Douglas Southall Freeman

Douglas Southall Freeman (born May 16, 1886, Lynchburg, Va., U.S.—died June 13, 1953, Westbourne, Hampton Gardens, near Richmond, Va.) was an American journalist and author noted for writings on the Confederacy.

After receiving degrees from Johns Hopkins University and Washington and Lee University, Freeman began a long and distinguished teaching career. Among numerous other posts, he served for a year (1934–35) as a visiting professor of journalism at Columbia University, remaining on the faculty as a nonresident from 1936 to 1941. From 1936 on he was also a lecturer at the Army War College. And from 1915 to 1949 Freeman edited the Richmond (Va.) News Leader.

Among his honorary appointments and affiliations, Freeman was a member of the advisory council of the War Department’s History Division and of the Presidential Committee on Higher Education. In 1935 Freeman won the Pulitzer Prize for his four-volume biography, R. E. Lee.

His other works include Virginia—A Gentle Dominion (1924); The Last Parade (1932); The South to Posterity: An Introduction to the Writings of Confederate History (1939); Lee’s Lieutenants, A Study in Command, 3 vol. (1942–44); John Steward Bryan (1947); and George Washington, 7 vol. (1948–57), the final volume of which was prepared by his assistants after his death—the whole work earning him a second, posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1958.