Part One, Chapters 1-5 Summary

God's and Generals is broken up, chapter by chapter, between the perspectives of its four main characters, Robert E. Lee, Thomas Jonathan Jackson, Winfield Scott Hancock, and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. These four men had a defining impact on the American Civil War and the story follows them from a few years prior to the war until a few days before the decisive Battle of Gettysburg.

In Chapter One, Lee, at this time a colonel in the United States Army, comes home on leave. His father-in-law has died and left him in charge of the family estate of Arlington, just across the Potomac river from Washington DC. He comes back to find his daughter grown up and his wife crippled by arthritis. He reflects on a life of military service and the many years he has spent far...