This book is a one-volume abridgement of the 4-volume original biography of Robert Edward Lee by Douglas Southall Freeman. The abridgement was done by Richard Harwell. According to a preface by James M. McPherson the original Freeman multi-volume set is the gold standard of Lee biographies.
I considered acquiring the Lee bio by Michael Korda. I liked his “Ike” and “With Wings Like Eagles,” on the Battle of Britain. But I recalled that his style, while informative and entertaining, does not lend itself well to the day-by-day excerpting helpful in a project like this. The Freeman-Harwell book meets that requirement just fine. My problems with it are of a different sort, and I don’t know if my criticism should be aimed at the original or the abridgement, or a combination of the two. The narrative focuses so closely on Lee that it tends to miss what is going on around him. This is less a “life and times” account than a “life of” account. An example of this is the story of Lee’s time at West Point. We learn that Lee made it through all four years without a demerit but little more than that except who were his main competitors in class standing from one semester to the next. By contrast, I am now reading a bio of Jefferson Davis, who was one class ahead of Lee. The Davis biography (by William J. Cooper Jr.) gives the reader a lot of good background information on the West Point of the early 19th century and its most influential superintendent – Col. Sylvanus Thayer. There are some funny and revealing stories about Jefferson Davis during his West Point years included in Coopers book. Can the same be said of Lee’s time there? Freeman/Harwell doesn’t say.
The Freeman/Harwell account of the Mexican War is similarly limited. Lee had a highly distinguished record in that war. He behaved courageously, exhibiting good leadership skills, fortitude under adverse conditions and used his engineering skills to achieve decisive results. (In doing so, incidentally, he became a personal favorite officer of the U.S. Army commander, Gen. Winfield Scott.) But it is all seen in close up. The big picture of what happened around him is missing. Again, I compare “Lee” to a similar book – “Grant,” by Jean Edward Smith (introduced by me March 17, reply #93 ) U.S. Grant played a much less exalted role in the Mexican War than Lee – not surprising, as Grant had 14 fewer years of seniority than his future nemesis – but I learned a great deal more about the Mexican war from reading “Grant” than I did from “Lee.” It seems to me that learning about the world the subject lives in is crucial to understanding the person. Maybe that background information was included in the 75% of the original 4 volume set and was cut for the abridged version. Too bad, if so.
McPherson explained in his preface that Freeman eschewed the omniscient narrator method of writing for the majority of the book that deals with the Civil War in favor of a “fog of war” style. That is, the reader learns only what Lee knew at any particular point during a battle or campaign. The idea is to help the reader understand Lee’s thought process as he made decisions and exercised command. That could work well for us when we get to 1861 and beyond, since we will be getting “the rest of the story” from any number of other sources.
Here are some facts about Lee’s life before 1856: Born January 19, 1807 in Virginia to Ann Carter Lee and Henry Lee. Henry “Lighthorse Harry” Lee had been a hero of the American Revolution and a friend of George Washington, but didn’t fare well in peacetime. Business setbacks cost him most of his property and left his family in a precarious position. Ann Lee admonished her son Robert to practice discipline and self-denial to avoid similar pitfalls. He took the lessons to heart. Lee won an appointment to West Point and attended 1825-29, graduating with honors. He worked in the Corps of Engineers until the Mexican War. On June 30, 1831 he married Mary Custis. For his distinguished service in the war he was breveted colonel. After two more years with the Corps of Engineers he was made Superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. In that capacity he initially had trouble with discipline because well-connected cadets could get Lee’s decisions countermanded by friends in the War Department. That ended when fellow Mexican War veteran Franklin Pierce became President and appointed Mexican War veteran Jefferson Davis Secretary of War.
In March 1855 he was assigned to the cavalry and became second in command, as a Lt. Col., of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, under Col. Albert Sydney Johnston.
With that, here is the first excerpt from “Lee.”
Douglas Southall Freeman, Lee, an abridgement by Richard Harwell