R.E. Lee: A Biography

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Summary: The Salvaging of Lee
Review: Douglas Southall Freeman's four-volume biography of Robert E. Lee is the work of a man who obviously held Lee in high opinion both before and after writing about his life. Freeman was the son of a rebel soldier who fought in Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. The deep respect and love that Lee's men had for him are evident in the biography written by someone who had close relations with the men who fought under Lee.

Freeman covers the breadth of Lee's life. Of course, the great majority of "R. E. Lee" deals with Lee's life from roughly 1857 to his demise in 1870. This was a fourteen year time span where Lee was front and center to one of the most trying times the United States has ever experienced. Freeman gives Lee no short shrift in describing his exploits to both gain Virginia's independence from the United States and to heal the wounds created by the war.

Freeman's biography of Lee dances very close to the line of hagiography. As all great biographers though, Freeman knows when to pull back on his praise. Freeman's final conclusion of Lee is that he was an uncomplicated man of conservative values. Lee believed that he must be two things in this world above all others: a Christian and a gentleman, in that order.

Lee was not much interested in political questions. Freeman states that he followed Virginia out of the union not because he believed his state should secede but because Virginia was his home and he had to stand by her. Lee in fact counselled against secession to his friends and family and blamed hot-headed politicians for the country's predicament.

However, that does not mean that Lee was not an intelligent man who did not hold strong opinions. Following the war, while he was president of Washington College (now Washington & Lee University), Lee received a letter from an Englishman, Sir John Dalberg Acton, asking him for his personal opinion on contemporary American politics. Lee responded to Sir John and included in his letter a summary of his view of the states' rights issue. Lee wrote, "...the maintenance of the rights and authority reserved in the states and to the people, [is]...the safeguard to the continuance of a free government. ...the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that preceded it." This quote can be found on pp. 304 of Volume IV and is one of history's most concise arguments for states' rights and federalism.

While Freeman does paint a solid portrait of Lee, he spends too much time in this biography discussing things which are more properly left to a history of Lee's campaigns. Freeman does salvage this somewhat by discussing many of the why's of Lee's decisions and not simply the what's and how's. He delves into the many controversies that sprang up in the course of the war, especially the ones related to General James Longstreet's criticisms of Lee following the latter's death. Unsurprisingly Freeman cuts many of Longstreet's criticisms to ribbons.

The portrait that Freeman provides us of Lee is of a man devoted to his family, his country, and his God. For a long period following the Civil War, most northerners condemned Robert E. Lee as nothing more than one of the leaders of a traitorous band. There were many slanderous stories told about him and all were likely to be believed. After the passions of the war had cooled though, Lee began to be viewed with a different eye. Today most Americans will credit Lee as one of the men vitally important to America's eventual reunion. We realize today that, while Lee fought for the dissolution of the country during the war, he did all in his power at Appomattox and beyond to ensure the peaceful re-admission of the southern states to the union. Lee considered the issue of secession decided by the war. Freeman's biography of General Lee was the first important step in the recovery of Lee's reputation.

Rating:
Summary: No Question About It...THE Biography of Lee For All Time...
Review: The story is well told how Douglas Southall Freeman went on to write this four volume magnum opus. Born in 1886, the son of Confederate veteran Walker Burford Freeman, young Douglas grew up in the sunny remembrances of Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. He received his Ph.D in history at the tender age of 22 and earned an early reputation as a Confederae scholar with Calendar of Confederate Papers. Then followed Lee's Dispatches, which he edited. He wrote an introduction to Lee's Dispatches that was so brilliant, Scribner's signed him on to write a biography of Lee. Freeman believed he could complete the job in two years.

20 years later, he was finished. In that time, America fought in a world war, women won the right to vote, and the original editor who signed Freeman on died and left the legendary Maxwell Perkins in charge.
All through it, Freeman labored on the biography like a demon. He discovered early on that most of the major sources were either never consulted or only skimmed over. He searched far and wide. He carried on a schedule that would have killed a lesser man. He awoke at 2:30 every morning, put a full day in at the Richmond Newspaper where he was an editor at, delivered two radio addresses each day, then back home to work on the biography.

After twenty years and four massive volumes, he was done. Unanimous praise was heaped on his book and rightly so. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in biography in 1935. It was and still remains the most thorough biography of Lee ever done and will probably never be surpassed.

Readers looking for a book that will take R. E. Lee to task will be disappointed. Freeman is an unabashed admirer of Lee. Longstreet admirers will find Freeman's highly critical remarks of him in volume 3 during the Gettysburg Campaign aggravating. Freeman's Lee is a great man. Plus, why spend 20 years of your life reading and writing about a man you loathe?

I never believed Lee was the saint certain Confederate veterans painted him to be. He was a human being and he had his share of flaws. But he was a good man who did what he thought was right and a great general. Freeman's research is awesome and his writing style (which Shelby Foote once described as a sort of "jog trot prose") while dated in some aspects (Freeman loves to use "whither" and "tither" whereas "where" and "there" would have been better), and the Freeman's overly critical treatment of Longstreet not withstanding, it is still an awesome book. Lee's campaigns are exhaustively detailed, and the maps are profuse and always keep the reader informed as to what the Army of Northern Virginia was doing at any given time.

I would strongly recommend readers use Ezra Warner's "Generals in Gray" in conjunction with this work. I did and when Freeman parades the various personalities of the Army of Northern Virgina in front of the reader, the names can be confusing. Warner's book will give you illustrations of the men of Lee's command, and you will glad you got it. The book will come alive which is the purpose of all biographies.

Lastly, Thomas Connelly's "The Marble Man" will give the reader a good counterbalance to Freeman. Still even Connelly admitted to someone once that "R. E. Lee" was still "the greatest biography ever written." I have to agree. At four volumes, I didn't want to stop. Give Freeman a chance, you'll be glad you did.

One last note. You might also wish to start with "Lee" a one volume abridgement. Freeman's understudy, Richard Harwell did a painstaking abridgement and it is a wonderful one volume work. Of course, the superb maps that went with the 4 volume set are gone and replaced by more general maps, still it's a good bet in case 4 volumes are too daunting.