Memoirs of Robert E. Lee

One time when Lee was on his travels, a woman ran from her house, grabbing his arm and dragging him into her front arm. She told of how her grandfather had plant the tree in the front yard, how it had grown so tall and perfect. The tree was now nothing but dead limbs. She told how the dreadful Yankees came and stayed in her home, and they destroy the tree for fun and target practise. To her the tree was her 'red badge of courage', and she was proud to show Lee how terrible the in justice the Yankees visited up her, how she suffered. Lee quietly told her to cut it down. Not the reaction the woman hoped for, but so like Lee. When the war ended, it ended. He made sure there the war did not devolve from armies fighting armies, into a situation similar to Northern Ireland, local resistance prolonging the fighting, likely bringing down swift retribution from the Northern Reformations.Lee started his memoirs, but never finished, and at his death, the part of history was never really addressed by Lee. There have been many like Longstreet who wrote about the war, but not Lee.His father had been Lighthorse Harry Lee, a friend of George Washington and a Revolutionary War Hero - a role that would have been Lee's had the Confederacy won. Instead of helping to forge a new nation of independence as his father had, by the simple act of the South losing, he was on the 'wrong side'. Instead of hero, he was a rebel. Lee was troubled deeply by his decision to leave the Union Army and take up leadership for the Army of Northern Virginia. He was the husband of Mary Ann Randolph Custis, great-granddaughter of Washington. Arlington, our national cemetery that is so honoured, was her plantation, and the dead originally put there was done so as an insult to the Lee family.Lee was a brilliant tactician, did what so few did before him, divide his army in the face of superior forces, and succeeded until the fiasco at Gettysburg in Pickett's Charge.Since Lee could not or would not complete his memoirs, A.L. Long, with backing of Lee and later his family, took up the role, an amazing chore since most of his work was done when he was losing his sight, and the writings accomplished with a slate used for the blind. Long was military secretary to Lee and the vast amount of information was unpublished before this work. The papers were collected with the assistance of Marcus J. Wright, formerly Brig. General of the Army of Tennessee and Agent for the Collections of Confederate Records.This books provides a wealth of information on a gentleman, a husband, a father, a lady's man, but first and foremost a soldier and leader.I highly recommend this for anyone wanting a clear pictures of Robert E. Lee.

Long knew Lee in the pre-war army and was with him in notth-west Va. and the sea coast defenses in '61 through Appotamox. As his milt. secretary, Long drew on his own resources as well as those of Taylor and Venable also on Lee's staff, in addition to corrospondance with Lee's family members after the war. When one wonders why Lee resigned his commission to offer service to his Virginia, one can readily find the answers in this text....As a professional soldier being above politics, Lee merely was"doing his duty" to Vriginia and his family. Who won was not as important as duty, in the life and times of Lee. One can readily understand the resolve displayed by Kempe, Gordon, Armistead and others after reviewing the text. A recommended reading for any serious student of history studying the period