Le Judas Confedéré: James Longstreet’s surprising alliance with Black politicians in New Orleans

ABSTRACT

In a remarkable political about-face, Confederate general James Longstreet embraced Congress’s Reconstruction Acts in 1867 and thereby became a pariah among unreconstructed white Southerners. Longstreet’s conversion launched him on a decades-long career as an influential Republican operative and iconoclastic critic of his own society. Historians have overlooked the most significant aspect of Longstreet’s postwar career: namely his alliances with Black politicians during Reconstruction. Those alliances reveal the depth of Longstreet’s commitment to the Republican party; the source of the white-hot animus against him on the part of conservatives; and the ultimate limits of white Southern Republicans’ tolerance for transformative change.

KEYWORDS:

• Reconstruction
• Republicans
• Louisiana
• Afro-Creoles

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 New Orleans Republican, Sept. 2, 1871; New Orleans Picayune, July 31, 1872.

2 Varon, Longstreet; Nystrom, “P.B.S. Pinchback.”

3 The extant Longstreet biographies completely neglect Black politics – see for example Piston, Lee’s Tarnished Lieutenant and Wert, General James Longstreet.

4 Varon, Longstreet, 37; Smith, “Race and Retaliation,” 147.

5 Varon, Longstreet, 121–6.

6 New Orleans Times, March 19, June 8, 1867.

7 Charleston Mercury, in Macon Weekly Telegraph, June 28, 1867; Mobile Daily Tribune in Bossier Banner (Bellevue, La.), July 6, 1867; Le Carillon, Oct. 18, 1874.

8 On Longstreet as misunderstood see Piston, Lee’s Tarnished Lieutenant, 166–9 and Wert, General James Longstreet, 412–13, 418–19, 423–7.

9 On the reasons for Longstreet’s about-face, see Varon, Longstreet, 150–7.

10 On the Black leadership class, see for example Vincent, Black Legislators in Louisiana during Reconstruction; Hogue, Uncivil War: Five New Orleans Street Battles; Ross, The Great New Orleans Kidnapping Case; and Nystrom, New Orleans After the Civil War.

11 Tunnell, Crucible of Reconstruction, 116–19.

12 New Orleans Tribune, as quoted in Lowell Daily Citizen (Mass.), June 13, 1867; New Orleans Tribune, Feb. 10, 24, 1869; Mobile Tribune as quoted in Ripley Bee (Oh.), Sept. 16, 1868.

13 New York Tribune, Aug. 24, 1868.

14 On Johnson and his rhetoric, see Varon, “Andrew Johnson,” https://millercenter.org/president/johnson; on “mongrelism” see for example Wheeling Daily Register (W.Va.), April 22, 1867.

15 Nystrom, New Orleans After the Civil War, 83–7; Burlington Free Press, Sept. 1, 1869; New Orleans Republican, March 25, 1870, April 30, May 1, 4, 1870.

16 New Orleans Picayune, Aug. 26, 1869; The Eagle (Fayetteville, N.C.), Sept. 30, 1869; Rosen, Terror in the Heart of Freedom, 140; New Orleans Republican, May 1, 1870; The South-Western (Shreveport), May 11, 1870; Daily Standard (Raleigh, N.C.), May 18, 1870; Fall River Daily Evening News (Mass.), May 14, 1870.

17 Hogue, Uncivil War, 68–9, 70, 73; Vincent, Black Legislators, 191, 221; Nystrom, New Orleans After the Civil War, 89, 96–8; Annual Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Louisiana, for the Year Ending December 31, 1870 (New Orleans: A.L. Lee, State Printer, 1871), 6–10.

18 New Orleans Republican, Oct. 23, 25, Nov. 5, 1870; Hogue, Uncivil War, 122; Annual Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Louisiana, for the Year Ending December 31, 1870 (New Orleans: A.L. Lee, State Printer, 1871).

19 Weekly Louisianian, March 30, 1871; New Orleans Republican, March 7, Oct. 10, 1872, Jan. 10, July 3, 1873; New Orleans Picayune, Dec 11, 1873; Weekly Louisianian, April 27, 1871; Donald E. Devore, “Race Relations and Community Development: The Education of Blacks in New Orleans, 1862-1960.” PhD dissertation, Louisiana State University Press, 1989, 40.

20 Tunnell, Crucible of Reconstruction, 153–7 (quote on 153); Williams, I Saw Death Coming, 50.

21 On Longstreet’s alliance with Warmoth see for example Longstreet to Warmoth, Jan. 19, July 8, 1871, Warmoth Papers, Southern Historical Collection, UNC; Tunnell, Crucible of Reconstruction, 164.

22 Longstreet to Warmoth, April 19, Pinchback to Warmoth, Sept. 11, 1872, Warmoth Papers, UNC; Tunnell, Crucible of Reconstruction, 170–1; Hogue, Uncivil War, 91–5. On Pinchback’s support for Grant and Kellogg see for example Pinchback to James Lewis, Aug. 27, 1872, P.B.S. Pinchback papers, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, DC.

