Publisher's Note: Charles W. Ramsdell, known during his lifetime as the Dean of Southern Historians, wrote the following review in 1935 at the peak of his career. It was two years later that Ramsdell wrote his famous treatise, "Lincoln and Fort Sumter," which indicts Abraham Lincoln for scheming and starting the War Between the States in Charleston Harbor.
Ramsdell's book reviews are works of art. As a brilliant scholar and authority on American history, he knew what to look for and was hard on writers when he did not find it. That was certainly not the case with Douglas Southall Freeman. Ramsdell writes, early on, that Freeman, with his four volume R. E. Lee: A Biography, has given us "the definitive life of Robert E. Lee."
This review is a pleasure to read and is like a mini-history of Robert E. Lee and the war.
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