道格拉斯·索撒尔·弗里曼

道格拉斯·索撒尔·弗里曼（Douglas Southall Freeman，1886年5月16日－1953年6月13日）是一位美国历史学家、传记作家、报纸编辑、电台评论员。他为罗伯特·E·李和乔治·华盛顿写了传记，并因此获得普利策奖。

Douglas Southall Freeman (May 16, 1886 – June 13, 1953) was an American historian, biographer, newspaper editor, radio commentator, and author. He is best known for his multi-volume biographies of Robert E. Lee and George Washington, for both of which he was awarded Pulitzer Prizes.

Early life

Douglas Southall Freeman was born May 16, 1886, in Lynchburg, Virginia, to Bettie Allen Hamner and Walker Burford Freeman, an insurance agent who had served four years in Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. From childhood, Freeman exhibited an interest in Southern history. In Lynchburg, his family lived at 416 Main Street, near the home of Confederate general Jubal Early. The family moved to the former Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, in 1892 at the height of the monument commemoration movement that memorialized Virginia's Robert E. Lee, J.E.B. Stuart, and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson.

In 1904, Freeman was awarded an A.B. from Richmond College, where he had been a member of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity. In 1908, at the age of 22, he earned a Ph.D. in history from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Unable to secure a position in academia, Freeman joined the staff of the Richmond Times-Dispatch in 1909, and, in 1915, at the age of 29, he became editor of The Richmond News Leader—a position he held for 34 years.

Writing career

Lee's Dispatches

In 1911, when Freeman was 25 years old, he came into possession of a cache of long-lost wartime communications between Robert E. Lee and Confederate president Jefferson Davis. Freeman spent four years working on the documents, and in 1915, he published Lee's Dispatches. The book was received enthusiastically by Civil War historians, and it became an important primary source for Civil War scholars.

Written between June 2, 1862, and April 1, 1865, Lee's letters to Davis revealed the general's strategy with clearer perspective, shed new light on some of Lee's decisions, and underscored his close and always co-operative relationship with Davis. In his Introduction, Freeman summarized seven major revelations contained in the letters. For example, the letters reveal that the Confederate high command in 1862 considered but rejected a bold proposal to strengthen Stonewall Jackson's army in the Shenandoah Valley and embark on a vigorous offensive campaign against the North, even at the expense of defending Richmond.

R. E. Lee: A Biography

Following the immediate critical success of Lee's Dispatches, Freeman was approached by New York publisher Charles Scribner's Sons and invited to write a biography of Robert E. Lee. Freeman accepted but chose to retain his position at The Richmond News Leader and work longer days to work on the biography.

Freeman's research of Lee was exhaustive. He was able to interview some survivors of Lee's army, such as Giles Buckner Cooke. He evaluated and cataloged every item about Lee, and he reviewed records at West Point and the War Department and material in private collections. In narrating the general's Civil War years, he used what came to be known as the "fog of war" technique, providing readers only the limited information that Lee himself had at a given moment. That helped convey the confusion of war that Lee experienced as well as the processes by which Lee grappled with problems and made decisions.

R. E. Lee: A Biography was published in four volumes in 1934 and 1935. In its book review, The New York Times declared it "Lee complete for all time." Historian Dumas Malone wrote, "Great as my personal expectations were, the realization far surpassed them." In 1935, Freeman was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his four-volume biography.