Description
Civilian carte view of famed Confederate General James Longstreet. After graduating from the United States Military Academy at West Point, Longstreet served in the Mexican–American War. He was wounded in the thigh at the Battle of Chapultepec. In June 1861, Longstreet resigned his U.S. Army commission and joined the Confederate Army. He commanded Confederate troops during an early victory at Blackburn’s Ford in July and played a minor role at the First Battle of Bull Run. He made significant contributions to several important Confederate victories in the Eastern Theater as one of Robert E. Lee’s chief subordinates in the Army of Northern Virginia. Following Gettysburg, Longstreet was sent to the Western Theater to fight under Braxton Bragg. He returned East and commanded troops during the Battle of the Wilderness in 1864, where he was seriously wounded by friendly fire. He later returned to the field, serving under Lee in the Siege of Petersburg and the Appomattox Campaign. Longstreet enjoyed a successful post-war career working for the U.S. government as a diplomat, civil servant, and administrator. He contracted pneumonia and died in Gainesville on January 2, 1904. Longstreet’s remains are buried in Alta Vista Cemetery, in Gainesville. This example is a post war view back marked out of New Orleans with a cancelled tax stamp dated October 31, 1865. There is a slight amount of wear to the surface of the carte with an old ink id across the front bottom.
