Publication date:
15 November 2016Length of book:
296 pagesPublisher
Taylor Trade PublishingISBN-13: 9781630761691
This book details Lee’s life from Gettysburg to his death just five years after the South’s surrender at Appomattox. Rather than retreating bitterly from life, Lee sought to heal the nation, even meeting with his rival, Ulysses S. Grant, while the former Union general occupied the White House. Leaving his military life behind, Lee went on to become president of Washington College, where he was revered for his fairness as well as his willingness to help struggling students.
Yet another book on Robert E. Lee as one of history’s “great captains” would surely find readers but hardly make news. In contrast, Douglas Savage’s The Last Years of Robert E. Lee will come as a revelation to many admirers of this master of martial craft. In the declining fortunes of war from Gettysburg to Appomattox, it is a portrait of supreme courage. In the sequel to final defeat, it is a story of the discovery of new purpose and new vocation. Here is the absorbing narrative of metamorphosis from warrior to peacemaker, moral healer, and—in the tradition of fellow Virginian Thomas Jefferson—educator. As president of Washington College (today Washington and Lee University) from 1865 until his death in 1870, Lee struggled through his last illness to invest mind and heart not in the “Lost Cause” of the Confederacy but in preparing a new generation that might make a broken nation whole. This volume is a poignant revelation of greatness more inspirational and more enduring than anything won at Chancellorsville or lost at Gettysburg.