Longstreet Interview: Longstreet on Pickett, Sheridan, Five Forks and the Timing of the Surrender

If reconciliation was the goal in Louisiana, we may need to consider that Longstreet was a pro-Confederate mole willing to sacrifice his reputation for the good of the cause. :unsure:
Thanks for your response.
If reconciliation was not the goal of everyone in Louisiana- no, in the entire South- it should have been. Psychologists warn about the damage of carrying a grudge; nowhere is this more evident than in the damage done to southerners and the entire region for over a hundred years, some of which still persists.
“To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.” --- Confucius
 
Thanks for your response.
If reconciliation was not the goal of everyone in Louisiana- no, in the entire South- it should have been. Psychologists warn about the damage of carrying a grudge; nowhere is this more evident than in the damage done to southerners and the entire region for over a hundred years, some of which still persists.
“To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.” --- Confucius

Reconcile with whom, the radicals had a difficult enough time reconciling with rival factions of their own party much less reconciling with mostly white Southern Democrats. Reconciliation wasn't their goal and as historian Otis A. Singletary so succinctly put it: “furtherance of his own political career or in opposition to another's” was.
 
Reconcile with whom, the radicals had a difficult enough time reconciling with rival factions of their own party much less reconciling with mostly white Southern Democrats. Reconciliation wasn't their goal and as historian Otis A. Singletary so succinctly put it: “furtherance of his own political career or in opposition to another's” was.
Thanks for your response.
Not all Americans outside of the former CSA were Radical Republicans. Reconciliation came eventually, and pretty much on southern terms. Too bad it didn't happen earlier....
One thing that I believe is being overlooked thus far in this discussion: Longstreet was a realist. He saw that the law had changed and that the best way forward was to obey the law and make the best of it. But he was just as much a racist as anyone else in that period. The reconstructed south he envisioned was not some Utopia. Although equitable, it would still be dominated by whites.
 
Thanks for your response.
Not all Americans outside of the former CSA were Radical Republicans. Reconciliation came eventually, and pretty much on southern terms. Too bad it didn't happen earlier....
One thing that I believe is being overlooked thus far in this discussion: Longstreet was a realist. He saw that the law had changed and that the best way forward was to obey the law and make the best of it. But he was just as much a racist as anyone else in that period. The reconstructed south he envisioned was not some Utopia. Although equitable, it would still be dominated by whites.
On that, we can agree.
 
Did Longstreet give a decent goodbye to his men at Appomattox. I am looking for it and can't find any thing.
 
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