The soul of Lee

Front matter

Class Y,4-^1 Book

COPYRIGHT DEPOSrii

GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE

Preface

The purpose of this little volume is to give in brief compass an epitome of the life and the campaigns of General Robert E. Lee, with sufficient detail, however, to convey a true impression of his genius as a soldier and his exalted character as a man. The author believes that at this crisis when our young men are oflfering their strength and their Hves in the greatest struggle for liberty and democracy the world has ever seen, a study of the life and character of Lee cannot but be an inspiration. For the great Southern leader was more than a Southerner — he was an American ; * and the time has come when the whole country may take an honest pride in his military genius and in the high ideals which governed him in his campaigns, while the study of those campaigns may well arouse the emulation of the young soldiers of our new national army as they mark the splendid valor and constancy of the men who fought in both the Union and the Confederate armies more than fifty years ago.

It will at once be seen that these pages do not aspire to the dignity of a biography of the illustrious

* Mr. Gamaliel Bradford, a writer of rare insight, hitaself a man of old New England stock, has shown his perception of this fact by giving his biography the title "Lee the American."

vii viii PREFACE

man who is their subject, — yet they are more than an appreciation or a eulogy. They give, I hope, a true outhne of Lee's life, a reliable sketch of his campaigns, and a just, if inadequate, impression of his character. They are based upon a painstaking study of his career, and it is believed the picture they present is historically accurate. May I point out to any who may think it too highly colored, that it has been painted chiefly with materials taken from other easels than my own — competent writers and critics, in large part Northern men and Europeans.

It will also be recognized that, while all who write of Lee must needs draw from substantially the same sources, yet there are in this narrative not a few incidents which are quite unfamiliar, and others which have never been published before.

I do not forget in what I have said above that it may be thought that the magnitude of the world conflict now waging so dwarfs the battles and the campaigns of half a century ago that the student of war today can learn little or nothing from them; but on the other hand Gen. Sir Frederick B. Maurice has told us that war is waged today on the same great principles of strategy practiced by Napoleon and Lee. And though the methods and the instruments of war are so vastly changed since 1861, yet there are likenesses as well as contrasts between the two, — and the most vital factor of war, the spirit of man himself, has never changed since the days of Joshua and Judas Maccabeus.

I will only add that I desire to make my own the

PREFACE IX

words of the author of that charming Httle volume, A Rebel's Recollections:

"Will the reader please bear in mind that my estimate of the character of the Southern troops is a positive and not a comparative one, and that nothing said in praise of the one army is meant to be a reflection on the other. Between Bull Run and Appomattox I had ample opportunity to learn respect for the courage and manliness of the men who overcame us." (Geo. Gary Eggleston.)

The frontispiece is reproduced from the portrait at Washington and Lee University by kind permission of the President of the University. The original is known as the " Pine Tree Portrait."

Table Of Contents

PAGE

I. Ancestry, Birth and Early Years 3

II. Lee in the Service of the U. S. Army 13

II Lee In The Service Of The United States Army

"What a grace was seated on his brow!

. . . the front of Jove himself; An eye, like Mars, to threaten and command; A station like the herald Mercury, New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill; A combination and a form indeed Where every God did seem to set his seal. To give the world assurance of a man!''

— Shakspeare.

. . . "/ have no ambition To see a goodlier man J'

— Shakspeare.

II

LEE IN THE SERVICE OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY

Lieutenant Lee's first assignment to duty was at Old Point, Va., where he remained several years. In 1835 he was appointed assistant astronomer on the commission for marking out the boundary line between Ohio and Michigan. In 1838 he was made captain in the Engineer Corps. He had previously been on duty in Washington as assistant to the chief engineer.

The soul of the man shone out during these early years of his career just as it did in later Hfe, high and pure and noble, so that he was universally beloved and respected by his brother officers.

In 1837-8 Lieutenant Lee did most valuable service as engineer in charge of the improvement of the navigation of the Mississippi, for which St. Louis, as well as Minneapohs and St. Paul will ever owe him a debt of gratitude. The problem was to open a passage for the river at the Des Moines rapids. It was a great feat of engineering. Capt. May, of Illinois, in a notice of Gen. Lee's death wrote: "His exhibition of skill as an engineer and rehable manager made for him thousands of admirers and friends on the Upper and Lower Mississippi. In 1838-9 there was a serious alarm and real danger of the Mississippi cutting a channel on the IlKnois side, by which St. Louis would have become a deserted village, when the talent and skill of R, E. Lee were sought and obtained. He conceived and executed a plan which saved St. Louis from destruction as a commercial city."

