Savannah, GA, November 7, 2024—The Georgia Historical Society (GHS) announced today that Dr. Elizabeth R. Varon has been awarded the 2024 Malcolm Bell, Jr. and Muriel Barrow Bell Award for the best book on Georgia history published in 2023 for Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied The South, published by Simon and Schuster.
The Bell Award, established in 1992, is the highest publication award given by the Georgia Historical Society. It recognizes the best book on Georgia history published in the previous year. The award is named in honor of Malcolm Bell, Jr., and Muriel Barrow Bell in recognition of their contributions to the recording of Georgia’s history.
The Bell Award selection committee said, “Elizabeth R. Varon has produced an incisive and captivating work that shows not only how a man who once fought to secure a slaveholder’s republic could change, but also how the American South, as a whole, decidedly did not. Her work provides a testament to how historical currents and events are a product of decisions and demonstrates that inequality in the past cannot be diminished or excused as the result of ‘a different time’ with different standards. Varon’s skillful use of sources as well as her integration of Longstreet’s personal and professional lives reveal the striking evolution of a much-maligned Confederate general into a champion of Reconstruction and Republicanism.”
"Elizabeth Varon is one the best Civil War historians at work in the field today.,” said Dr. Stan Deaton, the Dr. Elaine B. Andrews Distinguished Historian and Senior Historian at GHS. “This award-winning book is not only deeply and carefully researched but also graceful and engagingly written."
Elizabeth R. Varon is the Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History at the University of Virginia’s Corcoran Department of History and the Associate Director of UVA’s John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History.
For more information about the Malcolm Bell, Jr., and Muriel Barrow Bell Award please contact Dr. Stan Deaton, Dr. Elaine B. Andrews Distinguished Historian and Senior Historian, at 912.651.2125, ext. 115 or by email at sdeaton@georgiahistory.com.
About the Book (from Simon and Shuster)
It was the most remarkable political about-face in American history. During the Civil War, General James Longstreet fought tenaciously for the Confederacy. He was alongside Lee at Gettysburg (and counseled him not to order the ill-fated attacks on entrenched Union forces there). He won a major Confederate victory at Chickamauga and was seriously wounded during a later battle.
After the war, Longstreet moved to New Orleans, where he dramatically changed course. He supported Black voting and joined the newly elected, integrated postwar government in Louisiana. When white supremacists took up arms to oust that government, Longstreet, leading the interracial state militia, did battle against former Confederates. His defiance ignited a firestorm of controversy, as white Southerners branded him a race traitor and blamed him retroactively for the South’s defeat in the Civil War.
Although he was one of the highest-ranking Confederate generals, Longstreet has never been commemorated with statues or other memorials in the South because of his postwar actions in rejecting the Lost Cause mythology and urging racial reconciliation. He is being discovered in the new age of racial reckoning as “one of the most enduringly relevant voices in American history” (The Wall Street Journal). This is the first authoritative biography in decades and the first that “brilliantly creates the wider context for Longstreet’s career” (The New York Times).
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