The Life of Robert E. Lee

"In preparing the Life of Lee for Children, for use in the Public Schools, I beg leave to place before teachers good reasons for employing it as a supplementary reader. First, I urge the need of interesting our children in history at an early age. From observation I find that the minds of children who study history early expand more rapidly than those who are restricted to the limits of stories in readers. While teaching pupils to read, why not fix in their minds the names and deeds of our great men, thereby laying the foundation of historical knowledge and instilling true patriotism into their youthful souls? Secondly, in looking over the lives of our American heroes we find not one which presents such a picture of moral grandeur as that of Lee. Place this picture before the little ones and you cannot fail to make them look upward to noble ideals." -- Mary L. Williamson, 1898