The life of General Robert E. Lee

Contents

CHAPTER

I. Introductory 1

II. Birth, Youthhood, and Early Career 17

Preface

Though more than a generation has now elapsed since General Eobert E. Lee passed from the scenes of his illustrious deeds, public interest in the great soldier and his career is still active, and turns with increasing curiosity to any attractive recital of the incidents in his eventful life — many as are the biographies that have already been published of him. Nor is this perennial interest in the loved hero of ^^ a Lost Cause " to be wondered at, when we recall not only the historical importance of the long struggle in which he so nobly fought, and against such heavy odds ; but the remarkable military ability and eminently high character of the man whose career is identified with the great conflict, and whose life-story is throughout so attractive and inspiring.

The era is now passed when, in the North, Confederates and their sympathizers were hotly stigmatized as '^ rebels," and when their attitude and their caiise were aspersed as hateful as well as treasonable. To-day, the drama of the Civil War

iii

V iv PREFACE.

has gone into the limbo of history, and can now be written about dispassionately and, even on the Southern side, with admiring Northern curiosity and interest. This is one of the manifest advantages the modern-day writer has in dealing with the events of the distracting and calamitous period, and in reviewing the whole story with calm deliberation and historic impartiality. Another and special advantage has the narrator of the era's annals, when, as is the present case, he is writing biography as well as history, and has so entrancing a theme to deal with as the life-career and achievements of so distinguished and revered an actor in the tragedy of the Civil War as General Kobert E. Lee. For the latter and his estimable character the present writer has always had the highest regard, and even veneration ; and though this perhaps may not shield him from criticism should there be found shortcomings in the within work, it ought at least to placate the reader towards the author of it, if he is also an admirer of Lee, and lead him to be at once indulgent and friendly.

G. M. A.

LIFE OF GENERAL LEE.

Chapter I. Introductory

In attempting to write a record of the Life and Career of General Eobert E. Lee, the great commander of the Southern Army in the Civil War, the author undertakes the work with some diffidence and misgiving. This is occasioned, in part, by a sense of responsibility in undertaking so important a task — a task that had already been so well achieved by other and prominent biographers of '' the hero of a Lost Cause " ; and in part also, by a doubt in the present writer's mind of being able to do adequate justice to so eminent an actor in the drama of his time, who was, moreover, one of the greatest soldiers and most clever military tacticians of the past century, and, withal, a splendid type of Christian manhood. Here, however, the writer's hesitation ends, and the impelling motive finally becomes admiration — long and heartily entertained — for the noble theme of this volume, and the ambition to add another, and it is hoped a not unworthy tribute, to the fame of the illustrious General, who was personally not only greatly beloved and highly esteemed in his day, but whose professional eminence among the renowned commanders of the war is conceded by every critic and writer of distinction who has dealt with its tragic annals.

But great as is the niche filled by the grand old soldier in the history of the Southern side of the Civil War contest, we must remember that this is not all we have to deal with in relating the life and military exploits of the man, since long before the outbreak of the War of the Eebellion and his espousal of the interests of his native State in that dire struggle, Lee had had a lengthened, varied, and honorable career of service in the Army of the United States. In that service, not only had he won distinction as chief engineer officer and active combatant in the War with Mexico, where he rendered heroic and conspicuous service at the siege of Vera Cruz, and was wounded in the assault ; but was, moreover, of invaluable service to the commander of the expedition, General Winfield Scott, in his council of officers, as well as in important reconnoissances, in planting batteries, in conducting columns from point to point under fire during the assault upon the place, and taking part in the onerous and often perilous operations of the siege. For this highly efficient work he was repeatedly mentioned in the General's despatches ; while from the campaign as a whole he issued, as it has been said, *' crowned with honors and covered with brevets for gallant and meritorious conduct." After this we find Lee engaged in the important duty of constructing defensive works at various points for the Washington government ; and during the year 1852-55, he acted as commandant of the Military Academy at West Point, of which he was himself a distinguished graduate. Later on, Colonel Lee was transferred from the Engineers to the Cavalry branch of the service, when he held for a time responsible posts in Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, and Texas, and was at Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, at the era of the John Brown raid. When Civil War loomed upon the scene, Lee, as we shall ere long see, had reached his fifty-fourth year, and had thirty-two years of honorable service to his credit in the national army. Moreover, so conspicuous had been his career, and so highly esteemed was he as an officer and a gentleman, that, had he remained in the service of the Unionj

