LIBRARY 
 
 OK THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class 
 
ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 THE SOUTHERNER 
 
ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 THE SOUTHERNER 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS NELSON PAGE 
 
 Kd/j,e6a rots Kelvuv ^fj-affi. 
 
 WITH PORTRAIT 
 
 OF THE 
 
 f UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
 k \ssf4LiFc-- 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER ,8 SONS 
 NEW YORK : : : : : 1908 
 
COPYRIGHT, igo8, BY 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS 
 
 Published October, 1908 
 
TO THE MEMORY OF 
 
 "AS GALLANT AND BRAVE AN ARMY 
 
 AS EVER EXISTED": 
 
 THE ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA! 
 
 ON WHOSE IMPERISHABLE DEEDS 
 
 AND INCOMPARABLE CONSTANCY 
 
 THE FAME OF THEIR OLD COMMANDER 
 
 WAS FOUNDED 
 
 176307 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 INTRODUCTORY ix 
 
 I. EARLY LIFE 3 
 
 II. FIRST SERVICE 13 
 
 III. THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 30 
 
 IV. RESOURCES 57 
 
 V. LEE IN WEST VIRGINIA 71 
 
 VI. THE SITUATION WHEN LEE TOOK COM 
 MAND 84 
 
 VII. BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND .... 96 
 
 VIII. LEE RELIEVES RICHMOND 109 
 
 IX. LEE S AUDACITY ANTIETAM AND CHAN- 
 
 CELLORSVILLE 122 
 
 X. LEE S CLEMENCY 153 
 
 XL GETTYSBURG 174 
 
 XII. THE WILDERNESS CAMPAIGN . . . .204 
 
 XIII. LEE AND GRANT 213 
 
 XIV. THE RETREAT TO APPOMATTOX . . . 237 
 
 vii 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XV. LEE IN DEFEAT 253 
 
 XVI. AFTER THE WAR 261 
 
 XVII. LEE AS COLLEGE PRESIDENT .... 269 
 
 XVIII. SOURCES OF CHARACTER 284 
 
 XIX. THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH . . .290 
 
 APPENDIX 293 
 
 INDEX 307 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 / 1pHIS sketch of a great Virginian is not wnt\ 
 ten with the expectation or with even the 
 hope that the writer can add anything to the 
 fame of Lee; but rather in obedience to a 
 feeling that as the son of a Confederate soldier, 
 as a Southerner, as an American, he owes some 
 thing to himself and to his countrymen, which he 
 should endeavor to pay, though it may be but a 
 mite cast into the Treasury of Abundance. / 
 
 The subject is not one to be dealt with in the 
 language of eulogy. To attempt to decorate it 
 with panegyric would but belittle it. What the 
 , writer proposes to say will be based upon public 
 records, or on the testimony of those personal 
 witnesses who by character and opportunity for 
 observation would be held to furnish evidence 
 by which the gravest concerns of life would be 
 decided. 
 
 True enough it is, Lee was assailed and as 
 sailed with a rancor and persistence which have 
 undoubtedly left their deep impression on the 
 minds of a large section of his countrymen; but 
 as the years pass by, the passions and prejudices 
 
 IX 
 
x INTRODUCTORY 
 
 which attempted to destroy him have been grad 
 ually giving place to a juster conception of the 
 lineaments of Truth. 
 
 "Seest thou not how they revile thee?" said 
 a youth to Diogenes. 
 
 "Yea/* replied the Philosopher. "But seest 
 thou not how I am not reviled ? " 
 
 Thus, as we read to-day of the reviling of 
 Lee by those who under the sway of passion 
 endeavored to stigmatize with the terms, " Reb 
 el" and "Traitor/ one whom history is already 
 proclaiming, possibly, the loftiest character of 
 his time, the soul is filled, not so much with 
 loathing for their malignity, as with pity for 
 their blindness. 
 
 Unhappily, the world judges mainly by the 
 measure of success, and though Time hath his 
 revenges, and finally rights many wrongs, the 
 man who fails of an immediate end appears to 
 the body of his contemporaries, and often to 
 the generations following, to be a failure. Yet 
 from such seed as this have sprung the richest 
 fruits of civilization. In the Divine Economy, 
 indeed, appears a wonderful mystery. Through 
 all the history of sublime endeavor would seem 
 to run the strange truth enunciated by the Di 
 vine Master: that, He who loses his life for the 
 sake of the Truth shall find it. 
 
INTRODUCTORY xi 
 
 But although, as was said by the eloquent 
 Holcombe of Lee just after his death, "No cal 
 umny can ever darken his fame, for History has 
 lighted up his image with her everlasting lamp," 
 yet after forty years there appears in certain 
 quarters a tendency to rank General Lee, as a 
 soldier, among those captains who failed. Some 
 historians, looking with narrow vision at but one 
 side, and many readers ignorant of all the facts, 
 honestly take this view. A general he was, they 
 say, able enough for defense; but he was uni 
 formly defeated when he took the offensive. 
 He failed at Antietam, he was defeated at Get 
 tysburg; he could not drive Grant out of Vir 
 ginia; therefore he must be classed among cap 
 tains of the second rank only. 
 
 Iteration and reiteration, to the ordinary ob 
 server, however honest he may be, gather ac 
 cumulated force and oftentimes usurp the place 
 of truth. The Public has not time nor does it 
 care to go deeper than the ordinary presentation 
 of a case. It is possible, therefore, that unless 
 the truth be set forth so plainly that it cannot 
 be mistaken, this estimate of Lee as a Captain 
 may in time become established as a general, 
 if not as the universal opinion of the Public. 
 
 If, however, Lee s reputation becomes estab 
 lished as among the second class of captains, 
 
xii INTRODUCTORY 
 
 rather than as among the first, the responsibility 
 for it will rest, not upon Northern writers, but 
 upon the Southerners themselves. For the facts 
 are plain. 
 
 We of the South have been wont to leave the 
 writing of history mainly to others, and it is far 
 from a complete excuse that whilst others were 
 writing history we were making it. It is as much 
 the duty of a people to disprove any charge 
 blackening their fame as it is of an individual. 
 Indeed, the injury is infinitely more far-reach 
 ing in the former case than in the case of an 
 individual. 
 
 It is no part of my purpose to undertake to 
 discuss critically the great campaigns which 
 Lee conducted or battles which he fought. This 
 I must leave to those military scholars whose ex 
 perience entitles their judgment to respect. I 
 shall mainly confine myself to setting forth the 
 conditions which existed and the results of the 
 manner in which he met the forces which con 
 fronted him. 
 
 It is, therefore, rather of Lee, the man, that 
 I propose to speak in this brief memoir, though 
 incidentally I shall endeavor to direct the read 
 er s thought to one especial phase of his work 
 as a soldier, for it appears to me to illustrate 
 the peculiar fibre which distinguished him 
 
INTRODUCTORY xiii 
 
 from other great Captains and other great men. 
 His character I deem absolutely the fruit of the 
 Virginian civilization which existed in times 
 past. No drop of blood alien to Virginia 
 coursed in his veins; his rearing was wholly 
 within her borders and according to the prin 
 ciples of her life. 
 
 Whatever of praise or censure, therefore, 
 shall be his must fall fairly on his mother, Vir 
 ginia, and the civilization which existed within 
 her borders. The history of Lee is the history 
 of the South during the greatest crisis of her 
 existence. For with his history is bound up the 
 history of the Army of Northern Virginia, on 
 whose imperishable deeds and incomparable 
 constancy rests his fame. 
 
 The reputation of the South has suffered be 
 cause we have allowed rhetoric to usurp the 
 place of history. We have furnished many 
 orators, but few historians. But all history at 
 last must be the work not of the orator, but of 
 the historian. Truth, simply stated, like chas 
 tity in a woman s face, is its own best advocate; 
 its simplest presentation is its strongest proof. 
 
 It is then, not to Lee the Victorious, that the 
 writer asks his reader s attention, but to that 
 greater Lee: the Defeated. 
 
ROBERT E. LEE, 
 THE SOUTHERNER 
 

 ROBERT E. LEE, THE SOUTHERNER 
 
 " A Prince once said of a Monarch slain, 
 Taller he seems in Death. " 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 EARLY LIFE 
 
 /^\N a plateau about a mile from the south 
 bank of the Potomac River, in the old Colo 
 nial 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 favor 
 ites, Culpeper and Arlington, stands a massive 
 brick mansion, one of the most impressive piles 
 of brick on this continent, which even in its di 
 lapidation looks as though it might have been 
 built by Elizabeth and bombarded by Cromwell. 
 It was built by Thomas Lee, grandson of Rich 
 ard Lee, the emigrant, who came to Virginia 
 about 1641-2, and founded a family which has 
 numbered among its members as many men of 
 distinction as any family in America. It was 
 
 3 
 
4 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 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 towards its rebuilding. 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 inde 
 pendent States, and Francis Lightfoot Lee, his 
 brother. But it has a yet greater distinction. 
 In one of its chambers was born on the iQth of 
 January, 1807, Robert E. Lee, whom we of the 
 South believe to have been not only the greatest 
 soldier of his time, and the greatest captain of 
 the English-speaking race, but the loftiest char 
 acter of his generation; one rarely equalled, 
 and possibly never excelled, in all the annals of 
 the human race.^ 
 
EARLY LIFE 5 
 
 His reputation as a soldier has been dealt with 
 by those much better fitted to speak of it than 
 I; and in what I have to say as to this I shall 
 but follow them. 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 
 Caesar, of Cromwell and Marlborough; of Na 
 poleon 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 oper 
 ations of 1862 as there is to be found in Na 
 poleon s campaigns of 1796." 
 
 Robert Edward Lee was the second son of 
 "Light Horse Harry" Lee (who in his youth 
 had been the gallant young commander of the 
 "Partisan Legion") and 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 hospitality. In his veins 
 flowed the best blood of the gentry of the Old 
 Dominion and, for that matter, of England, 
 and surrounding his life from his earliest child- 
 
6 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 hood 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 an 
 cestors for generations had been councillors 
 and governors of Virginia, and had contributed 
 their full share towards Virginia s greatness. 
 Richard Lee was a scion of an old family, an 
 cient 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. 
 It has been well said that knowledge of a 
 man s ideals is the key to his character. Tell us 
 his ideals and we can 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 attained such a standard of virtue that if 
 
 * "Lee of Virginia." By Edmund I. Lee. 
 
EARLY LIFE 7 
 
 we would liken him to other governors we must 
 go back to Marcus Aurelius, to St. Louis and 
 to William the Silent. 
 
 Not far from Stratford, within an easy ride, 
 in the same old colonial county of Westmore 
 land, on the bank of the same noble river whose 
 broad waters reflect the arching sky, there 
 spanning Virginia and Maryland, was Wake- 
 field, 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 Mt. Vernon a shrine for lovers of Lib 
 erty 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 country. 
 
 It was Lee s own father, the gallant and gifted 
 
8 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 "Light Horse Harry" Lee, who, as eloquent in 
 debate as he had been eager in battle, had 
 been selected by Congress to deliver the me 
 morial address on Washington, and 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 Washing 
 ton 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 Wash 
 ington was natural on the plastic and serious 
 
EARLY LIFE 9 
 
 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 complete 
 ness, 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 him 
 self 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 be 
 come 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 
 
 * A Japanese officer, a military attache 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. 
 
io ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 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 dying when the 
 lad was only eleven years old, and, like Washing 
 ton, he was brought up by a devoted mother, the 
 gentle and pious Anne Carter of Shirley, a rep 
 resentative, as already stated, of one of the old 
 families of Tidewater Virginia and a descend 
 ant of Robert Carter, known as " King Car 
 ter," 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 fami 
 lies of distinction in the Old Dominion, and, 
 by at least one strain of blood, to Washington 
 himself. 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 to go and 
 take his invalid mother driving in the old fam 
 ily carriage, where he was careful to fasten the 
 
EARLY LIFE 11 
 
 curtains and close up the cracks with news 
 papers to keep the draughts from her. 
 
 Early in his 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 passed in the old 
 town that was redolent of the memory of Wash 
 ington. He worshipped in the same church in 
 which Washington had been a pew-holder, and 
 was a frequent visitor both at the noble mansion 
 where the Father of his Country had made his 
 home and at that where lived the Custises, the 
 descendants and representatives of his adopted 
 son. 
 
 Sprung from such stock and nurtured on such 
 traditions, the lad soon gave evidence of the char 
 acter that was to place him next to his model. 
 "He was always a good boy," said his father. 
 "You have been both son and daughter to me," 
 wrote .his mother, in her loneliness, after he had 
 left home for West Point. " The other boys 
 used to drink from the glasses of the gentlemen," 
 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 a pleasant reference to his boyhood made 
 by himself long afterwards in writing of his 
 youngest son, then a lad. "A young gentle- 
 
12 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 man," 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 mes 
 senger."* 
 
 * Letter of June 25, 1857. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 FIRST SERVICE 
 
 V7X)UNG LEE selected at an early age the 
 military profession, which had given his 
 father and his great prototype their fame. 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 Greene 
 had said that "he became 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 biog 
 raphy. 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 received his 
 appointment from Andrew Jackson, to whom 
 he applied in person. And there is a tradition 
 that the hero of New Orleans was much im 
 pressed at the interview between them with the 
 frank and sturdy youth who applied for the 
 
 13 
 
H ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 appointment. At the academy, as in the case 
 of young Bonaparte, those soldierly qualities 
 which were to bring him later so great a meas 
 ure 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 char 
 acter that was to prove his most distinguished 
 attribute, and he graduated second in his class 
 of forty-six; but with the extraordinary dis 
 tinction 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 be 
 coming 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 afterwards to serve with or against in the 
 great Civil War, and doubtless a part of his 
 extraordinary success in that Homeric contest 
 
FIRST SERVICE 15 
 
 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 
 overprudent McClellan and defeated him, and 
 those in which he balked 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 class mate and com 
 rade 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 quali 
 ties 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 de 
 meanor and attention to all duties, personal 
 
16 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 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 sympathy an 
 occurrence which took place the morning after 
 a battle in Mexico in which he had lost a cher 
 ished 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 well- 
 nigh 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 Washing 
 ton s step-son, the surviving representative of 
 Washington. Mrs. Lee was the daughter and 
 heiress of George W. Parke Custis, while Lieu 
 tenant Lee was poor; but such was her pride in 
 
FIRST SERVICE 17 
 
 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 lieutenant, 
 and for some time she thus lived.* 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 him 
 self 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 man 
 sion, 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. 
 
 With the distinction of such a high gradu 
 ation as his, young Lee was, of course, assigned 
 to the Engineers, that corps of intellectual aris 
 tocracy from which came, with the notable 
 exceptions of Grant and Jackson, nearly all the 
 officers who attained high rank during the war. 
 
 * This fact was stated to the writer by the wife of General 
 Wm. N. Pendleton, Mrs. Lee s close neighbor and friend. 
 
i8 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 His first service was in Virginia, and 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 bloody 
 outbreak. 
 
 His early manhood was devoted to his pro 
 fession, 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 appro 
 priation 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. Feel- 
 
FIRST SERVICE 19 
 
 ing in the city ran high, riots broke out, 
 and it is said that cannon were placed in po 
 sition 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. 
 
 The Mexican War was the training-ground of 
 most of those who fought with distinction in 
 the later and more terrible strife of the Civil 
 War, and many of the greatest campaigns and 
 fiercest battles of that war were planned and 
 fought with a science learned upon the pampas 
 and amid the mountains of Mexico. During the 
 Mexican War, Lee, starting in as an engineer 
 officer on the staff of General Wool, achieved 
 more renown than any other soldier of his rank, 
 and possibly more than any other officer in the 
 army of invasion, except the commander-in-chief. 
 
 The scope of this volume will not admit of 
 going into the details of his distinguished services 
 there which kept him ever at the crucial point and 
 which led General Scott to declare long after 
 wards that he was the "very best soldier he ever 
 saw in the field." His scouts and reconnaissances 
 at Cerro Gordo, Contreras, Churubusco, and 
 Chapultepec, brought him the brevets of Major 
 at Cerro Gordo, April 18, 1874, of Lieutenant- 
 
20 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 Colonel at Contreras and Churubusco, and 
 of Colonel at Chapultepec, September I3th. 
 His first marked distinction was won by a 
 reconnaissance made at night with a single guide, 
 whom he compelled to serve at the muzzle of 
 the pistol, wherein he ascertained the falsity of 
 a report that Santa Anna s army had crossed 
 the mountains and lay in their front. This dis 
 tinction he greatly increased by work at Vera 
 Cruz, by which that strategic point, protected, 
 as was believed, by impregnable defences, was 
 captured. But this, as notable as it was, was 
 as far excelled by his services at Cerro Gordo as 
 that was in turn by his work at Contreras. At 
 Cerro Gordo, where Santa Anna with 13,000 
 troops and forty-two guns posted in a pass 
 barred the way in an apparently impregnable 
 position, Lee discovered a mountain pass, and 
 having in person led Twigg s division to the 
 point for assault in front, and having worked 
 all night posting batteries, at dawn next morn 
 ing led Riley s brigade up the mountains in the 
 turning movement which forced Santa Anna 
 from his stronghold. At Contreras again, he 
 showed the divinely given endowments on which 
 his future fame was to rest. 
 
 At Contreras the army of invasion found 
 itself in danger of being balked almost at the 
 
FIRST SERVICE 21 
 
 Gates of the Capital, and Lee s ability shone 
 forth even more brilliantly than at Cerro Gordo. 
 The defences of the City of Mexico on the east 
 ward appeared impregnable, while an attack 
 from the south, where the approach was natu 
 rally less difficult, was rendered apparently 
 almost as unassailable by powerful batteries 
 constructed at San Antonio Hill commanding 
 the only avenue of approach, the road which 
 wound between Lake Chalco with its deep mo 
 rass on one side, and impassable lava beds on 
 the other. Lee by careful reconnaissance dis 
 covered a mule-trail over the Pedregal, as this 
 wild and broken tract of petrified lava was 
 termed, and this trail having been opened suf 
 ficiently to admit of the passage of troops, though 
 with difficulty and danger, he conducted over 
 it the commands of Generals Pillow and Worth, 
 and the village of Contreras was seized and held 
 till night against all assaults of the enemy. The 
 position of the American troops, however, was 
 one of extreme peril, as it was known that heavy 
 reinforcements were being rushed forward by 
 the Mexicans, and at a council of war it was de 
 cided to advance before dawn rather than await 
 attack from the Mexican forces. It became 
 necessary to inform General Scott of the situa 
 tion and Captain Lee volunteered for the per- 
 
22 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 ilous service. He accordingly set out in the 
 darkness and alone, and in the midst of a furi 
 ous tropical storm, he made his way back 
 across the lava beds infested by bands of Mexi 
 cans, advised the Commander-in-Chief of the 
 proposed movement, and having secured his 
 co-operation, returned across the Pedregal in 
 time to assist in the assault which forced the 
 Mexicans to abandon their position, and opened 
 the way to Churubusco, Molino del Rey and 
 Chapultepec, and, finally, led to the occupation 
 of the capital and the close of the War. 
 
 This was, declared Scott, "The greatest feat 
 of physical and moral courage performed by 
 any individual, to my knowledge, pending the 
 campaign." 
 
 The "gallantry and good conduct," the "in 
 valuable services," "the intrepid coolness and 
 gallantry of Captain Lee of the Engineers," of 
 "Captain Lee, so constantly distinguished," fill 
 all the dispatches of all the battles of the war, 
 and Lee came out of this war with such a rep 
 utation for ability that his old commander, 
 Scott, declared to General Preston, that he was 
 "the greatest living soldier in America." In 
 deed, Scott, with prescient vision, declared his 
 opinion that he was "the greatest soldier now 
 living in the world." "If I were on my death- 
 
V 
 
 
 
 FIRST SERVICE 
 
 23 
 
 bed to-morrow," he said to General Preston, 
 long before the breaking out of the war, "and 
 the President of the United States should tell me 
 that a great battle were to be fought for the 
 liberty or slavery of the country, and asked my 
 judgment as to the ability of a commander, I 
 would say with my dying breath, Let it be 
 Robert E. Lee/" 
 
 Lee, himself, however, declared that it was 
 General Scott s stout heart and military skill 
 which overcame all obstacles and while others 
 croaked pushed the campaign through to final 
 success. 
 
 During the period following the Mexican 
 War, Lee was engaged for a time in constructing 
 the defences of Baltimore. Then he was, in 
 1852, assigned to duty as Superintendent of the 
 United States Military Academy at West Point, 
 and three years later was assigned to active duty 
 on the southwestern frontier as Lieutenant 
 Colonel of one of the two regiments of cavalry 
 which Mr. Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of 
 War, had organized on the recommendation 
 of General Scott and made a separate branch 
 of the service.* He soon rose to the rank of 
 
 * Of these regiments E. V. Sumner was Colonel of the first and 
 Joseph E. Johnston was Lieutenant-Colonel, and Albert Sydney 
 Johnston Was Colonel of the second, with Lee as his Lieutenant- 
 Colonel. 
 
24 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 colonel of cavalry, a position which a great critic 
 of war has asserted to be the best of all training 
 schools for a great captain, and he held this rank 
 when, having been brought to Washington to 
 revise the tactics of the army, he was unexpect 
 edly called on in the summer of 1859 to take 
 charge of the force of marines sent to Harper s 
 Ferry to capture John Brown and his followers 
 in their crazy and murderous invasion of Vir 
 ginia, with the design of starting a servile war 
 which should lead to the negroes achieving their 
 emancipation. This duty he performed prompt 
 ly and efficiently. 
 
 Long afterwards when he was a defeated 
 general on parole, without means, his every act 
 and word watched by enemies thirsting for his 
 blood, one of the men he had commanded in 
 the ad Cavalry, but who had fought in the Un 
 ion army throughout the war, called at his house 
 in .Richmond with a basket of provisions for his 
 old commander, and when he saw him seized 
 him in his arms and kissed him. 
 
