James Longstreet: Confederate General, and Catholic Convert!

I was at Gettysburg just yesterday and would love to spend a week there! I have always been interested in the Civil War and, naturally, in the South! I was very interested to find out that General Longstreet was a Catholic convert! Very cool! Here is the story as I found it at McNamara's Blog:

In the aftermath of the American Civil War, General James Longstreet (1821-1904) became a scapegoat for the South’s woes. He was remembered as the general who argued with Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg, the one that befriended Ulysses S Grant (they were actually lifelong friends), and the one became a Republican. He was also the one that became a Catholic. Today marks the day in 1877 that Longstreet was received into the Roman Catholic Church in New Orleans. It was Father Abram J. Ryan, known as “the Poet-Priest of the Confederacy,” who was instrumental in his conversion. Ryan’s poems about the “Lost Cause” were longtime standard reading for southern schoolchildren. In 1904, Longstreet’s funeral was conducted by an ex-Confederate soldier named Benjamin Keiley, who was by then the Bishop of Savannah.