Abraham Lincoln quarterly. [Vol. 5, no. 3]

LINCOLN PUBLICA TIONS

169

factual history, but on the other hand, it is vivid impressionistic
narrative. The errors of impression and judgment, the concentrated though limited view, and the personal element, all combine to produce an image of battle which is certainly part illusion,
but the element of illusion is in itself part of the reality-the part
which is winnowed out of history with the passage of time and
the flailing of scholars. What has been done by Messrs. Miers and
Brown is essentially the work of artists rather than historians. By
their skilful arrangement of materials they have accentuated the
dramatic development of the battle. And yet, except for a few
minor errors, their editorial work is accurate and scholarly. The
problem of what selection and arrangement of materials does to
the "real" or "true" facts of history is exceptionally demonstrated
in this book, and the question of what history is, is presented as a
concrete, fascinating puzzle. The book should make new converts to the study of the Civil War.
LEE'S CENTENNIAL, An Address. By Charles Francis Adams. With
a Foreword by Douglas Southall Freeman. Edition limited to
seven hundred and fifty copies. Chicago: Americana House,
1948. 76 pp. $7.50.
This reprinting of Adams' address delivered at Lexington,
Virginia, January 19, 1907, is a welcome addition to any Civil
War collection. The book is attractively printed and nicely
bound; but a book which is caviar to the general reader
suffers most by misprints such as "prostate" for "prostrate." Dr.
Freeman's "Foreword" is spare but to the point and sufficient.
Reviewing Adams' treatment of Lee after these many years,
we are struck by the fact that no extended biography known to
us has hit so nearly the heart of the man that was Lee, not even
Freeman's monumental work; and yet the tragedy of Lee's character was scarcely comprehended by Adams-the tragedy of a
mind too intelligent to indulge with his fellow secessionists in
rationalizing the moral obliquity of slavery and in believing
that state sovereignty could be maintained under secession, but
forced to wear the chains of an irrational duty dictated by emotions which could not bow to the voice of reason. It is time for a
new one-volume biography of Lee which will revive the man
who has been buried in facts as well as abstracted into symbol.