America's greatest biographer: Douglas Southall Freeman. - book review

IT IS now a half century since the death of Douglas Southall Freeman who was acclaimed by his fellow historian, Allan Nevins, as 'America's greatest biographer'. Freeman's monumental biographies, R. E. Lee (four volumes, 1934-35) and George Washington (seven volumes, 1948-57) both won the Pulitzer Prize and both remain steady sellers as well as the standard scholarly biographies.

Now Dr Freeman has garnered his just deserts: he himself is the subject of an exemplary biography, David Johnson's Douglas Southall Freeman (Pelican Publishing Co., Gretna, Louisiana, $27.50, 476 pages, ISBN 1-800-843-1724). This biography makes judicious use both of Freeman's own vast archives and notes as well as many interviews. The biographer also has that all important knowledge of his subject's times and surroundings. This biography is, like Freeman's own biographical writings, essentially sympathetic to its subject, but it is not uncritical, especially in dealing with Freeman's troubled relationship with his son. It was, as David Johnson shows, not easy to be the son of a man of such staggering self-discipline and achievements.

Freeman had a 'provincial life' in all the favourable aspects of that much abused term. He spent virtually all of it in Richmond, Virginia where he was editor of a newspaper. His newspaper editorials, supplemented by his twice daily radio broadcasts, made him the most influential man in his native state. In addition, his daily analysis of the campaigns of both World Wars gave him a fame throughout America, particularly in military circles. Presidents and leading commanders such as Admiral Nimitz, and Generals Marshall, MacArthur and Eisenhower sought his friendship and advice. Indeed Eisenhower later said that it was Douglas Freeman who first persuaded him to think seriously about standing for the Presidency. Freeman was a leader of Southern opinion in the South's move from the Democratic Party into the ranks of the hereditary foe, the Republicans.

Douglas Freeman had acquired a lifelong devotion to Confederate history from tales told by his father, one of General Lee's soldiers. He was taken to see the first 'Civil War Re-enactment', one performed by the actual veterans and it was then that he vowed to write the history of Lee's fabled Army of Northern Virginia. As well as the two massive biographies, Dr Freeman (he was part of the first generation of historians to earn a Ph.D.) wrote several other works of Southern history and historiography.

Having finished the Lee biography, he was unable to abandon his chosen field and then wrote a three-volume book on the tensions and techniques of command in Lee's army: brevity was not among his manifold abilities. This also allowed him to reassess some of his earlier judgements such as his criticism of the perpetually difficult General Longstreet. This study, Lee's Lieutenants (1942-44), showed how an army actually worked and it had a great influence on American military thinkers in World War II. Indeed Freeman was asked to go on an official tour of American forces both in Europe and Japan only a month after the war ended. Many generals hoped (and no doubt some feared) that he would write the history of American generalship in that war. Mr Johnson provides some fascinating glimpses into that tour from Freeman's own diary.

Even when travelling in Europe and the Far East, Freeman stuck as far as possible to his well known schedule, which allowed him to accomplish much in his two full time careers as historian and journalist. At home he would rise about three every morning and drive to his newspaper office (always saluting Lee's statue as he passed) where he edited his daily newspaper as well as giving his two daily radio broadcasts about that day's news. By mid-afternoon, after a short nap, he was settled comfortably, soothed by Haydn in the background, for six hours' work on his current historical project. This schedule makes even Anthony Trollope's schedule seem lethargic.

In the decade before the Second World War, Freeman had also become one of the most admired newspaper editors in America, so much so that the country's most prestigious School of Journalism, Columbia University, made enormous efforts to have him as a Professor. He was 'too deeply rooted in the soil of old Virginia. . I want to live here to the end, and die if I may while the mocking bird is singing... I think the American people lose a large part of the joy of life because they do not live for generations in the same place'. Eventually he agreed to make a weekly dash to the 'Babylon' of New York once he had calculated that he would have several hours to work on the train and he thus deeply influenced the next generation of journalists and editors.

