Leaders of the Lost Cause

This handy volume provides biographical and interpretive essays on eight Confederate general officers who attained the rank of full general (equivalent to four-star) during the course of the U.S. Civil War. These men were: Robert E. Lee, P. G. T. Beauregard, Braxton Bragg, Samuel Cooper, Albert Sidney Johnston, Joseph E. Johnston, Edmund Kirby Smith, and John Bell Hood. In addition, the editors, in their Introduction, profile Confederate President Jefferson Davis, “the common thread among these officers, to whom they were beholden for their appointment.” This in itself is an important and essential essay that knits the others together in a useful fashion.