 A light is thrown on his character in the letters 
 he wrote about and to his children during his long 
 absences from home on duty in the West and in 
 Mexico. And it is one of the pathetic elements in 
 the history of this loving and tender father, that 
 with a nature which would have reveled in the 
 
FIRST SERVICE 25 
 
 joys of domestic life, he should have been called 
 by duty to spend so large a part of his time away 
 from home that he did not even know his young 
 est son when he met him. He was ever devoted 
 to children, and amid the most tragic scenes of his 
 eventful life, his love for them speaks from his 
 letters. Writing to his wife from St. Louis in 
 1837, when he was engaged in engineering work 
 for the government, he speaks with deep feeling 
 of the sadness he felt at being separated from his 
 family, and of his anxiety about the training of 
 his little son. "Our dear little boy," he says, 
 "seems to have among his friends the reputa 
 tion of being hard to manage a distinction not 
 at all desirable, as it indicates self-will and ob 
 stinacy. Perhaps, these are qualities which he 
 really possesses, and he may have a better right 
 to them than I am willing to acknowledge; but 
 it is our duty, if possible, to counteract them, 
 and assist him to bring them under his control. 
 I have endeavored, in my intercourse with him, 
 to require nothing but what was, in my opinion, 
 necessary or proper, and to explain to him tem 
 perately its propriety, and at a time when he 
 could listen to my arguments and not at the 
 moment of his being vexed and his little faculties 
 warped by passion. I have also tried to show 
 him that I was firm in my demands and con- 
 
26 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 stant in their enforcement and that he must 
 comply with them, and I let him see that I look 
 to their execution in order to relieve him as 
 much as possible from the temptation to break 
 them." 
 
 Wise words from a father, and the significant 
 thing was that they represented his conduct 
 throughout his life. He was the personification of 
 reasonableness. Small wonder that his youngest 
 son, in his memoir of his father, recorded that 
 among his first impressions was the recognition of 
 a difference between his father and other persons, 
 and a knowledge that he had to be obeyed. A 
 touch in one of his letters to an old friend and 
 classmate, then Lieutenant, afterwards Lieutenant 
 General Joseph E. Johnston, gives a glimpse of 
 his love for children, and also of that of another 
 old friend: "He complains bitterly of his 
 present waste of life, looks thin and dispirited 
 and is acquainted with the cry of every child in 
 Iowa." 
 
 His son and namesake in his "Recollections" 
 of his father makes mention of many little in 
 stances of his love of and care for animals, and 
 the same love of and care for animals constantly 
 shines from his letters. 
 
 At one time he picked up a dog lost and 
 swimming wildly in "the Narrows" and cared 
 
FIRST SERVICE 27 
 
 for it through life; at another he takes a long, 
 roundabout journey by steamer for the sake of 
 his horse; at another he writes, "Cannot you 
 cure poor Spec ? SJ (his dog). "Cheer him up! 
 take him to walk with you tell the children to 
 cheer him up." In fact, his love for animals, 
 like his love for children, was a marked char 
 acteristic throughout his life, and long after the 
 war he took the trouble to write a description of 
 his horse "Traveller," which none but a true 
 lover of horses could have written. 
 
 On his return from Mexico, after an absence 
 so long that he failed to recognize his own child 
 whom he had left a babe in arms, he was, like 
 Ulysses, first recognized by his faithful dog.* 
 
 His two elder sons had both entered the mili 
 tary profession, which their father held in the 
 highest honor, and the letters he wrote them 
 illustrated not only the charming relation that 
 existed between father and sons, but the lofty 
 ideal on which he ever modeled his own life and 
 desired that they should model theirs. To his 
 oldest son, then a cadet at West Point, he writes 
 from Arlington (April 5, 1852), as he was on 
 the point of leaving for New Mexico to see that 
 his "fine old regiment" which had been "or 
 dered to that distant region" was "properly 
 
 * " Recollections and Letters of General Lee. By R. E. Lee. 
 
28 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 cared for": . . . "Your letters breathe a true 
 spirit of frankness; they have given myself and 
 your mother great pleasure. You must study 
 to be frank with the world. Frankness is the 
 child of honesty and courage. . . . Never do 
 a wrong thing to make a friend or to keep one. 
 . . . Above all, do not appear to others what 
 you are not. ... In regard to duty, let me in 
 conclusion of this hasty letter inform you that 
 nearly a hundred years ago there was a day of 
 remarkable darkness and gloom, still known as 
 the dark day a day when the light of the sun 
 was slowly extinguished, as if by an eclipse. 
 The legislature of Connecticut was in session, 
 and, as its members saw the unexpected and un 
 accountable darkness coming on, they shared the 
 general awe and terror. It was supposed by 
 many that the last day the day of judgment 
 had come. Some one in consternation of the 
 hour moved an adjournment. Then there arose 
 an old Pilgrim legislator, Davenport of Stam 
 ford, and said that if the last day had come he 
 desired to be found at his place doing his duty, 
 and therefore moved that candles be brought in 
 so that the House could proceed with its duty. 
 There was quietness in that man s mind, the 
 quietness of heavenly wisdom and inflexible will 
 ingness to obey present duty. Duty, then, is the 
 
FIRST SERVICE 29 
 
 sublimest word in our language. Do your duty 
 in all things, like the old Puritan. You cannot 
 do more; you should never wish to do less. 
 Never let me or your mother wear one gray hair 
 for lack of duty on your part/ * 
 
 * It is said that this letter as a whole was made up by a clever 
 newspaper man out of parts of different letters by Lee. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 
 
 TXT HEN the war came Lee had to face the most 
 momentous question that ever confronted 
 a soldier. The Government of the United States 
 and his own State, which was later to form a part 
 of a new National Government, were about to 
 be arrayed in arms against each other. The 
 former was preparing to invade his native State 
 to coerce by arms the seceded States. He had to 
 decide between allegiance to the general Govern 
 ment whose commission he had borne, whose 
 honors had been conferred on him, and under 
 whose flag he had won high distinction; and alle 
 giance to his native State, which had been a con 
 stituent part of that government, and which in 
 the exercise of its Constitutional right, seceded 
 from the Union on being invaded. 
 
 The John Brown Raid with its aim, the head 
 ing of a servile insurrection throughout the 
 South, backed as it was by blind enthusiasts at 
 the North, affected profoundly all thinking men 
 at the South. Had it proved successful, the 
 
 30 
 
THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 31 
 
 hdrrors of San Domingo would have been mul 
 tiplied a thousandfold and have swept over the 
 South in a deluge of blood. The South was 
 enraged by this effort to arouse a slave-insur 
 rection; but the wild sympathy expressed at 
 the North with its murderous leader gave it a 
 shock from which it never recovered. Lee had 
 no illusions respecting slavery. He saw its evils 
 with an eye as clear as Wendell Phillips . He 
 set forth his views in favor of emancipation in 
 as positive terms as Lincoln ever employed. He 
 manumitted all the slaves he owned in his own 
 right before the war, and within a week after 
 the emancipation proclamation he manumitted 
 all the negroes received by him from the Custis 
 estate, having previous to that time made his 
 arrangements to do so in conformity with the 
 provisions of Mr. Custis s will. 
 
 Most men of open minds have long passed 
 the point when we should deny to any honorable 
 man the right to make that election as his con 
 science dictated. But with most of us sympathy 
 and affection go to the man who chose the 
 weaker side. This choice Lee deliberately 
 made. Who knows what agony that accom 
 plished soldier and noble gentleman went 
 through during those long weeks, when the 
 sword was suspended and he with unblinded 
 
32 ROBERT L. LEE 
 
 vision foresaw that it must fall. To some men 
 the decision might have been made more diffi 
 cult by the prize that was suddenly held out to 
 him. But not so with Lee. The only question 
 with him was what was his duty. 
 
 The President of the United States tendered 
 to him the command of the armies of the Union 
 about to take the field. This has long been re 
 garded by those who knov as an established 
 fact; but it has become the custom of late 
 among a certain class to deny the fact on the 
 principle, perhaps, that an untruth well stuck to 
 may possibly supplant the truth. Of the fact that 
 he was offered the command of the armies of the 
 United States there is, however, abundant proof 
 outside of General Lee s own statement to Sena 
 tor Reverdy Johnson, were more proof needed. 
 The Hon. Montgomery Blair published the 
 fact as stated by his father, the Hon. Francis 
 P. Blair, that he had been sent by Mr. Lincoln to 
 Colonel Lee with the offer of the command, and 
 long afterwards the Hon. Simon Cameron, for 
 merly Secretary of War in Mr. Lincoln s cabi 
 net, in a published interview, frankly admitted 
 the fact. "It is true," he says, "that Gen. Rob 
 ert E. Lee was tendered the command of the 
 Union Army. It was the wish of Mr. Lincoln s 
 administration th; t as many as possible of the 
 
THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 33 
 
 southern officers then in the regular army should 
 remain true to the nation which had educated 
 them. Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston 
 were then the leading southern soldiers. . . . 
 In the moves and counter moves in the game of 
 war and peace then going on, Francis P. Blair, 
 Sr., was a prominent figure. The tender of the 
 command of the U. S. forces rvas made to Gen 
 eral Lee through ^iim. Mr. Blair came to me 
 expressing the opinion that General Lee could 
 be held to our cause by the offer of the chief 
 command of our forces. I authorized Mr. Blair 
 to make the offer. . . . " * 
 
 But the matter is set at rest by a letter from 
 General Lee his letter of February 25, 1868, 
 to Reverdy Johnston in which he states that 
 he had a conversation with Mr. Francis 
 Preston Blair, at his invitation, and as he un 
 derstood at the instance of President Lincoln. 
 "After listening to his remarks," he says, "I 
 declined the offer he made me to take com 
 mand of the army that was to be brought into 
 the field, stating as candidly and as courteously 
 as I could that, though opposed to Secession 
 and deprecating War, I could take no part in 
 an invasion of the Southern States. I went di 
 rectly from the interview with Mr. Blair to the 
 
 * New York Herald, cited Jones s " ?;.ee," p. 130. 
 
34 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 office of General Scott, told him of the proposi 
 tion that had been made me and my decision." * 
 Indeed, it was this offer which possibly hastened 
 his decision. 
 
 Two days later, on April 2Oth, he resigned 
 his commission in the United States Army, de 
 claring that he never wished to draw his sword 
 again save in defence of his native State. Even 
 then he "hoped that Peace might be preserved 
 and some way found to save the country from 
 the calamities of War." 
 
 So much we have from his own lips, and that is 
 proof enough for those who know his character. 
 
 This action of Lee s at the outbreak of the 
 war, in resigning from the Army of the United 
 States, and later in assuming the command, first 
 of the Virginia forces, and afterwards of the 
 Confederate forces, used, during the period of 
 passion covered by the war and the bitter years 
 which followed, to be made the basis of a criti 
 cism whose rancor bore an almost precise re 
 lation to the degree of security which had been 
 sought by the assailant during the hour of danger. 
 The men who fought the battles of the Union 
 said little upon the subject. They knew for 
 the most part the feeling which animated the 
 
 *See also Jones s " Life and Letters of Robert Edward Lee," 
 p. 128. 
 
THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 35 
 
 breasts which opposed them, and paid it the 
 tribute of unfeigned respect. The conduct of 
 Grant and of his officers at Appomattox, with 
 a single exception, was such as to reflect un 
 ending credit on them as men of honour and 
 generosity. The charge of treason was mainly 
 left to those who, having risked nothing on the 
 field of honour, were fain later, when all danger 
 was past, to achieve a reputation for patriotism 
 by the fury of their cries for revenge. To these, 
 the vultures of the race, may be added an 
 element, sincere and not well-informed, who 
 more than half wishing to avail themselves 
 of Lee s transcendent character, have found his 
 action in this crisis a stumbling-block in their 
 way. Having been reared solely upon the doc 
 trine of Federalism, and taught all their lives 
 that the officers of the Army of the Union had 
 received their education at West Point at the 
 hands of the National Government and were 
 guilty of something like treason, or, as it used to 
 be put, treachery, in giving up their commands 
 in the Union Army and bearing arms for their 
 States against the United States, they find it 
 difficult to accept the plainest facts. These are 
 the bigots of Politics. 
 
 As the statement is wholly unfounded and as 
 the matter goes to the basis of character, it is 
 
36 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 well to point these latter to the facts which dis 
 prove wholly and forever the premises on which 
 they have based their erroneous conclusion. 
 
 It is well to remember at the outset that in the 
 first place, the action of every man must be con 
 sidered in relation to the conditions from which 
 that action springs, and amid which it had its 
 being. The most fallacious method of consid 
 ering history is that which excludes contem 
 porary conditions and undertakes to judge it by 
 the present, the two eras often being far more 
 different than would be indicated by the mere 
 passage of time. 
 
 At the time when these officers received their 
 education at the Military Academy, they were 
 sent there as State cadets, and the expense of 
 their education was borne at last by the several 
 States, which, there being at that time no high 
 tariff and no internal revenue taxation to main 
 tain the National Government, made a yet more 
 direct contribution than since the war to the 
 Government for its expenses. In recognition 
 of this fact and as compensation for the contri 
 bution by the States, each Representative of a 
 State had the right to send a cadet to each 
 academy. Virginia had been peculiarly instru 
 mental in creating the Union. She had taken 
 a foremost and decisive part in the Revolution 
 
THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 37 
 
 for those rights on which the Constitution was 
 based and subsequently in the adoption of the 
 Constitution. She had led alike in the field 
 and in the Council Chamber. Without her no 
 Union would have been formed, and without 
 her no Union would have been preserved during 
 the early decades of its existence. To make the 
 Union possible she had ceded her vast north 
 west territory, first embraced in her charter, 
 and later conquered by her sons led by George 
 Rogers Clark. 
 
 There had long been two different schools of 
 governmental thought in the country, the one 
 representing the Federalist Party, and the other 
 representing the Republican or Democratic 
 Party. They had their rise in the very incep 
 tion of the National Government. Their teach 
 ings had divided the country from that time on. 
 Originally the chief agitation against the Federal 
 Government had been at the North, and while 
 the parties were not demarked by any sectional 
 lines, for the most part, the body of the Federalist 
 Party were at the period of the outbreak of war, 
 owing to certain conditions connected with the 
 institution of slavery, and to various advantages 
 accruing to the Northern States, as manufactur 
 ing States, at the North, while the body of the 
 States rights party were at the South. Not only 
 
38 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 were the powers of the greatest statesmen and 
 debaters in the country continually exercised up 
 on this question, as for example, in the great 
 debates in which Clay, Webster, Hayne, and 
 Calhoun took part on the floor of the Senate, 
 but the teachings in the great institutions of 
 learning were divided.* 
 
 But Lee had from his boyhood been reared 
 in the Southern school of States Rights as in 
 terpreted by the conservative statesmen of Vir 
 ginia. His gallant and distinguished father had 
 been governor of Virginia, and, while heartily 
 advocating in the Virginia Convention the rati 
 fication of the Constitution of the United States, 
 favored the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions 
 of 1798-99, drawn by Mr. Madison and Mr. Jef 
 ferson, which were based upon the States 
 Rights doctrine. He said in debate, "Virginia 
 is my country, her will I obey, however lament 
 able the fate to which it may subject me." 
 
 He wrote to Mr. Madison in January, 1792, a 
 letter in which he said, "No consideration on 
 earth could induce me to act a part, however 
 gratifying to me, which could be construed into 
 disregard of, or faithlessness to, this Common 
 wealth." 
 
 * A brief and simple statement of the position of the two sides 
 may be found in Ropes s "Story of The Civil War": I. Chap. i. 
 
THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 39 
 
 Such was the teaching under which Robert E. 
 Lee had been reared. One knows little of Vir 
 ginia who does not know in what passionate 
 esteem the traditions and opinions of a father 
 were cherished by a son. Political views were 
 as much inherited as religious tenets. 
 
 As a matter of fact, at the time that young Lee 
 was attending the Military Academy at West 
 Point, the text-books, such as "Rawle on the 
 Constitution," which were used there, taught 
 with great distinctness the absolute right of a 
 State to secede, and the primary duty of every 
 man to his native State.* " It depends on the 
 State itself," declares this authority then taught 
 at West Point, "to retain or abolish the prin 
 ciple of representation, because it depends on 
 itself whether it will continue a member of the 
 Union." This position was that held by the 
 leaders of New England during the first half of the 
 
 * This has been ably and conclusively shown by Mr. Charles 
 Francis Adams, of Massachusetts, in his admirable address on 
 "Constitutional Ethics," and in his memorial address on the life 
 and character of Robert E. Lee, delivered at Washington and Lee 
 University on the occasion of the Hundredth Anniversary of Gen 
 eral Lee s birth. His distinguished grandfather, John Quincy 
 Adams, who had been President of the United States, had enun 
 ciated the doctrine of Secession clearly, declaring that it would 
 be better for the States to " part in friendship from each other 
 than to be held together by constraint " and " to form again a 
 more perfect Union by dissolving that which could not bind." 
 Speech of John Quincy Adams, April 30, 1839. 
 
40 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 century, and was earnestly advanced both at the 
 time of the acquisition of Louisiana and of Texas. 
 
 The action of the Hartford Convention in 
 threatening secession had blazoned abroad the 
 views of the leaders of New England thought 
 at the time when the Virginians were straining 
 every force to maintain the Union; and John 
 Quincy Adams had presented to Congress (Jan 
 uary 23, 1842) a petition from a Massachusetts 
 town (Haverhill), asking the dissolution of the 
 Union, on which a motion had been made by a 
 Virginia member (Mr. Gilmer), to censure him, 
 which had been debated for ten days, Mr. 
 Adams ably defending himself. 
 
 Indeed, whatever question existed as to the 
 right of a State to secede, there was no ques 
 tion whatever as to her citizens being bound 
 by her action should she secede. The basic 
 principle of the Anglo-Saxon Civilization was 
 the defence of the inner circle against whatever 
 assailed it from the outside, and nowhere was 
 this principle more absolutely established than 
 in Virginia. 
 
 In a thoughtful discussion of the action of Vir 
 ginia at this time, Colonel G. F. R. Henderson, 
 the noted biographer of Stonewall Jackson, says, 
 "There can be no question but that secession 
 was Revolution, and Revolutions, as has been 
 
THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 41 
 
 well said, are not made for the sake of greased 
 cartridges. . . . Secession, in fact, was a pro 
 test against mob rule. ... It is always difficult 
 to analyse the motives of those by whom revo 
 lution is provoked; but if a whole people acqui 
 esce, it is a certain proof of the existence of 
 universal apprehension and deep-rooted discon 
 tent. This spirit of self-sacrifice which ani 
 mated the Confederate South has been char 
 acteristic of every revolution which has been 
 the expression of a nation s wrongs, but it has 
 never yet accompanied mere factious insurrec 
 tion. When, in the process of time, the history 
 of secession comes to be viewed with the same 
 freedom from prejudice as the history of the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it will be 
 clear that the fourth great revolution of the 
 English speaking race differs in no essential 
 characteristic from those that preceded it. ... 
 In each a great principle was at stake: in 1642 
 the liberty of the subject; in 1688, the integrity 
 of the Protestant faith; in 1775, taxation only 
 with consent of the taxed; in 1861, the sov 
 ereignty of the individual states." * 
 
 * Henderson s "Stonewall Jackson." New Impression. I. 
 PP- 93-4- 
 
 I have quoted extensively in this volume from this author, 
 feeling that he, as an impartial student of the Civil War and its 
 causes, is an authority to command respect. 
 
42 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 Whether, then, those who were in the service 
 of the United States at the outbreak of the war 
 were under obligation to remain in her service 
 after the States seceded, or were under obliga 
 tion to resign and espouse the side of their sev 
 eral States, was a matter for each man to decide 
 according to his conscience, and scores of gal 
 lant and high-minded gentlemen thus decided. 
 Of the three hundred and odd graduates of 
 West Point who were from the South, at least 
 nine-tenths followed their States, and these, 
 men whose character would challenge com 
 parison with the loftiest examples of the human 
 race. That there was an obligation on them to 
 remain, because of the source from which their 
 education came, is sheer nonsense. This edu 
 cation was but a simple return for the money 
 contributed by their States to the General Gov 
 ernment. And Virginia had paid for all she 
 got, a hundred times over. 
 
 When the great conflict came, the time which 
 tried men s souls, no soul in all the limits of this 
 broad country was more tried than that lofty 
 soul which had for its home the breast of Robert 
 E. Lee. A glimpse of his love for and pride in 
 his country may be found in a letter written 
 during his stay in Texas in 1856. Writing to his 
 wife of the Fourth of July, he says, "Mine was 
 
THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 43 
 
 spent after a march of thirty miles, on one of 
 the branches of the Brazos, under my blanket, 
 elevated on four sticks driven in the ground, as 
 a sunshade. The sun was fiery hot, the atmos 
 phere like a blast from a hot-air furnace, the 
 water salt, still my feelings for my country were 
 as ardent, my faith in her future as true, and my 
 hope for her advancement as unabated as they 
 would have been under better circumstances." 
 
 Such was the feeling of this Virginian for his 
 country. 
 
 Writing of secession, from Texas in the begin 
 ning of 1861, he said, "The South, in my opin 
 ion, has been aggrieved by the act of the North. 
 I feel the aggression and am willing to take 
 every proper step for redress. It is the principle 
 I contend for, not individual or private interest. 
 As an American citizen I take great pride in 
 my country, her prosperity and institutions. 
 But I can anticipate no greater calamity for this 
 country than a dissolution of the Union. It 
 would be an accumulation of all the evils we 
 complain of, and I am willing to sacrifice every 
 thing but honor for its preservation. I hope, 
 therefore, that all constitutional means will be 
 exhausted before there is a resort to force. Se 
 cession is nothing but revolution. . . . Still a 
 
 * Letter of August 4th, 1856, cited in Jones s Lee, p. 80. 
 
44 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 Union that can only be maintained by swords 
 and bayonets, and in which strife and civil war 
 are to take the place of brotherly love and 
 kindness, has no charm for me. I shall mourn 
 for my country, and for the welfare and progress 
 of mankind. If the Union is dissolved and the 
 government disrupted, I shall return to my 
 native state and share the miseries of my people, 
 and, save in defence, will draw my sword no 
 more." * 
 
 The agonizing which he endured, when the 
 crucial time came, may possibly never be known 
 to us. All night nearly he paced his chamber 
 floor alone, often seeking on his knees the 
 guidance of the God he trusted in. But in 
 the morning light had come.f His wife s fam 
 ily were strongly Union in their sentiments, and 
 the writer has heard that powerful family in 
 fluences were exerted to prevail on him to 
 adhere to the Union side. "My husband has 
 wept tears of blood," wrote Mrs. Lee to his old 
 commander, Scott, who did him the justice to 
 declare that he knew he acted under a com 
 pelling sense of duty. 
 
 His letters to his family and to his friends, 
 
 * Letter of January 23, 1861. Cited in Jones s " Life and Letters 
 of R. E. Lee," p. 120. 
 
 t Jones s "Life and Letters of Robert E. Lee," p. 132. 
 
THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 45 
 
 though self-restrained, as was the habit of the 
 man, show plainly to those who knew his char 
 acter how stern was the sense of duty under 
 which he acted when in his own person he had 
 to meet the question whether he should take 
 part against his native State. Unlike many 
 other officers who knew no home but the post 
 where they were quartered, Lee s home was in 
 Virginia, and to this home in his most distant 
 service his heart had ever yearned. 
 
 Lee had no personal interests to subserve con 
 nected with the preservation of the institution of 
 slavery; his inclinations and his views all tended 
 the other way. " In this enlightened age," he had 
 already written, "there are few, I believe, but will 
 acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a 
 moral and political evil." He had set free the 
 slaves he owned in his own right and was " in favor 
 of freeing all the slaves in the South, giving to 
 each owner a bond to be the first paid by the Con 
 federacy when its independence should be se 
 cured."* 
 
 The slaves owned by Mrs. Lee he manumitted 
 in 1862 or in January, 1863. In fact, it is acuri- 
 
 *"The Confederate Cause and Conduct in the War," p. 22; 
 Offical Report of the History Committee, Grand Camp, C. V., 
 by the late Hunter McGuire, M.D., LL.D., Richmond, Va. See 
 also Lee s letter of December 27, 1856, " Life and Letters of 
 Robert E. Lee "; Jones, p. 82. 
 
46 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 ous commentary on the motives connected with 
 the war that while Lee had set his slaves free, 
 Grant is said to have continued in the posses 
 sion of slaves until they were emancipated by the 
 Government of the United States.* 
 
 It was, however, not so much the freeing of 
 these slaves as the compassion and affection that 
 breathe in his letters about them that testify his 
 character. His care that every one should have 
 his papers even though he might have gone off to 
 the North; his provision for their wages; his 
 solicitude for the weak and feeble among them; 
 all testify to the feeling that the Virginia master 
 had for his servants. His thoughts were con 
 stantly with his children even amid the most 
 arduous duties and the most perilous scenes his 
 mind reverted to them. His letters from Mexico 
 were full of them. On Christmas eve he, in his 
 imagination, filled their stockings, as on another 
 occasion; in lieu of his own children, from whom 
 he was far distant, he acted Santa Claus and 
 bought presents for all the children in the post. 
 He ever kept in touch with his children, writing 
 them of the interesting scenes through which he 
 passed. To his eldest son, then a schoolboy, later 
 
 *Ibid., p. 23, note, where Mrs. Grant is given as authority, the 
 statement that "these slaves came to him from my father s fam 
 ily; for I lived in the West when I married the General, who was 
 then a Lieutenant in the Army." 
 
THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 47 
 
 a gallant and efficient soldier of high rank, he 
 wrote, just after the Battle of Cerro Gordo,* how, 
 in the battle, he had wondered while the musket 
 balls and grape were whistling over his head in a 
 perfect shower, where he could have put him if with 
 him, to be safe. Indeed, all through his life children 
 had a charm for him known only to the starved 
 heart of a father exiled from his own fireside and 
 little ones. To the day of his death, the entrance 
 of a child was a signal for the dignified soldier to 
 unbend, and among his latest companions in his 
 retirement, when he was, perhaps, the most noted 
 Captain in the world, were the little sunbonneted 
 daughters of the professors of the college of which 
 he was the President. 
 
 The crisis that came rent Virginia. It was 
 known that in the event of war, should Virginia 
 secede, her soil would become the battle ground. 
 Lee had no illusion as to this; nor had he any 
 illusion as to the fury and duration of the war 
 if it should come. Whatever delusions others 
 might cherish, he knew the Union thoroughly, 
 and knew the temper and the mettle of the 
 people of both sections. In the dread shadow of 
 war the people of Virginia selected for the great 
 convention, which was to decide the question of 
 remaining in the Union or taking part with the 
 
 * Letter of April 25, 1847. 
 
48 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 other Southern States, the most conservative 
 men within her borders. Thus, the Virginia 
 convention was a Whig body with a large ma 
 jority of staunch Union men, the first Whig 
 body that ever sat in the State. 
 
 Throughout its entire duration this great body 
 of representative Virginians resisted all the in 
 fluences that were brought to bear on it, both 
 from the South and from the people of the State, 
 who, under unreasoning provocation, gradually 
 changed their opinion and began to clamor for 
 secession. Only two weeks before the final act 
 by which she severed her connection with the 
 Union, she, by a two-thirds majority, rejected 
 the idea of secession. A relief squadron sailed 
 for Charleston while negotiations were going on, 
 and preparations for war were being pushed 
 which could only mean one thing. As a last 
 and supreme effort to prevent war, Union men 
 went to Washington to beg Mr. Lincoln to 
 withdraw the garrisons of Sumter and Pickens, 
 and understood him to say that he had been 
 willing to take it under favorable considera 
 tion.* The reply when it came was the im 
 perative call for troops to be furnished by the 
 States. It meant war and the invasion of the 
 
 * Report of Joint Committee on Reconstruction, ist Sess., 
 39th Cong., pp. 71, 114-115- 
 
THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 49 
 
 State. Even after Sumter was fired on, every 
 effort was made by the State to bring about a 
 reconciliation between the estranged and di 
 vided sections. But it was too late. Troops 
 were already marching on her. The State did 
 not make war. War was made on her. And 
 under the shock Virginia, on the iyth day of 
 April, solemnly reversed her former action and 
 seceded from the Union she had done so much 
 to create and so much to make great. 
 
 "To have acceded to the demand (for her 
 quota of troops to attack South Carolina) 
 would," says Henderson, "have been to abjure 
 the most cherished principles of her political 
 existence. . . . Neutrality was impossible. She 
 was bound to furnish her tale of troops and thus 
 belie her principles, or to secede at once and 
 reject with a clean conscience the President s 
 mandate. . . . The world has long since done 
 justice to the motives of Cromwell and of 
 Washington, and signs are not wanting that 
 before many years have passed it will do justice 
 to the motives of the southern people." 
 
 Speaking of Virginia s action specifically, he 
 declares, "Her best endeavors were exerted to 
 maintain the peace between the hostile sections, 
 and not till her liberties were menaced did she 
 repudiate a compact which had become intoler- 
 
50 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 able. It was to preserve the freedom which her 
 forefathers had bequeathed her, and which she 
 desired to hand down unsullied to future genera 
 tions, that she acquiesced in the revolution."* 
 
 " I can contemplate no greater calamity for 
 the country than a dissolution of the Union," 
 wrote Lee in January. In April the calamity had 
 come. Virginia had been invaded and had 
 risen to repel the invasion. The Union was 
 dissolved in so far as his State was concerned. 
 
 Her action concluded her citizens. This was 
 Lee s view, and it was the view of every man 
 who sat in her Convention, Unionist and Seces 
 sionist. Ninety-nine out of every hundred of 
 the intelligent men in what was known as Old 
 Virginia, the great section east of the Allegha- 
 nies which had largely made her history, bowed 
 to her decree and not with the less unanimity 
 that a considerable element among them were 
 grief-stricken at her decision to separate from 
 the Union which their fathers had done so 
 much to create.f 
 
 Among these was Robert E. Lee. Before him 
 
 * Henderson s "Life of Stonewall Jackson." I. pp. 101-2. 
 
 f The writer s father was a staunch Union man, and stood out 
 against secession till the last; but three days after Virginia seceded 
 he enlisted as a private in an infantry company, known as the 
 "Patrick Henry Rifles," Co. C., 3d Va. Reg t, later i5th Va. 
 Reg t, and fought through to Appomattox. 
 
THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 51 
 
 stood the example of his life-long model, Wash 
 ington, who, having fought with Braddock 
 under the English flag, when war came between 
 England and his State, threw in his lot with his 
 people. To him his thoughts recurred not only 
 at this moment of supreme decision, but years 
 afterwards in the seclusion of the little mountain- 
 town, where he spent the evening of his days as 
 the head of the academic institution which 
 Washington had endowed. 
 
 Two or three days later, on the 2Oth of April, 
 the same day on which he tendered the resigna 
 tion of his command of his regiment of cav 
 alry, he wrote to both his brother and sister, 
 informing them of the grounds of his action. 
 To his brother, with whom he had had an ear 
 nest consultation on the subject two days before, 
 he stated that he had no desire ever again to 
 draw his sword save in defence of his native 
 State. To his sister he wrote: 
 
 "With all my devotion to the Union and the 
 feeling of loyalty and duty of an American citi 
 zen, I have not been able to make up my mind 
 to raise my hand against my relatives, my 
 children, my home. I have, therefore, resigned 
 my commission in the army, and save in defence 
 of my native State, with the sincere hope that 
 my poor services may never be needed, I hope I 
 
52 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 may never be called on to draw my sword. I 
 know you will blame me; but you must think as 
 kindly of me as you can, and believe that I have 
 endeavored to do what I thought right." 
 
 All that we know is that, sacrificing place and 
 honors and emoluments; leaving his home to the 
 sack of the enemy already preparing to seize it, 
 he decided in the sight of God, under the 
 all-compelling sense of duty, and this is enough 
 for us to know. His letter to General Scott 
 tendering his resignation is full of noble dignity 
 and not without a note of noble pathos. "I 
 shall carry to the grave," he says in its conclu 
 sion, "the most grateful recollection of your 
 kind consideration, and your name and fame 
 will always be dear to me." And to his dying 
 day he always held his old commander in un- 
 diminished affection. 
 
 Yet, however clear Lee was in his view as 
 to his own duty, he left others to judge for 
 themselves. Holding that the matter was one of 
 conscience, he did not attempt to decide the 
 momentous question for others not even for his 
 own son. Nearly a month after he had resigned 
 (May 13, 1861), he wrote his wife, "Tell Custis 
 he must consult his own judgment, reason, and 
 conscience as to the course he may take. I do 
 not wish him to be guided by my wishes or ex- 
 
THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 53 
 
 ample. If I have done wrong let him do better. 
 The present is a momentous question, which 
 every man must settle for himself and upon 
 principle." 
 
 After the war, when he was, perhaps, the most 
 famous captain of the world, he from time to 
 time recurred to this action. For example, in a 
 letter to General Beauregard, written the day 
 after his entrance on his duties at Washington 
 College, he refers to it. 
 
 "I need not tell you," he says, "that true 
 patriotism sometimes requires men to act ex 
 actly contrary at one period to that which it 
 does at another and the motive which impels 
 them the desire to do right is precisely the 
 same. History is full of illustrations of this. 
 Washington himself is an example. [He was 
 ever his example.] He fought at one time 
 against the French under Braddock, in the ser 
 vice of the King of Great Britain; at another he 
 fought with the French at Yorktown, under the 
 orders of the Continental Congress, against him. 
 He has not been branded by the world with re 
 proach for this; but his course has been ap 
 plauded." 
 
 To the Committee of Congress before which 
 he was called after the war, he stated that he re 
 signed because he believed that the act of Vir- 
 
54 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 ginia in withdrawing herself from the United 
 States carried him along with it as a citizen of 
 Virginia, and that her laws and acts were bind 
 ing upon him.* 
 
 On one other occasion he stated his motives 
 in his action at this crisis. f He says, "I must 
 give you my thanks for doing me the justice 
 to believe that my conduct during the last five 
 years has been governed by my sense of duty. 
 I had no other guide, nor had I any other object 
 than the defence of those principles of American 
 Liberty upon which the Constitutions of the 
 several States were originally founded, and un 
 less they are strictly observed I fear there will 
 be an end to Republican Government in this 
 country." 
 
 While the harpies were screaming and clam 
 oring; and blind partisanry was declaiming 
 about leaving him to the "avenging pen of 
 History," his high soul dwelt in the serene air 
 of consciousness of duty performed. He said 
 to General Wade Hampton in June, 1869, "I 
 could have taken no other course save in dis 
 honor, and if it were all to be gone over again I 
 should act in precisely the same way." 
 
 * Report of Joint Com. on Reconstruction, ist Sess., 39th 
 Cong., p. 133. 
 
 t In a letter of July 9, 1866, to an old friend in Illinois, Captain 
 James May. 
 
THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 55 
 
 Thus spoke his constant soul. It was his de 
 liberate judgment on calm reflection, with all 
 the consequences known to him. As before 
 writing it he cast his mind back he must have 
 seen everything in the clear light of the inex 
 orable past the sacrifice of the chief command 
 of the Union armies, with a great fleet at his 
 back to keep open his lines of communication, 
 hold the world for his recruiting ground, and 
 blockade the enemy s country until starvation 
 forced capitulation. It had lifted Grant from 
 poverty and obscurity to the Presidency, while 
 his own choice, to follow his State and obey her 
 sacred laws, had reduced him from station and 
 affluence to poverty and toil. His beautiful 
 home had been confiscated and turned into a 
 cemetery, and its priceless treasures, endeared 
 by association with Washington, had been 
 seized and scattered. A trial for treason had 
 been threatened and the furious pack were yet 
 trying to hunt him down. Yet there was no re 
 pining no questioning. "There was quietness 
 in that man s mind." When the sky was darkened 
 he had simply lighted the candles and gone on 
 with his duty. 
 
 * Duty is the sublimest word in our language,"Y 
 he had declared long before, and by it as a pilot- 
 star he ever steered his steadfast course, abiding 
 
56 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 with calm satisfaction whatever issue God 
 decreed. 
 
 "We are conscious that we have humbly 
 tried to do our duty," he said, about a year after 
 the war; "we may, therefore, with calm satis 
 faction trust in God and leave results to him. * 
 
 In this devotion to duty and calm reliance on 
 God lay the secret of his life. The same spirit 
 animated his great lieutenant. "Duty belongs 
 to us, consequences belong to God," said Jack 
 son. The same spirit animated the men who 
 followed them. It was the teaching of the 
 Southern home, which produced the type of 
 character, the deep foundations of which were 
 devotion to duty and reliance on God. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 RESOURCES 
 
 A ND now, dealing with the fruits of character, 
 we come to the proposition, whether Lee 
 was, as some have claimed, a great captain only 
 for defensive operations, or was a great captain 
 without reservation or limitation one of the 
 great captains of history whose genius was equal 
 to every exigency of war to which human genius 
 may rise. 
 
 The question involved is of his greatness both 
 as a soldier and as a man. And to some extent 
 it reaches far beyond^he confines of the South 
 and involves the basicroaits of race and of civil 
 ization. It was nobly said by Mr. Charles 
 Francis Adams, Sr., to whom almost as much as 
 to Lincoln or Grant the final result of the war 
 was due, when, as the representative of the 
 United States in England, he was challenged on 
 an occasion with the argument that the armies of 
 the South had defeated the armies of the North, 
 and was asked what he had to say about it, 
 "That they also are my countrymen." Thus, 
 
 57 
 
58 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 Lee s genius and Lee s fame are the possession 
 of the whole country and the whole race which 
 his virtue honored. 
 
 We may ask ourselves first, what constitutes a 
 great captain ? The question takes us far into 
 the records of both War and Peace. To most 
 men the answer will come by the process of re 
 calling the few the very few whom history has 
 by universal consent placed in the first rank. 
 They are Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Freder 
 ick, and Napoleon, with Cromwell, Turenne, 
 Eugene, Gustavus, Marlborough, Washington, 
 Wellington, in a class so close to them in fame as 
 to leave in doubt the rank to which at least one 
 or two of them should be assigned. And on 
 their heels crowd a concourse of captains great 
 and victorious, yet easily distinguishable from the 
 first, if confusingly close on the others. 
 
 Napoleon reckoned, as his masters for constant 
 study, the first four and Gustavus, Turenne and 
 Eugene. 
 
 Among the modern captains stand two con 
 spicuous Americans: Washington, whose great 
 ness proved equal to every exaction and who 
 gave promise that he would have commanded 
 successfully under all conditions that might 
 have arisen; and the persistent, indomitable 
 Grant, victor of Vicksburg, Missionary Ridge 
 
RESOURCES 59 
 
 and Appomattox, not so brilliant as Marlborough 
 or Frederick, for no flashing stroke of genius like 
 Blenheim or Leuthen adorned his record, but 
 able, resourceful, constant, indomitable, like 
 Scipio or Cromwell. 
 
 What placed those few men in the first rank 
 before all others ? Not final success. For 
 though success final and absolute crowned most 
 of them, final and irrevocable defeat was the last 
 reward of others and these the greatest: Han 
 nibal and Napoleon. Such rank then was won 
 notwithstanding final defeat; and in reckoning 
 its elements, final success bears no definite part. 
 
 Studying these captains closely, what gifts do 
 we discern in all, divided as they were by cen 
 turies and by the equally vast gulf of racial dif- 
 erences ? First, Imagination the divine imagi 
 nation to conceive a great cause and the means 
 to support it. It may be to conquer the world; or 
 Rome; or Europe. I conceive that it was this 
 supreme gift that led Alexander to sleep with the 
 casket-set of the Illiads under his pillow with his 
 dagger and to declare them the best compendium 
 of the soldier s art. 
 
 Next there must be the comprehensive grasp 
 that seizes and holds firmly great campaigns in 
 their completeness together with the mastery of 
 every detail in their execution, both great and 
 
60 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 small. There must be a tireless mind in a tire 
 less body, informed with zeal; incarnate energy; 
 the mental, moral and physical courage in com 
 plete and overpowering combination to compel 
 men to obedience, instant and loyal under all 
 conditions whatsoever; to inspire them with new 
 forces and the power to carry out orders through 
 every possible chance and change. These give 
 the grand strategy. Its foundation is the combi 
 nation in a brave soldier of a rare imagination 
 and of a rarer intellect. No amount of fighting 
 power or of capacity for calling it forth in others 
 proves this endowment. In the Napoleonic 
 wars, "Ney and Blu cher," says Henderson, 
 "were probably the best fighting generals of 
 France and Prussia. But neither could be 
 trusted to conduct a campaign." * 
 
 Then there must be the supreme constancy to 
 withstand every shock of surprise or defeat with 
 out a tremor or a doubt, before which mere 
 courage becomes paltry, and constant, imminent 
 danger dwindles to a bare incident, serving only 
 to quicken the spirit and fan its last ember to a 
 consuming flame. 
 
 With these must exist an intuitive and pro 
 found knowledge of human nature and of men, 
 singly and in combination; power to divine the 
 
 * Henderson s "Stonewall Jackson," I., p. 93. 
 
RESOURCES 61 
 
 adversary s every design and to fathom his deep 
 est intention; equal to every exigency, amount 
 ing to inspiration; all culminating in the power 
 to foresee, to prepare for, divine and seize the 
 critical moment and win where others would 
 lose, or, having lost, save where others would be 
 destroyed; and equally profound and exact 
 knowledge of the art of war as practised by the 
 great masters of all ages. And finally, fusing 
 all in one complete and harmonious whole, 
 crowning this whole with the one final and abso 
 lute essential must be the God-given personal 
 endowment of genius; undefined, undefinable; 
 sometimes flaming at the very first, sometimes 
 slumbering through years to burst forth at some 
 moment of supreme crisis; sometimes hardly 
 recognized until its light is caught down the 
 long perspective of the years, but when caught 
 recognized as genius. 
 
 Without this a man may be a great captain, a 
 victorious captain; but not the greatest or among 
 the greatest. 
 
 Thus, we come to the measure of Lee s great 
 ness as a captain. 
 
 The measure of a captain s abilities must rest, 
 at last, on his achievement as gauged by his re 
 sources. 
 
 Let us see what Lee accomplished with his 
 
62 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 means; then we shall be the better able to reckon 
 the measure of his success. Let us turn aside 
 for a moment for the consideration of a few 
 figures. They are a dry and unpalatable diet, 
 but, after all, it was to the science of arithmetic 
 that the South yielded at the end. 
 
 The South began the war with a white popu 
 lation of about 5,500,000. Of these her mili 
 tary population numbered about 1,065,000.* 
 
 The North began the war with a white popu 
 lation of about 22,000,000. Of these her fight 
 ing men, whom she could call into the field, 
 numbered about 3,900,000. f 
 
 The South enlisted about 900,000. The 
 North enrolled of her fighting men about 1,700,- 
 ooo; J besides which she enlisted of foreigners 
 about 700,000, and of negroes about 186,000. 
 
 The North had an organized National Govern 
 ment with all departments State, War, Navy, 
 Treasury and Justice, perfectly organized and 
 equipped, while the South had to organize her 
 Confederated Government. The North had about 
 
 * Besides these she had a servile population of about 3,500,000, 
 of which a certain proportion were available for raising subsistence 
 for the army. 
 
 f Besides, of the negroes the North drew into her armies about 
 186,000, they being the most able-bodied of this class. 
 
 \Cf. "Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America," pp. 40 
 and 50. Colonel Thomas L. Livermore. Houghton, Mifflin 
 &Co. 
 
RESOURCES 63 
 
 $11,000,000,000 of taxable values as against 
 about $5,000,000,000 in the South, of which 
 $2,000,000,000 was represented by the slaves. 
 The North had by far the best means of trans 
 portation, a large percentage of the efficient 
 railways and the means of railway equipment. 
 
 In addition to this the North had nearly all 
 the manufactures, and possessed a superiority 
 in equipment that is incalculable. When the 
 war broke out, the South could scarcely manu 
 facture a tin-cup or a frying-pan, a railway-iron, 
 a wool-card, or a carpenter s tool. The North 
 possessed nearly the whole old Navy, the naval 
 forces, and the population from which the sea 
 men were drawn. And finally and above all, 
 the North had the ear of the world. 
 
 With this superiority she was enabled to 
 blockade the South and lock her within her own 
 confines, while the world was open to her and 
 she could await with what patience she could 
 command, the fatal result of "the policy of 
 
 attrition." 
 
 No adequate account of the value of the Navy 
 to the Union side has ever been given, or, at 
 least, has ever reached the public ear. Had the 
 Navy been on the side of the Confederacy in 
 stead of on the Union side, it is as certain that 
 the South would have made good her position 
 
64 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 as is any other fact established by reason. The 
 Navy with its 200,000 men enabled the Union 
 not only to seal up the South against all aid 
 from without, but to penetrate into the heart 
 of the Confederacy, command her interior 
 waters and form at once the base of supplies 
 for the Union Armies when advancing and their 
 protection when defeated.* 
 
 It is not meant to imply that figures give an 
 exact statement of the problem that was worked 
 out during the war; but they cast a light upon it 
 which contributes greatly to its just compre 
 hension. 
 
