Robert E. Lee, man and soldier

Front matter

o^

^X

I

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Early Life 3

II. First Service 15

Chapter I

On a plateau about a mile from the south bank of the Potomac River, in the old Colonial county of Westmoreland, in what used to be known as the ''Northern Neck," that portion of Virginia which Charles II in his heedlessness once undertook to grant to his friends and favorites, Culpeper and Arlington, stands a massive brick mansion, one of the most impressive piles of brick on this continent. Built in the form of a broad H, it looks, even in its dilapidation, as though it might have been erected by Elizabeth and bombarded by Cromwell. It had to be built strong ; for in those days the Indians were just across the blue mountains to the westward, and roving bands were likely to appear at any time, following the broad river in search of scalps or booty, and ready to fall on any defenceless family in their way. The broad chimneys clustered above the roof of each wing are said to have been connected in old times by a paviHon which was used for dances and such Uke entertainments. No picture of the mansion gives any adequate idea of its chateau- Hke massiveness. It was built by Thomas Lee, grandson of Richard Lee, the immigrant, who came to Virginia about 1641-42, and founded a family which has numbered among its members as many men of distinction as any family in America. It was through him that Charles II, when an exile in Brussels, is said to have been offered an asylum and a kingdom in Virginia. When the first mansion erected was destroyed by fire. Queen Anne, in recognition of the services of her faithful counsellor in Virginia, sent over a liberal contribution toward its rebuilding. Founded about 1725-30, it bears the old English name, Stratford, after the English estate of Richard Lee, and for many generations, down to the last generation, it was the home of the Lees of Virginia.

This mansion has a unique distinction among historical houses in this country ; for in one of its chambers were born two signers of the Declaration of Independence: Richard Henry Lee, who, in obedience to the mandate of the Virginia Convention, moved the resolution in Congress to declare the Colonies free and independent States, and Francis Lightfoot Lee, his brother. But it has a yet greater distinction. In one of its chambers was born, on the 19th of January, 1807, Robert E. Lee, whom many students of military history believe to have been not only the greatest soldier of his time, and, taking all things together, the greatest captain of the English-speaking race, but the loftiest character of his generation; one rarely equalled, and possibly never excelled, in all the annals of the human race.

His reputation as a soldier has been dealt with by others much better fitted to speak of it than I; and in what I shall have to say as to this I shall often follow them, drawing from their studies what seem to me the necessary conclusions presented. The campaigns in which that reputation was achieved are now the studies of all military students throughout the world, quite as much as are the campaigns of Hannibal and Cffisar, of Cromwell and Marlborough, of Napoleon and Wellington.

"According to my notion of military history," says Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley, "there is as much instruction both in strategy and in tactics to be gleaned from General Lee's operations of 1862 as there is to be found in Napoleon's campaigns of 1796." In recognition of this fact the United States War College annually sends an expedition of picked officers to study the movements of these campaigns on the fields on which he gained his renown.

Robert Edward Lee was the fourth son of General Henry Lee, known in history as "Light Horse Harry" Lee (who in his youth had been the gallant young commander of the "Partisan Legion"), and the third son of Anne Carter, of Shirley, his second wife, a pious and gracious representative of the old Virginia family whose home still stands in simple dignity upon the banks of the James, and has been far-famed for generations as one of the best-known seats of the old Virginia hospitahty. His three older brothers were Henry (who was the only child of ''Light Horse Harry" Lee's first marriage), Charles Carter, and Sidney Smith, all of whom were unusually clever men. His two sisters were Mildred and Anne. In his veins flowed the best blood of the gentry of the Old Dominion, and, for that matter, of England, and surrounding him from his earliest childhood were the best traditions of the old Virginia life. Amid these, and these alone, he grew to manhood. On both sides of his house his ancestors for generations had been councillors and governors of Virginia, and had contributed their full share toward Virginia's greatness.

Richard Lee, '' the immigrant," was a scion of an old family, ancient enough to have fought at Hastings and to have followed Richard of the Lion Heart to the Holy Land.^ On this side of the water they had ever stood among the highest. The history of no two families was more indissolubly bound up with the history of Virginia than that of the Lees and the Carters. Thus, Lee was essentially the type of the cavalier of the Old Dominion, to whom she owed so much of her glory. Like Sir Walter Raleigh, he could number a hundred gentlemen among his kindred, and, even at his greatest, he was in character the type of his order.

