James Longstreet served as one of the most capable Confederate generals in the Civil War, earning the nickname "Lee's Old War Horse" from Robert E. Lee himself for his tactical brilliance and steadfastness under fire. Born on January 8, 1821, in Edgefield District, South Carolina, Longstreet graduated from West Point in the class of 1842 and served in the Mexican-American War before joining the Confederacy in 1861. He commanded the First Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia and fought at virtually every major engagement in the Eastern Theater, including the Peninsula Campaign, Second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, and the Wilderness. His performance at Chickamauga in September 1863 produced one of the Confederacy's most decisive tactical victories. At Gettysburg, he argued against the frontal assault that became Pickett's Charge, a disagreement that later became the centerpiece of the "Lost Cause" mythology that blamed Longstreet for the defeat. What actually infuriated his former Confederate colleagues was what he did after the war. Longstreet joined the Republican Party, publicly supported Ulysses Grant for president, accepted federal appointments including Minister to the Ottoman Empire, and advocated for Reconstruction and the civil rights of freed slaves. In a post-war South that was building a mythology around the Confederate cause, this was apostasy. Former allies who had shared battlefields with him spent decades vilifying his military record to punish his politics. His reputation was deliberately destroyed by the Lost Cause movement. Modern historians have substantially rehabilitated it. He died on January 2, 1904, in Gainesville, Georgia.