 In round numbers the South had on her 
 muster-rolls, from first to last, less than 900,000 
 men. And in this list the South had all she 
 could muster; for, at the last, she had enlisted 
 in her reserves all men between sixteen and sixty 
 years. In round numbers the North had 2,700,- 
 ooo, and besides, had all Europe as her recruit 
 ing field. f 
 
 *C/. Henderson s "Stonewall Jackson," I., Chap. V., p. 113. 
 " Judicious indeed," he says, " was the policy which at the very 
 outset of the war brought the tremendous pressure of the sea- 
 power to bear against the South." 
 
 f Col. Thomas S. Livermore of Boston, author of the notable 
 work, "Numbers and Losses," in a letter to the writer, says, "I 
 suppose that it would be safe to assume that eighty per cent, (of 
 the enlistments) would hold in all the Northern States. This 
 would give about 2,234,000 individuals in the army. The Record 
 
RESOURCES 65 
 
 When the war closed, the South had in the 
 field, throughout her territory, but 175,000 men 
 opposed to the armies of the North, numbering 
 980,000 men.* 
 
 and Business Bureau, in its memorandum of 1896, computed the 
 average estimates of reenlistments by different authorities at 
 
 543>393-" 
 
 The Confederate forces he estimates at " 1,239,000, the number 
 shown by the census to have been within the conscript age, less the 
 number of exempts (partly estimated and partly recorded), and an 
 estimate of the natural deaths; or at about 1,000,000 estimated pro 
 portionally to the killed and wounded in the two armies." It will be 
 seen that his first estimate above takes no account of the numbers 
 of Southerners in the mountain regions who sided with the Union. 
 
 Gen. Marcus J.Wright places the total number of the Southern 
 troops at less than 700,000. The total number within the 
 conscript age he places at 1,000,065. 
 
 Henderson, in his "Life of Stonewall Jackson," estimates them 
 at about 900,000. 
 
 I have felt that possibly this trained and impartial soldier of an 
 other nation might have arrived at a fairer estimate than any one 
 on this side the Atlantic. 
 
 For calculations of Col. Livermore and General Wright, see 
 Appendix A. 
 
 *Of 346,744 Federal soldiers examined for military service 
 after March 6, 1863, sixty-nine per cent were Americans, the rest 
 were foreigners. In the 35th Massachusetts Regiment, which, 
 says Henderson, may be taken as a typical Northern regiment, of 
 495 recruits received during 1864, 400 were German immigrants. 
 Henderson s "Life of Stonewall Jackson," ist Ed., I., p. 466. 
 
 The South, or rather those orators who stood as the econo 
 mists of the South, had supposed that her cotton and tobacco were 
 so necessary to the rest of the world that the European nations 
 would take her part, out of plain consideration for their own wel 
 fare. It was a great error. The value of the cotton crop exported 
 in 1860 was $202,741,351. In 1861, it was $42,000,000. In 
 1862, it was $4,000,000. After that it was next to nothing. 
 
66 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 Towards the close of the war the South was 
 well nigh stripped naked, and for what was left 
 she had no means of transportation. She had 
 no nitre for her powder; no brass for her per 
 cussion caps; the very kettles and stills from the 
 plantations had been used; and when it was nec 
 essary to repair one railroad as a line for trans 
 portation, to meet the emergency the best rails 
 were taken up from another road less important. 
 
 The commissariat and the quartermaster s de 
 partment were bad enough. Study of the 
 matter will, however, convince any one that 
 at the very last it was rather owing to the des 
 perate condition of the lines of transportation 
 than to mere inefficiency of the commissariat 
 and the quartermaster s department, to which 
 it has been so often charged, that Lee failed to 
 carry out his final plan of effecting a junction 
 with Johnston.* 
 
 In fact, from the first, a considerable propor 
 tion of the equipment of the Southern armies 
 and all of their best equipment had been cap 
 tured by them on the field of battle. So regu 
 lar had been their application to this source of 
 supply that, says Henderson in his "Life of 
 
 * I can remember my surprise as a boy at seeing wagons 
 hauling straw from my home to Petersburg, sixty-odd miles, 
 through roads the like of which, I trust in Grace, do not now exist 
 in the United States. 
 
RESOURCES 67 
 
 Stonewall Jackson/ 5 "the dishonesty of the 
 Northern contractors was a constant source of 
 complaint among the soldiers of the Army of 
 Northern Virginia/ 
 
 An English soldier and critic, Colonel Lawler, 
 writing in Blackwood s Magazine, has declared 
 his doubt whether any general of modern history 
 could have sustained for four years a longer 
 time nowadays than Hannibal s fifteen years 
 in Italy in times past a war in which, possessed 
 of scanty resources himself, he had against him 
 so enormous an aggregate of men, horses, ships 
 and supplies; it is an under, rather than an over 
 estimate to state that during the first two years, 
 the odds all told were ten to one, during the last 
 two years, twenty to one, against the Confed 
 erates.* 
 
 Truly, then, said General Lee to General 
 Early, in the winter of 1865-6, "It will be diffi 
 cult to get the world to understand the odds 
 against which we fought." 
 
 It is known by some in the South, the surviv 
 ors of those armies who tracked the frozen roads 
 of Virginia with bleeding feet; whose breakfast 
 was often nothing but water from a road-side 
 well and whose dinner nothing but a tightened 
 belt. Some knew it who knew the war-swept 
 
 *Jones s "Lee," p. 75. 
 
68 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 South in their boyhood, where the threat was 
 that a crow flying over it should have to carry 
 his rations, and the fact was more terrible than 
 the prophecy. 
 
 But it is well for the race to make the world 
 know it. 
 
 In the foregoing computation it is true enough 
 to say that we have not reckoned all the resources 
 of the South. She had Lee and she had Jack 
 son; she had the men who followed them and 
 the women who sustained those men. " Lee and 
 Jackson," says Henderson, in his "Life of 
 Stonewall Jackson," "were worth 200,000 men 
 to any armies they commanded." Quoting 
 Moltke s saying that the junction of two armies 
 on the field of battle is the highest achievement 
 of military genius, he says in comment: "Tried 
 by this test alone, Lee stands out as one of the 
 greatest soldiers of all time. Not only against 
 Pope, but against McClellan at Gaines s Mill, 
 against Burnside at Fredericksburg and against 
 Hooker at Chancellorsville, he succeeded in carry 
 ing out the operations of which Moltke speaks." 
 But this is not all. No reckoning of the oppos 
 ing forces can be made without taking into ac 
 count the men who followed Lee and Jackson, 
 and the women who stayed at home and sustained 
 them. No people ever gave more promptly to 
 
RESOURCES 69 
 
 their country s cause than did the old American 
 element of the North, or would have been 
 readier had occasion arisen to suffer on their 
 country s behalf. But it is no disparagement 
 of them to state the simple fact that the war did 
 not reach them as a people as it reached the 
 people of the South. Where a class gave at the 
 North, the whole population of the South gave; 
 whereas a fraction suffered at the North, the en 
 tire population of the South suffered. The rich 
 grew to be as the poor, and, together with the 
 poor, learned to know actual hunger. The deli 
 cately nurtured came to be hewers of wood 
 and drawers of water. War in its most brutal 
 and terrible form came to be known all over 
 the land; known in disease without medicines; 
 in life without the common necessaries of life; 
 in ravaged districts; bombarded and blackened 
 towns; burnt homesteads, terrorized and starv 
 ing women and children. This the South came 
 to know throughout a large extent of her terri 
 tory. Yet, through it all, her people bore 
 themselves with a constancy that must ever be 
 a monument to them, and that even in the breast 
 of those who were children in that stirring period 
 must ever keep alive the hallowed memory of 
 her undying resolution. 
 
 "All honor and praise to the fair Southern 
 
;o ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 women!" declared a Richmond paper in the 
 closing days of 1862. "May the future his 
 torian when he comes to write of this war fail 
 not to award them their due share of praise." 
 No history of this war could be written without 
 such due award. It is not too much to say that 
 as brave and constant as were the intrepid 
 soldiery that, with steadily wasting ranks, fol 
 lowed Lee from Seven Pines to Appomattox, 
 even more brave and constant were the women 
 who stayed at home. Gentle and simple, they 
 gave their husbands, their brothers and their 
 sons to the cause of the South, sorrowing chiefly 
 that they themselves were too feeble to stand at 
 their side. Hungering in body and heart they 
 bore with more than a soldier s courage, more 
 than a soldier s hardship, and to the last, un 
 daunted and dauntless, gave them a new courage 
 as with tear-dimmed eyes they sustained them 
 in the darkest hours of their despondency and 
 defeat. 
 
 Such were among the elements which even in 
 the South s darkest hour Lee had at his back. 
 From such elements Lee himself had sprung 
 and in his character he was their supreme ex 
 pression. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 LEE IN WEST VIRGINIA 
 
 A ND now, bearing clearly in mind what his 
 resources were, we may approach the ques 
 tion intelligently : whether Lee was, as charged by 
 some, great only in defence and when on interior 
 lines and behind breast-works, or was really the 
 greatest soldier of his time, and, perhaps, of the 
 English-speaking race. 
 
 Immediately on his resignation from the 
 Army of the United States, Lee was tendered 
 by the Governor of Virginia the command of 
 the forces of the State which was in the throes 
 of preparation to repel the invasion of her ter 
 ritory, and on the 23d of April he received at 
 the hands of the President of the State Con 
 vention the commission of Major-General of the 
 Virginia forces. The President of the Conven 
 tion, the Hon. John Janney, in a brief speech, 
 recalling the example of Washington, an 
 nounced to him the fact that the Convention 
 had by a unanimous vote, expressed their con 
 viction that among living Virginians he was 
 
 71 
 
72 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 "first in war"; that they prayed he might so 
 conduct the operations committed to his charge 
 that it should soon be said of him that he was 
 "first in peace," and that when that time came, 
 he should have earned the still prouder dis 
 tinction of being "first in the hearts of his 
 countrymen." He further recalled to him that 
 Washington in his will had given his swords 
 to his favorite nephews with an injunction that 
 they should never be drawn from their scab 
 bards except in self-defence or in defence of 
 the rights and liberties of their country. 
 
 He said inclosing, "Yesterday your mother 
 Virginia placed her sword in your hand, upon 
 the implied condition that we know you will 
 keep to the letter and in spirit, that you will 
 draw it only in defense and that you will fall 
 with it in your hand rather than the object for 
 which it was placed there should fail." 
 
 To this Lee replied in the following simple 
 words: "Mr. President and gentlemen of the 
 Convention: Profoundly impressed with the 
 solemnity of the occasion, for which I must say 
 I was not prepared, I accept the position as 
 signed me by your partiality. I would have 
 much preferred that your choice had fallen 
 upon an abler man. Trusting in Almighty God, 
 an approving conscience and the aid of my 
 
LEE IN WEST VIRGINIA 73 
 
 fellow-citizens, I devote myself to the service of 
 my native State, in whose behalf alone will I 
 ever again draw my sword." 
 
 Thus, passing into the service of his native 
 State in the dire hour of her need, Lee was ap 
 pointed a Major-General of Virginia s forces to 
 resist the invasion of Virginia s soil, and it was 
 not until war was flagrant throughout the land, 
 and Virginia had been actually invaded that he 
 became an officer of the Confederate States. 
 
 His first service was to put Virginia in a pos 
 ture of defence. That he promptly effected this 
 was shown on the plain of Manassas on July 
 2 1 st. He was the third in rank of the Major- 
 Generals appointed by Mr. Davis, and to this 
 fact was due his assignment to Western Virginia. 
 
 Indeed, it is stated that so far was General 
 Lee from being influenced by any considerations 
 of a selfish nature that when Virginia joined the 
 Southern Confederacy and left him without 
 rank, he seriously contemplated enlisting in the 
 company of cavalry commanded by his son.* 
 
 The game, as it appears now to all and as it 
 appeared then to those who had to shoulder the 
 responsibility of playing it, was, on the one side, 
 the sealing up of the South within its own bor 
 ders; the suppression of the power of the Border 
 
 * Jones s " Life and Letters of Robert E. Lee." 
 
74 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 States, such as Maryland, Kentucky and Mis 
 souri, to join the South, and the cutting in two 
 of the section already seceded; on the other, it 
 was the simple maintenance of the status quo of 
 the seceded section; the power to exercise the 
 right of secession in the Border States; and the 
 resistance of invasion. There was no claim on 
 the part of the South to the right of invasion and 
 no thought of invasion of the North until the ex 
 actions of war made it necessary as a counter- 
 stroke. Even after the victory of Manassas the 
 Confederate Government held back the eager 
 Jackson and sustained the prudent Johnston. 
 Such being the game it was played on both sides 
 with clear vision and impressive determination. 
 And no one saw more clearly than Lee the mag 
 nitude of the impending struggle. 
 
 Of Lee s far-sightedness we have signal proof 
 in his letters. While others discussed the war 
 as a matter of days and occasion for a summer 
 holiday, he, with wider knowledge and clearer 
 prevision, reckoned its duration at full four 
 years, and possibly at even ten. It is said that 
 one of the few speeches he ever made was that 
 in which, responding to urgent calls from a 
 crowd assembled at a railway station to see him, 
 he, in a few grave sentences, bade them go 
 home and prepare for a long and terrible war. 
 
LEE IN WEST VIRGINIA 75 
 
 "We must make up our minds," he wrote in 
 February of 1862, "to meet with reverses and 
 to overcome them. But the contest must be 
 long and the whole country has to go through 
 much suffering." * 
 
 His views on the matter of the Trent were as 
 sound as though he had been trained in di 
 plomacy all his life. "I think/ he writes, "the 
 United States Government, notwithstanding this 
 moral and political commitment at Wilkes act, 
 if it finds that England is earnest, and that it 
 will have to fight or retract, will retract. We 
 must make up our minds to fight our battles 
 ourselves, expect to receive aid from no one, 
 and make every necessary sacrifice of money, 
 comfort and labor to bring the war to a success 
 ful close. The cry is too much for help. I am 
 mortified to hear it. We want no aid. We 
 want to be true to ourselves, to be prudent, 
 just and bold." f 
 
 The first steps taken at the North were to 
 blockade the Southern ports from the Chesa 
 peake to the Rio Grande with the efficient navy 
 of the Union; to seize the Mississippi and to 
 overawe the Border States. 
 
 * Letters to Mrs. Lee, dated April 30, 1861, and February 8, 
 1862. Jones s "Lee," p. 150. 
 t Letter to his son, Gen. G. W. C. Lee, December 29, 1861. 
 
76 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 The western portion of Virginia, traversed by 
 the great Appalachian Range stretching in a 
 vast barrier across the State, and penetrated only 
 by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, had, partly 
 by reason of the origin and character of the 
 population, partly by reason of their direct asso 
 ciation with the North and West, but mainly 
 owing to the absence of slaves among them, been 
 unaffected by the causes which created the 
 friction between the North and South. Here in 
 this mountainous and substantially non-slave- 
 holding region, bordering on the States of Ohio 
 and Pennsylvania, and mainly trading by way 
 of the Ohio River and the Baltimore and Ohio 
 Railroad with the North and West, the popula 
 tion was almost as strongly Union in sentiment 
 as that of the States with which they marched, 
 and, finally, when the conflict came, the major 
 portion of the population sided with the North 
 and stood for the Union. And here McClellan, 
 outmatching the commands and the commanders 
 opposed to him, soon showed substantial success 
 for the Union side. 
 
 The importance of securing this great sec 
 tion of the leading Southern State was mani 
 fest to both sides, and from the first troops 
 were thrown into the State by both sides to con 
 trol and hold it. General Garnett had been 
 
LEE IN WEST VIRGINIA 77 
 
 early dispatched with a command to protect 
 the western border, and awe into submission the 
 wavering and the disaffected. The course of 
 events, however, had made the eastern rather 
 than the western border of this section the seat 
 of operations, with Harper s Ferry and Win 
 chester as the key to the situation, and when 
 Harper s Ferry, soon after the first outbreak 
 of war, fell into the hands of the Federal 
 troops, McClellan had seized the passes that 
 commanded the western region and fortified 
 them strongly. The gallant Garnett had fallen 
 soon after the evacuation of Harper s Ferry, 
 and Rosecrans, who had succeeded to the 
 command of the troops dispatched to hold 
 Western Virginia on McClellan s being trans 
 ferred to Washington, was now leading an in 
 vading force up the Kanawha, while Reynolds 
 was posted on the Cheat River to guard the chief 
 avenue of communication between the East and 
 the West. 
 
 The Confederate forces in this mountainous 
 region were divided into several detachments, 
 two of them on the Kanawha under command, 
 respectively, of Generals Floyd and Wise, and two 
 others farther eastward under Generals Loring 
 and H.R.Jackson, among whom the spirit of co 
 operation left much to be desired. Owing part- 
 
78 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 ly to the hostility of the population and partly 
 to the lack of harmony among the commanding 
 officers, the cause of the South steadily waned in 
 this trans-Alleghany region, and in July, after 
 Johnston had been offered the command in this 
 territory and had declined the billet, General Lee 
 was sent out to Western Virginia to take com 
 mand of the somewhat disorganized forces in that 
 hostile region. His reputation, gained among 
 the mountains of Mexico, was doubtless one of 
 the motives which ruled when he was assigned to 
 duty among the mountains of Western Virginia; 
 but even his abilities were not equal to con 
 quering the conditions which he found prevailing 
 there. Old soldiers with whom I have discussed 
 the causes of the result of this campaign have 
 never given wholly satisfactory reasons for it, 
 but have felt assured that all that could have 
 been accomplished Lee accomplished. They 
 have felt that in the first place the dissensions 
 of the officers previously in command had 
 tended to demoralize the troops; then, that the 
 sickness among the troops unaccustomed to the 
 exposure or prostrated by an epidemic of typhoid 
 fever, measles, and other diseases, impaired 
 their efficiency, and finally, that the unlooked-for 
 hostility of the population at large, in a region 
 where it was difficult, at best, to maintain lines 
 
LEE IN WEST VIRGINIA 79 
 
 of communication, now in a season unprecedent- 
 ly wet, which rendered the roads impassable, 
 combined with lack of means of transportation 
 to frustrate the plans of even as capable a com 
 mander as Lee. 
 
 Lee s report makes mention of the difficulty of 
 maintaining his lines of communication owing 
 to the exhausted condition of his horses and the 
 impossibility of obtaining supplies; so it may 
 be assumed that this was in his view the chief 
 reason for the failure of the campaign. 
 
 The first object of Lee s offensive operations 
 was the destruction of Reynolds, posted on Cheat 
 Mountain. The movement, however, proved 
 a failure because the frontal attack, which 
 was to be the signal for the assault intended 
 to be made by the body of troops sent by night 
 across the mountains to attack Reynolds posi 
 tion in the rear, was not made as ordered by Lee, 
 and the flanking force, having had their am 
 munition damaged and their provisions destroyed 
 by a furious storm which raged all night, miss 
 ing the concerted signal, returned across the 
 mountains without making the expected assault. 
 If any one else was to blame for this failure to 
 carry out Lee s well-conceived plan, the com 
 mander, with the magnanimity characteristic of 
 him, simply passed it by as he later did similar 
 
8o ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 failures on the part of his subordinates, assum 
 ing himself whatever blame attached to the 
 failure. 
 
 The second opportunity which apparently of 
 fered itself and was allowed by Lee to pass 
 fruitlessly by, was when Rosecrans army, 
 which lay before him at Sewell s Mountain was 
 allowed to slip away unmolested. Lee gave as 
 his reason for his apparent non-action, that he 
 was confident of defeating Rosecrans by a flank 
 ing movement which he had planned for the 
 following night and that he "could not afford 
 to sacrifice five or six hundred of his people to 
 silence public clamor." 
 
 The "public clamor" over Lee s failure was 
 bitter and persistent, but he remained unruffled 
 by it. With characteristic calm he simply stated 
 that it was "only natural that such hasty conclu 
 sions should be reached," and gave his opinion 
 that it was "better not to attempt a justification 
 or defence but to go steadily on in the discharge 
 of our duty to the best of our ability, leaving all 
 else to the calmer judgment of the future and to 
 a kind Providence." 
 
 Happily for the South, Mr. Davis knew Lee 
 better than those who were so clamorous against 
 him, and the autumn having closed the cam 
 paign in Western Virginia, Lee was dispatched 
 
LEE IN WEST VIRGINIA 81 
 
 to the South to design and construct a general 
 system of coast-defences along the Atlantic sea 
 board, a duty in which he displayed such genius 
 that he rendered the coast cities of Georgia and 
 South Carolina impregnable against all assaults 
 by sea, and, protected by his chain of forts, they 
 stood as memorials of his genius until Sherman 
 with his victorious army attacked them by land. 
 His letters give a clear picture of the difficulties 
 of protecting these seaport towns against a navy 
 without some sort of navy to oppose it. 
 
 This duty performed, Lee, in the shadow of 
 the vast preparations making at Washington, 
 for a great invasion of Virginia, was called back 
 to Richmond to advise the President of the Con 
 federacy, and the need was urgent, for Mc- 
 Clellan, with Johnston falling back slowly before 
 him, was marching steadily up the Peninsula, 
 with an army the like of which had never been 
 commanded by one man. 
 
 The first campaign in which Lee engaged, like 
 Washington s first campaign, was thus conducted 
 with adverse fortune. Had Washington s mili 
 tary career closed after the retreat from Long 
 Island, he would have been reckoned simply a 
 brave man and a stark fighter, but one unequal 
 to general command. Had Lee s career ended 
 after the campaign in Western Virginia, when he 
 
82 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 was derisively characterized in the anti-adminis 
 tration press of Richmond, as "Evacuating 
 Lee," he would have been known in history only 
 as a fine organizer, a capital scout, and a bril 
 liant engineer of unusual gallantry, whose abili 
 ties as a commander were not superior to those 
 of the mediocre officer who opposed him in that 
 experimental campaign, and were possibly equal 
 only to the command of a brigade, or at best, 
 of a division. But the South and Fame awaited 
 his opportunity. 
 
 As soon as Lee was brought back from the 
 South, and was again appointed military adviser 
 to the President, he revolutionized the plan of 
 campaign hitherto followed. His clear vision 
 saw the imperative necessity of substituting an 
 aggressive for a defensive policy, and he un 
 leashed the eager Jackson on the armies in the 
 Valley of Virginia, keeping them fully occupied 
 and so alarming Washington as to hold McDow 
 ell on the north side of the Rappahannock. 
 Within a month after he was placed in com 
 mand he perfected his plans and fell upon 
 McClellan and defeated the greatest army that 
 had ever stood on American soil. The next 
 three years proved beyond cavil that in the first 
 campaign, as always, all that could have been 
 done with his forces by any one, was done by 
 
LEE IN WEST VIRGINIA 83 
 
 Lee. Within one year, indeed, he had laid the 
 foundation of a fame, as a great captain, as en 
 during as Marlborough s or Wellington s. 
 
