Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence

by John Ferling

Tall and wafer thin, with a pinched and homely face, Lee was given to quirky behavior. He was habitually unkempt, slovenly even, and voluble. Opinionated and prone to ceaseless monologues, he also never learned to curb his penchant for delivering a searing riposte. Lee had never married and insisted that he preferred dogs to most people. He spoke “the language of doggism,” Lee said, adding that he found canines attractive because, unlike many people, they were neither bigoted nor inclined to put their “convenience, pleasure, and dignity” ahead of his. He traveled everywhere with his pack of dogs and seldom hesitated to foist them on others. “He is a queer creature,” John Adams said of him, and Lee would have been the first to agree. He once confessed to his sister that in his “cooler candid moments” he understood that “my deportment must disgust and shock.”