Robert E. Lee considered reconciliation and education to be his highest duties after the War. While many other Confederate leaders left the United States, Lee remained in Virginia and worked to heal the wounds of the War. He turned down political positions and refused to capitalize on his name, and instead accepted a position as President of Washington College to revive the struggling school’s fortunes. As Philip Leigh explains, Lee should be remembered as one of the greatest Americans in history.


Philip Leigh

Philip Leigh contributed twenty-four articles to The New York Times Disunion blog, which commemorated the Civil War Sesquicentennial. He is the author of U.S. Grant's Failed Presidency, Southern Reconstruction (2017), Lee’s Lost Dispatch and Other Civil War Controversies (2015), and Trading With the Enemy (2014). Phil has lectured a various Civil War forums, including the 23rd Annual Sarasota Conference of the Civil War Education Association and various Civil War Roundtables. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Florida Institute of Technology and an MBA from Northwestern University.

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