 Three years from this time "this colonel of 
 cavalry" surrendered a muster-roll of 26,000 
 men; of which barely 8,000 muskets showed up, 
 to an army of over 130,000 men, commanded by 
 the most determined and able general that the 
 North had found, and, defeated, sheathed his 
 sword with what will undoubtedly become the 
 reputation of the greatest captain and the no 
 blest character of his time. 
 
 In this period he had fought three of the great 
 est campaigns in all the history of war and de 
 stroyed the reputation of more generals than 
 any captain had ever done in the same space of 
 time. His last campaign alone, even ending as 
 it did in defeat, would have sufficed to fix him 
 forever as a star of the first magnitude in the 
 constellation of great captains. Though he suc 
 cumbed at last to the "policy of attrition" pur 
 sued by his patient and able antagonist, it was 
 not until Grant had lost in the campaign over 
 124,000 men, two men for every one that Lee 
 had in his army from the beginning of the 
 campaign. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE SITUATION WHEN LEE TOOK COMMAND 
 
 VITHEN McClellan moved on Richmond, the 
 fortunes of the South appeared to be at 
 a lower ebb than they ever were again until the 
 winter of 1864. 
 
 The general plan for prosecution of the war 
 on the part of the North was the same that had 
 been laid down at the beginning: that is, to hold 
 the Border States; to blockade the Southern ports 
 and attack by sea; and to seize the navigable 
 rivers running far up into her territory, espe 
 cially the Mississippi, and thereby cut the South 
 in two. By the end of spring, 1862, nearly the 
 whole of this far-reaching and sagacious plan 
 had been measurably accomplished. Mary 
 land, Missouri and Kentucky had been held 
 firmly, and in all three States, except Missouri, 
 Secession had been forcibly prevented, while Mis 
 souri had been substantially conquered. 
 
 The very next day, after the rout at Bull Run, 
 Mr. Lincoln, awakening to the gravity of the 
 situation, had called for 500,000 men, and the 
 
 84 " 
 
WHEN LEE TOOK COMMAND 85 
 
 North had responded with fervor. Between the 
 4th of August and the loth of October more 
 than no regiments and 30 battalions, com 
 prising at least 112,000 men, were added to the 
 forces in Washington and its neighborhood.* 
 The ablest organizer in the army had been called 
 to the task of organization, and proved to have a 
 genius for it. All autumn and winter he labored 
 at the work and when spring came Washington 
 had been strongly fortified, and McClellan found 
 himself at the head of possibly the largest, best 
 equipped and best drilled army ever commanded 
 by one man in modern times. 
 
 The spring of 1862 had been spent by the 
 Government of the United States in preparation 
 for a campaign which should retrieve the errors 
 and disasters of the preceding year and, by 
 making certain the capture of Richmond, " the 
 heart of the Confederacy," should end the war 
 by one great and decisive stroke. It was well 
 said that without McClellan there had been no 
 Grant. 
 
 Several plans for attacking Richmond pre 
 sented themselves, all of which included the 
 idea of cutting off the city from communica 
 tion with the Southwest. One was by way of 
 the Shenandoah Valley, striking the Virginia 
 
 * Ropes s " Story of the Civil War," I, p. 167. 
 
86 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 Central Railroad at Staunton or Waynesboro; 
 and marching on Richmond by way of Char- 
 lottesville, whence a railway line ran to South 
 west Virginia and Tennessee; one by way of 
 Manassas; one by the Chesapeake Bay and the 
 lower Rappahannock; and finally one by way 
 of the Chesapeake Bay and the peninsula lying 
 between the York and the James, which pre 
 sented the opportunity under certain contin 
 gencies of seizing Petersburg and isolating 
 Richmond from the South. 
 
 The practicability of all of these plans of in 
 vasion had to be considered quite as carefully 
 in Richmond as in Washington, and the possi 
 bility of each one of them being adopted had to 
 be provided against. As the junction at Ma 
 nassas had proved to be the key to the situation 
 in the first effort, and its use had enabled the 
 Valley forces to be brought across the Blue 
 Ridge in the nick of time for the final move 
 ment in the battle there, so it still remained the 
 most important point in Central Virginia, and 
 Johnston s army was placed there to guard it 
 and at the same time keep Washington in a 
 state of anxiety. The Washington authorities 
 were in favor of trying their fortune against this 
 point. McClellan, however, favored the route 
 by the Rappahannock. McClellan s first plan 
 
WHEN LEE TOOK COMMAND 87 
 
 was to march to Annapolis and then transport 
 his army, 140,000 men, to Urbana, on the south 
 bank of the Rappahannock and "occupy Rich 
 mond before it could be strongly reinforced." * 
 
 This plan he was forbidden to adopt, though 
 he considered it the best of all the plans, and he 
 thereupon selected the route by way of Fortress 
 Monroe and the Peninsula, against the views 
 of the Government authorities, who greatly de 
 sired him to adopt the overland route by 
 Manassas across which Johnston lay with an 
 army then believed to number over 100,000 men; 
 but really containing certainly less than half 
 that number. f 
 
 Illness during the autumn and early winter 
 of 1 86 1 prevented McClellan s acting with the 
 efficiency which he might otherwise have shown; 
 but even more disastrous than this was his de 
 termination not to move until he had an army 
 sufficiently great and properly organized to make 
 his success assured. For this reason mainly he 
 resisted alike the importunities of the President 
 and the Secretary of War and the clamor of the 
 public until on toward the spring; by which time 
 he had sacrificed the good will of the former and 
 the confidence of both. 
 
 * John C. Ropes s "Story of the Civil War," I, p. 266, citing 
 McClellan s letter to Stanton. 5 W. R., 45. f Ibid. 
 
88 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 Jackson settled the question of the Shenan- 
 doah Valley plan by the battle of Winchester 
 and his brilliant retreat between two converging 
 
 o o 
 
 armies down the Valley, followed by the victory 
 of Port Republic. The authorities in Washing 
 ton decided against the Lower Rappahannock 
 plan and gave McClellan his choice between the 
 overland route by way of Manassas, and the 
 Fortress Monroe plan, and he states that "of 
 course he selected the latter," adding a jibe at 
 the fears of the administration and a suggestion 
 of their disloyalty to him.* 
 
 This decision was reached by him in the first 
 week in March, and on the Qth of March John 
 ston, under orders from Mr. Davis, withdrew his 
 army from Manassas and fell back to the Rap 
 pahannock and thence toward Richmond, im 
 mediately on which McClellan occupied Manas 
 sas with the greater part of his army,f to give 
 them training and with a view to opening the 
 railway from Manassas, where Banks s head 
 quarters were to be, to Strasburg in the Shenan- 
 doah Valley. About the middle of March 
 McClellan began to ship his troops to Fortress 
 Monroe, a movement which proceeded rapidly, 
 and Johnston, thereupon, " his movements con- 
 
 * "McClellan s Own Story," p. 227. 
 
 f Ropes s "Story of the Civil War," I, p. 255. 
 
WHEN LEE TOOK COMMAND 89 
 
 trolled by McClellan," marched to the Penin 
 sula, where Magruder with only some 13,000 
 men at Yorktown had handled them so ably 
 that McClellan was led to believe his force 
 much larger than it was. Unwilling to leave 
 such a force on his flank McClellan had sat 
 down to besiege Yorktown and was held there 
 until the beginning of May (3d), when, on the 
 eve of his assault, Magruder marched out and 
 fell back on Williamsburg, where a sharp fight 
 occurred, resulting in a victory for the Federal 
 General, though the Confederate Army was 
 withdrawn intact. 
 
 The possession of a fleet gave to the Union 
 forces the command of the Chesapeake, of the 
 Potomac, of the York and (after the sinking of 
 the -M err i mac by her commander) of the James 
 to within a day s march of Richmond. 
 
 In January Thomas had won the battle of Mill 
 Springs in Kentucky, which made the Union 
 forces dominant in that region. In February 
 (6th) Fort Henry, on the Tennessee, had been 
 captured, and four days later (the loth) Fort 
 Donelson, on the Cumberland, had surren 
 dered unconditionally to a general hitherto al 
 most unknown, to whom the Government had 
 been inclined to turn the cold shoulder, but who 
 was to become better known thereafter. By 
 
9 o ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 these victories the upper Mississippi, the Cum 
 berland and the Tennessee came into the control 
 of the Federal forces, and all that was needed was 
 to obtain mastery of the lower Mississippi to 
 leave the Confederacy rent in twain. The forts 
 at Hatteras Inlet had been reduced in August 
 (28th). Hilton Head and Beaufort, in North 
 Carolina had been captured, following Admiral 
 DuPont s reduction of the forts on Port Royal 
 Inlet; and Roanoke Island and Newberne, 
 N. C, had been captured in the first half of 
 March, 1862. On April 6th, Albert Sydney 
 Johnston, deemed up till now the South s most 
 brilliant soldier, had substantially won a battle 
 against the captor of Forts Henry and Donel- 
 son, but had been shot in the hour of victory, 
 and that night, Buell having reached the 
 field with fresh troops, the Confederate forces 
 had been in turn defeated. It is probable that 
 but for the fall of Johnston, who bled to death 
 through neglecting his wound in his eagerness 
 to push his victory on the 6th, Grant s fort 
 unate star might have set at Shiloh instead of 
 rising higher and higher in the next three 
 years to reach its zenith at Appomattox. As 
 it was, the upper Mississippi, with its great 
 tributaries, was in complete control of the 
 Union, arid on April 24th Flag Officer Farra- 
 
WHEN LEE TOOK COMMAND 91 
 
 gut, himself a Tennessean, with a powerful 
 fleet, ran up the Mississippi, successfully passing 
 the forts (Jackson and St. Philip) guarding its 
 mouth, and reached New Orleans, which city 
 was soon occupied by Butler (May ist), its fall 
 being quickly followed by the fall of Pensacola. 
 By this time all the important Florida seaport 
 towns were in the possession of the Federal 
 forces, and all these captures, except Roanoke 
 Island and Newberne had been effected by the 
 navy.* Thus, the Mississippi was open from its 
 mouth to Port Hudson, and even that fort and 
 the yet more threatening forts at Vicksburg could 
 be passed by the Federal gunboats, though not 
 without danger, which it was important to put 
 an end to. The main object of attack now was 
 Richmond. 
 
 Thus, as the spring closed the Confederate 
 Capital was menaced by an army which had 
 cleared the Peninsula of its adversaries and was 
 believed to be capable of taking Richmond 
 whenever its general saw fit to deliver his assault. 
 Feeling sure of it, McClellan approached leisure 
 ly up the north bank of the Chickahominy and 
 entrenched his army in the positions he secured 
 from time to time, until he was within sight of 
 the spires of Richmond, and on quiet nights his 
 
 * Ropes s " Story of the Civil War," pp. 182-5. 
 
92 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 pickets could hear the sound of the city s bells 
 pealing the hours. McDowell, with 40,000 men, 
 was on the Rappahannock, not seventy miles 
 away, and was under stringent orders to effect 
 a junction with McClellan, who, to get in touch 
 with him and protect his base at West Point 
 on the York, had reached out on the north 
 side of the Chickahominy as far as Hanover 
 Court House and the North Anna. Two armies, 
 one under Banks in the Valley of Virginia, and 
 the other under Fremont to the westward, were 
 keeping Stonewall Jackson so fully engaged 
 that he was making marches which gained for 
 his infantry the appellation of "foot-cavalry," 
 and to hold his own, he was forced to win two 
 battles in one day. Johnston had, in face of 
 McClellan s steady advance, fallen back on 
 Richmond, and finding McClellan s army di 
 vided by the swollen Chickahominy had, on 
 May 3 ist, attacked his left under Keyes at 
 Seven Pines and driven him back to Fair Oaks, 
 possibly missing a complete victory only by 
 reason of Longstreet s slowness; then having 
 been severely wounded he had been forced to 
 leave the field, and next day a renewal of the 
 attack under General G. W. Smith had resulted 
 in a repulse. And in this crisis Lee was placed 
 in command. 
 
WHEN LEE TOOK COMMAND 93 
 
 The situation at Richmond, when in succes 
 sion to Johnston Lee was appointed in command 
 of the army there on the ist day of June, was 
 substantially this. The Confederate troops ly 
 ing between Richmond and McClellan s army 
 numbered about 70,000 men. A steady retreat 
 up the Peninsula had tended to impair their 
 spirit if not their morale. The single check 
 given to McClellan at Williamsburg had re 
 sulted in nothing more practical than to allow 
 time for the retirement on Richmond, and to 
 teach McClellan a wholesome lesson of respect 
 for his enemy. The attack at Seven Pines, on 
 the afternoon of May 3ist, had been so gallantly 
 pressed that it had resulted in a victory, but not 
 the complete victory that had been expected; for 
 owing to Longstreet s slowness and possibly to 
 his half-heartedness, which on the 3ist led him 
 to wait until the afternoon before making the 
 assault planned for the morning and thereby 
 allowed Sumner to cross the falling Chicka- 
 hominy and save Keyes, and on the next day 
 led him to attack Sumner with only three bri 
 gades instead of his full force, the victory of the 
 3 ist had been followed by the repulse at Fair 
 Oaks next day, when General G. W. Smith 
 commanded. In the same way, a few weeks 
 later, as Henderson points out, he became 
 
94 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 responsible for the frontal battle of Malvern 
 Hill. 
 
 The capture of Norfolk, followed by the com 
 mand of the Peninsula, had opened the James 
 River as high up as Dairy s Bluff only a few 
 miles below Richmond and had given Mc- 
 Clellan command of the river to that point, 
 thus opening to him two bases of supply on the 
 York and jthe James respectively, accessible by 
 water. 
 
 The fortunes of the Confederacy in the West 
 and along the seaboard, as we have seen, were 
 at this time at a low ebb, and McClellan 
 now was apparently sure of the capture of 
 the Confederate Capital. Should it fall, Vir 
 ginia was likely to be overrun by the forces of 
 the Union, and the principal seat of war would 
 be the South or the West. McClellan s army 
 numbered about 110,000 men, now well organ 
 ized and fairly seasoned; his equipment was as 
 good as the world could furnish, and he believed 
 himself, and he was believed to be, a young Na 
 poleon. McDowell s army composed of 40,000 
 men, until a portion of it was sent to protect 
 Washington, was at Fredericksburg, only sixty 
 miles away, clamorous to join him, and under 
 orders to do so, while already in the Shenan- 
 doah Valley, or ready to march thither, was 
 
WHEN LEE TOOK COMMAND 95 
 
 Fremont with 20,000 men, all operating to unite 
 and fall on Richmond. 
 
 Such, in brief, was the situation when Lee 
 assumed command on June 1st, 1862. His pres 
 tige at this time was far from being what it soon 
 afterward became, or even what it had been 
 previous to the outbreak of the war. His ability 
 as an engineer was recognized; but the proof 
 of a general is victories, and that proof he had 
 not given. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 
 
 T EE, thus called from the titular position of 
 Military Adviser to the President* to the 
 command of the army defending Richmond, to 
 take the place of Johnston, found himself in 
 command of about 80,000 men, 70,000 being 
 close by, while McClellan had not less than 
 1 10,000. From that moment the army felt a new 
 hand and acknowledged its master. His first 
 act was one which should dispel the delusion 
 that he was great only in defensive operations. 
 Massing his troops suddenly on the north 
 side of the Chickahominy and calling Stonewall 
 Jackson from the Valley to meet him at a given 
 point at a given hour, he fell upon McClellan s en 
 trenchments and rolled him back to the upland 
 plain of Malvern Hill. Was it on the defensive 
 or the offensive that he acted when he conceived 
 and carried through to supreme success those 
 masterly tactics ? Was he acting on the defen 
 sive or offensive when again, dashing upon him 
 
 * June i, 1862. 
 
 96 
 
BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 97 
 
 on the entrenched uplands of Malvern Hill, he 
 swept him back to his gunboats, and shattered 
 at once his plans and his prestige ? It was a 
 battle fought as Grant fought at second Cold 
 Harbor, mainly by frontal attack; and, like the 
 plan of second Cold Harbor, has been criticised 
 as costing needless waste of life. But, unlike 
 Grant s futile and costly assaults, Malvern Hill, 
 however bloody it was, proved successful. That 
 night McClellan retreated to the shelter of his 
 gunboats. Lee s audacious tactics saved Rich 
 mond. It was not until nearly three years had 
 passed, and until hundreds of thousands of lives 
 had been spent, and the seed-corn of the Confed 
 erate South had been ground in the ever-grind 
 ing mills of war, that a Union picket ever again 
 got a glimpse of the spires of Richmond or any 
 Union soldier, other than a prisoner of war, 
 heard her church bells pealing in the quiet night. 
 It had long been plain to Lee s clear vision that 
 the best defence of Virginia s Capital was an 
 offensive movement which should menace the 
 Federal Capital, and as early as April 2Qth he 
 had suggested to Stonewall Jackson, then operat 
 ing in the Valley of Virginia, a threatening 
 counter-move, to prevent, if possible, McDowell 
 from crossing the Rappahannock. Two weeks 
 before the battle of Seven Pines he had again 
 
98 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 prompted Jackson to move on Banks, and, if 
 successful, drive him back toward the Potomac 
 and create the impression that he intended to 
 threaten that line, a movement in which Jackson 
 was completely successful. Thus, Lee had, 
 with the aid of his able Lieutenant, stopped the 
 armies of Fremont and McDowell from any 
 attempt to reinforce McClellan, and was ready 
 when the moment came to carry out his far- 
 reaching plan to defeat and possibly destroy 
 by one swift blow McClellan s great army now 
 lying at the gates of Richmond and holding both 
 sides of the Chickahominy. 
 
 It is no part of the plan of this book to discuss 
 in detail Lee s consummate tactics; but a bare 
 outline of his far-seeing plan is necessary. 
 
 Johnston had attacked on the south side of 
 the Chickahominy and failed to dislodge Mc 
 Clellan. What would Lee do ? His first act 
 was to retire his army to the original position 
 held before the assault at Seven Pines and fortify 
 on the south bank of the Chickahominy, to secure 
 that side of the river while he prepared for his 
 coup on the north bank against McClellan s 
 right wing, commanded by the gallant Fitz John 
 Porter. Thus, he had as his first move with 
 drawn his army even nearer Richmond than 
 before. But he had no idea of remaining 
 
BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 99 
 
 there idle while McClellan prepared to dis 
 lodge him. To secure accurate information 
 he dispatched Stuart with a small force (about 
 1, 200 cavalry and a battery of horse artil 
 lery)* to investigate around his right flank, and 
 the dashing cavalry leader swept entirely around 
 McClellan s army in a ride that gave him fame 
 the world over and placed him forever among 
 the great cavalry captains of History.f Next, 
 Jackson was instructed to strike a blow in the 
 Valley which should startle Washington, and, 
 while they were still dazed, to hasten and join 
 Lee on the Chickahominy, and with his veter 
 ans act as Lee s left wing in a blow on McClel 
 lan s right, which should drive him from before 
 Richmond. To make sure of this as well as to 
 lull McClellan to a sense of security, several 
 brigades were sent somewhat ostentatiously to 
 Jackson; but time appeared so important that 
 Jackson was summoned to join him without 
 waiting for a stroke in the Valley, and putting 
 his troops in motion the General rode ahead to 
 Richmond to learn the details of Lee s plans 
 and then rode back to hurry forward his troops, 
 already pushing on by forced marches toward 
 the field where, by Lee s brilliant plan, the as- 
 
 * Walter H. Taylor s " General Lee," p. 58. 
 f Henderson s " Stonewall Jackson." 
 
ioo ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 sault was to be delivered at dawn on the 26th 
 by his combined forces.* 
 
 With Jackson up, Lee s army numbered about 
 80,000 men.f His plan briefly was for Jackson, 
 with his veterans, to advance at crack of day 
 on June 26th, with Stuart on his left, and turn 
 the long right wing of McClellan s army, under 
 Porter, posted at Mechanicsville, in a strong 
 position, commanding the turnpike across the 
 Chickahominy, with Beaver Dam Creek and its 
 upland behind it; for Branch s Brigade, facing 
 Porter, to keep in touch with Jackson and on his 
 advance to cross the Chickahominy and rejoin 
 his commander A. P. Hill; for A. P. Hill, as 
 soon as he knew Jackson was engaged, to cross 
 the Chickahominy at the Meadow Bridge and 
 force the crossing of the Chickahominy at the 
 Mechanicsville Bridge; for Longstreet to cross 
 to the support of A. P. Hill and for D. H. Hill 
 to cross to the support of Jackson; meanwhile 
 Magruder and Huger were to hold the defences 
 on the south side of the Chickahominy and 
 keep McClellan s main army well occupied. 
 
 Lee s plan was the consummation of audac 
 ity, for it would leave only 25,000 men to con 
 front and hold McClellan s left wing and centre 
 
 * Walter H. Taylor s "General Lee," p. 60. 
 t Ibid., p. 62. 
 
BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 101 
 
 on the south bank of the Chickahominy, while 
 he assaulted his right wing on the north bank 
 with his main army. The time fixed for the 
 assault was based on Jackson s conviction that 
 he could be up and ready to attack at daylight 
 on the 26th of June. But for once in his life 
 Jackson was not "up." He was to have been 
 at the Slash Church near Ashland on the 25th, 
 and was to bivouac near the Central Railway 
 (now the Chesapeake and Ohio), ready to 
 march at three o clock on the morning .of the 
 26th on the road to Pole Green Church to 
 deliver the assault which was to be the signal to 
 A. P. Hill to cross the Chickahominy. But it 
 was not until late that afternoon that he was 
 able to reach the neighbourhood of the field of 
 battle, where the fight had been raging for sev 
 eral hours, and even then he did not attack, but 
 halted and lay with the roar of the guns to his 
 right distinctly audible. 
 
