Download or read book Lee The Last Years written by Charles Bracelen Flood and published by HMH. This book was released on 1998-09-02 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times bestselling author’s revealing account of General Robert E. Lee’s life after Appomattox: “An American classic" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution). After his surrender at Appomattox in 1865, Robert E. Lee, commanding general for the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia during the Civil War, lived only five more years. It was the great forgotten chapter of his remarkable life, during which Lee did more to bridge the divide between the North and the South than any other American. The South may have lost, but Lee taught them how to triumph in peace, and showed the entire country how to heal the wounds of war. Based on previously unseen documents, letters, family papers and exhaustive research into Lee’s complex private life and public crusades, this is a portrait of a true icon of Reconstruction and quiet rebellion. From Lee’s urging of Rebel soldiers to restore their citizenship, to his taking communion with a freedman, to his bold dance with a Yankee belle at a Southern ball, to his outspoken regret of his soldierly past, to withstanding charges of treason, Lee embodied his adage: “True patriotism sometimes requires of men to act exactly contrary, at one period, to that which it does at another.” Lee: The Last Years sheds a vital new light on war, politics, hero-worship, human rights, and Robert E. Lee’s “desire to do right.”

Download or read book The Last Years of Robert E Lee written by Douglas Savage and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-09-15 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book details Lee’s life from Gettysburg to his death just five years after the South’s surrender at Appomattox. Rather than retreating bitterly from life, Lee sought to heal the nation, even meeting with his rival, Ulysses S. Grant, while the former Union general occupied the White House. Leaving his military life behind, Lee went on to become president of Washington College, where he was revered for his fairness as well as his willingness to help struggling students.

Download or read book How Robert E Lee Lost the Civil War written by Edward H. Bonekemper and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book challenges the general view that Robert E. Lee was a military genius who staved off inevitable Confederate defeat against insurmountable odds. Instead, the author contends that Lee was responsible for the South's loss in a war it could have won.Instead, as this book demonstrates, Lee unnecessarily went for the win, squandered his irreplaceable troops, and weakened his army so badly that military defeat became inevitable. It describes how Lee's army took 80,000 casualties in Lees first fourteen months of command-while imposing 73,000 casualties on his opponents. With the Confederacy outnumbered four to one, Lee's aggressive strategy and tactics proved to be suicidal. Also described arc Lee's failure to take charge of the battlefield (such as on the second day of Gettysburg), his overly complex and ineffective battle plans (such as those at Antietam and during the Seven Days' campaign), and his vague and ambiguous orders (such as those that deprived him of Jeb Stuart's services for most of Gettysburg).Bonekemper looks beyond Lee's battles in the East and describes how Lee's Virginia-first myopia played a major role in crucial Confederate failures in the West. He itemizes Lee's refusals to provide reinforcements for Vicksburg or Tennessee in mid-1863, his causing James Longstreet to arrive at Chickamauga with only a third of his troops, his idea to move Longstreet away from Chattanooga just before Grant's troops broke through the undeemanned Confederates there, and his failure to reinforce Atlanta in the critical months before the 1864 presidential election.Bonekemper argues that Lee's ultimate failure was his prolonging of the hopeless and bloody slaughter even afterUnion victory had been ensured by a series of events: the fall of Atlanta, the re-election of Lincoln, and the fall of Petersburg and Richmond.Finally, the author explores historians' treatment of Lee, including the deification of him by failed Confederate generals attempting to resurrect their own reputations. Readers will not fred themselves feeling neutral about this stinging critique of the hero of The Lost Cause.

Download or read book Robert E Lee and Me written by Ty Seidule and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2021-01-26 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Ty Seidule scorches us with the truth and rivets us with his fierce sense of moral urgency." --Ron Chernow In a forceful but humane narrative, former soldier and head of the West Point history department Ty Seidule's Robert E. Lee and Me challenges the myths and lies of the Confederate legacy—and explores why some of this country’s oldest wounds have never healed. Ty Seidule grew up revering Robert E. Lee. From his southern childhood to his service in the U.S. Army, every part of his life reinforced the Lost Cause myth: that Lee was the greatest man who ever lived, and that the Confederates were underdogs who lost the Civil War with honor. Now, as a retired brigadier general and Professor Emeritus of History at West Point, his view has radically changed. From a soldier, a scholar, and a southerner, Ty Seidule believes that American history demands a reckoning. In a unique blend of history and reflection, Seidule deconstructs the truth about the Confederacy—that its undisputed primary goal was the subjugation and enslavement of Black Americans—and directly challenges the idea of honoring those who labored to preserve that system and committed treason in their failed attempt to achieve it. Through the arc of Seidule’s own life, as well as the culture that formed him, he seeks a path to understanding why the facts of the Civil War have remained buried beneath layers of myth and even outright lies—and how they embody a cultural gulf that separates millions of Americans to this day. Part history lecture, part meditation on the Civil War and its fallout, and part memoir, Robert E. Lee and Me challenges the deeply-held legends and myths of the Confederacy—and provides a surprising interpretation of essential truths that our country still has a difficult time articulating and accepting.

