Existing comment:
Lost Cause
Douglas Southall Freeman's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography ("R.E. Lee: A Biography", 1934-35) stood for decades as the last word on Lee. Heavily indebted to the Lost Cause tradition, Freeman's massive work presented Lee as a noble, gifted man and soldier: "Robert Lee was one of the small company of great men in whom there is no inconsistency to be explained, no enigma to be solved... a wholly human gentleman, the essential elements of whose positive character were two and only two, simplicity and spirituality." |