Clifford Dowdey

By May 1864, General Robert E. Lee had been transformed from a young soldier into a gray-haired patriarch of the Confederate cause. As Lee struggled to keep his ragged soldiers alive, he faced pressure from two fronts. Grant's Union Army not only had superior numbers, but a steadfast infra-structure or railroads and industrialized supply routes. Lee's Last Campaign is a triumph of historic research and elegant writing. In this essential analysis of...

General Robert E. Lee is well known as a major figure in the Civil War. However, by removing Lee from the delimiting frame of the Civil War and placing him in the context of the Republic's total history, Dowdey shows the "eternal relevance" of this tragic figure to the American heritage. With access to hundreds of personal letters, Dowdey brings fresh insights into Lee's background and personal relationships and examines the factors which made Lee...

A collection of Lee's offical Civil War correspondence--letters, orders, dispatches, and battle reports-complemented by his personal letters to his family.