Robert E. Lee in Two Books: Davis and Flood Compared

Review: Lee: The Last Years by Charles Bracelen Flood

This review examines Lee: The Last Years by Charles Bracelen Flood, a book that looks at the final five years of Robert E. Lee's life after the Civil War. It is a moving account of a man who gave so much to his people, yet always felt he had given too little.

The author's thesis is quite clear: he wants to show the last years of General Lee's life and the effect the Civil War had on him and his fellow Southerners. The book reads partly like a historical documentary and partly like a novel, keeping the reader's interest throughout by interspersing personal information about Lee with general accounts of his life and times after the war. Flood also seems determined to show Lee the man, rather than Lee the General and leader. His portrayal is of a man near the end of his life who never felt his accomplishments amounted to much — facing his final years in ill health, without a home, and without a purpose now that his days of command were done. Flood portrays Lee as a hero, but never as haughty or self-important. He seems modest and unassuming, which makes him all the more sympathetic and likeable.

Lee was well respected, even by Union troops, whom he had once served alongside before he resigned his commission and joined the Confederacy. Flood describes a moving scene just after the surrender at Appomattox: "When he realized that this was Lee leaving, he stopped and took off his hat. So did every other Union soldier in the yard" (Flood 13). Flood fills his book with emotional scenes like these, drawing the reader into the action and offering a fuller sense of what Lee was truly like beneath the authority and the power. He also fills his book with stories of Lee's family, which gives a more well-rounded picture of the General's personal life and what awaited him after losing the war. Lee's family was close, and that closeness was a vital part of his life both before and after the conflict. Portraying the family in detail ultimately deepens the portrait of the General himself, making the reader feel less like an outsider and more like a friend of the family.

Flood illustrates his thesis by following Lee through the years after the war to his deathbed, with his daughter Mildred at his side. The Notes and Bibliography sections are extensive, demonstrating the depth of research the author completed before writing the book. He draws on personal reminiscences as a major source, alongside secondary research materials and other published biographies. The accumulated detail produces a biography that is both richly informative and difficult to put down. The book also includes an extensive selection of photographs of Lee, from his youth to just before his death, as well as images of his family, their home, and his final position at Washington and Lee University. The photographs complement the careful detail of the written account, giving the reader an even closer sense of the family Lee loved so much. They also show how war changes a man. His final photographs reveal a war-weary figure who looks far older than his years; it is clear he had suffered greatly and could never be the young man shown in earlier portraits at the beginning of his long military career.

In conclusion, Flood's book is an intimate look at the last days of the Confederacy's greatest and most enduring General. The picture Flood paints is of a man determined to find peace in his own life and to help rebuild a country still divided by war — a man who longed only for a simple life in the country and some way to care for his family. Another man might have seemed pathetic under these circumstances, but Lee holds on to his dignity just as he holds his family together and reassembles the pieces of his life after the war's end.

Reference: Flood, Charles Bracelen. Lee: The Last Years. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1981.