4: LIFE OF GENERAt LEE.

his name, ifc is well known, was designed to be brought before the military authorities of the nation and that favorably, as the successor in the chief command of the army to the then aged warrior. General Winfield Scott. Nor, at the crisis that then fell upon the country, was Lee actuated by caprice or mere partisanship in taking sides with the South in the calamitous war that was about to ensue and drench the land in fratricidal blood. His attitude was far otherwise ; for at first we know that he regarded Secession as anarchical, if not treasonable, and looked with grave apprehension upon the threatened rupture of the Union, and was ill at ease at the prospect of the disseverance of his own relations with the North and the breaking of the ties, professional and social, that had hitherto connected him with its military service. The slavery question did not appeal to him as a cause of sectional strife, his chief concern being the attitude of his native State in the unhappy prospect of war, for to his loved Commonwealth of Virginia he was chiyalrously loyal, and if strife was to come he felt that he could not draw his sword against her and her interests. This was his answer to his friend and superior officer, General Winfield Scott, as well as to the Hon. Montgomery Blair, son of the then

Postmaster-General of Washington, who was authorized to offer Lee command of the Federal army if he would remain stanch in his fidelity to the Union. In deserting the Northern cause, he asserted that he could not consult his own feelings entirely, so strong was his allegiance to his own section of the country as well as faithful his attachment to his own State. '* Save in defense of my State," he feelingly wrote in the Spring of 1861 to General Scott, in asking to be relieved of his command, ^^I never desire again to draw my sword." After resigning his commission in the Federal service, his own State having by this time prepared to withdraw from the Union and make the call upon her many brave sons to rally to her standard and espouse the Southern side in the pending struggle, Lee repaired to his Virginia home as a private citizen, while deprecating war and trusting that sectional strife would not break out, but that a peaceful solution would yet be formed of the grave problems that were then a menace to the nation. Unhappily, war, and not peace, was to be the issue of the distracting times, for already seven States, in accordance with convention ordinances, had taken themselves out of the Union, and at Montgomery, Alabama, had organized a separate government under the desige LIFE OF GENERAL LEE.

nation of the Confederate States of America. A little later on, the other sister States of the South joined the new Confederacy, whose capital was Eichmond, Va. ; while its president, provisionally, became Jefferson Davis, formerly a member of the U. S. House of Eepresentatives and national senator, who arrived at Kichmond, May 29th (1861), and was duly installed in office. Meanwhile, Virginia had declared for Secession and joined the Confederacy, and Lee, having been nominated by the Grovernor of his own State as a delegate to the Virginia Convention, he now repaired to Eichmond, where he was enthusiastically intrusted with the chief command of the Virginia forces and confirmed in the rank of major-general, which high office had been conferred upon him by the Governor of his State, under the authority of the Legislature.

In what estimation General Lee was held, even at this time in the South, may be seen from the reception accorded him by the Convention at Eichmond, on the occasion of his presentation to the body to receive its president's address of welcome, be formally installed in the office of commander-in-chief of the military and naval force of the State, and accept his instructions to mobilize and put in the field an army for its defense and protection. The appointment, we need hardly say, had come unsought by him, and was confirmed by the unanimous vote of the Convention, the fullest confidence of the body (handsomely vouched for by the president) being felt in his ability, integrity, and trusty honor, as well as in the high historic traditions of his family, by which General Lee, like his illustrious forebears, had always been influenced and guided, and had ever scrupulously respected with pardonable pride and becoming dignity. After a brief, modest reply in acknowledgment of the Convention's reposeful trust in him and assignment of duty, the Commander-in-chief entered vigorously upon his task of organizing and equipping the State forces, which were subsequently merged with those of the Confederacy as a whole ; while Lee became one of the able group of general officers of the regular army of the Confederate States, still retaining, however, his chief command of the army of Virginia.

