"Robert E. Lee, the famed Confederate forces commander and icon of the South, is a towering figure in U.S. and military history. The son of a famed Revolutionary War officer, his path to greatness included graduating at the top of his class at West Point, serving with distinction in the Mexican-American War, and being asked to command the Union Forces at the start of the Great War. Declining the offer, he chose to remain with his home state of Virginia, which had seceded. His memoirs, here gathered and edited by his youngest son Robert Jr., bring to life a seismic period in American history."
"General Robert E. Lee was the most heroic figure of the Civil War, but to many, he is a solitary figure. This book fleshes out the man and reveals the workings of a great military mind and a warm, understanding, and generous human being. It shows all the facets of the general during the war; at the conclusion, when he was an outspoken proponent of a reasonable peace which would allow the South to rejoin the Union; and after the war, when he served as president of Washington College, and became a driving force for the creation of a viable educational system. This anthology shows all these facets of the general, through his correspondence and through the revealing insight supplied by his son. No other collection of source materials gives such a whole and rewarding picture of one of the South's greatest sons and heroes."