Download or read book Robert E Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy 1863 1865 written by Ethan S. Rafuse and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2009-10-16 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this reexamination of the last two years of Lee's storied military career, Ethan S. Rafuse offers a clear, informative, and insightful account of Lee's ultimately unsuccessful struggle to defend the Confederacy against a relentless and determined foe. This book provides a comprehensive, yet concise and entertaining narrative of the battles and campaigns that highlighted this phase of the war and analyzes the battles and Lee's generalship in the context of the steady deterioration of the Confederacy's prospects for victory.

Download or read book The Lost Indictment of Robert E Lee written by John Reeves and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-07-15 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History has been kind to Robert E. Lee. Woodrow Wilson believed General Lee was a “model to men who would be morally great.” Douglas Southall Freeman, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his four-volume biography of Lee, described his subject as “one of a small company of great men in whom there is no inconsistency to be explained, no enigma to be solved.” Winston Churchill called him “one of the noblest Americans who ever lived.” Until recently, there was even a stained glass window devoted to Lee's life at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Immediately after the Civil War, however, many northerners believed Lee should be hanged for treason and war crimes. Americans will be surprised to learn that in June of 1865 Robert E. Lee was indicted for treason by a Norfolk, Virginia grand jury. In his instructions to the grand jury, Judge John C. Underwood described treason as “wholesale murder,” and declared that the instigators of the rebellion had “hands dripping with the blood of slaughtered innocents.” In early 1866, Lee decided against visiting friends while in Washington, D.C. for a congressional hearing, because he was conscious of being perceived as a “monster” by citizens of the nation’s capital. Yet somehow, roughly fifty years after his trip to Washington, Lee had been transformed into a venerable American hero, who was highly regarded by southerners and northerners alike. Almost a century after Appomattox, Dwight D. Eisenhower had Lee’s portrait on the wall of his White House office. The Lost Indictment of Robert E. Lee tells the story of the forgotten legal and moral case that was made against the Confederate general after the Civil War. The actual indictment went missing for 72 years. Over the past 150 years, the indictment against Lee after the war has both literally and figuratively disappeared from our national consciousness. In this book, Civil War historian John Reeves illuminates the incredible turnaround in attitudes towards the defeated general by examining the evolving case against him from 1865 to 1870 and beyond.

Download or read book Appomattox written by Michael E. Haskew and published by Zenith Press. This book was released on 2015-03 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: They endured hardship and deprivation as they fought for their home and ideals - relive the final days of the Army of Northern Virginia. Appomattox: The Last Days of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia encompasses the defense and evacuation of the Confederate capital of Richmond, the horrific combat in the trenches of Petersburg, General Robert E. Lee's withdrawal toward the Carolinas in his forlorn hope of a rendezvous with General Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee to carry on the fight, the relentless pursuit of Union forces, and the ultimate realization that further resistance against overwhelming odds was futile. The Army of Northern Virginia was the fighting soul of the Confederacy in the Eastern Theater of the Civil War. From its inception, it fought against overwhelming odds. Union forces might have occupied territory, but as long as the Confederate army was active in the field, the rebellion was alive. Through four years of bitter conflict, the Army of Northern Virginia and its longtime commander, General Robert E. Lee, became the stuff of legend. By April 1865, its days were numbered. There are many stories of heroism and sacrifice, both Union and Confederate, during the Civil War, and Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia wrote their own epic chapter. Author Michael E. Haskew, a researcher, writer, and editor of many military history subjects for over twenty years, puts the hardship and deprivation suffered by this Army's soldiers while defending their home and ideals into proper perspective.

Download or read book Robert E Lee written by Allen C. Guelzo and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A WALL STREET JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • 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. "An important contribution to reconciling the myths with the facts." —New York Times Book Review 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.

