Robert E. Lee

As a younger man, Lee had impressed his classmates at West Point for his maturity and gravitas, who described him as the “Marble Model” for the ideal soldier. Lee’s good looks were also widely remarked on, as were his manners. His reserve and perfect decorum—he was rarely visibly angry with others—only deepened as his responsibilities grew, first for his family and then for his army. Lee’s great biographer, Douglass Southall Freeman, ascribed no mystery to Lee; he was exactly as he seemed: a perfect, Christian gentleman and soldier. Modern biographers have disagreed, finding contradictions between the inner and outer man as Lee coped with his emotional conflicts. Perhaps the “real” Lee can never be known. As South Carolina diarist Mary Chesnut wondered, “Can anybody say they know [him]? I doubt it. He looks so cold and quiet and grand.”