Internet Resources
- The Civil War in America: Robert E. LeeBiography of Robert E. Lee from the Library of Congress.
- How Did Robert E. Lee Become an American Icon?The man was remembered, but not his cause.
- Making Sense of Robert E. LeeFew figures in American history are more divisive, contradictory or elusive than Robert E. Lee, the reluctant, tragic leader of the Confederate Army, who died in his beloved Virginia at age 63 in 1870, five years after the end of the Civil War. In a new biography, Robert E. Lee, Roy Blount, Jr., treats Lee as a man of competing impulses, a “paragon of manliness” and “one of the greatest military commanders in history,” who was nonetheless “not good at telling men what to do.”
- Robert E. LeeRobert E. Lee was a Confederate general who led the South’s attempt at secession during the Civil War. He challenged Union forces during the war’s bloodiest battles, including Antietam and Gettysburg, before surrendering to Union General Ulysses S. Grant in 1865 at Appomattox Court House in Virginia, marking the end of the devastating conflict that nearly split the United States.
Streaming Media
- Robert E. Lee - Beyond the BattlesThis is the authoritative documentary on Robert E. Lee, the famed military leader of the Confederate Army during the Civil War. Featuring the perspectives of America's leading Civil War historians, such as Pulitzer prize winner James M. McPherson, Gary W. Gallagher, James Robertson, Emory Thomas, and Holt Merchant, this program offers a sophisticated and accurate look at Lee's entire life and his resounding legacy; it goes far beyond the study of his well-documented military genius to explore the man from his boyhood to his adulthood as a husband, father, engineer, American soldier, college president, and peacemaker of the post-war years. Also original footage was shot at locations integral to Lee's life, including Stratford Hall, Alexandria, Shirley Plantation, Arlington House, Washington and Lee University, the city of Richmond, the United States Military Academy, Appomattox, Gettysburg and Harpers Ferry.
Perspectives
Robert E. Lee
From the award-winning historian and best-selling author of Gettysburg comes the definitive biography of Robert E. Lee. An intimate look at the Confederate general in all his complexity--his hypocrisy and courage, his inner turmoil and outward calm, his disloyalty and his honor. Robert E. Lee is one of the most confounding figures in American history. Lee betrayed his nation in order to defend his home state and uphold the slave system he claimed to oppose. He was a traitor to the country he swore to serve as an Army officer, and yet he was admired even by his enemies for his composure and leadership. He considered slavery immoral, but benefited from inherited slaves and fought to defend the institution. And behind his genteel demeanor and perfectionism lurked the insecurities of a man haunted by the legacy of a father who stained the family name by declaring bankruptcy and who disappeared when Robert was just six years old. In Robert E. Lee, the award-winning historian Allen Guelzo has written the definitive biography of the general, following him from his refined upbringing in Virginia high society, to his long career in the U.S. Army, his agonized decision to side with Virginia when it seceded from the Union, and his leadership during the Civil War. Above all, Guelzo captures Robert E. Lee in all his complexity--his hypocrisy and courage, his outward calm and inner turmoil, his honor and his disloyalty.
Robert E. Lee
The definitive collection of photographs, important paintings, original engravings, and significant documents. Although the Civil War years are accented, Lee's early years, the Mexican War, and the postwar years in Lexington are also explored.
Lee
Douglas Southall Freeman's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Robert E. Lee was greeted with critical acclaim when it was first published in 1935. This reissue chronicles all the major aspects and highlights of the general's military career, from his stunning accomplishments in the Mexican War to the humbling surrender at Appomattox. More than just a military leader, Lee embodied all the conflicts of his time. The son of a Revolutionary War hero and related by marriage to George Washington, he was the product of young America's elite. When Abraham Lincoln offered him command of the United States Army, however, he choose to lead the confederate ranks, convinced that his first loyalty lay with his native Virginia. Although a member of the planter class, he felt that slavery was "a moral and political evil." Aloof and somber, he nevertheless continually inspired his men by his deep concern for their personal welfare. Freeman's biography is the full portrait of a great American--a distinguished, scholarly, yet eminently readable classic that has linked Freeman to Lee as irrevocably as Boswell to Dr. Johnson.
Crucible of Command
They met in person only four times, yet these two men- Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee- determined the outcome of America's most divisive war and cast larger-than-life shadows over their reunited nation. They came from vastly different backgrounds: Lee from a distinguished family of waning fortunes Grant, a young man on the make in a new America. Differing circumstances coloured their outlooks on life: Lee, the melancholy realist Grant, the incurable optimist.Then came the Civil War that made them both commanders of armies, leaders of men, and heroes to the multitudes of Americans then and since who rightfully place them in the pantheon of our greatest soldiers. Forged in battle as generals, these two otherwise very different men became almost indistinguishable in their instincts, attributes, attitudes, and skills in command.Each the subject of innumerable biographies, Generals Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee have never before been paired as they are here. Exploring their personalities, their characters, their ethical and moral compasses, and their political and military worlds, William C. Davis, one of America's preeminent historians, uses substantial, newly discovered evidence on both men to find surprising similarities between them, as well as new insights and unique interpretations on how their lives prepared them for the war they fought and influenced how they fought it. Crucible of Command is both a gripping narrative of the final year of the war and a fresh, revealing portrait of these two great commanders as they took each other's measure across the battlefield with the aid of millions of men.
Lee's Last Retreat
Few events in Civil War history have generated such deliberate mythmaking as the retreat that ended at Appomattox. William Marvel offers the first history of the Appomattox campaign written primarily from contemporary source material, with a skeptical eye toward memoirs published well after the events they purport to describe. Marvel shows that during the final week of the war in Virginia, Lee's troops were more numerous yet far less faithful to their cause than has been suggested. He also proves accounts of the congenial intermingling of the armies at Appomattox to be shamelessly overblown and the renowned exchange of salutes to be apocryphal.
Seven Days
The Seven Days Campaign was a series of battles fought near Richmond at the end of June 1862. General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia had routed General George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac. Depriving McClellan of a military decision meant the war would continue for two more years. The Seven Days depicts a critical turning point in the Civil War that would ingrain Robert E. Lee in history as one of the finest generals of all time. Masterfully written, The Seven Days is Dowdey at his finest--detailed and riveting.