In the youth of young Henry Lee, Princeton was the most popular of the colleges with the Virginians, and Henry Lee was a student at Princeton when the Revolutionary War broke out. Nearly all the young men

* "Lee of Virginia," by Edmund I. Lee.

of his age were deeply interested in the matters which brought on the war, and probably because of the leading part Virginia took in the movement for independence, and possibly because of the prominent part that his kinsmen took in Virginia, no sooner had war begun, with the battle of Lexington, than young Henry Lee left his studies and joined the army. He was commissioned a captain at the age of nineteen, and by his soldierly qualities soon became a marked man. He rendered such signal service in the early campaigns of the war, and showed such courage, ability and dash, that he early became a favorite with Washington, and, as was stated by his famous son long afterward, "in the difficult and critical operations in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, from 1777 to 1780, inclusive, he was always placed near the enemy, intrusted with the command of outposts, the superintendence of scouts, and that kind of service which requires unusual qualities of resourcefulness and self-reliance." ^

His activity and daring in scouting near the enemy drew their attention, and they set to work to capture him. Knowing that he was quartered about six miles below Valley Forge, a surprise was attempted by them. A body of two hundred horse set out one night, and having taken a roundabout route, they eluded his outposts and reached about daybreak the house where he was quartered. In the house were only eight men: Captain Lee, Lieutenant Lindsay, Major Gemieson, a corporal, and four men. Though surprised, the soldiers in the house, instead of surrendering as they were ex-

' "Memoirs of the War of 7G," by H. Lee, p. 16.

pected to do, under Lee's direction barricaded the doors and fought the assailants off, forcing them finally to retire with a loss of five men killed and a number more wounded. Then, as they were attempting to carry off the horses of the party, Lee hurried the departure of the enemy by shouting to his men to fire away, as the infantry were coming, and tliey would bag them all. As soon as they retired he sallied forth, got his men to horse, and pursued the English force to their main body.

For this exploit, together with his services in the campaign before it, which Washington highly commended. Congress promoted Captain Lee to the rank of major, and gave him an independent command, known as a "partisan corps," composed first of two, and later of three troops of horse.

That summer he took part in the capture of Stony Point, which gave Mad Anthony Wayne his fame, and a little later he planned and executed the surprise and capture of Paulus Hook under the nose of the British warships and the garrisons of the New York forts. For this exploit Congress again signally honored him — thanking him publicly, and striking a medal in his honor, a tribute paid to no other officer below the rank of general during the war.*

Wlien the chief seat of war was transferred to the South, toward the end of 1780, Major Lee moved to join the Southern army, opposing Cornwallis in South Carolina, and Congress in recognition of his distinguished services made him, on Washington's recommendation, a lieutenant-colonel. He took part in all the battles of

• Leo's "Memoirs of the War of 70," p. 23.

the Southern campaign, and rendered such service that, when broken in health and partly because disappointed of a reward which he thought due him he retired about February, 1782, General Greene wrote of him to the president of Congress in the following warm terms: "Lieutenant-Colonel Lee retired for a time for the recovery of his health. I am more indebted to this officer than to any other for the advantages gained over the enemy in the operations of the last campaign, and should be wanting in gratitude not to acknowledge the importance of his services, a detail of which is his best panegyric." ^

Later on Colonel Lee became a member of Congress, and was so noted for his eloquence that when in 1799 Washington died, he was selected by Congress to deliver the official eulogy on his old commander and life-long friend. Subsequently he became the governor of Virginia, and served as such for three terms, and when the rebellion broke out in Pennsylvania, he was chosen to command the troops mobilized for its suppression.

Thus, the blood that coursed through the veins of Robert E. Lee was that of a soldier.

It has been well said that knowledge of a man's ideals is the key to his character. Tell us his ideals and we c^n tell you what manner of man he is. Lee's ideal character was close at hand from his earliest boyhood. His earliest days were spent in a region filled with traditions of him who, having consecrated his life to duty, had with the fame of a great soldier attained such a standard of virtue that if we would

' Lee's "Memoirs of the War of 76," p. 41.

liken him to other governoi-s we must go back to Marcus AureHus, to St. Louis and to WiUiam the Silent.

Not far from Stratford, within an easy ride, in the same old colonial county of Westmoreland, on the bank of the noble river whose broad waters reflect the arching sky, spanning Virginia and Maryland, was Wakefield, the plantation which had the distinction of having given birth to the Father of his Country. Thus, on this neighborhood, the splendor of the evening of his noble life, just closed, had shed a peculiar glory. And not a great way off, in a neighboring county on the banks of the same river, was the home of his manhood, where in majestic simplicity his ashes repose, making Mount Vernon a shrine for lovers )f liberty of every age and every clime.

