Born in South Carolina, James Longstreet graduated from West Point in 1842 and fought in the Mexican War. He resigned from the U.S. army in June 1861 and joined the Confederate army. Spending most of his Civil War service with the Army of Northern Virginia, by the fall of 1862 he was a lieutenant general and commander of the army's First Corps. He surrendered with the rest of the army at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865.After the war Longstreet joined the Republican Party, accepted jobs with the U.S. federal government, and criticized his former commander Robert E. Lee in several postwar writings. These actions made him unpopular with many Southerners.
