Word: lees
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...answer must be a qualified yes. He has made Washington human, in the sense that he displays human feelings, but he has not-in the first two volumes, at least-made of George Washington a more lovable figure for popular consumption. Readers of the seven thick volumes on Lee and his generals know that Freeman is not a portrait painter who gets his effect with quick, inspired strokes; his method is careful and cumulative. His works are what book reviewers are apt to call monumental, and monumental they literally are: built block by patient block, soundly based, immense, monochromatic...
...very absence of color, the refusal to jump to conclusions, and the blunt, graceless prose, have the persuasiveness of a courtroom exhibit. What Freeman once said of Robert E. Lee holds good for his approach to George Washington: "I know where Lee was and what he did every minute of the Civil War, but I wouldn't dare presume what he was thinking...
Freeman eats his breakfast slowly (he never hurries anything) then allows 17 minutes for the 4.7-mile trip to the News Leader building in the heart of Richmond, and that's what it takes. As he rolls past the handsome statue of Robert E. Lee on Monument Avenue, he gravely raises right hand to forehead in salute to the "great gentleman" whom he considers the finest man the South has produced. "I shall never fail to do that as long as I live...
Lunch at home with his wife is a leisurely, almost time-wasting meal, in a spacious dining room from whose walls handsome young Lieut. Lee looks down. At 2 :30 sharp he is in bed. At 3 (he wakes himself almost on the dot) he begins his "second day." From his attic bedroom he steps into his study for 2½ solid hours of work on Washington. Here visitors, and even his family, are forbidden. On the walls are autographed pictures of his friends Winston Churchill and Admiral Nimitz, a letter from President Roosevelt thanking Freeman for suggesting the term...
...Freeman family moved to Virginia in 1742, which makes them not quite F.F.V., but Biographer Freeman's maternal ancestors were. Young Douglas was a 17-year-old honor student at Richmond College when his father, who had been a private in Lee's army (and later a general in the Confederate veterans organization), took him to a Confederate reunion. The sight of the Confederacy's brave armless and legless old men stirred young Douglas; he decided: "If someone doesn't write the story of these men, it will be lost forever...