Download or read book Robert E Lee Brave Leader written by Rae Bains and published by Troll Communications. This book was released on 1986 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the life of the highly respected Confederate general, with an emphasis on his difficult boyhood in Virginia.

Download or read book Lee written by Charles Bracelen Flood and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1998 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Honors the memory of the great Confederate general in an exploration of his post-Civil War years.

Download or read book The Secret Trial of Robert E Lee written by Thomas Fleming and published by New Word City. This book was released on 2018-01-30 with total page 720 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1865. The Civil War is over, and the South lies in ruins. But for some people, former slaveholders have not been punished enough. A cabal of powerful men, led by Charles A. Dana, the assistant secretary of war, plot to break the spirit of the South once and for all - by convicting General Robert E. Lee of treason and hanging him like a common criminal. To this end, they have convened a secret military tribunal in Lee's former home in Arlington, Virginia. Jeremiah O'Brien of the New-York Tribune, a long-time protégé of Dana's, is the only reporter allowed to attend the trial. His exclusive reports on this momentous event, and the book he intends to write, will surely make his fortune. Yet as the trial proceeds, pitting the general against his accusers, O'Brien finds himself torn between his loyalty to Dana, his love for a Confederate spy, and his growing respect and compassion for Lee himself. The young reporter is supposed to be only an observer, but, in the end, it is O'Brien who must evaluate the evidence and determine the true meaning of honor. Written by New York Times bestselling author and historian Thomas Fleming, The Secret Trial of Robert E. Lee brings to life a fascinating chapter in American history that might well have happened - and perhaps truly did.

Download or read book General Lee written by Fitzhugh Lee and published by . This book was released on 1894 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Court Martial of Robert E Lee written by Douglas Savage and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-03-07 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the first day of July 1863, Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia accidentally crossed swords with George Gordon Meade’s federal Army of the Potomac. They clashed at a tiny Pennsylvania crossroads called Gettysburg. Three days later, at least 22,000 Confederate men and boys were dead, wounded or captured, and the Yankees held the field when the river of bloodshed finally stopped. Gettysburg was General Lee’s worst defeat on an open field of battle. In The Court Martial of Robert E. Lee, a discouraged Confederate Congress summons General Lee to Richmond in December 1863, to face a board of inquiry on the Battle of Gettysburg. Through this speculative board of inquiry, the reader is drawn into the true history of the Army of Northern Virginia and the real political personalities and true political intrigue of Richmond in 1863. Will General Lee be relieved of command? Perhaps sent into retirement borne of catastrophic failure, leaving behind forever his beloved Army of Northern Virginia? The reader feels his pain and the anguish of a defeated general who wrote four months after Gettysburg that, “My heart and thoughts will always be with this army.”

Download or read book General Lee written by Walter Herron Taylor and published by . This book was released on 1906 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Making of Robert E Lee written by Michael Fellman and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2003-04-07 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With rigorous research and unprecedented insight into Robert E. Lee's personal and public lives, Michael Fellman here uncovers the intelligent, ambitious, and often troubled man behind the legend, exploring his life within the social, cultural, and political context of the nineteenth-century American South.

Download or read book Robert E Lee A Biography written by Emory M. Thomas and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1997-06-17 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The best and most balanced of the Lee biographies."—New York Review of Books The life of Robert E. Lee is a story not of defeat but of triumph—triumph in clearing his family name, triumph in marrying properly, triumph over the mighty Mississippi in his work as an engineer, and triumph over all other military men to become the towering figure who commanded the Confederate army in the American Civil War. But late in life Lee confessed that he "was always wanting something." In this probing and personal biography, Emory Thomas reveals more than the man himself did. Robert E. Lee has been, and continues to be, a symbol and hero in the American story. But in life, Thomas writes, Lee was both more and less than his legend. Here is the man behind the legend.

Download or read book Meet Robert E Lee written by George W.S. Trow and published by Random House Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2011-11-30 with total page 51 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meet ROBERT E. LEE is the story of a great American leader forced to make a terrible decision. Robert E. Lee the Virginian, son of a Revolutionary hero, served in the U.S. Army as America moved towards Civil War. Loving his country, he hated to see the Union split, but he could not fight against the South. His agonizing decision, his brilliant military leadership, and the fine example he set when the battle was done, are all recounted in this thoroughly researched and richly illustrated book.