LEE'S LIEUTENANTS : A STUDY IN COMMAND (SIGNED) by Freeman, Douglas Southall - 1942

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1942. First Editions. Hardcover. Very Good Plus to Near Fine in Very Good Dustjackets. FIRST EDITIONS, published successively in 1942, 1943, 1944, all with the Scribner letter "A" present on the copyright pages. Top/Bottom edges trimmed, foredges untrimmed. Hardly noticeable rubbing to extremities and one corner on Vol. II slightly nudged, only. Soft deckle fore-edges. Gilt lettering to spines and fronts of black cloth-covered boards. 2,395 pp. with appendices, principle manuscript sources, acknowledgments, bibliographies, and indices. SIGNED by Douglas Southall Freeman on the half-title of Volume I. Dustjackets: Edgewear. Small chips missing from bottom of spines. All volumes show original price of $5.00 to front upper flap, and are mylar protected. Each jacket front features a black and white illustration with title lettering in red, blue and green, respectively. Photographs and short narratives of eight of Lee's predecessors and lieutenants begin each volume. 101 maps. A large, 17 x 17", fold-out map titled Battlegrounds of the Army of Northern Virginia follows index of volume 3. Covering the generals of the Army of Northern Virginia during the American Civil War who fought under Robert E. Lee. Volume One, Manassas to Malvern Hill, could be regarded as the book of Beauregard, Johnston, Magruder, D.H. Hill, Garnett, Jeb Stuart, Ewell, Gustavus Smith, and Stonewall Jackson; Volume Two, Cedar Mountain to Chancellorsville continues by giving us a look at John Hood, Robert Rodes, John Cooke, Ramseur, Pender and Wilcox; Volume Three, Gettysburg to Appomattox concludes with the "deepening twilight of the South's declining military might, to the tragic inward collapse of the Command and the formal surrender in 1865," (back cover volume 3). "In its completed form this tremendous study is a towering landmark in the literature of American biography and in all the literature of war," (front flap).