This quantitative study provides a comprehensive narrative and statistical analysis of many key aspects of General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Serving as a companion to the author's General Lee's Army: From Victory to Collapse, it presents his supporting data and major conclusions in extensive detail. While gathering research materials for General Lee's Army, the author compiled quantitative data on the background and service of 600 randomly selected soldiers—150 artillerists, 150 cavalrymen, and 300 infantrymen—affording him insight into the prewar and wartime experience of Lee ... More

This quantitative study provides a comprehensive narrative and statistical analysis of many key aspects of General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Serving as a companion to the author's General Lee's Army: From Victory to Collapse, it presents his supporting data and major conclusions in extensive detail. While gathering research materials for General Lee's Army, the author compiled quantitative data on the background and service of 600 randomly selected soldiers—150 artillerists, 150 cavalrymen, and 300 infantrymen—affording him insight into the prewar and wartime experience of Lee's troops. The book presents the full details of this primary research in a way that is useful to scholars and students, and which appeals to anyone with a serious interest in the Civil War. While confirming much of what is believed about the army, the author's evidence challenges some conventional thinking in significant ways, such as showing that nearly half of all Lee's soldiers lived in slaveholding households (a number higher than previously thought), and provides a broader and fuller portrait of the men who served under General Lee.