Freeman's "R. E. Lee: A Biography" established the Virginia School of Civil War scholarship, an approach to writing Civil War history that concentrated on the Eastern Theater of the war, focused the narrative on generals over the common soldier, centered the analysis on military campaigns over social and political events, and treated his Confederate subjects with sympathy. This approach to writing Civil War history would lead some critics to label Freeman a "Lost Cause" historian, an allusion to the literary and intellectual movement that sought to reconcile the traditional white society of the South to the defeat of the Confederate States of America. Freeman began work on his biography of Lee in 1926; by the time he had completed his four volume work in 1933, he had committed some 6,100 hours to the effort.