Colonel Lee’s pet rattlesnake

One of the best Civil War books I’ve read is Elizabeth Brown Pryor’s "Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters." Still reading, actually. The letters are new, recently found in a bank vault and released to Pryor by his descendents. The Texas chapter, "Odyssey," chronicles in his own words, his time with the Second Cavalry "in the paradise of the Texans" right before the war. Details such as his horse, Bald Eagle; feeding frogs to his pet rattlesnake; and an audience with "Ka tem a se, the head chief of the Southern Comanches" invalided by pleurisy on his buffalo robes, attended by "his wives & suitors," his shield, bow and quiver nearby, as is his war horse, ready to be slain if the Comanche chief dies to carry him to the happy hunting ground. A new Lee. A step down from the Marble Man, but a leap up in humanity.