For Dr Freeman, Robert E. Lee 'embodies the glamour, the genius, and the graces with which the South has idealised a hideous war'. (R. E. Lee, IV. 493) Freeman, himself a devout but jolly Baptist, emphasised the central role of religion in Lee's life. This is a crucial aspect of the lives of so many Victorian figures, both in the U.S. and here, and one often neglected by many modern writers who approach their subjects from the lofty but arid height of agnostic superciliousness. Sometimes modern biographers stumble through the luxurious garden of Victorian religion guided by nothing more than their own prejudices or ignorance. Thus one of Anthony Trollope's biographers has convinced herself that be was a 'Unitarian' although she has no facts to sustain this. There are welcome exceptions such as one shining example from Robert E. Lee's own world: Felicity Allen's Jefferson Davis: Unconquerable Heart (University of Missouri Press, 1999) presents a magnificent portrait of Lee's President and stalwart friend by em phasising Davis's deep Christian faith.

In his admirable biography Mr Johnson also stresses the central place of religion in Dr Freeman's life. While Southern Baptists are usually committed to temperance if not teetotalism, Freeman was devoted to the enjoyment of good wine and to religious and racial tolerance. Not the least merits of this excellent work are the way that David Johnson explains, neither attacking nor defending, Freeman's conservative but mildly progressive views on racial matters. He resists that hobby of so many trendy biographers and does not mount into the pulpit of political correctness to fling anathemas on his silent subject. Thus this biography will be of interest to any student of the mid-twentieth century South.

It is salutary to contrast Douglas Freeman's methods and accomplishments with that of his best known British contemporary, Lytton Strachey. Freeman spent years (to the despair of patient publishers) on detailed research, all filed meticulously by a system well described by David Johnson. Douglas Southall Freeman can well claim to be the most influential pioneer of the scholarly biography that has become such an important part of today's literary world. On the other hand the vapid Strachey, ever eager to pillory his biographical victims and to display his own genius, dashed off clever sentences based on little research and less insight. Freeman himself admired Strachey's 'literary craftsmanship', but he rightly detested Strachey's trick of pretending to read his subject's mind. (As I write this I note that a copy of Freeman's Lee on one E-bay web site is selling for $63 while the same site has Strachey's Queen Victoria for $1 - a fairly accurate estimate of their respective merits as biographers.) Whatever his views of Strachey, Douglas Southall Freeman was a sturdy Anglophile who treasured his heritage of English literature and the English language itself. He was frequently called on to guide prominent Englishmen on their tours of Virginia's battlefields. His most celebrated tourists were Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, both of whom deeply admired his biographies.

It is almost seven decades since Freeman's greatest monument, his biography of Robert E. Lee, came forth. Since then numerous books on Lee have appeared, in particular a spiteful attack, The Marble Man by a Southern historian, Thomas Connelly. This unpleasant work is well dealt with by David Johnson in an appendix to his own biography. Other biographies have provided additional insights, such as Emory Thomas' 1995 biography which gave us valuable information about Lee's financial affairs. In the last decade the restless forces of political correctness -- often adopted rigorously by what one distinguished critic has called Southern 'calico liberals' -- have been trying with fascist fierceness to erase all remembrance of Robert E. Lee and the cause he served from living memory. (Perhaps I should mention that I write this as one whose great-great-grandfather was killed at Gettysburg, fighting on the Northern side.)

Yet, when all is said and written, it is, thankfully, that unforgettable and noble portrait carved by Douglas Southall Freeman that prevails. The new film, Gods and Generals, based on the victories of Robert E. Lee and 'Stonewall' Jackson, happily follows very much in his tradition and will, one hopes, lead others to Dr Freeman's books and his insights. Lee and Freeman, like Johnson and Boswell, have become inseparable. And just as Boswell eventually found an exemplary biographer in Frederick Pottle so has Dr Freeman found one in David Johnson.

Dr Richard Mullen is the author of Victoria: Portrait of a Queen; Anthony Trollope: A Victorian in His World and Birds of Passage: Five Englishwomen in Search of America.

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