In a letter written from St. Louis at this time occurs the following playful passage:

"Tell my cousin Philippa that it is the furthest from my wish to detract from any of the little Lees, but as to her boy being equal to Mr. Rooney (a pet name for his son W. H. F, Lee), it is a thing not even to be supposed, much less believed, although we live in a credulous country, where people stick at nothing from a coon story to a sea serpent."

In 1842 Capt. Lee was stationed at Fort Hamilton, in New York harbor, and soon after was made one of the visitors to West Point.

We come now to his career in the Mexican War in which he won great distinction. His first important service was in March, 1847, in connection with the siege of Vera Cruz where he directed the firing of the guns manned by a detachment of seamen in the trenches. In General Scott's autobiography, he says of Lee: "This officer greatly distinguished himself at the siege of Vera Cruz." Indeed the commanding general throughout the campaign constantly makes honorable mention of him.

At Cerro Gordo he wrote: "I am compelled to make special mention of Capt. R. E. Lee, Engineer. This officer was again indefatigable during these operations in reconnoissances, as daring as laborious,

LEE IN THE SERVICE OF THE U. S. ARMY 15

and of the utmost value. Nor was he less conspicuous in planning batteries, and in conducting columns to their stations under the heavy fire of the enemy." On one of these occasions, having ventured too far from his supporting column, he found himself in the midst of the Mexicans. *'He concealed himself under a fallen tree, near a spring where the Mexicans obtained water. While he lay there Mexican soldiers passed and repassed over the tree, and even sat down upon it, without discovering him. He remained until night enabled him to retire in safety."

Throughout the campaign Capt. Lee was constantly distinguished for skill and daring, but the most famous of his achievements was his exploration at night of the Pedregal— "a vast surface of volcanic rocks and scoriae, pathless, precipitous, broken into every possible form, presenting sharp ridges and deep fissures, exceedingly difficult for the passage even in the daytime of infantry, cavalry, or single horsemen." Seven staff officers dispatched by Gen. Scott had reported that it was impracticable to penetrate the Pedregal in the dark, but Capt. Lee undertook it and succeeded. It was accomplished amid darkness and storm — "without fight, without a companion or a guide — scarcely a step could have been taken without fear of death." "The brilfiant victory of Contreras on the following morning was made possible. Gen. Scott reported, "only by Capt. Lee's services that night," and he characterized it as "the greatest feat of physical and moral courage performed by any individual, in my knowledge, pending the campaign." The same ofl&cer in his report of the battle at Chapultepec speaking of Lee says he was "as distinguished for felicitous execution as for science and daring," and again, "Capt. Lee, so constantly distinguished, also bore important orders from me (Sept. 13th) until he fainted from a wound."

Other American officers bore similar high testimony to Lee's invaluable services, among whom we may mention Gen. P. F. Smith, Gen. Pillow, and Gen. Shields. Throughout the Mexican War he was equally distinguished for miHtary skill and for personal daring.

His letters at this period to members of his family show on the one hand his enthusiastic appreciation of the beauty of the scenery in Mexico, and on the other, his keen interest in the poHtics of the day.

It is noteworthy also that he fully reciprocated Gen, Scott's warm friendship. He writes: "The great cause of our success was in our leader. It was his stout heart that cast us on the shore of Vera Cruz; his bold self-reliance that forced us through the pass at Cerro Gordo; his indomitable courage that, amidst all the doubts and difficulties that surrounded us at Pueblo, pressed us forward to this capital, and finally brought us within its gates."

His description of the battle of Cerro Gordo is very graphic. In it he says: "The papers cannot tell you what a horrible sight a field of battle is, nor will I." In another letter he tells his son Custis how

LEE IN THE SERVICE OF THE U. S. ARMY 17

he had the wounded Mexicans carried to a house by the roadside, where they were attended by Mexican surgeons; of his finding by the side of a hut a httle Mexican boy who had been a bugler or drummer, with his arm terribly shattered, and how a large Mexicari soldier, in the last agonies of death, had fallen on him; how he was attracted to the scene by the grief of a Httle girl; how he had the dying Mexican taken off the boy, and how grateful the Httle girl was. "Her large black eyes," he said, "were streaming with tears, her hands crossed over her breast; her hair in one long plat behind reached her waist, her shoulders and arms bare, and without stockings or shoes. Her plaintive tone of 'Mille gracias, Signor,' as I had the dying man Hfted off the boy and both carried to the hospital, stiU rings in my ears,"* In this incident another aspect of the Soul of Lee is revealed — his humanity, his tenderness, his sympathy, his unfaiHng effort to reHeve suffering, without distinction of friend or foe.

