In 1861 Robert E. Lee faced one of the most difficult decisions that any army officer could possibly face. For in that year he was asked to accept the field command of the American armies in the war that was boiling up between the North and the South. Almost any other West Point graduate would have accepted the honor eagerly. But the quiet, soft-spoken Southern officer knew he could never lead an invading army through his native Virginia, where the Lees and Carters had lived for generations and where his own ties went like roots deep into the harsh red clay.

Instead, he resigned from the United States Army and accepted command of Virginia's troops in the Army of the Confederacy. For him this was the road of honor, a road that led for four long years through raging battles and scorched farmlands of the South.

In Robert E. Lee and the Road of Honor, Hodding Carter, himself a Southerner and one of the nation's most distinguished journalists, tells the moving story of the Confederate leader who is revered as one of America's greatest heroes.

From the book