Book Description

Since the intense era of the Civil War has passed away, and Northerners and Southerners are becoming more and more able to take dispassionate views of the controversies of that time, finding honorable reasons for the differences of opinion and of resultant conduct on both sides, it has been thought well to include among "American Leaders" a man who stands before all Americans as the chief embodiment of the "cause" for which so many gallant soldiers died--Robert E. Lee. His personal character was so lofty, his military genius so eminent, that North and South alike looked up to him while living and mourned him dead. His career is depicted by one who has given it careful study, and who, himself a wounded veteran officer of the Union army, and regarding the Southern cause as one well "lost," as to its chief aims of Secession and protection to Slavery, in the interest of civilization and of the South itself, yet holds a high appreciation of the noble man who is its chief representative. The paper on "Robert E. Lee: The Southern Confederacy," is from the pen of Dr. E. Benjamin Andrews, Chancellor of the University of Nebraska.