The Heroes of the Lost Cause: The Lives and Legacies of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and JEB Stuart

*Includes pictures of each general and important people, places, and events in their lives. *Includes a Bibliography on each man for further reading. *Includes a Table of Contents In 1867, Edward Pollard, an editor for a Richmond newspaper, published The Lost Cause, championing his voluminous book as a “New Southern history” of the war. Pollard’s work poignantly reflected the sentiments of unrepentant rebels clinging to their ideology. Pollard explicitly explained the motivation behind what he termed the “Lost Cause.” Although the South had lost the Civil War, he argued that the South could still wage and win the “war of ideas.” Henceforth, the Lost Cause remembered the Confederacy and their leaders as a doomed cause that was justly and heroically fought for by noble, chivalrous, virtuous men. The ideal Southern soldier, of course, was the “Marble Man”. With the exception of George Washington, perhaps the most famous general in American history is Robert E. Lee (January 19, 1807 – October 12, 1870), despite the fact he led the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia against the Union in the Civil War. As the son of U.S. Revolutionary War hero Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee III, and a relative of Martha Custis Washington, Lee was imbued with a strong sense of honor and duty from the beginning. And as a top graduate of West Point, Lee had distinguished himself so well before the Civil War that President Lincoln asked him to command the entire Union Army. Lee famously declined, serving his home state of Virginia instead after it seceded.