Lee's Lieutenants: A Study in Command

Lee's Lieutenants: A Study in Command by Douglas Southall Freeman. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780684859798.

Lees Lieutenants: A Study in Command is the most colorful and popular of Douglas Southall Freemans works. A sweeping narrative that presents a multiple biography against the flame-shot background of the American Civil War, it is the story of the great figures of the Army of Northern Virginia who fought under Robert E. Lee. The Confederacy won resounding victories throughout the war, but seldom easily or without tremendous casualties. Death was always on the heels of fame, but the men who commanded—among them Jackson, Longstreet, and Ewell—developed as leaders and men. Lees Lieutenants follows these men to the costly battle at Gettysburg, through the deepening twilight of the Souths declining military might, and finally to the collapse of Lees command and his formal surrender in 1865. To his unparalleled descriptions of men and operations, Dr. Freeman adds an insightful analysis of the lessons learned and their bearing upon the future military development of the nation. Accessible at last in a one-volume edition abridged by noted Civil War historian Stephen W. Sears, Lees Lieutenants is essential reading for all Civil War buffs, students of war, and admirers of the historians art as practiced at its very highest level.