Robert E. Lee now available

Some time ago KCGordon wrote

Robert E. Lee's library was given away to several schools in Virginia due to their need of books. According to the Washington and Lee University library Lee felt that it was too proud to use bookplates and didn't sign his books. They have been trying to find a list for 40 years, so it is going to be a problem.

It seems a list has been in the works for a while and is now done. See

Guide to the Tentative register of Robert E. Lee books in Lexington, Virginia: typescript W.0126
http://acumen.lib.ua.edu/w0003_0000126

"Seventy-one page typescript identifies books in Lexington, Virginia, that were once part of Robert E. Lee's personal library"

This copy is at the The University of Alabama.

Shall I see if Chris Holland, LT employee, can make a trip?

>1 timspalding: Hmm, I bet we can get a copy (or a scan). Give me a couple days.

Cool. If not, I bet @ConceptDawg would be glad to go.

Forgot to update this - photocopy is on the way from Alabama. I'll scan when it arrives.

Great.

Gotta say that I'm glad to hear this and would like to help.

I'm waiting for the Hitler shoe to drop.

Wouldn't that be Sherman more than Lee? But Hitler's jackboot has a wide tread, I know.

He, Lee, is no Hitler. He was, and is a traitor.

Sherman invented total warfare but he never established even one death camp so he is no Hitler either. "If nominated I will not run, If elected I will not serve." that is Tecumseh Sherman.

To be clear, I don't think either Sherman or Lee should be labeled a "Hitler" for purposes within LT or most any other, really. I knew when I made the jest I was inviting comment!

Elsewhere on LT with regard to Legacy Libraries, the preference was noted to exclude Hitler's and other libraries. (Don't recall if you were a part of those discussions, clarifying here for anyone who might not know the background.)

#10 I recently won Fierce Patriot about Sherman from the Early Reviewers program and am very anti-Lee in a thread in another group. It seemed like the place to chime in.

I also let them know in the history group about this project.

The L in my name is after Lee, in a roundabout way.

>9 TLCrawford:: Both sides, North and South, had death camps during the Civil War, only they were euphemistically called "prison camps". Perhaps the most notorious was at Andersonville, in Georgia, where some 13,000 union soldiers died of disease, starvation, and neglect. The death rate was about 29% After the war, Wirz, the camp commandant, was tried and hanged for his negligence.
Andersonville, by MacKinley Kantor. World Books, c. 1955

Almost as notorious was Camp Douglas, built on the prairie, just south of Chicago. It's death rate was only 17-23%.

Altogether, about 30,000 Union soldier died while imprisoned, while "only" 26,000 Confederate prisoners died.

". . . 30,000 Union soldiers died, while imprisoned, while
'only' 26,000 Confederate prisoners died." (12)

I'm surprised that, even in absolute numbers, the
Union deaths only outnumbered the Confederate by
4.000: in view of the much greater number of
Union soldiers that there were to begin with

I've read that the number of desertions were high
on both sides, and that Confederate deserters
outnumbered those from the Union side. (Also
an unestimated number of "Rebels" went over
to the "Yankee" side, while a defection in the
opposite direction was rare, (a situation explainable
by the ordinary soldier's working knowledge
of how much/little
food there was on the enemy side.)

> 9

For the record, Sherman did not "invent total war." Neither did anyone else in the American Civil War. Sherman imported and adapted the chevauchée, an established technique for subduing enemy territory. See Mark Grimsley's The Hard Hand of War.