Please note: Optional Dinner will start at 6:00 PM. The Lecture will start at 7:00 PM. To make dinner reservations, email CvilleCWRT@gmail.com and indicate your entree choice: prime rib, salmon or chicken. Dinner includes salad and dessert. Cost is $24 for members and $30 for non-members.

Lecture Topic:  Varon will connect Longstreet's military career and reputation to his political career and reputation, focusing on his controversial 1867 decision to support Congressional Reconstruction, and on his nearly 40 years as a Republican party operative thereafter.  She will highlight the role of Longstreet's friendship with U.S. Grant, and of the singular political milieu of New Orleans, in his decision-making.

Speaker:  Elizabeth R. Varon is Langbourne M. Williams professor of American history at the University of Virginia and a member of the executive council of UVA’s John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History. Varon’s books include Southern Lady, Yankee Spy: The True Story of Elizabeth Van Lew, A Union Agent in the Heart of the Confederacy, and Appomattox: Victory, Defeat and Freedom at the End of the Civil War. Her most recent book, Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War, won the 2020 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize and was named one of The Wall Street Journal’s best books of 2019.