Lee's campaign desk donated;Curator: Confederate general humanized

It is called a campaign desk, an Antebellum-era box of mahogany and inlaid ivory that once carried papers, pens and Confederate stamps, and provided a stable writing surface on the battlefield.

In other words, it is, as J. Grahame Long calls it, a Civil War laptop.

The desk would be valuable enough on its own, but this one, donated to the Charleston Museum this week, belonged to Lowcountry native and Confederate Gen. Stephen Dill Lee.

"It's nice to see personal items like this," said Long, the museum's curator of history. "Uniforms and weapons are nice, but these items help humanize a person."

The desk, donated by a descendent of Lee, likely saw more action than most Confederate soldiers. The general traveled the...