Review: Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee by Robert Edward Lee
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 30, 2013
At first, I just wanted to read the recollections and letters of General Robert E. Lee, so I might be able to understand how one of the seditionist to cause the Civil War, might justify his actions.  I thought if I read of his military career as a soldier, then his words would reveal his regret and the reasons for his political actions which would surely conflict against his duty to the well being of his country. Fortunately, the Union soldiers would allow him to live and go on to write his story. I was hoping it would show us some understanding and a regret to his folly, but in support of the healing of the country, General Lee was spared.  This Officer's roll in the war cost nearly 700 thousand lives and uncounted suffering.  United States citizens would kill that great a number of their own countrymen, was a horror I am sure no one would suspect would happen, but it did.  He was as much responsible, personally for that destruction in both North and South, yet he would not be put on trial or held accountable for his own actions.  His knowledge of the treatment of soldiers, captured after his battlefield successes and held prisoner in the Andersonville Prisoner of War Camp alone, should have warranted his standing trial.  He would never have to pay for the his role in this war or the horrible treatment of Union prisoners, who were starved and murdered at his command.  When his capture and surrender did occur, unlike so many of the unfortunate Union ground soldiers, he would be given dignified and honorable treatment from his enemies.  If Lee had been treated as a traitor to his duty, his country and his responsibilities as an officer of the U. S. Army, he would have been found guilty in a military court and would then have paid with his life for his betrayals.  I am trying to get an understanding how General Lee could justify his actions as a commanding general, that would participate in the choice to start a war with his own country to dissolve the union.  Only he would be able to explain his role in the sedition of the Civil War, his traitorous actions against the country he had sworn his allegience to protect. His was one of the major roles played in this betrayal and only his personal account could be explained here, for his legacy is proof he was a traitor to his service and rank and he never paid for his crimes.  I am aware those of the south will not agree with this, but if the Confederacy had succeeded and won this Civil War, would the treatment of others have been as honorable.  I think not.