The Lees of Virginia: Seven Generations of an American Family

The Lees were instrumental in many of the events that have shaped American History. The Lees, under Thomas Lee, helped form the Ohio Company, which ultimately helped provoke the French and Indian War. Richard Henry Lee led the charge against George Mercer, the Stamp Tax Collector, and led the fierce opposition against the Parliamentary tax (even though he himself had sought out the collector position, losing to Mercer, his rival). RH and his four brothers played a huge role in the American Revolution. Arthur Lee was a diplomat with Benjamin Franklin in England and Paris, even though Lee opposed Franklin in many of his views and ways to gain the loyalty of the French. And, of course, there is Robert E. Lee as leading and influential General of the Civil War. Simply stated, the Lees helped shape America. On a whole the Lees of Virginia has enough to make for an interesting book, one that has plenty of ammo to keep the read interesting. The problem came in that the book was too long as Nagel wrote on a lot of issues that helped to portray the Lees in their day to day life interaction with one another. I would find myself becoming bored and then, all of a sudden, an interesting story in history would suddenly come up, such as Richard Henry parading an effigy of Mercer towards his execution. Ultimately, Nagel set out to accomplish what he wanted, which was to not be a history of America, but rather how the Lees interacted with one another, with the history sidelines thrown in. Unfortunately, it was the sidelines that made this book at all interesting, and I wish Nagels would have condensed the book more and stuck to the extremely action packed and interesting impact that the Lees of Virginia had on America, rather than what they wore, where they lived and how they furnished their houses. The four chapters on Robert E. Lee did a lot on turning the book around and making it a recommend. Learning about the life he was born into, the cards that Light Horse Harry dealt him, and we can see how and why he became the man that he did. I would recommend, if you don't mind a dry, factual account of a family, more so than an individual. 3.5 stars.

This book is a fascinating look at a famous and influential family in a time and place I happen to find among the most interesting in all American history: Virginia from its founding until 1870. Within a few decades of the founding of Jamestown in 1607, the first Lee arrived in the Tidewater. For the next three centuries, more or less, the Lees were at or near the center of Virginia's -- and later America's -- history. For readers familiar only with Robert E. Lee, it may come as a shock to realize just how important his family was before and during the Revolution. But even for those for whom that's not a surprise, Paul Nagel's work is still richly rewarding. That's because "The Lees of Virginia" isn't really a composite biography of each individual member of the vast Lee family. Many of them do receive pretty thorough portraits, of course. But Nagel's main purpose is to chart the connections and relationships within the family, and to explore the influence of the family *as a* family. In so doing, he paints a fascinating picture of how characteristics and traits passed from generation to generation -- and how, just as importantly, subsequent generations learned from, and tried to do things differently than, their forebears. Perhaps the most interesting contrast here is between the erratic and debt-ridden "Light-Horse Harry" Lee and his son Robert Edward. R.E. Lee, in this analysis, comes across, frankly, as something of a moralistic prig, and one who more or less chained his daughters to their invalid mother's bedside. Nowadays, it's not uncommon to say about someone, "Well, he came from a messed-up family." I have more appreciation for Robert E. Lee's greatness, as well as his human failings, for seeing that he, too, came from a messed-up family. If I do have a complaint about this book, it might be that ending the narrative at R.E. Lee's death in 1870 seems a little arbitrary. Certainly, General Lee could be seen as the last truly great or influential member of the family. But as Nagel himself mentions, the General's sons and nephews continued to play relatively important roles in the history of Virginia, including service in Congress and as governor of the Commonwealth. Families wax and wane in their influence, as Nagel's book on the Adamses also proved. But I would have been willing to follow Nagel's reporting for another generation or two, just to see what happened. That aside, though, this is a fine book about an interesting family in interesting times. There are several members of the family I hope to find out more about -- especially Francis Lightfoot Lee, signer of the Declaration of Independence, whose relatively reclusive personality -- at least as contrasted to his more attention-seeking brothers -- was especially intriguing to me. I've always thought one sign of a good book is how much it makes you want to explore related topics, and "The Lees of Virginia" delivers in that regard too.

This was a very enlightning book about the Lees history. Some very fascinating stories about the lees and their roots