In theaters of grinding, hellish human carnage he kept a pet hen for company. He was in his element gossiping with belles about their beaux at balls. In his dashing (if sometimes depressive) antebellum prime, he may have been the most beautiful person in America, a sort of precursorcross between Cary Grant and Randolph Scott. Its name would thereafter resound with courage, casualties and miscalculation: Gettysburg. In the excerpt that follows, the general masses his troops for a battle over three humid July days in a Pennsylvania town. Blount argues that the issue does matter: вЂњTo me itвЂ™s slavery, much more than secession as such, that casts a shadow over LeeвЂ™s honorableness.вЂќ

Lee вЂњthought it was a bad idea for Virginia to secede, and God knows he was right, but secession had been more or less democratically decided upon.вЂќ LeeвЂ™s family held slaves, and he himself was at best ambiguous on the subject, leading some of his defenders over the years to discount slaveryвЂ™s significance in assessments of his character. вЂњThe decision was honorable by his standards of honor-which, whatever we may think of them, were neither self-serving nor complicated,вЂќ Blount says. Army commission to defend Virginia and fight for the Confederacy, on the side of slavery. вЂњAlso,вЂќ he says, вЂњLee reminds me in some ways of my father.вЂќДЄt the heart of LeeвЂ™s story is one of the monumental choices in American history: revered for his honor, Lee resigned his U.S. I plunged back into it for this book, and am relieved to have emerged alive.вЂќ Though Blount was never a Civil War buff, he says вЂњevery Southerner has to make his peace with that War. A resident of New York City and western Massachusetts, he traces his interest in Lee to his boyhood in Georgia. Lee, Roy Blount, Jr., treats Lee as a man of competing impulses, a вЂњparagon of manlinessвЂќ and вЂњone of the greatest military commanders in history,вЂќ who was nonetheless вЂњnot good at telling men what to do.вЂќД«lount, a noted humorist, journalist, playwright and raconteur, is the author or coauthor of 15 previous books and the editor of Roy BlountвЂ™s Book of Southern Humor.

Lee, the reluctant, tragic leader of the Confederate Army, who died in his beloved Virginia at age 63 in 1870, five years after the end of the Civil War. Lee Memorial Association, StratfordДЇew figures in American history are more divisive, contradictory or elusive than Robert E. 'Light-Horse Harry' Lee fought in the Revolutionary War.

Heroes and generals best us weapon