R. E. Lee by Douglas Southall Freeman

First published: 1934-1935

Type of work: Biography

Time of work: 1807-1870

Locale: Mostly the Confederate States of America

Principal Personages:

• General Robert E. Lee
• Mary Custis Lee, his wife
• General Winfield Scott, U.S.A.
• President Jefferson Davis, C.S.A.
• Thomas Jonathan (“Stonewall”) Jackson,
• James Longstreet,
• James Ewell Brown Stuart,
• Richard Stoddert Ewell,
• Ambrose Powell Hill, and
• Jubal Anderson Early, Generals of the Confederacy
• General Ulysses S. Grant, U.S.A.

Analysis

By heritage, education, profession, and talent Douglas Southall Freeman was ideally fitted to write the definitive biography of Robert Edward Lee. The son of a Confederate veteran, a Doctor of Philosophy in history from Johns Hopkins University, editor of the Richmond News Leader, whose “chief avocation” was “the study of military history” and whose prose style was fascinating, he accepted in 1915 a publisher’s invitation to tell the life story of the South’s best beloved hero. It seems that Douglas Freeman’s ambition to compose such a book was born in 1903, when as a youth of seventeen he attended a reunion of Confederate veterans in Petersburg, Virginia, in the company of his father, who lived to see his son’s work published. At first the biographer expected to write only a single volume, but a wealth of compelling material, much of it scarcely tapped, expanded his number to four; as a title for his monumental production, Dr. Freeman chose the general’s autograph: R. E. LEE. Following this work, Freeman returned to the life of General Lee himself for a one-volume biography entitled LEE OF VIRGINIA, and intended for a young adult audience or for readers who found the four-volume work too formidable. The author then laid aside the manuscript —which was published posthumously — to begin work on his exhaustive biography of George Washington, which had reached six volumes at the time of his sudden death in 1953.

Volume I of R. E. LEE, containing thirty-six chapters, covers a period of fifty-five years, from Lee’s birth on January 19, 1807, to the beginning of the War between the States in 1861 and the early months of 1862. It takes its reader with never flagging interest through the West Point years, marriage, gradual rise in the United States Army, the Mexican War, the capture of John Brown, “The Answer He Was Born to Make,” and the early, unsuccessful operations in western Virginia. Concerning Lee’s momentous decision, which has entailed much dispute by many persons, the author states: “The spirit of Virginia had been alive in his heart every hour of his life. . . . He was a United States officer who loved the army and had pride in the Union, but something very deep in his heart kept him mindful that he had been a Virginian before he had been a soldier.”

Volume II, composed of thirty-five chapters, recounting the Seven Days’ Battles east of Richmond against McClellan, Second Manassas against Pope, the Sharpsburg Campaign in Maryland with McClellan again the adversary, and the Battle of Fredericksburg against Burnside, all in 1862, concludes with the victory over Hooker at Chancellorsville and the death of Stonewall Jackson in May, 1863. In his Foreword to R. E. LEE, Freeman explains his belief that “...military biography, like military history in general, may fail to be instructive because, paradoxically, it is too informative.” To avoid the problem of burdening his narrative with too many facts, therefore, the author adopts a technique related to the novelist’s use of the limited point of view: events are presented to the reader only in the sequence and manner in which they were experienced by Lee himself. The result, apparent in Volume II, is a masterful narration, tense, powerful, and alive, and above all remarkable for its verisimilitude.

Volume III, twenty-nine chapters in length, proceeds from the beginning of the Gettysburg Campaign through that fateful conflict with the full power of Dr. Freeman’s critical study. Then comes the “hammer and rapier” matching of Grant against Lee in 1864, with such battles as the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Courthouse, and Cold Harbor, the historian’s expositions being precise but never tiresome. Grant crosses the James, and the long, encircling blue lines outside Petersburg are held in check by Lee’s thin gray battalions for nearly ten months, with the unique Battle of the Crater furnishing a new, strange story for the history of war. The reader lives with freezing, starving Southern veterans to the end of the winter of 1864-1865.

The first eleven chapters of Volume IV relate the close of the war in Virginia with the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse. The next sixteen chapters picture General Lee—body, mind, and soul—as he turns to civilian pursuits and works sincerely and consistently for peace and reconciliation. He maintains his dignity and grandeur as college president at Lexington, until his death on October 12, 1870. The final chapter, “The Pattern of a Life,” is Freeman’s masterpiece. Epitomizing Lee’s career and character, it can be designated properly by one term only: a classic.

R. E. LEE was a labor of love. For nineteen years, from its inception in 1915 to its publication in 1934-1935, the author, discarding apocryphal and legendary tales, scrupulously winnowed and used documented facts. Averring that he was “fully repaid by being privileged to live, as it were, for more than a decade in the company of a great gentleman,” Dr. Freeman adds in his foreword: “There were no ’secrets’ and no scandals to be exposed or explained. . . . Neither was there any occasion to attempt an ’interpretation’ of a man who was his own clear interpreter.” The reader enjoys the biography as he shares the author’s uplift of spirit.

Though detailed, the narrative is never boring. Minor, no less than major, incidents are recorded delightfully; for instance, Lieutenant Lee’s riding double on horseback with a brother officer along Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington; kissing a little boy whom he mistook for his own son; picking up under shellfire a small sparrow and putting it back in a tree from which it had fallen; smiling upon hearing a Negro attendant explain that he had not been shot because he stayed back where the generals stayed.

Dr. Freeman would have transcended human ability if he had never erred in his minutiae. Few and inconsequential, however, are such slips as entitling the Right Reverend John Johns “Bishop of Virginia” in 1853, whereas at that time he was Assistant Bishop, and calling Colonel David A. Weisiger “Daniel” Weisiger. Generally Freeman’s accuracy of research and transcription equals his natural stylistic charm. Moreover, R. E. LEE retains freshness and vigor throughout its length. Nor have verbal mannerisms become so patent in it as the author’s often repeated “doubtless” in his later GEORGE WASHINGTON.

Promptly upon the appearance of the first two volumes, R. E. LEE was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, and, in the years which have followed, neither the scholar nor the mere average reader has been prone to dispute the judges’ logic. Definitely this life of an unspotted American hero is the magnum opus of an unexcelled American biographer.