Tag: Civil War

Guelzo on Robert E. Lee: “To Err on the Side of Absorbing Society’s Defaulters”

Guelzo on Robert E. Lee: “To Err on the Side of Absorbing Society’s Defaulters”

Allen C. Guel­zo, Robert E. Lee: A Life (New York: Knopf, 2021), 608 pages, illus., $35, Kin­dle $15.99. First pub­lished in The Amer­i­can Spec­ta­tor, 9 Novem­ber 2021.

“Who’s that man on the horse?”…

…I asked my father at a young age. “That’s Lee—he led a South­ern army in the Civ­il War.” He gave me a book I still have, Illus­trat­ed Minute Biogra­phies, by William DeWitt. Pub­lished 1953, it is utter­ly non-judg­men­tal. Oppo­site the page on Lee (“Leader of a Lost Cause”) is a page on Lenin (“Father of the Russ­ian Revolution.”)

Among DeWitt’s 150 per­son­al­i­ties, Lee fas­ci­nat­ed. I’ve always had a soft spot for under­dogs.…

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