23 Hogue, Uncivil War, 96–103.

24 Vincent, Black Legislators in Louisiana, 124–32, 160–4; R.J.M. Blackett, ed., Thomas Morris Chester: Black Civil War Correspondent, 74–9.

25 Kamen, “Remember the Virginius: New Orleans and Cuba in 1873,” 315–18.

26 Shinn, Jr., “The ‘Free Cuba’ Campaign, Republican Politics, and Post-Civil War Black Internationalism,” 177–8; San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, Nov. 6, 1873; New Orleans Republican, Nov. 11, 1873; Boston Daily Advertiser, Dec. 27, 1873

27 New Orleans Republican, Nov. 20, 23, Dec. 9, 1873; Weekly Louisianian, March 21, 1874.

28 Nystrom, New Orleans After the Civil War, 165–8.

29 New Orleans Republican, Feb. 24, March 21, 1874.

30 New Orleans Bulletin, July 1, 2, 1874; New Orleans Picayune, July 1, 5, 1874; New Orleans Republican, July 1, 2, 1874; Nystrom, New Orleans After the Civil War, 163–4.

31 Nystrom, New Orleans After the Civil War, 165–73; Hogue, Uncivil War, 134–5.

32 For Longstreet’s firsthand accounts of the action, see New Orleans Republican, Sept. 20, 1874 and New Orleans Picayune, July 29, 1885.

33 Nystrom, New Orleans After the Civil War, 176–7.

34 New Orleans Bulletin, Oct. 4, 1874; New Orleans Republican, Sept. 20, 1874.

35 New Orleans Bulletin, Sept. 26, 1874; Blackett, Thomas Morris Chester, 77–8; Harrisburg Patriot interview in Picayune, Sept. 22, 1874; James Lewis testimony, Dec. 31, 1874 in Louisiana Affairs [Report 101, Part 2], 41–2; Annual Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Louisiana, for the year Ending December 31, 1874 (New Orleans: Republican Office, 1875), 1.

36 US House, Condition of Affairs in Louisiana, House Report 101, pt. 2, 87.

37 Daggett, Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans, 95–6, 115–16, 121 (quote).

38 Indianapolis Journal, Sept. 24, 1874.

39 Ibid.

40 Wetta, The Louisiana Scalawags, pp. 166, 189; Charles E. Nash, “Political Condition of the South,” Congressional Record, 44th Cong., 1st Sess., June 7, 1876, 3667–9.

41 Piston, Lee’s Tarnished Lieutenant, 137; Wert, General James Longstreet, 417, 422–3; Piston, Lee’s Tarnished Lieutenant, 118–23; Dallas Herald in Lake Charles Echo (La.), Oct. 10, 1874.

42 Carroll Free Press (Carrollton, Ga.), Aug. 4, 1893 (reprint of Maury letter).

43 Washington Post, Aug. 2, 1893, May 21, 1894; New Orleans Times-Democrat, June 15, 1893. On Longstreet’s alliances with Black Georgians such as Judson Lyons, see for example Savannah Morning News, March 11 and July 27, 1896; Americus Times-Recorder, May 7, 1897; Atlanta Constitution, May 12, 1897. On Longstreet’s support for Kelly see Cunningham, “‘His Influence with the Colored People is Marked,’” 23, 27.

44 On Longstreet’s memoir and his turn towards reconciliationism, see Varon, Longstreet, 304–13.

45 Longstreet, From Manassas to Appomattox, 638.

46 Ibid.

47 On Noxubee County during Reconstruction see National Anti-Slavery Standard (New York) May 13, 1871; on J.W. Longstreet see for example, U.S. Senate, Mississippi in 1875, 44th Cong., 1st Sess., Rpt. 527, Pt. 2, 43–4; J.W. Longstreet to Blanche K. Bruce, Dec. 30, 1877, Jan. 2, 1878, April 10, 1880, in Blanche K. Bruce Papers, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, D.C. On the Black Longstreets, see Varon, Longstreet, 132–3, 311–12.

48 New Orleans Times-Democrat, June 15, 1893.

49 Broad Ax (Chicago), Jan. 16, 1904; on coverage of the Liberty Place anniversary, see for example Daily Picayune, Sept. 14, 1899 and Southern Sentinel (Winnfield, La.), Sept. 14, 1906. Mounting public opposition to this Lost Cause symbol resulted in the addition of a plaque (in 1974) noting that the monument no longer reflected modern attitudes, and finally in the removal of the monument, in 2017, with the support of Mayor Mitch Landrieu: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/05/11/new-orleans-mayor-why-im-taking-down-my-citys-confederate-monuments/.

50 Longstreet, Lee and Longstreet at High Tide, 33, 85, 90, 112, 228, 235, 238–40, 310, 316, 317.

51 https://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/23/opinions/where-are-monuments-to-confederate-general-longstreet-opinion-holmes/index.html; https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/opinion/trump-capitol-riot-impeachment.html.

52 Weekly Inter-Ocean (Chicago), Feb. 26, 1880.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elizabeth R. Varon

Elizabeth R. Varon is Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History at the University of Virginia. Her most recent book is Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South (Simon & Schuster, 2023).