xxv “the sun was fiery hot”: Freeman, Robert E. Lee, Vol. 1, 367.

xxv Secretary of War Floyd: Note of J. B. Floyd, secretary of war, to Colonel Drinkard, October 17, 1859, National Archives.

xxvii By midnight, Lee, Stuart, Lieutenant Green: Select Committee of the U.S. Senate, 36th Congress, 1st Session, Rep. Com. No. 278, June 15, 1860, 41.

xxvii With exquisite politeness: Freeman, Robert E. Lee, Vol. 1, 397, 398.

xxviii Calmly, Lee surveyed the ground: Ibid., 397.

xxix His mutilated corpse: David S. Reynolds, John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights (New York: Knopf, 2005), 320.

xxx By mid-afternoon, men were falling: Ibid., 317–24; Villard, John Brown, 443.

xxx He sent an elderly civilian: Allan Keller, Thunder at Harper’s Ferry (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1958), 113.

xxx Brown took no umbrage: Villard, John Brown, 447.

xxxi “Oh, you will get over it”: Ibid., 448.

xxxiii “When Smith first came to the door”: Ibid., 451.

xxxiii “a ragged hole low down”: Ibid., 453.

xxxiii “With one son dead by his side”: Ibid.

xxxiv Colonel Washington cried out loudly: Keller, Thunder at Harper’s Ferry, 149.

xxxiv The rest “rushed in like tigers”: Villard, John Brown, 454.

xxxiv Lee “saw to it that the captured survivors”: Ibid.

xxxv “He is a man of clear head”: Ibid., 455.

xxxvii “No monument of quarried stone”: Susan Cheever, Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010), 129.

xxxvii “As it is a matter over which”: Robert E. Lee Jr., Recollections and Letters of Robert E. Lee (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1924), 21–22.

xxxvii In his majestic biography of Brown: Villard, John Brown, 555.

xxxviii In Philadelphia “a public prayer meeting”: Ibid., 559; Elizabeth Preston Allen, Life and Letters of Margaret Junkin Preston (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1903), 111–17.

xxxix “was draped in mourning”: Villard, John Brown, 559.

xl Southerners were dismayed: Ibid., 496.

xl “He has abolished slavery in Virginia”: Ibid., 562.

xl He was as little pleased: Freeman, Robert E. Lee, Vol. 1, 417.

xl He regarded secession: Ibid., 421.

xli “I hope,” he wrote: Ibid., 416.

xli “He had been taught to believe”: Ibid., 418.

xlii “Washington,” Everett wrote: Quoted ibid., 420.

xlii “Secession,” Lee wrote: Ibid., 421.

CHAPTER 1 “Not Heedless of the Future”

5 By the time of the American Revolution: Richard B. McCaslin, Lee in the Shadow of Washington (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001), 13.

7 The years between 1773 and 1776: Douglas Southall Freeman, Robert E. Lee: A Biography (New York: Scribner, 1934), Vol. 1, 2.

8 A year later: Ibid.

8 Washington, recognizing Lee’s special skills: Ibid., 3.

9 “much to the horror”: Ibid., 66.

9 “sensitive, resentful”: Ibid., 4.

10 When Matilda died in 1790: McCaslin, Lee in the Shadow of Washington, 17.

11 “Why didn’t you come home?”: Paul Nagel, The Lees of Virginia: Seven Generations of an American Family (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 166.

11 In a half-baked scheme: Emory Thomas, Robert E. Lee (New York: Norton, 1995), 26.

11 On a visit to Shirley: Freeman, Robert E. Lee, Vol. 1, 8.

13 In these modest circumstances: Nagel, The Lees of Virginia, 175, 195–96.

15 Henry Lee helped to barricade: Freeman, Robert E. Lee, Vol. 1, 14.

15 “Death seemed so certain”: Ibid., 15.

15 This proposal was not taken up: Ibid.

16 “Broken in body and spirit”: Nagel, The Lees of Virginia, 182.

16 He didn’t even manage: Freeman, Robert E. Lee, Vol. 1, 31.

16 “My dear Sir”: Ibid.

16 When it was brought to: McCaslin, Lee in the Shadow of Washington, 18.

17 That had been tried before: Freeman, Robert E. Lee, Vol. 1, 37.

18 The contrast between her childhood: Thomas L. Connelly, The Marble Man: Robert E. Lee and His Image in American Society (New York: Knopf, 1977), 169.

19 For somebody whose health was as frail: Thomas, Robert E. Lee, 45.

20 She entrusted him with the keys: Ibid., 39.

20 He accompanied her on drives: Freeman, Robert E. Lee, Vol. 1, 34.

20 “Self-denial, self-control”: Ibid., 23.

21 When he first went away: Ibid., 30–31.

21 His maternal grandfather: Ibid., 24.

21 Perhaps because Ann Carter Lee: Ibid., 25.

21 As a child he was surrounded: Ibid., 25, 28.

24 At that time there was not as yet: Ibid., 38.

25 Fitzhugh’s letter referred: Ibid., 39.

CHAPTER 2 The Education of a Soldier

30 The academy still consisted of only: Douglas Southall Freeman, Robert E. Lee: A Biography (New York: Scribner, 1934), Vol. 1, 49.

30 The stone wharf: Bernhard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar Eisenach, Travels Through North America During the Years 1825 and 1826 (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea and Carey, 1828), 110.

30 An English visitor with an eye for detail: William N. Blane, An Excursion Through the United States and Canada, 1822–1833 by an English Gentleman (London: Baldwin, Craddock and Joy, 1824), 352–76.

30 Tent mates were obliged to purchase: Freeman, Robert E. Lee, Vol. 1, 51.

30 Meals were ample: Theodore J. Crackel, West Point: A Centennial History (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), 89.

31 The new cadets were given: Freeman, Robert E. Lee, Vol. 1, 52.

31 The marquis was greeted: Albany (New York) Argus, July 8, 1825.

33 Another roll call and inspection: Freeman, Robert E. Lee, Vol. 1, 56–57.

33 The list of things forbidden: Ibid., 52.

33 Unlike third-year cadet Jefferson Davis: Ibid., 55.

33 By the end of his first year: Ibid., 62.

34 One of them later said: Michael Fellman, The Making of Robert E. Lee (New York: Random House, 2000), 11.

37 He had no reason to be apprehensive: Freeman, Robert E. Lee, Vol. 1, 67.

38 Everywhere they went: Paul Nagel, The Lees of Virginia: Seven Generations of an American Family (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 232.

38 This is not to say: Ibid., 235.

39 This problem he solved: Ibid., 206.

40 To his credit,