Longstreet's aide

by Thomas Jewett Goree

One of the Confederacy's most loyal adherents and articulate advocates was Lieutenant General James Longstreet's aide-de-camp, Thomas Jewett Goree. Present at Longstreet's headquarters and party to the counsels of Robert E. Lee and his lieutenants, Goree wrote incisively on matters of strategy and politics and drew revealing portraits of Longstreet, Jefferson Davis, P. G. T. Beauregard, John Bell Hood, J. E. B. Stuart, and others of Lee's inner circle. His letters are some of the richest and most perceptive from the Civil War period. In addition to their inside view of the campaigns of the Confederacy, Goree's Civil War letters shed light on their remarkable author, a onetime lawyer whose growing interest in politics and desire for "immediate secession," as he wrote to his mother in 1860, led him in July 1861 to Virginia and a new career as Longstreet's associate. He stayed with Longstreet through the war, ultimately becoming a major and participating in nearly all the battles of the A