Oh, MRS. Longstreet!

So, you get married at thirty-four. Seven years later, you find yourself widowed. Tragic accident to your husband perhaps? No. Instead, you married a former Civil War General in 1897 when he was older than the freaking hills. The general in question is Confederate General James Longstreet. His second wife is today's "Historical Person of the Day", Helen Dortch Longstreet.

This lovely Southern Bell married the general when he was seventy-six years old. Seventy-six. Again, she was thirty-four. That's a nice forty-two year difference. (Math!) Anyway, think about this, the first two years of the Civil War, when General Longstreet was middle-aged and fighting the Union, his future wife wasn't even born yet. Craziness. Anyway, the two met through a friend, or actually, a roommate of Dortch. I dunno if General Longstreet kept himself in fantastic shape, or was still quite the charmer, but either way, the very eligible young bachelorette said, "I've gotta have him!". They had around six years together, before General Longstreet passed away.

As crazy as that part of the story is, Mrs. Longstreet went on to live a very full and very long life. She was somewhat of a political activist, and an early 20th century version of a tree-hugger. Not necessarily a bad thing, either. What's more, when she was nearly eighty years old, Mrs. Longstreet worked in Atlanta as a "Rosie the Riveter" during WWII. Following WWII, in 1950, when she was eighty-seven, she even ran for governor of Georgia as a write-in candidate. Age meant nothing to Helen Longstreet, apparently.

Through all of Helen Longstreet's political endeavors and airplane building, the one thing she always did was work to defend her late husband's honor and reputation. In the years following General Robert E. Lee's death, General Longstreet increasingly became the scapegoat for the C.S.A's defeat at the Battle of Gettysburg which is generally considered the turning point of the Civil War. Modern historians now agree, this was really not the case, but for a long time, Lee was almost like a deity in the south, so blaming Longstreet was somewhat natural. Other officers also blamed Longstreet in their wartime memoirs. Mrs. Longstreet went so far as to publish a book defending the General. Helen Dortch Longstreet died in 1962 at the age of ninety-nine. She had to be one of America's last surviving, first-hand connections to the Civil War.

So to recap, Helen Dortch Longstreet married famed Civil War general, James Longstreet, when he was seventy-six. She was, for a time, the assistant State Librarian of Georgia. When most people in her demographic had long since retired, or even died, she was working as your classic (or not so classic) Rosie the Riveter during WWII and after all of that, she still tried to run for Governor. Quite the full life. For me, the craziest part, is that the wife of a Civil War general was still living in 1962, but if that's the only thing you take away from Helen Longstreet, then you're selling her life and achievements quite a bit short.