Robert E. Lee: life and legacy

¶ … Lee: The Last Years by Charles Bracelen Flood. Specifically, it will review and discuss the book. Flood's book looks at the final five years of Lee's life after the Civil War. It is a moving look at a man who gave so much to his people, and yet always felt that he had given so little.

The author's thesis in this book is quite clear. He wants to show the last years of General Lee's life, and the effect the Civil War had on him and his fellow Southerners. The book reads partly like a historical documentary, and partly like a novel, and keeps the reader's interest throughout the book by interspersing personal information on Lee with general accounts of his life and times after the war. He also seems quite determined to show Lee the man, rather than Lee the General and leader. His portrayal is of a man at the end of his life, who never really has felt that his life has amounted to much, and faces his last year's ill, without a home, and without a purpose now that his command days are done. Flood portrays Lee as a hero, but never as a haughty or full of himself, man. He seems modest and unassuming, which makes him all the more sympathetic and likeable.

Lee was well respected, even by the Union troops, who he had once fought with before he resigned his commission and joined the Confederacy. Author Flood writes of a moving time just after the surrender at Appomattox, "When he realized that this was Lee leaving, he stopped and took off his hat. So did every other Union soldier in the yard" (Flood 13). Flood fills his book with emotional scenes like these, pulling the reader into the action and giving them a fuller idea of what Lee was really like, underneath the command and the power. Even more, Flood fills his book with stories of Lee's family, which gives a more well rounded picture of the General's personal life, and what he has waiting for him after losing the war. Lee's family was close, and this was an all-important part of his life before the war, and even more so after the war. Portraying Lee's family with detail actually helps give more detail about the General, in the end, and makes the reader feel more like a friend of the family than an outsider looking back on the lives of some of the most influential people in the South.

The author illustrates his thesis by following Lee through the years after the war to his deathbed, with his daughter Mildred at his side. The Notes and Bibliography section are extensive, showing the author did quite a bit of extensive research before completing the book. He uses personal remembrances as a major portion of the book, as well as secondary research sources and other published biographies. The detail all adds up to a very detailed biography that is both interesting and difficult to put down. The book also includes an extensive selection of photographs of Lee from a young man to just before he died. Included are photographs of the family, their home, and Lee's last employment, his office at Washington and Lee University. The photographs complete the details the author is so careful about in the book, because they give the reader an even closer feeling to the family that Lee loved so much. They also show how war changes a man. His final photos show a war-weary man who looks much older than his years, and it is clear from the photos he has suffered much, and could never be the same young man shown in the painting when he was just beginning his long military career.