We will have a special occasion with the upcoming meeting of the CWFMNY on Tuesday, December 17th. We have a William Henry Seward Award to present, to a uniquely special speaker, one who has a topic that is sure to grab everyone's attention!
Elizabeth Varon is a highly decorated and widely published Professor of American History at the University of Virginia, and is a member of the executive council of UVA’s John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History. She also served as Professor of American History at the University of Oxford for the 2023-24 academic year. She has held many distinguished historical organization titles in addition to these academic positions. But it is her writing that brings her to us for the December meeting. Her past books include Southern Lady, Yankee Spy: The True Story of Elizabeth Van Lew ; A Union Agent in the Heart of the Confederacy ; andAppomattox: Victory, Defeat, and Freedom at the End of the Civil War. Her book,Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War, won the 2020 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize and was named one of TheWall Street Journal’s best books of 2019.
But it is her latest multi-award winning title, the winner of many very significant awards, including the inaugural $50,000 American Battlefield Trust Prize for History, titled Longstreet: The Confederate General who Defied the South, that we will learn about in December. This is the book that our book committee selected as this year's William Henry Seward award winner. In it Elizabeth tells the compelling story that has seen Longstreet's post CW life called the most remarkable political about-face in American history.
Note on Longstreet: after the war ended, he relocated to New Orleans and dramatically changed course compared to other high ranking southern generals. His post war actions included rejecting the Lost Cause mythology and urging racial reconciliation. This led to a firestorm of controversy, and white Southerners were now branding him as a race traitor and blaming him retroactively for the South’s defeat in the Civil War. As a result he has never been commemorated with statues or other memorials in the South, and only relatively recently, some 25 years ago, was a monument to his memory erected on the Gettysburg battlefield! Even that monument, however, is simply a life sized man on horseback, sitting inconspicuously directly on the ground, conspicuously not mounted on any sort of pedestal, which would have given it some of the prominence expected for a monument to Lee's senior general on such a significant battlefield. At first glance it is also inconspicuouslylocated on the battlefield, seemingly hidden and difficult to find, although it is in a historically accurate location for Longstreet to be gazing in the direction of the imminent start of Pickett's charge.
After a long time coming, however, he is now being discovered in the new age of racial reckoning as “one of the most enduringly relevant voices in American history” (The Wall Street Journal). This is the first authoritative Longstreet biography in decades and the first that “brilliantly creates the wider context for Longstreet’s career” (The New York Times).
This is sure to be one of the most fascinating individual stories to have come out of the CW, and one of the most fascinating to be discussed with us from the CWFMNY dais!
To some of us, Longstreet and Joseph E Johnston both stand far apart from the other Confederate Generals, including Lee, because of the manner in which they visibly embraced reconciliation with the Union and its leaders after the war, while Lee sat quietly as the President of Washington and Lee University in Lexington VA, perhaps more passively than actively fostering reconciliation. Johnston, you may remember, was a lifelong friend of Willliam Sherman. He died of pneumonia shortly after attending Sherman's funeral in NY, already frail and sickly when he arrived in NY, yet refusing to even wear a hat to keep him warm, stating that his friend Sherman would never have worn a hat if he were attending Johnston's funeral instead!
This William Henry Seward Award meeting definitely deserves a memorable turnout! It will be held on Tuesday, December 17th, at Villa Mosconi, located at 69 MacDougal Street, NY NY. The meeting begins at 6:00PM sharp, with a pay bar available if you arrive before that. PLEASE contact Ann Plogsterth at either 212-877-6814 or at plogsterth@aol.com if you plan to attend.