When these momentous events were taking place in the South, with the formation of a Confederate Government, based on the claim of their leaders to State Rights, and in opposition to Northern sentiment adverse to the peculiar institutions of the South, menaced as it was thought by the success of the Republican party in the election of

Abraham Lincoln, the North at last awoke to a sense of the reality of the situation, quickened by the levying of war by the seceded States, the departure of their representatives and senators from Congress, and the seizure of the forts and Federal property in the border States. The call of President Lincoln for Y5,000 militia had been issued, and the North roused itself to action, in virtue of the powers vested in the Executive head by the Constitution and laws of the nation. The response to the Northern summons of troops was immediate and gratifying ; and following it came the blockade of the ports of the seceding States, the rallying of forces to the defense of Washington, with preparations for the invasion of Virginia and the contemplated raid southward with the design of capturing and occupying Eichmond, the seat of the '' rebel " government.

But before proceeding with the narrative of events embraced in the era of the Civil War, in which General Lee, during the four protracted years of the great conflict, bore so conspicuous and brilliant a part, let us relate the early personal history of the intrepid soldier and valiant captaingeneral of the Southern army in the War of the Eebellion, and fill in the details of his remarkable career from his birth and up-bringing, with some

I INTRODUCTORY. 9

account of his family and the traditions of his historic ancestry and their genealogical belongings. In what remains of this chapter, let us first glance at the lineage and advent of our hero.

Eobert Edward Lee belonged to the old Colonial family of the Lees of Virginia, which has given not a few distinguished statesmen and soldiers to the service of his country. The first of the family we learn of, Colonel Eichard Lee, came to Virginia in Charles the First's era from the old home of the Lees in Stafford Langton, Essex, England, other branches of the family being resident of the counties of Bucks, Oxford, and Shrops. The home of the Lees in the latter shire was at Morton Eegis, a representative of which family branch also emigrated to the New World in early Colonial times and settled in Westmoreland County, Virginia. Colonel Eichard Lee, being a sturdy adherent of the reigning Stuarts and the scion of an influential English family, when he arrived in Virginia, naturally became a firm ally of Sir William Berkeley, governor of the colony, who warmly welcomed the newcomer as a member of the King's Privy Council and the monarch's nominee for the post of the Colonial State-secretaryship. Stanch royalist as he was, Lee, with Berkeley's assistance, kept the colony true in its allegiance to the Stuart cause, so long at least as the unfortunate Charles I. lived ; and when Cromwell's Commonwealth was created he was instrumental in negotiating a treaty between it and the colony, recognizing the latter as an independent State, until the Eestoration gave the lordship of the Virginia colony back to the Stuart House, Charles II. being persuaded to proclaim himself King of Virginia, as well as of France and the separate kingdoms of Britain. Colonel Eichard Lee at length died and found a grave in Virginia, where he had settled with his family. One son, a namesake, survived him, and as a man of fine parts became a member of the Colonial council. He married an English lady, a Miss Corbin, by whom, besides a daughter, who subsequently married in Virginia, he had five sons, all of whom rose to be influential men in the Colony, and by their marriages allying themselves with many well-known Virginia families. Of these sons, two became notable in the later annals of the Lee family : these were Thomas and Henry, the fourth and fifth sons, respectively, of Eichard Lee, who died about the year 1690. Of Henry Lee we shall write later on. The fourth son, Thomas, who resided at Stratford, Va., and there erected a magnificent manor-house long a inarvel among

