You cannot pursue even a nominal interest in the Civil War era without learning that there is a tremendous amount known about a large number of men and women of that period whose actions and experiences were anything but dull. People living then understood that they were all in the middle of something probably as important as the Revolution, and they wrote extensively about everybody and everything. Resource material is everywhere and biographies abound, particularly ones about people in or connected with the military.

I wish, however, to direct you to one that is a bit off the beaten track. It was written by Charles Bracelen Flood, and it is titled Lee - The Last Years (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1981).

It is the story of Robert E. Lee from the time he surrendered his Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in 1865 to his death in 1870. The uniform is off, the army is gone, and Lee musty stand or fall on his own. Flood tells us that this industrious president of Washington College- today's Washington & Lee University, Lexington VA-was magnificent. To the limit of his decades-old health problem (believed to be angina), Lee was unflagging in his efforts to invigorate his college and to assist in the creation of the New South. Flood skillfully combines the stories of Lee's public and private lives, and we get beyond the "Marble Man" to meet a duty-driven "Old Light" Calvinist who was especially good at what he did.

It's a great read.