In this probing and personal biography, Emory Thomas reveals more than the man himself did. Robert E. Lee has been, and continues to be, a symbol and hero in the American story. But in life, Thomas writes, Lee was both more and less than his legend. Here is the man behind the legend.

John Esten Cooke was a writer, not a soldier, yet his Civil War career took him from John Brown's raid, to General Lee's surrender and put him in touch with some of the greatest commanders in American history. This work first published in 1867, contains his best writing on the war.

Explains the perceived kinship between the Confederate cause and the American Revolution.