Disunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded.

Social scientists tell us that soldiers fight for one another more than for any other reason. Defending your unit has been shown to exceed a willingness to die for family, cause or country, and even the fear of capture. Yet unit cohesion in battle is a tricky thing to measure, let alone compare.

A related quality – a subset of unit cohesion, let’s say – is person-to-person friendship. Military friendships and loyalties are among the strongest because in many cases they are literally ones of life and death. But again, they are not very well understood or discussed.

This is true especially for those at the highest levels. There are many famous generals and admirals, but very few famous friendships in American military history. Those we know about are atypical and asymmetrical, such as the one between George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette, or between George Marshall and Sir John Dill. Most senior commanders tend to be solitary figures, at least in public.

This is one reason the friendship between Gen. James Longstreet and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant is so remarkable. Neither man was known for being an extrovert; one of their few commonalities was a love for horses over people. Even more stunning was the fact that they fought on opposite sides – Longstreet for the Confederacy and Grant for the Union.



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Their backgrounds could not be more different: Grant grew up in small-town Ohio; Longstreet was born in South Carolina and was raised a Southern gentleman in Georgia. By the time he entered West Point, “Pete” Longstreet was over six feet tall, well built and handsome. “Sam” Grant, when he arrived a year later, stood just an inch over five feet, and was slight, scrappy and silent – “A plodding enigma,” as one of his biographers described him. And yet, somehow, Sam and Pete became good friends.

After graduation both were posted to Jefferson Barracks, Mo. Longstreet’s West Point roommate and cousin, Fred Dent, was from nearby, and a visit to the Dent house led to a meeting between Fred’s sister, Julia, and Grant. The two married in 1848, with the newlywed Longstreets in attendance and, according to some accounts, with Longstreet himself as groomsman.

Both men then went their separate ways. Sometime later they ran into each other in St. Louis when Grant, having left the Army, “had been unfortunate,” and, in Longstreet’s recollection, “really in needy circumstances.” They joined a few other Army men in “an old time game of brag.” Later, Grant insisted on repaying a 15-year-old debt of $5 to Longstreet. The latter refused but Grant insisted: “You must take it. I cannot live with anything in my possession that is not mine.” So he took it.

Then came the Civil War. Longstreet rose quickly up the ranks. His dignified bearing overlaid a tough and imperturbable nature in battle and a supreme tactical instinct. Such qualities endeared him to Gen. Robert E. Lee, who called “Old Pete” his closest aide and “war horse.” A breach would open between the two, however, at Gettysburg when they had their famous quarrel over both the battle plan and the invasion itself. Lee prevailed in the dispute but not in the battle, which the South lost badly. Longstreet got much of the blame. To this day he is shunned by Southern partisans who charge him with disloyalty and even sabotage of Lee’s plan.

Nevertheless, Longstreet continued to lead troops, serving bravely at the Battle of Chickamauga. Then, the following May at the Battle of the Wilderness, he faced Grant’s troops directly.

It did not go well for Longstreet. He was shot in the shoulder and the neck by someone on his own side and lost the power of his right arm. But he survived and resumed fighting in the fall.

For his part, Grant, who, after returning to military service, began the war in obscurity, had by now risen to command the Union Army. At one point a proposal was floated between Gen. Edward Ord of the Union and Longstreet to initiate a peace conference, using Mrs. Grant and her old friend Mrs. Longstreet as the initial intermediaries. General Grant, following orders of President Lincoln, put a stop to the idea.

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The two friends would finally meet again following the Confederate surrender at Appomattox Court House. It was Longstreet, according to various accounts, who persuaded Lee that Grant would offer generous terms there. When Grant did just that, the mood in the room was one of stiff relief. It was the same when Grant met a few Southern officers shortly after. But as soon as he saw Longstreet in the group, he approached him warmly, grabbed his hand and said, “Pete, let us have another game of brag, to recall the days that were so pleasant.”

Longstreet was overcome: “Great God! I thought to myself, how my heart swells out to such magnanimous touch of humanity. Why do men fight who were born to be brothers?”

That sentiment, alas, was not widespread. When time came to weigh amnesty for Confederate officers, Grant put in a strong recommendation for Longstreet. It was vetoed by President Andrew Johnson, who said to the Southern general, “There are three persons of the South who can never receive amnesty: Mr. Davis, General Lee, and yourself. You have given the Union cause too much trouble.”

“You know, Mr. President, that those who are forgiven most love the most,” replied Longstreet.

“Yes,” said Johnson, “you have very high authority for that, but you can’t have amnesty.”

Longstreet eventually got his amnesty and Grant became president. Grant even appointed Longstreet, then his “political friend and adherent,” to the position of surveyor of customs at New Orleans. It was something of an achievement because Longstreet had made himself very unpopular in that city by publishing positive views on Reconstruction, which went against those then prevailing throughout much of the South. Longstreet remained in the job until 1873 and went on to accept other appointments: as a federal marshal, a collector of revenue, a commissioner of railroads and even as a minister to the Ottoman Empire, just two years after Grant visited there on his post-presidential world tour. Longstreet died at age 82, in 1904.

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Grant died nearly two decades earlier, following two difficult terms as president and a fatal bout with throat cancer. In spite of a vivid memoir, he did not say much about his friendship with a man he described as “brave, honest, intelligent, a very capable soldier, subordinate to his superiors, just and kind to his subordinates, but jealous of his own rights, which he had the courage to maintain.” Longstreet, he concluded, “was never on the lookout to detect a slight, but saw one as soon as anybody when intentionally given.”

As with many friendships, the thoughts expressed about the other may say as much or even more about oneself. Good friendships, even those as vexed by history as the one between Grant and Longstreet, tend to do this from both sides and “between the lines.” They are akin, as Grant implied, to the bidirectional and organic loyalty necessary for good leadership – and not only in battle. They speak to the qualities that leaders honor and lack in the estimation of themselves, and those they seek, want and even need from others. And they point to a neglected aspect of our own “leaderless” political culture, which remains obsessed with the foibles and failures of leaders.

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Sources: Bruce Catton, “Grant Takes Command”; “Confederate General James Longstreet Discusses His Friendship with Grant,” The New York Times, July 24, 1885; Julia Dent Grant, “The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant”; Ulysses S. Grant, “Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant”; Nicholas E. Hollis, “War Horses: Great Friends across the Divide,” in The Free Lance-Star, March 11, 2012; James Longstreet, “From Manassas to Appomattox”; Mark Perry, “Grant and Twain: The Story of a Friendship that Changed America”; John Y. Simon, ed., “The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant,” Vol. 19; Brooks D. Simpson, “Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction, 1861-1868”; Jeffry D. Wert, “General James Longstreet: The Confederacy’s Most Controversial Soldier.”

Kenneth Weisbrode is a writer and historian. His latest book is “The Atlantic Century.”