On the wall at Shirley, Lee's mother's home, among the portraits of the Carters hangs a full-length portrait of Washington, in a general's uniform, given by him to General Nelson, who gave it to his daughter, Mrs. Carter. Thus, in both his ancestral homes the boy from his cradle found an atmosphere redolent at once of the greatness of Virginia's past and of the memory of the preserver of his countr}^

It was Lee's own father, the gallant and gifted "Light Horse Harry" Lee, who, as eloquent in debate as he had been eager in battle, having, as stated, been selected by Congress to deliver the memorial address on Washington, had coined the golden phrase which, reaching the heart of America, has become his epitaph and declared him by the unanimous voice of a grateful people, "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."

How passionately the memory of ''Light Horse Harry" Lee was revered by his sons we know, not only from the life of Robert E. Lee, himself, but from that most caustic of American philippics, the ''Observations on the Writings of Thomas Jefferson, with Particular Reference to the Attacks they contain on the Memory of the late General Henry Lee, in a series of Letters by Henry Lee of Virginia."

Mr. Jefferson, with all his prestige and genius, had found a match when he aroused "Black Harry" Lee by a charge of ingratitude on the part of his father to the adored Washington. In no family throughout Virginia was Washington's name more revered than among the Lees, who were bound to him by every tie of gratitude, of sentiment, and of devotion.

Thus, the impress of the character of Washington was natural on the plastic and serious mind of the thoughtful son of "Light Horse Harry."

One familiar with the life of Lee cannot help noting the strong resemblance of his character in its strength, its poise, its rounded completeness to that of Washington, or fail to mark what influence the life of Washington had on the life of Lee. The stamp appears upon it from his boyhood, and grows more plain as his years progress.

Just when the youth definitely set before himself the character of Washington we may not know; but it must have been at an early date. The famous story of the sturdy little lad and the cherry-tree must have been well known to young Lee from his earliest boyhood, for it was floating about that region when Parson Weems came across it as a neighborhood tradition, and made it a part of our literature/ It has become the fashion to deride such anecdotes, but this much, at least, may be said of this story, that however it may rest solely on the authority of the simple, itinerant preacher, it is absolutely characteristic of Washington, and it is equally characteristic of him who since his time most nearly resembled him.

However this was, the lad grew up amid the traditions of that greatest of great men, whose life he so manifestly takes as his model, and with whose fame his own fame was to be so closely allied in the minds and hearts of the people of the South.

Like Washington, Robert E. Lee became an orphan at an early age, his father having been mortally injured in an election riot in Baltimore, and dying when the lad was only eleven years old, and, like Washington, Lee was brought up by a devoted mother, the gentle and pious Anne Carter, of Shirley, a representative, as already stated, of one of the old families of "Tidewater" Virginia, and a descendant of Robert Carter, known as "King Carter," equally because of his great possessions, his dominant character, and his high position in the colony. Through his mother, as through his father, Lee was related to most of the families of distinction in

• A Japanese oflScer, a military attach<S at Washington, related to the writer that when he was a boy in a hill-town of Japan, where his father was an officer of one of the old Samurai, his mother told him the story of George Washington and the cherry-tree and tried to impress on him the lessons of truth.

the Old Dominion, and, by at least one strain of blood, to Washington himself.

Early in Lee 's life his father and mother moved from Stratford to Alexandria, one of the two or three Virginia towns that were homes of the gentry, and his boyhood was pmssed in the old town that was redolent of the memory of Washington. He worshipped in old Christ Church, the same church in which Washington had been a pew-holder, and he was a frequent visitor both at the,' noble mansion on the banks of the Potomac where the !^ather of his Country had made his home and at tha.lt one where lived the Custises, the descendants ancli representatives of his adopted son, which was to berjbme Lee's own home in the future.

S-vprung from such stock and nurtured on such traditions, the lad soon gave evidence of the character that was to place him next to his model. Little is recorded of his childhood beyond the fact of his devotion to his mother and his sisters, and his attention to his duties. Both of his older brothers were very clever, and it is possible that the sturdy Robert was overshadowed by them. "Robert, who was always good/' wrote his father of him from the West Indies, where he had gone hoping to restore his health after his injury, "will be confirmed in his happy turn of mind by his ever- watchful and affectionate mother." This prophecy was amply fulfilled. It is recorded that "his mother taught him in his childhood to practise selfdenial and self-control, as well as the strictest economy in all financial concerns." To his mother he was ever a dutiful and devoted son, and we have a glimpse of him, none the less interesting and significant because it is casual, leaving his playfellows at their sport to go and take his invalid mother driving in the old family carriage, where he was careful to fasten the curtains and close up the cracks with newspapers to keep the draughts from her, and using all his poweijs to entertain and divert her. The ties between theitn were ever peculiarly close, and more than one of his wousins have recorded that what impressed them most in jtheir youth was "Robert's devotion to his mother." rYou have been both son and daughter to me," wrote liis mother, in her loneliness, after he had left home for \\^est Point. ''The other boys used to drink from the glasse(,s of the gentleman," said one of the family; "but Robert ^never would join them. He was different."