INTRODUCTORY. H

the colonial homes of the Old Dominion, allied himself with an influential family in the colony, the progeny including two daughters and six sons. The eldest of the latter, Philip Ludwell Lee, in turn married and had two daughters, the elder of whom, Matilda, became the wife of her second cousin. Colonel Henry Lee, known in history as ** Light-Horse Harry," and the father (though by a second wife) of the subject of this memoir — General Eobert E. Lee. The third son of Thomas Lee, Governor of Virginia, Eichard Henry Lee (1732-1794), was the noted champion of American Independence, the patriot orator who, in the Continental Congress, in June, 1776, offered the now famous resolution that ^^ these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent States." In making this free, bold speech the sturdy statesman of his day took unflinchingly the side of popular rights against the encroachment of the mother country, as he previously showed in opposing the Stamp Act, and in a brilliant, impressive speech now advocated the Declaration of Independence. It was by the same Congress, in July, 1775, that the historic "Address of the Twelve Colonies to the Inhabitants of Great Britain " was adopted and transmitted to the motherland. In the closing years of the Eevolutionary War, Eichard Henry Lee took part against England in the field at the head of the militia of Westmoreland County, Ya. ; from 1789 to 1792, he sat in the United States Senate, and though not a Federalist he warmly supported the Washington administration. As an orator, he was by his contemporaries called '^ the American Cicero " and was an impressive and distinguished public speaker. He was, moreover, ^^a man of amiable and noble character, of commanding presence, excellent abilities, and self-sacrificing patriotism." In these respects, his virtues were conspicuously reflected in his famous son.

We now turn back to trace the pedigree of Henry, fifth son of Eichard Lee, the early and direct ancestor of General Eobert E. Lee ; a distant relation of E. H. Lee, the Eevolutionary statesman ; and the grandfather of the distinguished commander of " Lee's Legion," commonly known as ''Light -Horse Harry." This Henry Lee married a Miss Bland, by whom he had several children, one of whom, Henry, took a Miss Grymes to wife, and by her had issue three daughters and five sons. Of the latter, the third son, a Henry also (1756-1818), became the famous soldier of the Eevolution and the father of the subject of the present Memoir. After graduating at Princeton, this distinguished member of the notable Lee family, as the present writer has elsewhere narrated, entered the Continental army, and at the battle of Germantown (Oct. 4, 1777) his cavalry troop was selected by General Washington as his personal body-guard. In January, 1778, when occupying a small stone house with a body of ten men, the remainder of his command being absent on a foraging expedition, the building was surrounded by 200 British cavalry, who attempted to take Lee prisoner, but were met with so spirited a resistance that they were compelled to retreat. Soon after this, Henry Lee was advanced to the rank of major, with the command of three companies of cavalry. While holding this rank he planned and executed the brilliant assault on the British post at Paulus Hook, their headquarters opposite the city of New York. Lee surprised and took the garrison under the eyes of the British army and navy, and safely conducted his prisoners within the American lines, many miles distant from the captured post. Than this there are few enterprises to be found on military record equal in hazard and difficulty, or are known to have been conducted with more boldness, skill, and daring activity. It was, moreover, accomplished without loss, while it filled the enemy's camp with confusion and astonishment, and shed an unfading luster on American arms. In 1Y80, Lee was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel commandant of a separate legionary corps, known as " Lee's Legion " of light horse, and was sent to the Southern Department of the United States, to join the army under General Greene, where he remained until the close of the war. Lee entered Congress in 1787, and was governor of Virginia between the years 1792 and 1795, during which he commanded the expedition against the Whiskey insurgents in Western Pennsylvania. He sat again in Congress at the period of Washington's death, in 1799, and, being appointed by that body to deliver an oration upon the character of the deceased first President, statesman, and warrior, Lee extolled him in the terms of the sincefamous eulogy, '^ First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."

