“Death seemed to lose its terrors and to borrow a grace and dignity in sublime keeping with the life that was ebbing away.”

“In rural and struggling Lexington, Virginia, Lee's new postwar home, one writer joked darkly dollars were so scarce that they had to be introduced to one another when they met on Main Street.”

“The war had made some into libertines and some into serious, sober men.”

“Death seemed to lose its terrors and to borrow a grace and dignity in sublime keeping with the life that was ebbing away.”