Augustus Baldwin Longstreet

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Augustus Baldwin Longstreet (September 22, 1790-July 9, 1870) was an American lawyer, minster, educator, and humorist, born in Augusta, Ga. He graduated at Yale (1813) and practiced law in Georgia, becoming a district judge in 1822 and holding the position for several years, after which he resumed his legal practice in Augusta, did editorial work, and established the Sentinel, which soon merged with the Chronicle (1838). He became a Methodist minister and in a year was made president of Emory College (1839).

After nine years he accepted the presidency of Centenary College, Louisiana, then of the University of Mississippi, where he stayed for six years, after which he resigned, and became a planter, but was tempted by the presidency of South Carolina College. In a few years, he returned to his old presidency in Mississippi.

During his years as a Southern Methodist minister Longstreet preached a doctrine of secession and defended slavery. Scholar Lewis M. Purifoy notes that "Augustus B. Longstreet, in a baccalaureate address to the University of South Carolina graduating class of 1859, urged the young men of his audience to defend Southern rights to the utmost. While they should not strive to break up the Union, they should not ‘make a dishonorable surrender of the thousandth part of the mill more to save it.’ He defended slavery mainly on the ground that freeing [slaves] would be ruinous to Southern society; and the burden of his speech was that the South had suffered long and grievously at the hand of the North. Longstreet assured the class that secession would not lead to war, but, if it should, a united South would win.”^[1]

His fame is based, however, on a single book, of which he was the author: Georgia Scenes (1835), originally published in newspapers, then gathered into a volume at the South, and finally issued in 1840 in New York. It featured realistic sketches of Southern humor. It is said that he disavowed the second edition (1867) and tried to destroy the first. He died in Oxford, Mississippi and is buried in section one of St. Peter's Cemetery.

Augustus was a mentor for his nephew James Longstreet, and was a long time friend and associate of John C. Calhoun.

[edit] External links

• Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, Georgia Scences, Characters, Incidents, Etc., in the First Half-century of the Republic, Harper & Brothers, 1897 (Full Text on Google Books)

[edit] Sources

Footnotes