Henry Lee's virtues and character have been extolled by many writers, for he possessed many of those admirable qualities of head and heart which, as we shall see later on, were manifested by his eminent son. His children had a great veneration, as well as affection, for him, for he was an excellent and kind father, a most exemplary and, considering his time, a highly moral man, and an ideal type of a self-sacrificing, patriotic citizen. He was twice married, first to Matilda Lee (his second cousin), daughter of Philip Ludwell Lee of Stratford, Va., and when that lady died he was united to Anne, daughter of Charles H. Carter of Shirley, on the James River, a lady who proved a devoted wife and mother, and who exercised a beneficent influence upon her children. The latter were six in number, namely two daughters and four sons ; several of the sons, especially Eobert Edward, and Sydney Smith Lee, afterwards attaining eminence and distinction, the one in the army, and the other in the navy of, the Southern Confederacy. The father, Henry Lee, died in 1818, aged 63, his life having been shortened by injuries received in suppressing a political riot in Baltimore in 1814, when the house in which he was at the time staying, that of a Federalist editor and journalist, was attacked by an angry mob. The next four years he spent in the West Indies in the search for health. A biography of him, by his distinguished son. General Robert E. Lee, was prefixed to an edition of his ''Memoirs of the (Revolutionary) War in the Southern Department of the United States." The work has an interest and value even to-day, since it is an outspoken and impartial record of events, based on the personal experience and observation of a contemporary narrator — those of ** Light-Horse Harry."

CHAPTER 11.

BIRTH, YOUTHHOOD, AND EARLY CAREER.

HAvma in our opening chapter introduced the subject of this Memoir and glanced at his ancestry and lineage, let us now record his birth and early upbringing, together with such facts as are known of his professional education as a military cadet and of the characteristics of the youth as he appeared at the threshold of his bright and promising career. The era of Eobert E. Lee's birth, which occurred at the family home at Stratford, Westmoreland County, Virginia, January 19, 1807, was a troubled one, even for a neutral nation in the New "World that had cut itself adrift from the Old, for at the period the two great world powers of Europe, France and Britain, were engaged in an armed and deadly struggle for political mastery and commercial dominance. At the same era, Denmark, Spain, Russia, and Prussia were for a period drawn into the vortex ; while bombardment, invasion, and pillage were the national sport and burning dread of the time. At this grave juncture of international affairs, Napo- 2 17 leon was, or aimed to be, supreme on the European continent, while his chief adversary and checkmate were the British, who held undisputed sway on the high seas. Against each other, in the hotly-embraced interest of commerce, France fired at England her heavy-shafted bolt of the Berlin Decrees, which declared the British islands to be *^ in a state of blockade " ; while her wary though inveterate enemy retorted with the British Orders in Council, closing to neutral commerce the ports of the continent and authorizing the seizure of any neutral vessel on a voyage to any of the prohibited French ports unless such vessel had first touched at a British port. France rejoined by authorizing, in the Milan Decree, the seizure of any vessel that had entered a British port. In this furious international strife, America soon became a sufferer, since the prohibitory decrees and hostile attitude of France and England struck a heavy blow at her carrying trade, and led to the enactment of Jefferson's Embargo Policy, forbidding the importation of goods from Britain and her colonies and banning intercourse. Another result of European ferment was to revive the partly slumbering animosities between America and the old motherland, the result of the irritating and humiliating right of search on board Ameri-

BIRTH, YOUTHHOOD, AND EARLY CAREER. 19

can vessels on the high seas and the arrest or impressment of sailors, naturalized citizens of the United States who had renounced their allegiance to Britain. The ill-feeling and strained relations of the two nations, once mother and child, soon hore fruit in the unhappy second War with England—that of 1812-14.

It was at this era that the child Eobert E. Lee was born, an era of unhappy friction between the United States and the disowned mother country, rendered more so as the result of fruitless international diplomacy, irritating retaliatory legislation, and a clashing of commercial interests which brought about a period of non-intercourse, and, finally, a state of war. Within the country, nevertheless, it was an era of strenuous political, industrial, and social effort, in the building up, by its sturdy nation-makers, of the youthful American Eepublic. The war, costly as it was to the young nation and a heavy drain upon its yet slender financial resources, had its compensations, not only in withdrawing the Eepublic from the complications of Old World politics, but in imparting to it a larger measure of self-reliance and independence, with a feeling of increased pride in the successes, on land and lake, of her militia and marine service. It also quickened the spirit of enterprise over the country, which followed the close of the struggle, and did much to cement the Union and implant in the heart of the nation love for its grand heritage and faith in its future mighty destiny.