Of this characteristic we have the following testimony from the pen of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, who writes: "We had the same intimate associates who thought as I did that no other youth or man so unites the qualities that win warm friendship and command high respect. For he was full of sympathy and kindness, genial and fond of gay conversation, and even of fun, that made him the most agreeable of companions, while his correctness of

* Quoted by Gen. Fitzhugh Lee.

demeanor and language and attention to all duties, personal and official, and a dignity as much a part of himself as the elegance of his person, gave him a superiority that every one acknowledged in his heart. He was the only one of all the men I have known who could laugh at the faults and follies of his friends in such a manner as to make them ashamed without touching their affection for him, and to confirm their respect and sense of his superiority.

"I saw strong evidence of the sympathy of his nature the morning after the first engagement of our troops in the valley of Mexico. I had lost a cherished young relative in that action, known to Lee only as my relative. Meeting me, he suddenly saw in my face the effect of that loss, burst into tears and expressed his deep syrapathy as tenderly in words as his lovely wife would have done."

Lee's opinion regarding the right of the conqueror to exact indemnity, is interesting in this crisis of the Great War that is convulsing the world. He wrote :

We have the right, by the laws of war, of dictating the terms of peace and requiring indemnity for our losses and expenses. Rather than forego that right, except through a spirit of magnanimity to a crushed foe, I would fight them ten years, but I would be generous in exercising it.

He returned from the Mexican campaign "crowned with honors and covered with brevets." More than twelve years were to elapse before Lee was called to face the great crisis presented by the outbreak of the war between the states.

LEE IN THE SERVICE OF THE U. S. ARMY 19

Invited by the Cuban Junta to become their military leader, he declines. Appointed a member of the Board of Engineers, he was employed until 1852 in strengthening the port of Baltimore by new defenses.

Then followed three years as superintendent of the Military Academy at West Point, during which term he raised the discipHne of the corps to a higher state of efficiency and improved the course of study. From 1855 to i860 his service was in the West and the Southwest, as Lieutenant Colonel of the Second Cavalry — in Missouri and in Texas.

His experience with the Quartermaster's department in 1855 may help some of our officers in 1917 to endure their experiences today with more equanimity. He writes.

*'I have been busy all the week superintending and drilling recruits. Not a stitch of clothing has as yet arrived for them, though I made the necessary requisition for it to be sent here more than two months ago in Louisville. Yesterday, at muster, I found one of the late arrivals in a dirty, tattered shirt and pants, with a white hat and shoes and other garments to match. I asked him why he had not put on clean clothes. He said he had none. I asked him if he could not wash and mend those. He said he had nothing else to put on. I then told him immediately after muster to go down to the river, wash his clothes and sit on the bank and watch the passing steamboats till they dried, and then mend them. This morning at inspection he looked as proud as possible, stood in the position of a soldier with his Uttle fingers on the seams of his pants, his beaver cocked back, and his toes sticking through his shoes, but his skin and solitary two garments clean. He grinned very happily at my comphments."

In a letter from Fort Brown, Texas, in 1856, Lee expressed his views on the institution of slavery thus :

"In this enhghtened age there are few, I beheve, but will acknowledge that slavery, as an institution, is a moral and poHtical evil in any country. I think it, however, a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, and while my feelings are strongly interested in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are stronger for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially and physically. . . . While we see the course of the final abolition of slavery is onward and we give it the aid of our prayers and all justifiable means in our power, we must leave the progress as well as the result in His hands who sees the end, . . . and with whom a thousand years are but as a single day."

The last incident of note in Lee's Ufe before the storm of war broke over the country is connected with the "John Brown Raid" in October, 1859. Being on furlough at Arhngton when that fanaticmadman made his invasion of Virginia and seized Harper's Ferry, he was ordered to proceed to that place with a battalion of marines and arrest the invader. This he did on the 17th of October, quietly and expeditiously. The insurgents, few in number, were all killed or mortally wounded but four, John

LEE IN THE SERVICE OF THE U. S. ARMY 21

Brown, Stevens, Coppie and Shields. The ringleader was tried, convicted and hanged December 2, 1859.

Ordered back to Texas, Lee remained at San Antonio in discharge of his duty until February, 1861, when he was summoned to Washington, reaching Arlington March i.

Ill

THE SOUL OF LEE IN THE GREAT CRISIS OF HIS LIFE

"I did only what my duty demanded. I could have taken no other course without dishonor.^' — Robert E. Lee.

"The degree of the love of liberty is proportioned in each man to the moral elevation he has attained.^'

— -Cavour.