 A. P. Hill having waited all day for news 
 of Jackson, finally, fearful that the whole 
 plan might miscarry, moved at three o clock, 
 crossed the Chickahominy at Meadow Bridge 
 and carried the stoutly defended position 
 of Mechanicsville, several miles below, and 
 pushing forward, assaulted furiously, but in 
 vain, the strongly defended position beyond 
 
102 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 Beaver Dam Creek. That night, McClellan 
 retired his left wing to his second line above 
 Powhite Creek, Gaines s Mill and Cold Har 
 bor. And here Lee attacked him again, and, 
 after terrific fighting, defeated him in the furi 
 ous battle of Gaines s Mill and Cold Harbor, 
 seizing his position; capturing his line of com 
 munication to West Point, and driving him 
 across the Chickahominy, forced him to aban 
 don his threatening position on its south side 
 and fall back across White Oak Swamp to Mal- 
 vern Hill some miles to the rear. It was a bril 
 liant stroke for Lee to have massed 50,000 men 
 on the north bank of the Chickahominy and 
 crushed McClellan s right wing, while he held 
 the rest of his army with only 25,000 men, and 
 had Jackson attacked on the morning of the 
 26th, as planned, or possibly even on the morn 
 ing of the 27th, the victory might have been yet 
 more decisive.* But it was necessary to do 
 more to drive McClellan back from before 
 Richmond. 
 
 On the 28th Lee held his army in hand, 
 watchful to see which way McClellan, after his 
 staggering blow, would move, whether by the 
 way he had come, up the Peninsula, or toward 
 the James, and as soon as it became apparent 
 
 * Taylor s " General Lee," pp. 68-78. 
 
BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 103 
 
 what he would do, ordered his troops to the 
 south side of the Chickahominy and proceeded 
 to attack again at Savage Station on the 2Qth, 
 and at White Oak Swamp and Frazier s Farm 
 on the 30th, carrying every position except one, 
 which was held with heroic constancy until 
 night-fall and then abandoned. The failure of 
 some of his lieutenants to grasp the situation 
 prevented the complete success of his plans, 
 and McClellan got safely across White Oak 
 Swamp. On July ist Lee found McClellan en 
 trenched in a formidable position on the up 
 lands of Malvern Hill, and again flung himself 
 upon him with immense loss to his own army, 
 but with the result of forcing him to abandon 
 his position and retreat precipitately by night to 
 the shelter of his gunboats at Harrison s Land 
 ing. 
 
 Thus, Lee had, with less than 80,000 men, 
 by his audacious tactics and masterly handling 
 of his troops, defeated McClellan with more 
 than 105,000 men, and driven him from posi 
 tion after position, relieving Richmond from 
 what had appeared imminent danger of im 
 mediate capture. 
 
 Military critics have often wondered why 
 Jackson, who both before and after the seven 
 days fighting around Richmond, proved him- 
 
104 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 self the most eager, prompt and aggressive lieu 
 tenant that any commander had during the 
 war, should apparently have been so slow in the 
 execution of the plan entrusted to him in this 
 critical movement. Old soldiers, who followed 
 and adored him, still discuss the mysterious 
 failure, and admit that "Old Jack" was "not 
 himself" at this crisis. 
 
 An explanation has been given that he mis 
 took the road leading toward the field of Cold 
 Harbor, and missed his way. 
 
 The writer, as a resident of that region, 
 familiar with the country and with the dis 
 cussion of the facts, ventures to suggest a 
 simple explanation. As is known, Jackson, 
 after a brilliant but arduous campaign in 
 the Shenandoah Valley, moved his troops 
 from the Valley of Virginia along the line 
 of the Virginia Central Railway, marching 
 some and conveying some on the few railway 
 trains he could procure, and when the latter 
 were far enough ahead of those who were 
 marching, he detrained them and set them to 
 marching, sending the trains back to bring up 
 the others and take them on ahead some dis 
 tance, when they were in turn detrained and 
 sent forward. 
 
 The distance from the Valley to the Chicka- 
 
BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 105 
 
 hominy being about 130 miles, the bringing 
 forward of his troops, even with the indifferent 
 assistance of his trains, occupied several days: 
 and the General himself, with a staff officer or 
 two, at a point some sixty odd miles west of 
 Richmond, left the train and rode to Richmond 
 to consult with Lee as to details, and, as I be 
 lieve, to familiarize himself somewhat with the 
 roads, which through Hanover are very confus 
 ing. It is of record that he then thought he 
 could be up and ready to co-operate with Hill 
 on the 25th, but General Longstreet claims 
 that he urged that this was impossible and 
 that if not the 27th, at the earliest the 26th 
 should be set for the attack, which was agreed 
 to. At Beaver Dam Station, on the Rail 
 way forty miles from Richmond, the last troops 
 were taken from the train, and, together with 
 those who had been marching the day be 
 fore, took the road for Richmond by way of 
 Honeyman s Bridge over the Little River, and 
 then, owing to high water in the South Anna, 
 instead of taking the shorter route by Ground- 
 squirrel Bridge they marched byway of Ashland. 
 From Little River to the field of Cold Harbor, 
 the roads are deep with sand, water is scant, 
 and in the blazing days of late June the prog 
 ress of the troops was much slower than had 
 
106 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 been reckoned on, and the move took nearly a 
 day longer than had been counted on. Mean 
 while, Jackson, who had left his train and ridden 
 sixty odd miles to Richmond to confer with 
 Lee, rode straight back to bring his men for 
 ward, met them at a point more than fifty miles 
 from Richmond, and returned with them. 
 Thus, when he reached the slashes of Hanover, 
 he had been in the saddle almost continuously 
 for several days and nights, and was completely 
 broken down.* 
 
 Members of a troop of cavalry, known as the 
 Hanover troop, (Company C, 4th Virginia 
 Cavalry) who came from that region, were 
 detailed to act as guides for the troops, and 
 the man detailed to guide Jackson, f on reaching 
 the neighborhood of the battlefield, found so 
 many new roads cut by McClellan s troops, 
 and so many familiar landmarks gone, that 
 he became confused, and led the column some 
 distance on the wrong road before discover 
 ing his error. It then became necessary to re 
 trace their way; but marching the other troops 
 back and turning around the artillery in the 
 
 * I remember as a boy seeing Jackson s columns passing down 
 the road near my home in Hanover, some fifteen miles above 
 Ashland, and every hour or so the men were made to lie down full 
 length on the ground to rest. 
 
 f Lincoln Sydnor. 
 
BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 107 
 
 narrow road, bordered by forest and thickets, 
 much time was lost. Ewell, who was pres 
 ent, threatened to hang the guide; but Jack 
 son intervened, and bade him guide them 
 back.* 
 
 However it was, Lee relieved Richmond, and 
 the war, from being based on the issue of a 
 single campaign, was now a matter of years 
 and treasure. 
 
 The results of the battles around Richmond 
 were summed up by Lee as follows: 
 
 In his General Order (No. 75, dated July 
 7, 1862), tendering his "warmest thanks and 
 congratulations to the army by whose valor such 
 splendid results were achieved," he says, "On 
 Monday, June 26th, the powerful and thor 
 oughly equipped army of the enemy was in 
 trenched in works vast in extent and most 
 formidable in character, within sight of our 
 capital. 
 
 "To-day the remains of that confident and 
 threatening host lie upon the banks of the 
 
 * The fact of Jackson s complete prostration is mentioned in a 
 letter written at the time by his aide de camp, the gallant Lt. Col. 
 Alexander S. Pendleton, killed later at Fisher s Hill. The other 
 circumstances I had stated to me in a letter from A. R. Ellerson, 
 Esquire, a member of the Hanover troop, whose home was near 
 Mechanicsville, and who was with Sydnor at Jackson s head 
 quarters and was sent with dispatches from General Lee. See 
 Appendix B. 
 
io8 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 James River, thirty miles from Richmond, 
 seeking to recover, under the protection of his 
 gunboats, from the effects of a series of disas 
 trous defeats. 
 
 "The immediate fruits of your success are 
 the relief of Richmond from a state of siege, 
 the routing of the great army that so long 
 menaced its safety, many thousand prisoners 
 including officers of high rank, the capture or 
 destruction of stores to the value of millions, 
 and the acquisition of thousands of arms and 
 fifty-one pieces of superior artillery." 
 
 He concludes, after a tribute to the "gallant 
 dead who died nobly in defence of their coun 
 try s freedom," "Soldiers, your country will 
 thank you for the heroic conduct you have dis 
 played conduct worthy of men engaged in a 
 cause so just and sacred, and deserving a na 
 tion s gratitude and praise." 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 LEE RELIEVES RICHMOND 
 
 T1JAVING assumed the offensive and won 
 " signal success, Lee was not a general to lose 
 the fruit of his victory, and be forced back into a 
 defensive position the perils of which he well 
 knew. McClellan was routed and driven back 
 to the shelter of his gunboats; but he was still 
 within little more than a day s march of Rich 
 mond with an army which, though demoralized, 
 was, in its position, still formidable. And he 
 could at any time cross to the South bank of 
 the James and attack Richmond from that side, 
 and threaten the cutting off of communication 
 with the South by the chief line of communica 
 tion, the Richmond and Danville Railway, a 
 move he urgently recommended, but as to which 
 he was overruled by Halleck and the authorities 
 in Washington.* McDowell, too, a gallant soldier 
 and gentleman, was still at Fredericksburg and 
 hungry for a chance to atone for his disaster at 
 Bull Run, and Pope, with another army greater 
 
 * Ropes, II, p. 238. 
 
 109 
 
i io ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 than Lee could send against him, was advancing 
 across the Piedmont, dating his letters from 
 "Headquarters in the saddle/ and boasting that 
 he never saw anything but the backs of his ene 
 mies.* If he should seize the Virginia Central 
 Railroad he would destroy an important avenue 
 with the southwest, and the one avenue of com 
 munication with the Valley of Virginia. If he 
 should unite with McClellan the South would be 
 lost. The situation was not a whit less critical 
 than it had been on the ist of June, when Mc 
 Clellan was advancing by approaches to shell 
 Richmond. 
 
 But Lee was of all men the man to meet the 
 situation. It might well be said of him as Conde 
 and Turenne said of Merci, that he never lost a 
 favorable moment, or failed to anticipate their 
 most secret designs, as if he had assisted in their 
 councils. 
 
 Let those who rank General Lee among the 
 defensive captains say whether he acted on the 
 defensive or offensive when, leaving only some 
 twenty thousand men to guard Richmond, with 
 McClellan still at Harrison s Landing, hurry 
 ing troops now to the South side of the James, 
 now to Malvern Hill, he, with rare audacity, 
 
 *Pope gave his force as 43,000. Taylor s "General Lee," 
 p. 86. 
 
LEE RELIEVES RICHMOND in 
 
 turned on Pope advancing across the Pied 
 mont, and sent Jackson to strike him beyond 
 the Rapidan, and then, after the first stroke at 
 Cedar Mountain, sweeping around in a great 
 half-circle through Thoroughfare Gap, struck 
 him at Groveton a staggering blow, and facing 
 him on the rolling plain of Manassas, routed 
 and drove him back to the shelter of the forts 
 around Alexandria, and with his army, ill-clad 
 and ill-shod, so threatened the national capital 
 that McClellan was hastily recalled from the 
 James to its defence. 
 
 The manner of it was this: 
 
 After a rest of about ten days, spent in watching 
 McClellan, who from time to time was moving 
 troops up to Malvern Hill, or across the James, 
 Lee addressed his attention to Pope, sending 
 Jackson with his veterans, his old division of four 
 brigades and E well s division of three brigades, to 
 Gordonsville, and supporting him with A. P. 
 Hill s division a little later, while with the remain 
 der of his depleted army he covered Richmond. 
 The effect of this bold movement was what he 
 anticipated. On the gth of August, Jackson at 
 tacked and defeated his old opponent, Banks s 
 corps at Cedar Run, and then withdrew toward 
 Gordonsville to avoid the attack by Pope s entire 
 army until Lee should be ready to reinforce 
 
ii2 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 him. On the I4th of August, McClellan received 
 orders from Washington to withdraw his army from 
 the Peninsula for the protection of the National 
 Capital. On the I3th day of August, Lee having 
 matured his plans and feeling secure as to Rich 
 mond, ordered Longstreet with Hood to Gordons- 
 ville, sending thither also Stuart and R. H. 
 Anderson, and on the iQth issued his order for 
 attack on the 2Oth. He had thus massed quickly 
 some 54,000 men ready for his stroke, leaving 
 only two brigades for the defence of Richmond. 
 But President Davis wrote him, "Confidence 
 in you overcomes the view which would other 
 wise be taken.* In the interval, however, Pope, 
 who occupied the line of the Rapidan, hav 
 ing captured Stuart s Adjutant General f with a 
 letter on his person from General Lee to General 
 Stuart, setting forth his plans and making mani 
 fest to Pope his position and force and his deter 
 mination to overwhelm the army under Pope be 
 fore it could be reinforced by the Army of the Po 
 tomac, withdrew hastily behind the Rappahannock, 
 which accident Stuart offset partially a few days 
 later when, in a night attack at Catlett s station, 
 he captured Pope s headquarters and effects, in- 
 
 * Ropes s "Story of the Civil War," II, p. 254. Col. Wm. 
 Allen, p. 199, n. 18 W. R., 928, 945. 
 t Major Fitzhugh. Pope s report. 
 
LEE RELIEVES RICHMOND 113 
 
 eluding his dispatch-book, containing impor 
 tant information throwing light on the strength, 
 movements and designs of the enemy and dis 
 closing General Pope s own views against his 
 ability to defend the line of the Rappahannock.* 
 This "fortunate accident" of the capture of 
 Lee s letter containing his plans saved Pope for 
 the time being, and he hastily withdrew behind 
 the Rappahannock, thereby preventing the 
 cutting off of his army from his base of supplies 
 as Lee had planned. "This retreat," says Ropes 
 in his history of the campaign, "was made not 
 a day too soon. Pope s army had been, in truth, 
 in an extremely dangerous position. . . . All 
 this is very plain, but apparently it was not seen 
 by General Pope until the capture of one of the 
 officers of Stuart s staff put him in possession of 
 Lee s orders to his army." f "Lee was greatly 
 disappointed at Pope s escape," continues this 
 able critic,{ and he proceeds to show how, had 
 Pope not retreated precipitately, he "would 
 have been attacked in flank and rear and his 
 communications severed into the bargain." 
 "Doubtless," he adds, "he would have made a 
 strenuous fight, but defeat under such circum- 
 
 * General Stuart s report, cited in Taylor s " General Lee." 
 t Ropes s "Story of the Civil War," pp. 256-257. 
 t Lee to Jackson, July 23, 1862, W. R., 916. 
 
ii4 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 stances might well have been ruin. From this 
 disaster Fortune saved Pope through the capt 
 ure of Stuart s staff officer." * 
 
 Even thus, Lee determined to attack Pope 
 beyond the Rappahannock, and Jackson was 
 sent up the stream to cross beyond him at Sul 
 phur Springs and turn his right. A great rain, 
 however, raised the river suddenly after he had 
 sent a brigade or two across, leaving them iso 
 lated and preventing their relief for several 
 days. This rain, in Ropes s opinion saved Pope, 
 who was now strictly on the defensive and was 
 being encouraged by Halleck to "fight like the 
 devil." f 
 
 It was after five days spent in trying to reach 
 Pope s right beyond the swollen Rappahannock, 
 that Lee put in operation his famous flank 
 movement, by which, holding Pope s front with 
 half his force, he despatched Jackson with a 
 part of Stuart s cavalry to circle quite around 
 Pope s right and crossing the Bull Run Moun 
 tains at Thoroughfare Gap, strike his line of 
 communication in his rear. Considering that 
 Pope had under him, on the Rappahannock, an 
 army which, making allowance for all losses, 
 "numbered upward of 70,000, when Lee under- 
 
 * Ropes s, II, pp. 257-258. 
 
 f Ropes s, II, pp. 259-260, 16. W. R., 
 
LEE RELIEVES RICHMOND 115 
 
 took this novel and perilous operation," one 
 may well agree with Ropes that "the dis 
 parity between this force and that of Jack 
 son is so enormous that it is impossible not to 
 be amazed at the audacity of the Confederate 
 General." * 
 
 Lee, however, was now assured of the with 
 drawal of McClellan s army as a consequence of 
 his audacious strategy in threatening Washing 
 ton, and having massed his forces in the Piedmont 
 with a view to attacking Pope in his position 
 along the Rappahannock, he proceeded to carry 
 out his plans, however "novel and perilous," 
 undisturbed by any forebodings. Sending Jack 
 son up the now swollen stream to find a 
 crossing-place well beyond Pope s right, and 
 Longstreet after him to demonstrate in Pope s 
 front and follow Jackson at the proper time, he 
 awaited confidently the result of his audacious 
 plan. Starting from Jefferson and crossing the 
 river at a point four miles above Waterloo, on 
 the morning of August 25th, Jackson marched 
 twenty-five miles a day, bivouacked at Salem, 
 and pushing forward with "his accustomed 
 vigor and celerity," crossed the Bull Run 
 Mountains at Thoroughfare Gap and about 
 nightfall, on the 26th, while Pope thought he 
 
 * Ropes s, II, pp. 261-262. Allen, 212-213. 
 
ii6 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 was headed for the Valley of the Shenandoah,* 
 struck the railway at Bristow Station between 
 Pope and the city he was supposed to be cover 
 ing. At Gainesville, on the day after he started, 
 he was joined by Stuart with two brigades of cav 
 alry, flushed with the recent victory of Kelly s 
 Ford. He despatched Stuart that night to capture 
 Manassas Junction with its vast stores for 
 Pope s army, which was successfully accom 
 plished, and next morning, leaving Ewell to 
 guard Bristow Station, he proceeded to Ma 
 nassas, where he was joined later by Ewell, 
 who had been forced back from Bristow Station 
 after a sharp fight, and who brought the informa 
 tion that Pope had turned on him with his full 
 force. That morning Pope had issued orders to 
 abandon the line of the Rappahannock.f This 
 was on the night of the 2yth, and the morning 
 of the 28th. 
 
 That same night Pope issued orders for his 
 entire army to concentrate at or near Manassas 
 Junction and a manifesto that he would "bag 
 the whole crowd." Jackson, therefore, moved 
 to the westward of the turnpike and took a po 
 sition near Groveton, where he could await 
 Longstreet s arrival by way of Thoroughfare 
 
 * 18, W. R., 653, 665. 
 
 f 16, W. R., 34, 70. Ropes s, II, p. 266. 
 
LEE RELIEVES RICHMOND 117 
 
 Gap, or himself retire through the Gap should 
 necessity arise. 
 
 On the afternoon of the 28th, Jackson, lying 
 near Groveton, almost surrounded by Pope s 
 army, learned that a large force was moving 
 down the turnpike toward Centreville, where 
 Pope had finally determined to concentrate. 
 This was King s division of McDowell s com 
 mand. He immediately sprang upon them, and 
 the result was one of the most obstinately con 
 tested of the minor fields of the war.* That 
 night the Federals withdrew and next day it was 
 known that Pope "had taken a position to 
 cover Washington against Jackson s advance." 
 Jackson posted himself in a defensive position 
 partially protected by the line of an unfinished 
 railway extending northeastwardly from the 
 Warrenton Turnpike, and awaited Longstreet, 
 (with whom was Lee himself), who, having been 
 relieved by R. H. Anderson, had crossed the 
 river at Hinson s Mill, the same point where 
 Jackson had crossed several days before, and 
 was pushing forward for Thoroughfare Gap, 
 which he reached on the afternoon of the 28th 
 and, finding it in possession of the enemy, was 
 forced to carry by assault. As Longstreet s com- 
 
 * Allen, 231, Henderson s "Stonewall Jackson," II, 179, 235. 
 Ropes s, II, 272. 
 
n8 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 mand emerged from the gap next morning (2Qth) 
 the sound of the guns toward Manassas told that 
 the battle was on. Pushing forward by Gaines 
 ville, Longstreet moved to Jackson s right, where 
 Sigel was striving to hold Jackson in check until 
 Pope could concentrate his full force to destroy 
 him. Other corps were soon put in and for 
 hours the battle raged "with incessant fury and 
 varying success, but Jackson stubbornly held 
 his ground, though the fighting was often hand 
 to hand and the bayonet was in constant requi 
 sition." * In all this fighting Longstreet took 
 little part, though Lee himself three times ex 
 pressed his wish that he should attack and thus 
 relieve the hard-pressed Jackson. As General 
 Lee did not positively order him in, he deter 
 mined to wait and attack next day should a 
 weak place be found in the enemy s lines, and 
 he left Jackson and Hill to hold their position 
 alone except for the aid afforded them by a recon 
 naissance in force by three gallant brigades 
 Hood s and Evans s with Wilcox in support. The 
 command of Fitz John Porter numbering some 
 10,000 men, lay near Gainesville, deployed to 
 engage any force in their front and Longstreet 
 thought the enemy was marching on him from 
 the rear and failed to press in to Jackson s aid. 
 
 * Taylor s " General Lee," p. 106. 
 
LEE RELIEVES RICHMOND 119 
 
 Thus Porter fully performed his task.* Fort 
 unately for Lee, he knew that Pope thought he 
 was in a perilous position and was anxious only 
 to escape, and he disposed his troops to take 
 advantage of this erroneous view, which he did 
 completely. Pope, who claimed to have won 
 the battle of the evening before, was obsessed 
 with the idea that Jackson was in full retreat 
 and he massed his army to destroy or "bag" 
 him, giving McDowell the "general charge of 
 the pursuit." It was afternoon of the following 
 day (the 3Oth) before Pope s gallant lines ad 
 vanced to the attack along the Warrenton Pike, 
 with Porter leading against Jackson s front in 
 such force that Jackson called on Lee for rein 
 forcements. Lee immediately ordered General 
 Longstreet in. The fighting was from this time 
 furious. Line after line came on under the 
 leaden sleet with a courage which aroused the 
 admiration of their antagonists and called for 
 the utmost exertion to repel them. But mortal 
 flesh could not stand against the deadly rain of 
 shot and shell poured down on the brigades 
 "piling up against Jackson s right, centre and 
 left" f and they melted away in the fiery fur 
 nace. "Their repeated efforts to rally were," as 
 
 * Ropes s, II, 281. 
 
 t See Report: Taylor s " General Lee," pp. 112-113. 
 
izo ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 Lee reported, "unavailing, and Jackson s troops, 
 being thus relieved from the pressure of over 
 whelming numbers, began to press steadily for 
 ward, driving the enemy before them." As they 
 retreated in confusion, "Longstreet anticipat 
 ing the order for a general advance, now threw 
 his whole command against the Federal centre 
 and left, and the whole line swept steadily on, 
 driving the enemy with great carnage from each 
 successive position." 
 
 Thus by Lee s "novel and perilous move 
 ment, "carried out to complete success, was won 
 the great battle of Second Manassas, which 
 completed the campaign by which he relieved 
 Richmond. 
 
