Reflections on Lee: A Historian's Assessment (review)

BOOK REVIEWS247 Thomas's biography is both well written and provocative. It will deservedly command a wide audience and his conclusions will provoke wide discussion. His book will surely serve as the benchmark for all future evaluations of "the marble man." Craig L. Symonds U.S. Naval Academy Reflections on Lee: A Historian 'sAssessment. By Charles P. Roland. (Mechanicsburg , Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1995. Pp. ix, 130. $16.95.) The Civil War's most prominent Southern participant, Robert E. Lee has been the subject of a stimulating historical debate over the past couple of decades. The seemingly unshakable demigod status accorded him by Douglas Southall Freeman in the 1940s was brought into question by Thomas Connelly and others in the 1970s and vigorously attacked by Alan Nolan in the 1980s. Albert Castel and others have been equally vigorous in the defense of Lee, and Archer Jones, former Connelly collaborator and mild critic of Lee, has since become a convinced defender of the famous Confederate's generalship as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. Still more recently, Emory H. Thomas has produced a major biography and this reviewer has made his own humble contribution, both tending toward what might be termed a postrevisionist Lee, recognizing his real greatness yet tempered with due consideration for the points raised by his critics. Charles P. Roland has now entered this discussion with his brief book, Reflections on Lee. Produced more or less simultaneously with the last two works mentioned, Roland's book offers the mature judgment of a very senior and very highly respected Civil War historian. The first two-thirds of the book provides a brief overview of Lee's life and career up until his surrender at Appomattox. The sketch is straightforward, clear, and well written. Roland admits that Lee may at times have lacked caution in expending the lives of his troops, but generally his tone is favorable. The overview completed through the end of Lee's military career, Roland begins his real reflections on Lee in a chapter entitled "Evaluation" (83). He first reviews the overwhelmingly favorable postwar and early twentieth-century views of Lee, both domestic and foreign. Then he turns to Lee's critics and attacks their arguments point by point in a section that makes up the bulk of the chapter. "Much of this criticism," he writes, "was either hastily conceived or ill-informed" (85). All of it, apparently, he holds to have been mistaken. Indeed, if, as Roland states, Alan Nolan "employs . . . prosecutorial methods to indict Lee's character and motives" ( 1 25), then Roland himself is surely counsel for the defense. The critics thus dispatched, Roland offers his assessment of Lee's greatness as being the product of his "intellect, audacity, poise, bearing, and character" 248CIVIL WAR HISTORY (99) and elaborates on these qualities in him and on how they shaped his career. The book concludes with a chapter on Lee's postwar life. The overview of Lee in the first two-thirds of the book is probably the best available very short biography of the great Confederate leader. The evaluation is necessarily controversial. Many will disagree with some of the conclusions offered, but those who seek a better understanding of Lee should not neglect a careful reading of this short book, which provides a valuable counterweight to the writings of Lee's more strident critics. Steven E. Woodworth Toccoa Falls College Citizen Sherman: A Life of William Tecumseh Sherman. By Michael Fellman. (New York: Random House, 1995. Pp. xiv, 486. $30.00.) Michael Fellman's Citizen Sherman, a tract for our times, is filled with revulsion for warfare and distaste for William Tecumseh Sherman and his era. As the title proclaims, this biography focuses on the man rather than the soldier, on his character rather than his military career. This famed Civil War commander, whose campaign through Georgia and the Carolinas has become proverbial, here receives attention for words more than deeds, for attitudes more than actions. Fellman assails the familiar "merchant of terror" who sliced through the Confederacy , but this is merely one count of a comprehensive indictment. The word "racism," which peppers the pages, appropriately receives a separate index entry with subheadings...