Any recommendations for biographies of Robert E. Lee, William T. Sherman or Jefferson Davis? I want to get up to date on those people but don’t have their stories.
Sorry, I'm not much into biographies, but I have a few that have been given to me by my sons or my wife, who know of my passion for Civil War history. I only skim them on occasion when looking for details concerning some event. So, I'm not the one to give you critical reviews of various biographies.
I was given a tattered and torn "uncorrected page proof" of the book, "Lee and Grant, A Dual Biography" by Gene Smith, that one of my sons found in a used book store. Again, I've only skim read a few parts of it. I looked the book up tonight in response to your question, The people reviewing it on Amazon gave it generally very good reviews, but others were more critical.
In looking at my copy of that book tonight, I saw where I had flagged a sentence the book attributed to Lincoln in response to the Union failure at Chancellorsville: "My God! It is horrible, horrible; and to think of it, one hundred and thirty thousand magnificent soldiers cut to pieces by less than sixty thousand half-starved ragamuffins!"
The problem is that it was Horace Greeley who said it, not Lincoln. Had the Internet been around when the author incorrectly attributed those words to Lincoln, he could have easily checked who said them.
As far as Sherman goes, you might read the book, "A City Laid Waste, The Capture, Sack, and Destruction of the City of Columbia" by William Gilmore Simms. It is not a biography of Sherman, but it is a Southern eyewitness account of what Sherman's troops did to Columbia, South Carolina in 1865.
In 1873, Sherman had to testify about the wholesale burning of Columbia during his occupation of it. Perhaps his reply to a question of why didn't he stop his troops from burning Columbia can shed some light on Sherman's character [Source: The New York Times, May 10, 1873: Link, see second page, first column]:
Q. -- You testified, a little while ago, that it was very likely they [Sherman's own men] might burn Columbia, and you permitted them, or your officers did -- permitted them to go about the town?
A. -- I could have had them stay in the ranks, but I would not have done it, under the circumstances, to save Columbia.
Q. -- Although you knew they were likely to burn Columbia, you would not restrain them to their ranks, even to save it?
A. -- No, Sir. I would not have done such harshness to my soldiers to save the whole town. They were men, and I was not going to treat them like slaves. ...