A light is thrown on his character at this time in c,% pleasant reference to his boyhood made by himself long afterward, in writing of his youngest son, then a lad, who was going to the Virginia Springs as escort to his mother and sister. "A young gentleman," he says, "who has read Virgil must surely be competent to take care of two ladies; for before I had advanced that far I was my mother's outdoor agent and confidential messenger." * He might readily have said more; for it is related that he was known from his boyhood for his devoted attention to his mother, and that "in her last illness he mixed every dose of medicine which she took," and nursed her both night and day.

» Letter of June 25, 1857.

Chapter II First Service

Young Lee selected at an early age the military profession, which had given his father and his great prototype their fame. During his early boyhood occurred the capture of Washington city and the destruction of the Capitol and the White House by the British troops, and it has been suggested that this may have turned his mind toward the army. But this was not needed. It was the profession to which all young men of spirit turned. It was in the blood. And young Lee was the son of him of whom General Charles Lee, himself an accomplished soldier, had said, that "he seemed to have come a soldier from his mother's womb," a bit of characterization which this soldier's distinguished son was to quote with filial satisfaction when, after he himself had become possibly the most famous soldier of his time, he wrote his father's biography. He was, wrote one of his cousins, "most anxious to go to West Point, both to relieve his mother and to have a military education." He had gone to school at the Alexandria Academy to a Mr. Leary, and with a view to preparing himself for West Point he now went for a time to the school of a well-known teacher, Mr. Hallowell. Here, according to his old master, he was noted for his attention to his duties and his perfect recitations. "His specialty," adds the old teacher, 'Svas finishing up," and he records that even the diagrams in conic sections which he drew on a slate were as carefully drawn and finished as if he had expected them to be engraved. At the proper time, 1825, when he was eighteen years of age, he was entered as a cadet among Virginia's representatives at the military academy of the country, having, it is said, received his appointment through Andrew Jackson, then a senator from Tennessee, to whom he applied in person. And there is a tradition that the hero of New Orleans was much impressed at the interview between them, with the frank and sturdy youth who applied for the appointment. At the academy, as in the case of young Bonaparte, those soldierly qualities which were to bring him later so great a measure of fame were apparent from the first ; and he bore off the highest honor that a cadet can secure — the coveted cadet-adjutancy of the corps. Here, too, he gave evidence of the character that was to prove his most distinguished attribute, and he graduated second in his class of forty-six, but with the extraordinary distinction of not having received a demerit. Thus early his solid character manifested itself. ''Even at West Point," says Holcombe, ''the solid and lofty qualities of the young cadet were remarked on as bearing a resemblance to those of Washington."

The impress of his character was already becoming stamped upon his countenance. One who knew him about this time records that as she observed his face in repose while he read to the assembled family circle, or sat in church, the reflection crossed her mind that he looked more like a great man than any one she had ever seen.

Among his classmates and fellow students at West Point were many of those men whom he was afterward to serve with or against in the great Civil War, and doubtless a part of his extraordinary success in that Homeric contest was due to the accurate gauge which he formed, in his youth or a little later in Mexico, of their abilities and character. Indeed, as may be shown, this was made almost plainly manifest in his dealings in at least three great campaigns of the war: that in which he confronted the over-prudent McClellan and defeated him, and those in which he balked and routed the vainglorious Pope and Hooker.

Here is a picture of him at this time from the pen of one who knew and loved him all his life, and had cause to know and love him as a true friend and faithful comrade — his old classmate and comrade-in-arms, Joseph E. Johnston. They had, as he states, entered the military academy together as classmates, and formed there a friendship never impaired, a friendship that was hereditary, as Johnston's father had served under Lee's father in the celebrated Lee Legion during the Revolutionary War.

"We had," says General Johnston, "the same intimate associates, who thought as I did, that no other youth or man so united 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, while his correctness of demeanor 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 that 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." He mentions, as an instance of the depth of his s^Tnpathy, an occurrence which took place the morning after a battle in Mexico, in which he had lost a cherished young relative. Lee, meeting him and seeing the grief in his face, burst into tears and soothed him with a sympathy as tender, declared the veteran long years after, ''as his lovely wife would have done."

