F307 Spring 2024 General James P. Longstreet: Confederate Hero or Scalawag?

F307  General James P. Longstreet: Confederate Hero or Scalawag?
Tuesdays, 9:40—11:05, Apr. 23—May 14
Four sessions
Instructor: Robert Shaffer
From July 1862 until April 1865, General James P. Longstreet was the senior corps commander in Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and the driving force in the Confederacy's major victories at the battles of Second Manassas and Chickamauga. After the war, Longstreet was reviled by many of his former Confederate colleagues as a man whose egotism played the major role in the Confederacy's defeat at Gettysburg, as a traitor to the Lost Cause, and as a hireling of the U.S. government. Were either his reputation as a Confederate war hero or as a tool of Federal administrators during the Reconstruction Era warranted? The four sessions of our course will explore this complex man and his times.
Bob Shaffer is a 1968 graduate of the University of Hawaii (Political Science) and has an M.A. from the University of Arizona (1972). He has been a member of OLLI since 2013 and has presented classes at OLLI on the Civil War and Trip Tales.