Consists of 3 parts. Pt. 1 introduces General Lee and Arlington House. Pt. 2 presents a brief historical account of the house and its occupants, the Custises and the Lees. Pt. 3 provides concise information on the house and grounds.

Eleanor Agnes Lee, Robert E. Lee's fifth child, began her journal in December 1852 at the early age of twelve. An articulate young woman, her stated ambitions were modest: "The everyday life of a little school girl of twelve years is not startling," she observed in April 1853; but in fact, her five-year record of a southern girl's life is lively, unpredictable, and full of interesting detail. The journal opens with a description of the Lee family life in their beloved home, Arlington. Like many military families, the Lees moved often, but Agnes and her family always thought of Arlington -- "with its commanding view, fine old trees, and the soft wild luxuriance of its woods" -- as home. When Lee was appointed the superintendent of West Point, the family reluctantly moved with him to the military academy, but wherever she happened to be, Agnes engagingly described weddings, lavish dinners, concerts, and fancy dress balls. No mere social butterfly, she also recounted hours teaching slaves (an illegal act at that time) and struggling with her conscience. Often she questioned her own spiritual worthiness; in fact, Agnes expressed herself most openly and ardently when examining her religious commitment and reflecting on death. As pious as whe was eager to improve herself, Agnes prayed that "He would satisfy that longing within me to do something to be something." In 1855 General Lee went to Texas, while his young daughter was enrolled in the elite Virginia Female Institute in Staunton. Agnes' letters to her parents complete the picture that she has given us of herself -- an appealingly conscientious young girl who had a sense of humor, who strove to live up to her parents' expectations, and who returned fully the love so abundantly given to her. Agnes' last journal entry was made in January 1858, only three years before the Civil War began. In 1873 she died at Lexington at the young age of thirty-two. The volume continues with recollections by Mildred Lee, the youngest of the Lee children, about her sister Agnes' death and the garden at Arlington. "I wish I could paint that dear old garden!" she writes. "I have seen others, adorned and beautified by Kings and princes, but none ever seemed so fair to me, as the Kingdom of my childhood." Growing Up in the 1850s includes an introduction by Robert Edward Lee deButts, Jr., great-great-grandson of General Lee, and a historical note about Arlington House by Mary Tyler Freeman Cheek, Director for Virginia of the Robert E. Lee Memorial Association. The editor, Mary Custis Lee deButts, is Agnes Lee's niece.

From its origination, Arlington National Cemetery's history has been compellingly intertwined with that of African Americans. This book explains how the grounds of Arlington House, formerly the home of Robert E. Lee and a plantation of the enslaved, became a military camp for Federal troops, a freedmen's village and farm, and America's most important burial ground. During the Civil War, the property served as a pauper's cemetery for men too poor to be returned to their families, and some of the very first war dead to be buried there include over 1,500 men who served in the United States Colored Troops. More than 3,800 former slaves are interred in section 27, the property's original cemetery.

“Pryor’s biography helps part with a lot of stupid out there about Lee – chiefly, that he was, somehow, ‘anti-slavery.’” – Ta-Nehisi Coates, theatlantic.com An “unorthodox, critical, and engaging biography” (Boston Globe) – Winner of The Lincoln Prize Robert E. Lee is remembered by history as a tragic figure, stoic and brave but distant and enigmatic. Using dozens of previously unpublished letters as departure points, Pryor produces a stunning personal account of Lee's military ability, shedding new light on every aspect of the complex and contradictory general's life story. Explained for the first time in the context of the young United States's tumultuous societal developments, Lee's actions reveal a man forced to play a leading role in the formation of the nation at the cost of his private happiness.