Unfortunately for the still youthful scion of the Lee family, he early lost the fostering care of his father, who, when the hoy was hut six years old, had to betake himself to the West Indies in the endeavor to restore his shattered health. A father's interest in and love for the lad were more than compensated, however, by the devotion and attachment of his wise, tender mother, whose influence upon hini was great, and to his lasting good. It was she who instilled in his youthful mind those high moral principles and that integrity and rectitude of conduct which in afteryears were marked traits in the character of her eminent son. On the latter's part, there was a strong reciprocal attachment and fine filial feeling, which shov/ed itself in a loving care and dutiful regard and solicitude. The need for this was the more urgent, as the self-sacrificing mother was at this period much alone, her husband being in the tropics, and her other sons were absent at College ; while of the two daughters one was as yet quite young and the other was in indifferent health.

BIRTH, YOUTHHOOD, AND EARLY CAREER. 21

Hence Robert was the one child to whom the noble mother looked for those attentions and that companionship which were a comfort to her, while she watched with earnest solicitude his careful hometraining and strove to embue his mind with sound religious principles and inspire him with high ideals and lofty purposes in life.

Previous to this, or, more precisely, when Eobert E. Lee was but four years old, the Lee family had removed from the old homestead at Stratford, in Westmoreland County (near the birthplace and early home of George Washington), and settled higher up the Potomac at Alexandria, six miles south of the Federal capital. The city at this period had, like the city of Washington itself, for a time fallen into the hands of the British ; and here, near by, at Arlington, young Lee had also associations with the home of President Washington, whose relative, the daughter of George Washington Parke Custis, he was afterwards to be allied with in marriage. At Alexandria Academy young Robert received his early education, afterwards passing to a more advanced institution kept by a Quaker, named Hallowell, who has left on record his high opinion of his pupil as a zealous student, most exemplary in his conduct and habits. Throughout his school career he gave the utmost^ satisfaction to his several masters, while he was popular among his fellows, being manly in his bearing and attractive in his manners.

In the Spring of 1818, his father, General Henry Lee, when returning from the West Indies, had to be put ashore on the coast of Georgia as his death was imminent. He died at "' Dungeness," the home of a daughter of his old friend, General Nathanael Greene, while his son Robert was but in his twelfth year. The death of *^ Light-Horse Harry," as he was familiarly called, was much and widely lamented, and at his funeral in Georgia military and naval honors were paid to his remains as they were interred beneath 'Hhe magnolias, cedars, and myrtles of beautiful Dungeness." As his son Robert grew up and the time came when he must make choice of a profession, naturally he sought to follow a military career, like his distinguished father, the General. His brother, Sydney Smith Lee, had taken to the navy, and was already beginning to carve out his own career in that profession (later on, he was known as Commodore Lee of the Confederate service and father of General Fitzhugh Lee, the famous cavalry commander). Ere long Robert succeeded in his application for admittance to the United States Military Academy, and

BIRTH, YOUTHHOOD, AND EARLY CAREER. 23

that famous training college for military cadets at West Point, he entered in 1825, and at once applied himself to a four years' course of drill and hard study, taking special interest in engineering science, with its accompanying lectures in strategy and tactics, varied by guard-mounting and cavalry exercises. Here his excellent character, scrupulous honor, and amenability to discipline, coupled with his studious habits and ambition to stand high in his class, won him the respect of his instructors and the esteem and love of his fellow-cadets, with the honor-post of adjutant of his corps. His whole course at West Point was that of a talented and ambitious youth who had high aims and an earnest purpose in life, and who sought to attain his objects by a preliminary career which should be marked by proficiency in his studies and an attention to them, as well as assiduity in the performance of his duties, which would win the commendation of those to whom he was indebted for efficient training and well-directed instruction and counsel. Throughout his four years' course, it is said, that he never had a demerit mark placed against his name ; while he graduated second in a class of forty-six, and at once received a commission as second lieutenant in the corps of engineers.