American journalist and author noted for writings on the Confederacy.

After receiving degrees from Johns Hopkins University and Washington and Lee University, Freeman began a long and distinguished teaching career. Among numerous other posts, he served for a year (1934–35) as a visiting professor of journalism at Columbia University, remaining on the faculty as a nonresident from 1936 to 1941. From 1936 on he was also a lecturer at the Army War College. And from 1915 to 1949 Freeman edited the Richmond (Va.) News Leader.

Among his honorary appointments and affiliations, Freeman was a member of the advisory council of the War Department's History Division and of the Presidential Committee on Higher Education. In 1935 Freeman won the Pulitzer Prize for his four-volume biography, R. E. Lee.

His other works include Virginia—A Gentle Dominion (1924); The Last Parade (1932); The South to Posterity: An Introduction to the Writings of Confederate History (1939); Lee's Lieutenants, A Study in Command, 3 vol. (1942–44); John Steward Bryan (1947); and George Washington, 7 vol. (1948–57), the final volume of which was prepared by his assistants after his death—the whole work earning him a second, posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1958.