 During the night Pope withdrew to the north 
 side of Bull Run and occupied a strong position 
 on the heights about Centreville. But by this 
 time the hunter had become the hunted. Lee, 
 driving for the fruits of his dearly won victory, 
 ordered Jackson to push forward around Pope s 
 right, while Longstreet engaged him in front, 
 and Pope, now thoroughly demoralized, retired 
 first on Fairfax Court House and after a sharp 
 engagement with Jackson at Chantilly, to the 
 secure shelter of the formidable forts at Alex 
 andria. Thus, Lee, with 50,000 men had routed 
 and drawn Pope from his menacing position 
 
LEE RELIEVES RICHMOND 121 
 
 with 62,000, or as Ropes states 70,000 men, as gal 
 lant as any soldiers in the world, captured more 
 than 9,000 prisoners; thirty pieces of artillery, 
 upward of 20,000 stand of small arms, numerous 
 colors, and a large amount of stores.* 
 
 It was a proof of Pope s utter demoralization 
 that he telegraphed that unless something were 
 " done to restore the tone of his army, it would 
 melt away," and that he attacked, as the cause 
 of his disaster, the gallant Fitz John Porter, 
 with a vehemence which might better have been 
 employed on the field of Manassas, and placed 
 on this fine soldier and honorable gentleman 
 a stigma which it took a generation to extirpate. 
 
 Such was the fruit of Lee s bold generalship, 
 and he was now to give a yet further proof of his 
 audacity and skill. 
 
 * Lee s report cited in Taylor s " General Lee," p. 117. The 
 Federal losses were 1,738 killed, and 10,135 wounded. Con 
 federate losses, 1,090 killed, and 6,154 wounded. Pope had over 
 70,000 men. See Ropes s, cited ante. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 LEE S AUDACITY ANTIETAM AND 
 CHANCELLORSVILLE 
 
 EE S move against Pope was not merely the 
 boldest, and possibly the most masterly piece 
 of strategy in the whole war; it was, as has been 
 well said, "one of the most brilliant and daring 
 movements in the history of wars." But he did 
 not pause to enjoy his victory. His army was 
 well-nigh shoeless, and the South was unable to 
 help him. Need became the handmaid of strat 
 egy. He was nearer to Washington than to 
 Richmond. Maryland lay the other side of 
 Pope s army. He would place that army and 
 the other armies also between him and Rich 
 mond. He determined to march around Pope s 
 army and invade Maryland to subsist his army 
 and relieve Virginia, and to give Maryland the 
 power to join the Southern Confederacy, which 
 it was believed she longed to do. Again circling 
 around to the westward, he dispatched Jackson 
 to capture Harper s Ferry and pushed on into 
 Maryland. It had been hoped that Maryland 
 
LEE S AUDACITY 123 
 
 would rise and declare for the South. Mary 
 land did not respond. This, however, was not 
 the cause of his failure. That he did not reap 
 the full fruits of this wonderful generalship was 
 due to one of those strange events, which, so 
 insignificant in itself, yet under Him who, 
 
 " Views with equal eye as God of All, 
 A hero perish, or a sparrow fall," 
 
 is fateful to decide the issues of nations. As the 
 capture of his letter and plans had given Pope 
 warning and led him to retire his army behind 
 the Rappahannock, so now an even stranger 
 fate befell him. A copy of his dispatch giving 
 his entire plan, was picked up on the site of a 
 camp formerly occupied by D. H. Hill, wrapped 
 about a handful of cigars, and promptly reached 
 McClellan, thus betraying to him a plan which 
 but for this strange accident, might have re 
 sulted in the complete overthrow of his army, 
 and even in the capture of the National capital, 
 and enabling him with his vast resources, to 
 frustrate it. A man s carelessness usually reacts 
 mainly upon himself, but few incidents in the 
 history of the world have ever been fraught with 
 such fateful consequences as that act of the un 
 known staff-officer or courier, who chose Lee s 
 plan of battle as a wrapping for his tobacco. 
 
124 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 " If we always had exact information of our 
 enemy s dispositions," said Frederick, "we 
 should beat him every time." This exact in 
 formation this strange mishap gave Lee s ad 
 versary on the eve of Antietam. Even so, Lee, 
 who fought the battle with only 35,000 men, 
 came off with more glory than his antagonist, 
 who had 87,000,* as gallant men, moreover, as 
 ever braved death, and the latter was a little 
 later removed by his Government as a failure, 
 while Lee stood higher than ever in the affection 
 and esteem of the South. 
 
 Lee s order was discovered and delivered to 
 McClellan on the I3th, and McClellan at once 
 set himself to the task of meeting the situation 
 by relieving Harper s Ferry on the one hand 
 and crushing Lee s army in detail among the 
 passes of the Maryland Spurs. Lee, however, 
 had, through the good offices of a friendly citi 
 zen who had been present at or had learned of 
 the delivery of his dispatch to McClellan, soon 
 become aware of the misfortune that had be 
 fallen him, and while McClellan was preparing 
 to destroy him, he was taking prompt measures 
 to repair the damage as fully as possible. He 
 
 * General Lee told Fitz Lee that he fought the battle of Sharps- 
 burg with 35,000 troops. And McClellan reported that he him 
 self had 87,164 troops. (Fitzhugh Lee s "Life of Lee," p. 209.) 
 Cf. also Ropes s, "Story of the Civil War," II, pp. 376-377. 
 
LEE S AUDACITY 125 
 
 instantly recalled Longstreet from Hagerstown, 
 ordered Hill back to Turner s Gap and Stuart 
 to Crampton Gap, to defend it against McClel- 
 lan s expected advance, a disposition which de 
 layed the enemy until the evening of the I4th, 
 when, after fierce fighting, they carried both 
 positions, forcing McLaws back from Cramp- 
 ton Gap to Pleasant Valley, across which, how 
 ever, he established "a formidable line of de 
 fence." Lee was thus forced either to retreat 
 across the Potomac, or to fight where he had 
 not contemplated fighting. He seems to have 
 wavered momentarily which course to adopt, 
 and well he might waver. It was a perilous situa 
 tion. He had with him, when the gaps were 
 stormed on the afternoon of the I4th, only about 
 19,000 men in all,* "while the main army of 
 McClellan was close upon him." He issued an 
 order that night (8 p. M.) to McLaws to cross the 
 Potomac below Shepherdstown, leaving the ford 
 at Shepherdstown for the main army to take. 
 " But in less than two hours Lee had changed his 
 mind, why we are not informed " says 
 Ropes, "and had determined to await battle 
 north of the Potomac." By midnight he had 
 planned his battle; he had ordered the cavalry 
 to pilot McLaws over the mountains and across 
 
 * Ropes s "Story of the Civil War," II, p. 347. 
 
126 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 country to Sharpsburg, where he had deter 
 mined to make his stand on the east of Antie- 
 tam creek. He had also taken measures to 
 bring up his other troops as rapidly as possible. 
 "This decision," says Ropes, "to stand and 
 fight at Sharpsburg, which General Lee took 
 on the evening of the I4th of September just 
 after his troops had been driven from the South 
 Mountain passes is beyond controversy one of 
 the boldest and most hazardous decisions in his 
 whole military career. It is, in truth, so bold 
 and hazardous that one is bewildered that he 
 could even have thought seriously of mak 
 ing it."* 
 
 Lee s decision was, indeed, so bold and hazard 
 ous that the thoughtful Ropes suggests that he 
 must have been influenced by fear of loss of his 
 military prestige. "General Lee, however," he 
 admits, "thought there was a fair chance for 
 him to win a victory over McClellan," f and 
 he adds that "naturally he did not consider 
 them (McClellan s troops) as good as his own, 
 and it is without doubt that they did not con 
 stitute so good an army as that which he com 
 manded." 
 
 We know, however, that while Longstreet 
 
 * Ropes s, " Story of the Civil War," II, p. 349. 
 f Ropes s, "Story of the Civil War," p. 351-352. 
 
LEE S AUDACITY 127 
 
 (as usual) suggested the obstacles and dangers 
 of the situation, Jackson approved the action of 
 Lee both before and after the battle.* 
 
 On the night of the I4th, General Lee with 
 drew his army across Antietam creek and as 
 sumed a position which he thought stronger, 
 along a range of hills on the east side of the 
 Hagerstown turnpike with his right resting on 
 Antietam creek and his left refused across the 
 turnpike some three miles to the northward, 
 this pike being a line of communication be 
 tween the two wings by which he could sup 
 port either when hard pressed. Thus, he waited 
 for Jackson, who, on the same day, captured 
 Harper s Ferry with its garrison, munitions 
 and stores, and leaving A. P. Hill in charge, 
 set out in haste to reinforce Lee, who was 
 confronting McClellan s great army of 75,000 
 men with only 19,000 men and about 125 
 guns.f 
 
 McClellan s army with whom Lee s cavalry 
 had been effectively skirmishing, appeared in 
 his front in the early afternoon, and Ropes de 
 clares, that it was an "unique opportunity" that 
 was offered the Union general. McClellan, 
 however, still believed that Lee had at least 
 
 * Lee s Letter to Mrs. Jackson, January 15, 1866. 
 t Ropes s, II, pp. 354-355- 
 
i 2 8 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 100,000 men under his command, and he knew 
 how ably that army, whatever its numbers, was 
 commanded. Moreover, he believed that his 
 own army was still not fully recovered from the 
 demoralization it had suffered from under Pope. 
 He was, therefore, inclined to be cautious. Ac 
 cordingly, it was not until next day that he 
 made any demonstrations against Lee. Mean 
 time, on the morning of the i6th, Jackson ar 
 rived with all of his army who could march, 
 between 8,000 and 9,000 men in all, the re 
 mainder of them, barefooted and lame, being 
 left behind. But these, alike with those who 
 could march, were flushed with victory. Lee s 
 troops were disposed with Longstreet command 
 ing his right and Jackson his left, with Hood 
 in support, while McClellan, in disposing his 
 forces had placed Hooker on his extreme right 
 with the first corps, Sumner next on his right, 
 with two corps, the 2d and I2th, then Porter 
 with the 5th corps, occupying his centre and 
 Burnside on the left with the Qth corps, good 
 troops and bravely led. That afternoon, in 
 pursuance of McClellan s plan, Hooker was or 
 dered to cross the Antietam and assault Lee s 
 left, and crossing the stream his corps assaulted 
 the portion of the line led by Hood, but was 
 "gallantly repulsed." The only effect of this 
 
LEE S AUDACITY 129 
 
 assault is declared by Ropes to have been the 
 disclosure of McClellan s plans.* 
 
 The real battle of Sharpsburg, however, was 
 fought on the iyth, and was the bloodiest battle 
 of the war, a battle in which intrepid courage 
 marked both sides, shining alike in the furious 
 charges of the men who assaulted Lee s lines 
 and the undaunted constancy of the men who 
 defended them. It began early in the morning 
 with an attack by Hooker s corps, the first 
 shock falling on Ewell s division in Jackson s 
 wing, and within the bloody hour of the first 
 onslaught, General J. R. Jones, commanding 
 Jackson s old division, was borne from the field 
 to be followed immediately by Starke, who suc 
 ceeded him in command, mortally wounded. 
 "Colonel Douglass, commanding Lawton s bri 
 gade, was killed. General Lawton, command 
 ing division and Colonel Walker, commanding 
 brigade, were severely wounded. More than 
 half of the brigades of Lawton and Hays were 
 either killed or wounded, and more than a third 
 of Trimble s, and all of the regimental command 
 ers in those brigades, except two, were killed or 
 wounded. f In this extremity, Hood s brigades 
 and three of D. H. Hill s brigades were rushed 
 
 * Ropes s, II, pp. 358-359. 
 
 t Ropes s, II, p. 359, citing Jackson s Report, 27 W. R., 956. 
 
130 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 to the front in support of the exhausted divisions 
 of Jones and Lawton, and after an hour of furi 
 ous fighting, Hooker s force, led by himself with 
 Doubleday, Ricketts and Meade, gallant com 
 manders of gallant divisions, were beaten off, 
 with Hooker himself wounded and over 2,500 
 men dead or wounded. It was a terrific opening 
 of a terrific day. As they retired, Mansfield s 
 corps came in on their left, and in the furious 
 onslaught on the already shattered brigades of 
 D. H. Hill and Hood, bore them back across the 
 turnpike, "with a loss of some 1,700 men out 
 of the 7,000 brought into action, and an even 
 heavier loss on the Confederate side. But be 
 yond the turnpike the remnants of Jones s 
 division under Grigsby, reinforced by Early, 
 who had succeeded the wounded Lawton in 
 command of Ewell s division, "clung obsti 
 nately" to their ground.* A brief lull took 
 place, broken by the advance of Sumner, with 
 two divisions pushing hotly across the turnpike, 
 his veteran troops cheering and being cheered, 
 confident of sweeping everything before them. 
 Beyond the turnpike, however, they came on the 
 remnants of Jackson s divisions, lying behind 
 a rocky ledge, who gave them a staggering re 
 ception, and at this moment the divisions of 
 
 * Ropes s, II, pp. 361-362. 
 
LEE S AUDACITY 131 
 
 McLaws and Walker, who, sent by Lee from his 
 right, had just come up and deployed across 
 Sumner s and Sedgwick s flank, poured forth 
 on them a fire so "terrible and sustained" that, 
 after a futile effort to change front, the federals 
 broke and fell back in confusion under the shel 
 ter of their artillery, with a loss of over 2,200, 
 officers and men, all within a few minutes. This 
 act of Lee in reinforcing his left wing from his 
 right at this critical juncture, Ropes praises as 
 exhibiting remarkable "skill and resolution." 
 An effort made to press Sedgwick s defeated 
 troops, who reformed behind their artillery, was 
 repulsed by the artillery, but not until 39 \ per 
 cent, of McLaw s division had fallen. A little 
 later the remnants of Jones s and Lawton s 
 troops drove the enemy from the ground they 
 had secured in the second assault; but by this 
 time all the Confederate troops in that part of 
 the field had sustained terrific losses. "They 
 had, indeed," says Ropes, "with the utmost 
 bravery, with inflexible resolution and at a ter 
 rible sacrifice of life, repelled the third attack 
 on the left flank of the Confederate army."* 
 Meantime, Sumner s other division, under 
 French, which was put in to reinforce Sedg- 
 wick, had by bearing southward, been engaged 
 
 * Ropes s, II, p. 367. 
 
132 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 in a bloody and desperate conflict on Lee s 
 left centre, with the divisions of D. H. Hill and 
 R. H. Anderson, the latter of whom, on his way 
 to reinforce the left wing, finding Hill s already 
 decimated brigades hard pressed, had turned 
 aside to their succor. They were soon in a des 
 perate struggle with over 10,000 fresh troops, 
 under French and Richardson. The combat 
 which followed, "was," says Ropes, "beyond 
 a question one of the most sanguinary and des 
 perate in the whole war." * For an hour or 
 more the conflict raged over the famous sunken 
 road before the Federals secured possession of 
 it, and "Bloody Lane" is the name to-day by 
 which is known this deadly roadway whose pos 
 session that day cost over 6,000 men. "At this 
 moment," says the same high authority whose 
 account we are following, "fortune favored 
 McClellan. The two divisions of Franklin s 
 corps under W. F. Smith and Slocum, had 
 arrived on this part of the field." They num 
 bered from 10,000 to 12,000 men, fresh and in 
 good condition. 
 
 Franklin wished to put them in, but Sumner, 
 who had tested the temper of the men who held 
 Lee s line, was unwilling to risk another attack 
 and "McClellan, undoubtedly much influenced 
 
 * Ropes s, II, p. 368. 
 
LEE S AUDACITY 133 
 
 by Sumner, would not permit any attack." 
 The battle was now raging along the front of 
 Lee s right, protected by the Antietam. About 
 i P. M. the bridge was carried, and the stream 
 was crossed both above and below, but not until 
 four assaults had been repelled by Tombs s bri 
 gade of D. R. Jones s division, assisted by the 
 well posted artillery. About three o clock Cox 
 made his assault on the heights where lay 
 Lee s right, and achieved "a brilliant success," 
 breaking the infantry line and capturing Mc- 
 Intosh s battery; and says Ropes, "A complete 
 victory seemed within sight. But this was not 
 to be." Just at the crucial moment the Con 
 federate "light division" five brigades under 
 A. P. Hill, pushing from Harper s Ferry, for the 
 sound of the guns "climbed the heights south of 
 the town," and "without an instant s hesitation 
 they rushed to the rescue of their comrades," 
 and the end was not long in coming. The lines 
 were recaptured along with Mclntosh s battery, 
 and the Federal troops, with victory apparently 
 almost in their grasp were driven back with ter 
 rific slaughter. "The failure to put Franklin 
 in," was, in the opinion of Ropes, a capital 
 error. He insists that McClellan should have 
 won the battle; for unlike those who argue 
 only from subsequent events, this thoughtful 
 
I 3 4 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 student of war admits that while "Lee s inva 
 sion had terminated in failure," he and his 
 army had unquestionably won glory, even though 
 he claims that the prestige of victory rested later 
 with McClellan.* Thus ended what is said to 
 have been the bloodiest day of the war, and one 
 of the bloodiest battles ever fought. Each side 
 lost about one-quarter of the troops engaged, 
 and Lee had, with less than half the force his 
 enemy had, though compelled to fight in a place 
 where he had not intended to fight, beaten his 
 brave enemy off with such slaughter that though 
 he offered him battle next day, he was not again 
 attacked, and the following morning he retired 
 across the Potomac unmolested. Of "his in 
 trepidity" in standing to fight an army of 70,000 
 with less than 40,000 men, not all of whom in 
 fact were with him at the commencement of the 
 action, Ropes has nothing but praise. "Nor 
 could any troops," he adds, "have more fully 
 justified the reliance their leader placed in them 
 than the troops of the army of Northern Vir 
 ginia." f "Lee, in fact, intended to try his men 
 again." Both Longstreet and Jackson urged 
 recrossing the Potomac that night; but he re 
 fused. "Gentlemen," he said, when his gen- 
 
 * Ropes s, "Story of the Civil War," II, p. 379. 
 t Ropes s, II, p. 377. 
 
LEE S AUDACITY 135 
 
 erals had advised retreat, "I shall remain 
 where I am. If McClellan offers me a chance, 
 I shall fight him again." All the next day he 
 watched for this chance as the eagle watches 
 from his crag for the prey; but it did not come 
 and he recrossed into Virginia. 
 
 Of the battle of Antietam the view usually 
 expressed is one largely influenced by events 
 which succeeded it after a long interval. The 
 view at the time, based on the actual battle and 
 its immediate consequences was widely differ 
 ent. Horace Greeley s paper representing the 
 great constituency which at that time opposed 
 Lincoln s methods, voiced their opinion. "He 
 leaves us," he declared, "the debris of his late 
 camp, two disabled pieces of artillery, a few 
 hundred of his stragglers; perhaps two thou 
 sand of his wounded and as many more of his 
 unburied dead. Not a sound field-piece, cais 
 son, ambulance or wagon; not a tent, box of 
 stores or a pound of ammunition. He takes 
 with him the supplies gathered in Maryland and 
 the rich spoils of Harper s Ferry." * 
 
 What those rich spoils were Lee himself men 
 tions in the general order issued to his army two 
 weeks after it had "on the field of Sharpsburg 
 with less than one-third of his [the enemy s] 
 
 * New York Tribune. Quoted from Jones s "Lee," p. 195. 
 
136 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 numbers . . . resisted from daylight until dark 
 the whole army of the enemy and repulsed 
 every attack along his entire front of more than 
 four miles in extent." 
 
 In this order the Commanding General re 
 counts to his army its achievements, in reviewing 
 which he declares he "cannot withhold the expres 
 sion of his admiration of the indomitable courage 
 it has displayed in battle, and its cheerful endur 
 ance of privation and hardship on the march." 
 
 "Since your great victories around Rich 
 mond," he declares, "you have defeated the 
 enemy at Cedar Mountain, expelled him from 
 the Rappahannock, and after a conflict of three 
 days, utterly repulsed him on the plain of Ma- 
 nassas, and forced him to take shelter within the 
 fortifications around his capital. Without halt 
 ing for repose, you crossed the Potomac, stormed 
 the heights of Harper s Ferry, made prisoners 
 of more than 11,600 men and captured upward 
 of seventy pieces of artillery, all of their small 
 arms and other munitions of war. While one 
 corps of the army was thus engaged, another 
 ensured its success by arresting at Boonsboro 
 the combined armies of the enemy, advancing 
 under their favorite general to the relief of their 
 beleaguered comrades. 
 
 * General Orders, No. 116. 
 
LEE S AUDACITY 137 
 
 "On the field of Sharpsburg, with less than 
 one-third of his numbers, you resisted from day 
 light till dark the whole army of the enemy, 
 and repulsed every attack along his entire front 
 of more than four miles in extent. 
 
 "The whole of the following day you stood pre 
 pared to resume the conflict on the same ground, 
 and retired next morning without molestation 
 across the Potomac. 
 
 "Two attempts subsequently made by the en 
 emy to follow you across the river have resulted 
 in his complete discomfiture and his being 
 driven back with loss." 
 
 Such was the view that the Commanding 
 General, Lee, himself, took of his campaign two 
 weeks after the battle of Antietam, and it is no 
 wonder that he should have added, "Achieve 
 ments such as these demanded much valor and 
 patriotism. History records few examples of 
 greater fortitude and endurance than this army 
 has exhibited," or that he should, as he reports, 
 have "been commissioned by the President to 
 thank the army, in the name of the Confederate 
 States for the undying fame they had won for 
 their arms." 
 
 In truth, whatever long subsequent events 
 may have developed as to the consequences of 
 the attack at Sharpsburg and Lee s retirement 
 
138 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 across the Potomac afterward, to the student of 
 war, now, as then, it must appear that the hon 
 ors of that bloodiest battle of the war were with 
 Lee and remain with him to-day. That Mc- 
 Clellan with the complete disposition of Lee s 
 forces in his hand, with an army of 87,000 men, 
 as brave as ever died for glory and as gallantly 
 officered, should not have destroyed Lee with 
 but 35,000 on the field, and that Lee, with but 
 that number up, while the rest shoeless and 
 lame, were limping far behind, yet trying to get 
 up, should with his back to the river, have not 
 only survived that furious day, repulsing every 
 attack along that bloody four miles front, but 
 should have stood his ground to offer battle 
 again next day and then have retired across 
 the river unmolested, is proof beyond all 
 doubt.* 
 
 "Why do you not move that line of battle to 
 make it conform to your own?" asked Hunter 
 McGuire of Grigsby, gazing at a long line of 
 men lying quietly in ranks in a field at some 
 little distance. 
 
