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American historian and journalist

Douglas Southall Freeman (May 16, 1886 – June 13, 1953) was an American historian, biographer, newspaper editor, radio commentator, and author. He is best known for his multi volume biographies of Robert E. Lee and George Washington, for both of which he was awarded Pulitzer Prizes.

Douglas Southall Freeman was born May 16, 1886, in Lynchburg, Virginia, to Bettie Allen Hamner and Walker Burford Freeman, an insurance agent who had served four years in Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. From childhood, Freeman exhibited an interest in Southern history. In Lynchburg, his family lived at 416 Main Street, near the home of Confederate general Jubal Early. The family moved to the former Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, in 1892 at the height of the monument commemoration movement that memorialized Virginia's Robert E. Lee, J. E. B. Stuart, and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson.

Following the immediate critical success of Lee's Dispatches, Freeman was approached by New York publisher Charles Scribner's Sons and invited to write a biography of Robert E. Lee. Freeman accepted but chose to retain his position at The Richmond News Leader and work longer days to work on the biography. Freeman's research of Lee was exhaustive. He evaluated and cataloged every item about Lee, and he reviewed records at West Point and the War Department and material in private collections. In narrating the general's Civil War years, he used what came to be known as the "fog of war" technique, providing readers only the limited information that Lee himself had at a given moment. That helped convey the confusion of war that Lee experienced as well as the processes by which Lee grappled with problems and made decisions. R. E. Lee: A Biography was published in four volumes in 1934 and 1935. In its book review, The New York Times declared it "Lee complete for all time." Historian Dumas Malone wrote, "Great as my personal expectations were, the realization far surpassed them." In 1935, Freeman was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his four volume biography.

Following the critical success of R. E. Lee: A Biography, Freeman expanded his study of the Confederacy with the three volume Lee's Lieutenants: A Study in Command, published in 1942, 1943, and 1944. It presents a unique combination of military strategy, biography, and Civil War history, and it shows how armies actually work. Published during World War II, it had a great influence on American military leaders and strategists. A few months after the conclusion of the war, Freeman was asked to join an official tour of American forces in Europe and Japan. Historian and George Washington biographer John E. Ferling maintains that no other biography of Washington compares to that of Freeman's work.

Freeman's considerable literary achievements have overshadowed his career as editor of The Richmond News Leader. Between 1915 and 1949, he wrote an estimated 600,000 words of editorial copy every year. He earned a national reputation among military scholars for his analyses of operations during World War I and World War II. Freeman was a devout Baptist who prayed daily in the small chapel he built in his home. He acknowledged that his Christian faith played a central role throughout his life. Freeman married Inez Virginia Goddin on February 5, 1914. They had three children: Mary Tyler, Anne Ballard, and James Douglas. Mary Tyler Freeman married Leslie Cheek, Jr., longtime director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and became a founder or influential officer of several important community organizations, as well as president of the Robert E. Lee Memorial Foundation. The family lived (and Freeman died) in a mansion he named Westbourne in Richmond's west end, a house listed (in 2000) in the National Register of Historic Places.

Douglas Southall Freeman died of a heart attack on June 13, 1953, at his home in Richmond, Virginia, at the age of 67. On the morning of his death he had delivered his usual radio broadcast from Richmond. He was buried in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond. Freeman's newspaper editorials and daily radio broadcasts made him one of the most influential Virginians of his day, his analysis of World War I and World War II military campaigns bringing him recognition throughout the country, especially in military circles. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt thanked him for suggesting the use of the term "liberation," rather than "invasion," of Europe. Military commanders such as Admiral Chester W. Nimitz and Generals George C. Marshall, Douglas MacArthur, and Dwight D. Eisenhower sought his friendship and advice. Eisenhower said Freeman first convinced him to think seriously about running for the presidency. In 1958, Freeman was posthumously awarded his second Pulitzer Prize for his seven volume biography of George Washington. In 1955, the Virginia Associated Press Broadcasters honored Freeman by creating the Douglas Southall Freeman Award for public service in radio journalism. Eric Foner is more critical of Freeman, whose biography of Lee Foner calls a "hagiography," criticizing its lack of nuance and the limited attention paid to Lee's relationship to slavery. Charles B. Dew wrote that Freeman's "magisterial" Lee's Lieutenants, United Daughters of the Confederacy magazine, and Facts the Historians Leave Out: A Youth's Confederate Primer by John S. Tilley were crucial titles in his adolescent indoctrination into the mainstream white Southern worldview of the 1950s.