ABSTRACT
Augustus Baldwin Longstreet's parents moved from New Jersey to Augusta, Georgia, only four years before he was born on September 22, 1790. Although his father, William, was an unsuccessful inventor and speculator, young Longstreet grew up with a solid sense of his family's stature among the neighbors, one so strong that a rebelliousness born of snobbery threatened to interfere with his earliest education. But, by the time he was admitted to the bar in 1815 after having completed his legal training under Judge Tapping Reeve in Litchfield, Connecticut, Longstreet had established himself as a potential civic leader with political aspirations. After his marriage to the well-to-do Frances Parke in 1817, he moved to her hometown, Greensboro, where he was elected judge of the Superior Court in Georgia's Ocmulgee District. Longstreet's only memorable work remains Georgia Scenes. This first collection of semifictional sketches inaugurated the literary phenomenon now popularly known as humor of the Old Southwest.