Small wonder that the soldiers who followed Lee faced death with a devotion that was wellnigh without a parallel.

Still influenced in part, perhaps, by his worship for his great hero, the young officer chose as the partner of his life his old playmate, Miss Mary Parke Custis, the granddaughter of Washington's stepson, the surviving representative of Washington. It was an early love affair, and, as such usually resulted in Virginia, proved one of the happiest of marriages. The marriage ceremony took place in the old drawing-room at Arlington, on the 30th of June, 1831, and was performed by the Rev. Dr. William Meade, afterward bishop of Virginia. Mrs. Lee was the daughter and heiress of George W. Parke Custis, while Lieutenant

Lee was poor; but such was her pride in her husband, and her sense of what was his due, that on her marriage to him she determined to live on her husband's income as a Heutenant, and for some time she thus hved/ It was a fitting training for the hardships she was called on to face, when her husband, as commander-in-chief of the Confederate armies, deemed himself happy to be able to send her one nearly dried-up lemon. Their domestic life was one of ideal devotion and happiness. Should we seek through all the annals of time for an illustration of the best that exists in family life, we need not go further to find the perfection and refinement of elegance and of purity than that stately mansion, the home of Lee, which from the wooded heights of Arlington looks down upon the city of Washington, and has by a strange fate become the last resting-place of many of those whose chief renown has been that they fought bravely against Lee. Seven children were born to him, all of whom grew up, and two of whom, like their father, adopted the profession of arms, and rose to the distinguished rank of major-general in the Confederate army.

With the distinction of such a high graduation as his, young Lee was, of course, assigned to the Engineers, that corps of intellectual aristocracy from which came, with the notable exceptions of Grant and Jackson, nearly all the officers who attained high rank during the war. His first service was in Virginia, where he was engaged on sea-coast defences, an ex-

* This fact was stated to the writer by the wife of General William N. Pendleton, Mrs. Lee's close neighbor and friend.

perience which was to bear rich fruit later on when he was called to construct the coast defences of the Carolinas, and rendered them impregnable against attack by sea. He was stationed at Fortress Monroe when occurred in a neighboring county the bloody negro uprising known as the "Nat Turner Rebellion/' which thrilled Virginia as thirty years later thrilled her the yet more perilous ''John Brown Raid/' which Lee was sent to quell, and quelled. Lee's letters to his wife touching this episode, while self-contained as was his wont, show the deep gravity with which he regarded this ferocious outbreak. Doubtless it also bore its part in bringing his mind to its definite conclusions against slavery, and his conviction that the presence of the colored race was an incalculable misfortune to a State. In 1834 he was assigned to service in Washington, as assistant to the chief engineer of the army. He was promoted to the rank of first lieutenant in 1836, and in 1838 was promoted to the rank of captain. During this service he resided at Arlington, and took his midday meal at a boarding-house kept by a Mrs. Ulrich, on the site of Riggs's Hotel, which was so popular with the army officers that it was known as ''The Mess." Here he met many of the leading public men of the day, on all of whom he made a deep impression. "No one was ever jealous of him," records one of his old comrades, Colonel McComb; "all delighted to do him honor."

His early manhood was devoted with unremitting care to his profession, wherein he made, while still a young man, a reputation for ability of so high an order, and for such devotion to duty, that when the Mississippi, owing to a gradual change in its banks, threatened the city of St. Louis, General Scott, having been appealed to to lend his aid to prevent so dire a calamity, said he knew of but one man who was equal to the task, Brevet Captain Lee. "He is young," he wrote, ''but if the work can be done, he can do it." The city government, it is said, impatient at the young engineer's methodical way, withdrew the appropriation for the work; but he went on quietly, with the comment : "They can do as they like with their own, but I was sent here to do certain work, and I shall do it." And he did it. Feeling in the city ran high, riots broke out, and it is said that cannon were placed in position to fire on his working force; but he kept calmly on to the end. The work he wrought there stands to-day — the bulwark of the great city which has so recently invited America and the nations of the world within her gates. His service in 1837 in surveying the upper Mississippi and opening it so as to render it navigable is not generally known ; yet it provided a clear water-way for the great region of the North-west, and opened it for the immigration which has since made it one of the most important sections of the country. And Lee's recommendations led to the great conception of the present system of improvement of internal water-ways, and his method was the forerunner of the Eads system of jetties, by which the Mississippi River has been preserved as the midland water-way of the nation.