"You cannot barter manhood for peace, nor the right of self -government for life or property." — Robert E. Lee.

"Let each man resolve that the right of self-government, liberty and peace, shall find in him a defender J'^

— Robert E. Lee.

Ill

THE SOUL OF LEE IN THE GREAT CRISIS OF HIS LIFE

The great crisis had come. Virginia had passed the ordinance of secession and joined her Southern sisters. What course should Lee take? He loved the Union with a passionate devotion. His ancestors had played a great part in its formation. And though the right of secession had been acknowledged in the early history of the country, quite as much at the North as at the South; and though that right was defended in the text-book on the Constitution (Rawle's) taught at West Point in the year before his entrance as a cadet; yet Lee saw that there could be then no such thing as peaceable secession. ''Secession," he wrote, "is nothing but revolution." And further, ''I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union."

While his mind was torn with doubt as to his duty, he received through the Hon. Francis P. Blair, and at the instance of Mr. Lincoln, the offer of the supreme command of the United States Army. But neither his ambition as a soldier, nor his love for the Union, could tempt him to accept this magnificent offer. He says, "I declined the offer he made me to take command of the army in the field, stating as candidly and courteously as I could, that though opposed to secession and deprecating war, I could take no part in the invasion of the Southern States."

And yet he hesitated to break the bonds which a lifetime of service in the U. S. Army (he was then 54) had forged. It was a choice as full of anguish as perhaps any human soul was ever called to make. Through the long night he wrestled with the question in his chamber at Arlington, pacing the floor hour after hour, and often crying to God for guidance. At last the choice was made. He threw in his lot with Virginia, and in doing so deHberately sacrificed nearly everything that men hold dear, home and fortune and professional career, and the dazzling rewards of ambition.

But why? Because he held his allegiance to his state supreme; because by. ancestry, by inherited traditions, he was a Virginian of the Virginians, and could not fail to reflect the feeling which his eloquent father expressed when he exclaimed in the debate on the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798: "Virginia is my country, her will I obey, however lamentable the fate to which it may subject me." To use his own words: "I had to meet the question whether I should take part against my native state. I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relations, my children, my home." Not a few of the brave and candid men of the North have declared that had they been placed as Lee was placed, they would have done as Lee did.

Gamaliel Bradford, contemplating the perhaps impossible contingency of a future sectional separation in our country, says, "I should myself be first, last, and always a son and subject of New England and Massachusetts," words which are the echo of an utterance of another distinguished son of Massachusetts, Charles Francis Adams, who said at the Lee Centennial, '*If in all respects similarly circumstanced,! hope I should have been fihal and unselfish enough to have done as Lee did."

Lee's anguish of soul in deciding to resign his commission is reflected in his letter to Gen. Scott, April 20, 1861, in which he refers to "the struggle it has cost me to separate myself from a service to which I have devoted the best years of my life and all the ability I possessed." Of all the inner struggles of his life, it is evident this was the most intense, the most painful. Never, in any of his great battles, — Chancellorsville, Sharpsburg, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Petersburg, was his great soul so shaken as on that night in his chamber at Arlington when this momentous decision was trembling in the balance. Even now, after the lapse of fifty-six years, no generous heart can contemplate without emotion and admiration this midnight wresthng of a brave and unselfish man.

One question alone presented itself to his great soul: "What is my duty?" He put aside ambition — personal inclination — every selfish interest. Nothing weighed in the balance at that supreme moment but the purest, highest, most unselfish motives.

To this Charles Francis Adams bears noble testimony: "Lee was a soldier; as such, rank and the possibility of high command and great achievements were very dear to him. His choice put rank and command behind him. He quietly and silently made the greatest sacrifice a soldier can be asked to make. With war plainly impending, the foremost place in the army of which he was an officer was now tendered him; his answer was to lay down the commission he already held." And this generous foe goes on to say, ''He stands awaiting sentence at the bar of history in very respectable company. Associated with him are for instance, William of Orange, known as the Silent; John Hampden, the original Pater PatricB; Oliver Cromwell, the Protector of the English Commonwealth; Sir Harry Vane, once a governor of Massachusetts; and George Washington, a Virginian of note." It is of moment to enquire what was Lee's attitude, — once he had cast in his lot with Virginia — touching the nature of the struggle between the North and the South. Let us look into his soul for the answer. We can do this because his words were ever the true expression of his soul. "I had no other guide," he wrote, "nor had I any other ) object, than the defence of those principles of Amer- ' ican Hberty upon which the constitutions of the several states were originally founded; and unless { they are strictly observed, I fear there will be an 1 end to republican government in this country."* '

* Jones, Rem., p. 218.

