The Man in Gray

The Man in Gray: A Romance of North and South is a 1921 novel by Thomas Dixon Jr. (1864-1946) centred on Robert E. Lee in the years before and during the Civil War. Dixon presents Lee as the tragic hero of the national conflict, following him from the John Brown raid at Harpers Ferry, where Lee commanded the marines who captured Brown, through the secession crisis and the war years. The novel embodies the Lost Cause idealisation of Lee that dominated popular Southern memory in the early twentieth century, with the plantation romance conventions Dixon had used across his career. The book is a late entry in his Civil War cycle and a primary source for the Lee cult of the 1920s, the decade of the Confederate memorial boom. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.