God and General Longstreet: The Lost Cause and the Southern Mind

by Thomas Lawrence Connelly, Barbara L. Bellows

Hardcover

Genres: Civil War, History, American History

152 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Born in 1938, Thomas Lawrence Connolly earned his Ph.D. from Rice in 1963. He taught at Presbyterian College and Mississippi State University before joining the Department of History at the University of South Carolina in 1969, where he taught until his death in 1991.

Reviews

[Paul Frandano · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uneven. More like 3.5 stars. Impressionistic, argumentative, and opinionated - seemingly a series of essays, stitched together but never given a thorough editing into a coherent monograph, Connelly and Bellows' book is marred by frequent redundancies, spotty and sometimes missing transitions, and thus wanderings around in search of places to touch down.

That said, the icon-shattering Connelly, presumably the pricipal author - and author as well of the controversial iconoclalstic biography The Marble Man: Robert E Lee and His Image in American Society - and Bellows create a plausible theory of the case that the tragic-heroic post-Civil War "Lost Cause" mythology lived on into the 1980s, when their book was published, and by our own reasonable extrapolation can be said to live on to this very day in 2017. Indeed, it's possible to look on this book - and I do - as a useful companion volume to JD Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, almost as a catalog of various species of Lost Cause themes and symbology that surface in political campaigns, and, particularly, in the GOP national and local campaigns of 2016, pitched to a broad demographic of disgruntled, alienated, distrustful-of-government, largely white and working class voters. Precisely the demographic of Lost-Cause adherents.

As many others have observed, the book's title is somewhat misleading. We should view book and article titles as contracts with the reader, offering promised, relevent content in exchange for the reader's time and effort. I dock the book a half-star for breaking its contract with the reader. Yes, General Longstreet does make an appearance, but only in the first essay, as a target of vilification by Confederate generals. The "God" of the title is the conservative "Classic Christianity," Bible- and salvation-centricity of evangelical Southern worship that lends a religious overtone to the Lost Cause, in which a defeated South is redeemed from God's wrathful judgment with a 19th romantic narrative - "we were the better men and lived more wholesomely" - and tragedy - "our culture and environment doomed us to war." Longstreet never returns to the narrative, except in one instance, in a reprise of Jubal Early's campaign of defamation, in which Longstreet is again blamed for Lee's and the Army of Northern Virginia's defeat at Gettysburg. Themes of Southern piety, however, and thus of God and Classic Christianity, repeatedly return and are central to the main story.

Connelly and Bellows are exhaustive researchers who point usefully to a variety of primary and secondary documents that illuminate the topic of the Lost Cause and its transformation from Jubal Early and company's angry "We were better, had the better commanders, and should have won" (but for men like Longstreet) to the redemptive post-Reconstruction Lost Cause that focuses on a Robert E. Lee shorn of specific Southern characteristics and denatured into a kind of shimmering, flawless saint, accepted in the North after 1900 as an ideal of American, not Southern, Manhood (rather than as a traitor who got off easy). The authors rely primarily on literary 19th and 20th Century sources to make their case... many now obscure but many others - William Faulkner, Allen Tate, Carson McCullers, Erskine Caldwell, for example - familiar to most readers. The concluding two chapters are useful summaries of Connelly's earlier demythification of Lee and the argument for the enduring relevance of Lost Cause thinking.

In short, a worthy addition to your post-Civil War/Reconstruction/"New" South library, but not quite what the title offers.

[Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

It isn't so much a book as a series of essays. As such it can be repetitive and hard to follow. It also assumes a huge knowledge of the South and the literary tradition of it. Lastly, it really has little to do with Longstreet despite its title.

[Ted Greiner · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the most poorly named book I've ever come across. While one of its four chapters is about rescinding General Lee's sainthood, it hardly mentions Longstreet. Published in 1982, it will also be a disappointment for readers interested in the Lost Cause in the modern meaning. The book distinguishes an interesting early phase, in which confederate veterans defend what they did, but the authors' second phase is just the juxtaposition of the opposites that characterize the Southern mind (their term) -- evangelical-style piety and actual good old boy real life behavior, etc. Its ending, a brief portrait of Elvis, is a good example.

[Peter Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was recommended to me by the cashier of the Shiloh Battlefield National Park bookstore. He was kind of rambling on about Elvis so I wasn't sure what that had to do with anything, but it turns out Elvis is a central figure of the conclusion of the book so it makes sense in retrospect. This book is more about the creation and lingering effects of the Southern Lost Cause mentality rather than God (indirectly mentioned or implied) or General Longstreet (only a few pages dedicated to him), but it does as good a job as any other book or article I've read explaining this enduring mindset. It is somewhat slim and can be repetitive (especially about the deification of Robert E. Lee), but it's my opinion that the Lost Cause mentality is still a factor in our society (especially politics) today so this book remains relevant.

[Mike Wigal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Barely mentions General Longstreet. Gives almost as much attention to Elvis. And has anyone noticed the author’s love of the word “renascence?” I lost count at 20, but it occurred sometimes three times on a page and multiple times in a single paragraph.

[Gerry · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book cover’s flap tells us “God and General Longstreet traces the persistence and the transformation of the Lost Cause from the first generation of former Confederates—who cloaked their defeat in religion and, in the process, elevated Robert E. Lee to a postwar saint at the expense of General James Longstreet—to the present day when the Lost Cause continues in the determined commitment of southerners to their regional culture.” That it does, although I found it to be a confusing read and had difficulty following the changes in their perception of their past. Well, at least it’s only 148 pages.