And again, "We had, I was satisfied, sacred principles to maintain and rights to defend, for which we were in duty bound to do our best, even if we perished in the endeavor." To this add his words to his soldiers, "You cannot barter manhood for peace, nor the right of self-government for Ufe or property. . . . Let us then oppose constancy to adversity, fortitude to suffering, and courage to danger, with the firm assurance that He who gave freedom to our fathers will bless the efforts of their children to preserve it."* These words leave no room for doubt that to the soul of Robert E. Lee the cause of the Confederacy was the cause of Liberty and Self-government, and that history must recognize in him an illustrious champion of Freedom and Democracy. The first of these conclusions can hardly be denied by any candid historian, but the second is challenged even by Mr. GamaHel Bradford, — in spite of his almost boundless admiration for the character of Lee.

*In an unpublished letter, dated Richmond, Virginia, July 27, 1861 (see Life Bishop Kerfoot, James Pott & Co., 1876, Vol. I, p. 223), Gen. Lee wrote:

" As far as my voice and counsel go, it will be continued on our side as long as there is one horse that can carry his rider and one arm to wield a sword. I prefer annihilation to submission. They may destroy, but I trust they will never conquer us. I bear no malice, have no animosities to indulge, no selfish purpose to gratify. My only object is to repel the invaders of our peace and the spoilers of our homes. I hope in time they will see the injustice of their course and return to their better nature."

Commenting on the words just quoted, he is "almost" ready to look upon Lee "as one of the great martyrs of liberty" — but he feels compelled to refuse him that chaplet of glory on the ground that Lee, though he was no advocate of slavery, though before the war he had freed his own slaves, and had declared that "slavery, as an institution, is a moral and political evil in any country," " was yet, after all, fighting for slavery, and he must have known perfectly well that if the South triumphed and maintained its independence, slavery would grow and flourish for another generation, if not for another century."

But what if Lee believed, as apparently Jefiferson Davis believed in 1861, that in any case slavery was doomed by the moral judgment of the world, and that even if successful in their revolution, the Southern states would be compelled sooner or later, by gradual emancipation, or otherwise, to confer freedom upon their slaves.

Will not the historian in determining this question refer to the expressed opinions of the men who fought the war — statesmen and soldiers of the North, and statesmen and soldiers of the South?

What then, we ask, were the avowed purposes of leaders on both sides? And first of Mr. Lincoln:

In August, 1862, he wrote Mr. Greeley: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union." *

Mr. Lincoln then was waging the war not to free the slaves but to save the Union. His Emancipation Proclamation (January i, 1863) was avowedly a war measure, and it did not proclaim the freedom of all the slaves, but only "those persons held as slaves in any state the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States." Slaves in all states not in rebellion (as Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri) were not released from slavery by the Emancipation Proclamation.

On the other hand Jefferson Davis declared that the South was not lighting for slavery, and in fact he embarked on the enterprise of secession believing that he would, as a consequence, lose his slaves, for he wrote to his wife in February, 1861: "/w any case our slave property will eventually be lost," that is to say, whether successful or not in estabHshing the Southern Confederacy. Lee, long before the war, emancipated the few slaves that came to him by inheritance, whereas his Union antagonist, Gen. Grant, held on to those that had come to him through marriage with a Southern woman, until they were freed by the Thirteenth Amendment.

Stonewall Jackson never owned but two slaves — a

* Short Life by Nicolay, p. 336.

man and a woman— whom he bought at their earnest solicitation. And he kept account of the wages he would have paid for white labor, and when he considered himself reimbursed for the purchase money gave them their freedom. Gen. Joseph E. Johnston never owned a slave, nor did Gen. A. P. Hill, nor Gen. Fitzhugh Lee. Gen. J. E. B. Stuart, the famous cavalry leader, never owned but two, and he rid himself of these long before the war.*

To these facts as to the attitude of the leaders and commanders of the Confederacy, should be added the testimony of the rank and file of the Southern armies. With one voice they avowed then, with one voice they avow now, that they were not marching and fighting and sufTering and dying for slavery but for the right of self-government. Old soldiers, known to the writer, declare they never met a Southern soldier who had drawn his sword to perpetuate slavery. What they had at heart was the preservation of the supreme and sacred right of self-government. They had the same pride in their cause as Lee had when he expressed his absolute behef in its nobility and justice, and his resolute determination to fight for it so long as there was any possibility of success. To use his own words, "Let each man resolve that the right of self-government, Hberty and peace, shall find in him a defender."