert|1993|pp=405–406}} Military historian Richard L. DiNardo wrote: "Even Longstreet's most virulent critics have conceded that he put together the best [[staff (military)|staff]] employed by any commander, and that his ''de facto'' [[chief of staff]], Lieutenant Colonel G. Moxley Sorrel, was the best staff officer in the Confederacy."<ref name="DiNardo">Richard L. DiNardo. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/3093262  "Southern by the Grace of God but Prussian by Common Sense: James Longstreet and the Exercise of Command in the U.S. Civil War."] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180815025718/https://www.jstor.org/stable/3093262 |date=August 15, 2018 }} ''The Journal of Military History'' 66. 4 (2002), pp. 1011–32.</ref> Noting Longstreet's delegation of control of battlefield movements to his staff, DiNardo argues that this allowed him to communicate more effectively during battles.<ref name="DiNardo"/> Praise for Longstreet's political conduct is tempered by the fact that he urged white acceptance of Reconstruction at least in part so that whites, and not blacks, would have the preeminent role in rebuilding the South.<ref name="CNN8232017">{{cite web |url=https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/23/opinions/where-are-monuments-to-confederate-general-longstreet-opinion-holmes/index.html |title=Where are the monuments to Confederate Gen. James Longstreet? |last=Holmes |first=Steven A. |date=August 23, 2017 |publisher=CNN |access-date=August 18, 2021 |archive-date=August 18, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210818203022/https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/23/opinions/where-are-monuments-to-confederate-general-longstreet-opinion-holmes/index.html |url-status=live }}</ref> Nevertheless, he has been commended for his willingness to work with the North, support for black voting rights, and bravery in leading a partially black militia to suppress a white supremacist insurrection.<ref name="CNN8232017"/><ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/blackface-is-a-tool-of-white-oppression-there-are-many-moer-towering-over-us/2019/02/07/4ea303b6-2b11-11e9-984d-9b8fba003e81_story.html |title=Opinion: James Comey: Take down the Confederate statues now |last=Comey |first=James |author-link=James Comey |date=February 27, 2019 |newspaper=The Washington Post |access-date=August 18, 2021 |archive-date=December 19, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201219195404/https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/blackface-is-a-tool-of-white-oppression-there-are-many-moer-towering-over-us/2019/02/07/4ea303b6-2b11-11e9-984d-9b8fba003e81_story.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

===Memorials===
Longstreet is remembered in his hometown of Gainesville, Georgia, through the Longstreet Bridge, a portion of [[U.S. Route 129]] that crosses the [[Chattahoochee River]] (later dammed to form [[Lake Sidney Lanier]]), and the Longstreet Chapter of the [[United Daughters of the Confederacy]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/meta/html/dlg/vang/meta_dlg_vang_hal281.html? |title=[Photograph of relatives of General James Longstreet at the dedication of the Longstreet Bridge, Hall County, Georgia, 1935 ] |publisher=Digital Library of Georgia |access-date=August 16, 2021 |archive-date=August 16, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210816144646/http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/meta/html/dlg/vang/meta_dlg_vang_hal281.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.gainesvilletimes.com/news/old-joes-history-complicated-current-debate/ |title=Old Joe's history as complicated as current debate |last=Bowman |first=Nick |date=August 28, 2017 |newspaper=The Gainesville Times |access-date=August 16, 2021}}</ref> In 1998, one of the last monuments erected at [[Gettysburg Battlefield|Gettysburg National Military Park]] was dedicated to Longstreet: an equestrian statue by sculptor [[Gary Casteel]]. The monument was funded through a grassroots campaign, and is one of the only Confederate monuments in the park "not paid for by taxpayers in the states of the former Confederacy."<ref>{{Cite web |last=Holmes |first=Steven A. |date=August 23, 2017 |title=Where are the monuments to Confederate Gen. James Longstreet? |url=https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/23/opinions/where-are-monuments-to-confederate-general-longstreet-opinion-holmes/index.html |access-date=June 14, 2024 |website=CNN |language=en}}</ref>

These two monuments are the only two memorials to Longstreet, whereas there were once more statues of [[Nathan Bedford Forrest]] in Tennessee than there were of U.S. President [[Andrew Jackson]]. At least one historian attributes this to Longstreet's defense of the "rights of the freedmen and women" whereas Forrest was considered the "avenging angel" of American white supremacy and the Lost Cause myth.{{sfn|Whitfield|2021|pp=167–168}}

Longstreet's Billet, the house in [[Russellville, Tennessee]], that was occupied by Longstreet in the winter of 1863–64, is now The Longstreet Museum.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.longstreetmuseum.com/|title=General James Longstreet's Headquarters, winter of 1863–1864|website=General Longstreet Headquarters Museum|access-date=December 29, 2019|archive-date=December 18, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191218235308/http://www.longstreetmuseum.com/|url-status=live}}</ref>

<gallery>
File:James Longstreet statue at Gettysburg Battlefield, Pennsylvania, US.jpg|Equestrian statue of General Longstreet on his horse Hero in Pitzer Woods at Gettysburg National Military Park |alt=Equestrian statue without a pedestal of Longstreet riding a horse
File:22-22-258-longstreet.jpg|Painting of Longstreet at [[Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park]]
</gallery>