The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

Robert Edward Lee. He is in his fifty-seventh year. Five feet ten inches tall but very short in the legs, so that when he rides a horse he seems much taller. Red-faced, like all the Lees, white-bearded, dressed in an old gray coat and a gray felt hat, without insignia, so that he is mistaken sometimes for an elderly major of dignity. An honest man, a gentleman. He has no "vices." He does not drink or smoke or gamble or chase women. He does not read novels or plays; he thinks they weaken the mind. He does not own slaves nor believe in slavery, but he does not believe that the Negro "in the present stage of his development," can be considered the equal of the white man. He is a man in control.

He does not lose his temper nor his faith; he never complains. He has been down that spring with the first assault of the heart disease, which will eventually kill him.