 "Those men are all dead," was the reply, 
 "they are Georgia soldiers." f 
 
 * The Union losses were 12,400; Confederate, 8,000. 
 f Address on Stonewall Jackson, by Dr. Hunter McGuire, 
 "The Confederate Cause," p. 204. 
 
LEE S AUDACITY 139 
 
 That night 20,000 men, dead or wounded, 
 lay on the field of Sharpsburg. 
 
 I have thought well to discuss somewhat at 
 length this great battle fought by Lee on North 
 ern, soil, because it seems to illustrate peculiarly 
 those qualities which, in combination, made him 
 the great captain he was, and absolutely refutes 
 the foolish if not malevolent charge that he was 
 only a defensive general, and remarkable only 
 when behind breastworks. It exhibits absolutely 
 his grasp of the most difficult and unexpected sit 
 uation; his unequalled audacity; his intrepidity; 
 his resourcefulness; his incomparable resolu 
 tion and his skill in handling men alike in de 
 tached sections and on the field of battle. Pos 
 sibly no other general on either side would have 
 had the boldness to risk the stand Lee made in 
 the angle of the Antietam, with the Potomac at 
 his back; certainly no other general save Grant 
 would have stood his ground after the battle, 
 and have saved the morale of his army, and as 
 to Grant it is merely conjecture; for he fought 
 no battle south of the Rapidan in which he did 
 not largely outnumber his antagonist, and vastly 
 excel him in equipment. 
 
 It is true, as Ropes states, that McClellan 
 followed Lee across the Potomac, but his two 
 immediate attempts were promptly repelled 
 
HO ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 and his troops driven back, and it was not until 
 more than a month later, when Lee lay about 
 Winchester, that McClellan made good a foot 
 ing in Virginia. During this time Stuart had 
 again crossed over into Maryland, and made a 
 complete circuit of McClellan s army. 
 
 In the early days of November McClellan 
 advanced on Warrenton, and Lee, in anticipa 
 tion, moved down to the east of the Blue Ridge 
 and occupied Culpeper and the region south of 
 the Rappahannock, and after a tart correspond 
 ence between McClellan and the authorities in 
 Washington over McClellan s failure to destroy 
 Lee s army, McClellan was relieved of his com 
 mand, and Burnside appointed in his place, the 
 order issuing on the 6th of November. Thus, 
 the North lost the services of the general whom 
 General Lee considered the best commander 
 opposed to him during the war. That he was 
 not Lee s equal either as a strategist, a tactician 
 or a fighter, was clearly manifest then as it is 
 now; but he was a great organizer; conducted 
 war on high principles; restored the morale of a 
 shattered army and defeated the object of 
 Lee s first invasion of Maryland. And as has 
 been already quoted, it was well said that 
 "without McClellan there could have been no 
 Grant." 
 
LEE S AUDACITY 141 
 
 "Though badly found in weapons, ammu 
 nition, military equipment, etc.," says Field 
 Marshal Viscount Wolseley, in speaking of Lee 
 at this time, "his army had, nevertheless, 
 achieved great things. His men were so badly 
 shod (indeed, a considerable portion had no 
 boots or shoes) that at the battle of Antietam 
 General Lee assured me he never had more 
 than 35,000 men with him; the remainder of 
 his army, shoeless and footsore, were straggling 
 along the roads in the rear trying to reach him 
 in time for the battle." 
 
 Had Lee been in McClellan s place who can 
 doubt what the issue would have been! In fact, 
 Mr. Lincoln plainly put this question to McClel- 
 lan in another connection, and a little later re 
 lieved him of command and put the brave but 
 hesitating Burnside in his place only to add on 
 the fatal field of Fredericksburg new laurels to 
 Lee s chaplet. 
 
 Burnside, having made it manifest that he 
 designed to cross the Rappahannock at Fred 
 ericksburg, Lee promptly moved down from 
 Culpeper and Orange on the upper waters of 
 the Rappahannock, and posting himself on the 
 heights on the southern side of the town, forti 
 fied and awaited Burnside s advance. The 
 fortifications for the artillery were made under 
 
142 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 the superintendence of General Lee s chief of 
 artillery, General Wm. N. Pendleton, and were 
 much commended. At least they served. It 
 was now nearly mid-December. Burnside s 
 forces as given by himself numbered 113,000; 
 while Lee s total strength was 78,288 men of all 
 
 arms.* 
 
 The actual laying of the pontoons was gal 
 lantly effected by the federal troops on the after 
 noon of the I ith, under cover of a heavy artillery 
 fire from 150 guns, and that evening and the fol 
 lowing day Burnside s army crossed over, their 
 movements being veiled by a heavy fog which rose 
 from the river and the sodden ground, blanketing 
 all beneath it. The following morning, as the 
 fog lifted, Burnside s army, with Franklin com 
 manding his left and Sumner his right, advanced 
 to the attack where Lee lay along the heights 
 above the town, with Longstreet commanding 
 his left and Jackson his right. It was a battle 
 as fierce almost as Sharpsburg, and scarcely less 
 deadly for the hapless assailants. The assault 
 began on the less commanding hills to the south 
 of the town where Jackson lay, his right pro 
 tected by the artillery and Stuart s cavalry, faced 
 North on the plain near Hamilton s crossing. 
 Line after line advanced to the attack, only to 
 
 * Taylor s "General Lee," pp. 145-146. 
 
LEE S AUDACITY 143 
 
 be swept back with terrific slaughter, and at one 
 point where a marshy stream, known as Deep 
 Run, came through, bordered by woodland, the 
 gallant assailants broke through the advanced 
 line of A. P. Hill; but they were quickly forced 
 back and the line re-established. Franklin s 
 brave divisions having failed to break Lee s right, 
 an assault was made against Lee s left by Sum- 
 ner who had been ordered to hold his men where 
 they were sheltered by the town, until " an im 
 pression" could be made on Lee s right. It was 
 an even more impossible and deadly task than 
 Franklin had essayed. " Six distinct and separate 
 assaults were made against Longstreet s front"; 
 line after line rushing recklessly forward under 
 the iron sleet, "only to be torn to pieces," and 
 melt away, without making any impression on 
 Lee s determined veterans. When night came, 
 the great army of Burnside had been hurled 
 back with losses amounting to 12,500 men, 
 "sacrificed to incompetency," after having dis 
 played, in a task which "exceeded human en 
 deavor," a heroism which "won the praise and 
 the pity of their opponents." * 
 
 The following day passed without the renewal 
 
 * Taylor s "General Lee," p. 148. The losses in the Federal 
 Army numbered 12,653; m tne Confederate Army, 5,322, killed 
 and wounded. 
 
i 4 4 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 of the attack which Lee expected, and that 
 night Burnside, shaken and distressed over his 
 disaster, withdrew his decimated divisions across 
 the Rappahannock and next morning sent a flag 
 of truce to Jackson s front, asking for a cessa 
 tion of hostilities to bury the dead.* 
 
 Fredericksburg was, with the exception of 
 Cold Harbor, almost the only wholly defensive 
 battle that Lee fought, and in this he could 
 scarcely believe that Burnside had put forth all 
 his strength. His report and letters show that 
 he expected and awaited another and fiercer 
 assault. It is asserted that Jackson counselled 
 a night attack on Burnside s army as it lay in 
 the town after the battle, and he undoubtedly 
 contemplated the possibility of such an attack, 
 for he ordered his chief of medical staff to be 
 
 * The writer as a small boy rode over the battlefield of Fred 
 ericksburg with his father, who was a Major on the staff of Gen 
 eral Wm. N. Pendleton, General Lee s chief of artillery, and he 
 recalls vividly the terrible sight of a battlefield while the dead are 
 being buried: blood everywhere along the trenches, the shat 
 tered fences and the roadsides the orchards, peeled by the 
 bullets and canister, looked at a little distance as if covered with 
 snow; the plank fences splintered by shot and shrapnel, looked 
 as though they had been whitewashed, and the field, torn by shells 
 and covered with dead horses, broken arms and debris, presented 
 an ineffaceable scene of desolation, while on the common, being 
 filled with the bloody and rigid forms of those who two days before 
 had been the bravest of the brave, was a long, wide, ghastly trench, 
 where the path of glory ended. 
 
LEE S AUDACITY 145 
 
 ready with his bandages to furnish bands for 
 the arms of the men, by which they would know 
 each other, should such an attack be made.* 
 Lee, however, decided against this plan, if it 
 was ever formally proposed, and in his report 
 he gives his reason. The attack on the I3th," 
 he says, "had been so easily repulsed and by so 
 small a part of our army that it was not sup 
 posed the enemy would limit his effort, which 
 in view of the magnitude of his preparations 
 and the extent of his force, seemed to be com 
 paratively insignificant. Believing, therefore, 
 that he would attack us, it was not deemed ex 
 pedient to lose the advantage of our position 
 and expose the troops to the fire of his inac 
 cessible batteries, beyond the river by advancing 
 against him." 
 
 Lee was at this time at the zenith of his fame 
 as a successful general, yet was never more 
 modest. His letter of Christmas Day, 1862, to 
 his wife is full of the spirit of the man in his 
 most intimate moments. He writes: "I will 
 commence this holy day by writing to you. 
 My heart is filled with gratitude to God for the 
 unspeakable mercies with which He has blessed 
 us in this day; for those He has granted us from 
 
 * Address on Stonewall Jackson, by Dr. Hunter McGuire, 
 "The Confederate Cause." The Bell Co., Richmond, Virginia. 
 
146 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 the beginning of Life, and particularly for those 
 he has vouchsafed us during the past year. 
 What should have become of us without His 
 crowning help and protection ? Oh ! if our 
 people would only recognize it and cease from 
 vain self-boasting and adulation, how strong 
 would be my belief in final success and happi 
 ness to our country. But what a cruel thing is 
 war to separate and destroy families and friends, 
 and mar the purest joys and happiness God has 
 granted us in this world, to fill our hearts with 
 hatred instead of love for our neighbors and to 
 devastate the fair face of this beautiful world! 
 I pray that on this day when only peace and 
 good will are preached to mankind, better 
 thoughts may fill the hearts of our enemies and 
 turn them to peace. Our army was never in 
 such good health and condition since I have 
 been attached to it. I believe they share with 
 me my disappointment that the enemy did not 
 renew the combat on the I3th. I was holding 
 back all that day and husbanding our strength 
 and ammunition for the great struggle for which 
 I thought I was preparing. Had I divined that 
 was to have been his only effort, he would have 
 had more of it. My heart bleeds at the death of 
 every one of our gallant men." 
 
 Should the portrait of a victorious general be 
 
LEE S AUDACITY 147 
 
 drawn, I know no better example than this 
 simple outline of a Christian soldier drawn out 
 of his heart that Christmas morning in his tent, 
 while the world rang with his victory of two weeks 
 before. It is a portrait of which the South may 
 well be proud. 
 
 But again we have, following on his success 
 in the defence of Fredericksburg, the proof of 
 Lee s boldness in offensive operations, which re 
 sulted in what is esteemed among foreign mili 
 tary critics as the most brilliant action, not only 
 of the Civil War, but of the century. 
 
 With a vast expenditure of care and treasure, 
 the armies of the Union were once more re 
 cruited and equipped, and the command of the 
 Army of the Potomac was entrusted to General 
 Hooker, "Fighting Joe Hooker," as he was 
 called whose reputation was such that he was 
 supposed to make good at once all the deficiencies 
 of McClellan and Burnside. He had shown 
 capacity to command a corps both in the West 
 and the East, and was given to criticising his 
 superiors with much self-confidence. His self- 
 confidence was, indeed, so great that it called 
 from Mr. Lincoln one of those remarkable letters 
 which he was given to writing on occasion. The 
 plan on which he proceeded was acknowledged 
 to be well-conceived and gave promise of victory. 
 
148 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 While Burnside was ordered to cross the Rappa- 
 hannock below Lee s fortified position at Fred- 
 ericksburg, threaten his right flank, and assail his 
 lines of communication with Richmond, Hooker 
 marched up the river, crossed it high up beyond 
 Lee s extreme left and prepared to assail his rear. 
 In the full assurance that he had " the finest army 
 in the world holding the strongest position on 
 the planet," he elaborated his plans and pre 
 pared to deliver the assault which should force 
 Lee from his defensive position with the alter 
 native of the capture of his entire army. Possibly, 
 he ranked Lee as a captain good for defensive 
 operations alone. If so, his error cost him dear. 
 While he was congratulating himself on his 
 tactics and issuing grandiloquent proclama 
 tions to his eager yet untried army in the tone of 
 a conqueror, declaring that the enemy must 
 come out from his breastworks and fight him on 
 his own ground "where certain destruction 
 awaited him," or else " ingloriously fly," Lee 
 performed the same masterly feat which he had 
 already performed before Richmond and in the 
 Piedmont, and with yet more signal success. 
 Detaching Stonewall Jackson from his force in 
 front of Burnside, he sent him around Hooker s 
 right at Chancellorsville, and while the latter 
 was congratulating himself that Lee was in 
 
LEE S AUDACITY 149 
 
 full retreat on Gordonsville, he fell upon him 
 and rolled him up like a scroll. Unhappily, 
 his great lieutenant who performed this feat, fell 
 in the moment of victory, shot by his own men 
 in the dusk of the evening as he galloped past 
 from a reconnaissance. Possibly, Hooker s army 
 was saved by this fatal accident from capture 
 or annihilation that night. For when, a week 
 later, Stonewall Jackson, still murmuring of his 
 battle lines, passed over the river to rest under 
 the shade of the trees, it was with a fame hardly 
 second to that of his great captain. 
 
 The question has often been debated whether 
 the chief credit for the victory at Chancellors- 
 ville should be assigned to Lee or to Jackson. 
 Lee, himself, has settled it in a letter which he 
 wrote to Mrs. Jackson, in which he states that 
 the responsibility for the flank attack by Jack 
 son, that is, for the tactics which made it possible, 
 necessarily rested on him. He repeated the 
 statement in a letter to his friend, Professor 
 Bledsoe. And apart from his conclusive state 
 ment, this is the judgment of Jackson s biog 
 rapher, General Henderson. Commenting on 
 the question as to whether to Lee or Jackson 
 the credit was due for the daring plan of the 
 campaign against Pope, Henderson says, "We 
 have record of few enterprises of greater daring 
 
150 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 than that which was then decided on; and no 
 matter from whose brain it emanated, on Lee 
 fell the burden of the responsibility; on his 
 shoulders and on his alone, rested the honor of 
 the Confederate arms, the fate of Richmond, 
 the independence of the South; and if we may 
 suppose, so consonant was the design proposed 
 with the strategy which Jackson had already 
 practised, that it was to him its inception was 
 due, it is still to Lee that we must assign the 
 higher merit. It is easy to conceive. It is less 
 easy to execute. But to risk cause and country, 
 name and reputation, on a single throw, and to 
 abide the issue with unflinching heart, is the 
 supreme exhibition of the soldier s fortitude." * 
 It is, indeed, no disparagement from Jackson s 
 fame to declare that, if possible, even more 
 brilliant than the afternoon attack on Hooker s 
 right which routed that wing and began the de 
 moralization of his army, was the final attack, 
 when Lee, who had left Early with only enough 
 men at Fredericksburg to hold Burnside in 
 check, learning that Sedgwick had forced a 
 crossing and was marching on his rear, turned 
 and, leaving only a fragment of his army to hold 
 the shaken Hooker in his breastworks, fell on 
 Sedgwick and hurled him back across the river, 
 
 * Henderson s "Life of Stonewall Jackson," II., p. 582. 
 
LEE S AUDACITY 151 
 
 and then, turning again, fell on Hooker s posi 
 tion, and so crushed him that he was glad to 
 retreat by night, broken and discouraged, across 
 the Rappahannock. 
 
 The victory of Chancellorsville, in which Lee 
 with 62,000 men and 170 guns completely 
 routed Hooker on his own ground with 120,000 
 men and 448 guns, was, declares Henderson, 
 "the most brilliant feat of arms of the century." 
 Thus, Lee had destroyed the reputation of more 
 generals than any captain had destroyed since 
 Napoleon. 
 
 But the attrition was grinding away the forces 
 of the blockaded and beleaguered Confederacy. 
 It was a case of "One more such victory and we 
 are lost." It became necessary to remove the 
 seat of war into a new region. For this reason 
 Lee, boldly flanking Hooker, who, secure on the 
 further side of the Rappahannock, was boasting 
 still, marched his army into Maryland and Penn 
 sylvania, not for conquest, but for subsistence, 
 and to employ once more, at need, the strategy 
 which he knew would compel the withdrawal of 
 the forces still threatening Richmond. 
 
 With masterly foresight he had once written 
 that a pitched battle would probably be fought 
 at York, or at Gettysburg. 
 
 It was thus that the wheat-clad ridges about 
 
152 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 the little Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg, with 
 the valley between them, became the field of the 
 battle which possibly turned the fluctuating tide 
 of the war. Lee s meeting with Meade s army 
 at this spot was to some extent a surprise to him; 
 for his able and gallant cavalry commander, 
 Stuart, on whom he had relied to keep him in 
 formed touching the enemy, had been led by 
 the ardor of a successful raid further afield than 
 had been planned, and the presence of Meade s 
 army in force was unsuspected until too late to 
 decline battle.* Heth s division had sought the 
 place for imperatively needed supplies and 
 found the Union troops holding it, and a battle 
 was precipitated. Lee s plan of battle failed 
 here, but the student of war knows how it 
 failed and why. It failed because his lieuten 
 ants failed, and his orders were not carried out 
 possibly because he called on his intrepid 
 army for more than human strength was able 
 to achieve. "Had I had Jackson at Gettys 
 burg," he once said, "I should, so far as man 
 can judge, have won that battle." 
 
 * That Stuart was in any way responsible for this is denied by 
 Colonel John S. Mosby, in his "Stuart in the Gettysburg Cam 
 paign." 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 LEE S CLEMENCY 
 
 pOSSIBLY, Lee s one fault as a soldier was 
 that he was not always rigorous enough with 
 his subordinates; that, if such a thing be possible, 
 he was too magnanimous. He took blame on him 
 self where it should rightly have been adjudged 
 to others. Yet, this weakness as a soldier but 
 added to his nobility as a man, and it is as a 
 man a type of the man bred of Southern blood 
 and under the Southern civilization that we are 
 now considering him. 
 
 While many competent critics in his army 
 were charging Longstreet with having been the 
 cause of the disaster at Gettysburg, Lee wrote 
 him a letter such as only a man of noble nature 
 could have written to an old comrade who had 
 failed him. He showed him a magnanimity 
 which was ill requited when Longstreet wrote 
 his own story of the war. 
 
 As the years pass by, the military genius of 
 Lee must be more and more restricted to the study 
 of a class. His character will ever remain the 
 
 153 
 
154 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 precious possession of his kindred and his people. 
 In all the annals of his race none has excelled it. 
 Among his characteristics his humanity stands 
 forth to distinguish him forever from possibly 
 nearly all his contemporaries. Colonel Charles 
 Marshall, of his staff, who knew him best among 
 men, declares that he never put a spy to death, 
 and the story is well known of his clemency in 
 the case of a deserter who had been found guilty 
 by a court-martial, and condemned to death. It 
 was during the terrible campaign of 1864, when 
 the women at home wrote such heart-rending ac 
 counts of their want to their husbands in the 
 field, that Lee was compelled to forbid the mails 
 to be delivered. A soldier who had disappeared 
 from his regiment and gone home was arrested 
 and tried as a deserter. His defence was a letter 
 which he had received from his wife, which 
 showed that she and her children were starving. 
 It was held insufficient, and he was sentenced to 
 be shot. The case, however, was so pitiful that 
 it was finally presented to General Lee. He 
 wrote beneath the finding his approval, and then 
 below that, an order that the man should im 
 mediately rejoin his regiment. There were, of 
 course, unhappily, other instances enough in 
 which discipline had to be enforced, and when 
 the exigency arose he was rock. But, as has 
 
LEE S CLEMENCY 155 
 
 been well said by Mr. Charles Francis Adams, 
 possibly his surest and loftiest title to enduring 
 fame was, "his humanity in arms and his 
 scrupulous regard for the most advanced rules 
 of modern warfare." 
 
 An incident, small in itself, but illustrative of 
 the compassionate character of Lee occurred 
 during one of his fiercest battles. He was stand 
 ing with officers of his staff in the yard of a 
 dwelling on an eminence, when the group at 
 tracted the attention of the enemy and a hot 
 fire was directed on them. General Lee sug 
 gested to his companions to go to a less exposed 
 spot, but he himself remained where he was. 
 A little later as he moved about he stooped and 
 picked up a young bird, and, walking across the 
 yard, placed the fledgling on a limb in a place 
 of security. 
 
 It was characteristic of him that ordinarily, 
 wherever he might be, he slept in a tent, for fear 
 of incommoding the occupants of the houses he 
 might have taken for his headquarters, and at 
 times when he was inspecting the long lines from 
 Richmond to Petersburg, he even hesitated to 
 seek shelter at night in the camp of an acquaint 
 ance lest he might inconvenience him.f 
 
 * Address delivered at Lexington, Virginia, January 19, 1907. 
 t Long s "Lee," quoting Col. Thomas H. Carter. 
 
156 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 He writes later, during the stress of war, to 
 his eldest son, "... I hope we will be able to 
 do something for the servants. I executed a 
 deed of manumission embracing all the names 
 sent me by your mother, and some that I recol 
 lected, but as I had nothing to refer to but my 
 memory, I fear many were omitted. It was my 
 desire to manumit all the people of your grand 
 father, whether present on the several estates or 
 not. I believe your mother only sent me the 
 names of those present at W.[hiteJ H.fouse], and 
 Romancoke. Those that have left with the 
 enemy may not require their manumission. 
 Still, some may be found hereafter in the State, 
 and, at any rate, I wished to give a complete 
 list, and to liberate all to show that your grand 
 father s wishes, so far as I was concerned, had 
 been fulfilled. ... I shall pay wages to Perry 
 [his body-servant], and retain him until he or I 
 can do better. You can do the same with Billy. 
 The rest that are hired out had better be fur 
 nished with their papers and be let go. But 
 what can be done with those at the W. H. and 
 Romancoke ? Those at and about Arlington 
 can take care of themselves, I hope, and I have 
 no doubt but all are gone who desire to do so. 
 At any rate, I can do nothing for them now." * 
 
 * Letter to General G. W. C. Lee, January nth, 1863. 
 
LEE S CLEMENCY 157 
 
 In another letter, dated March 31, 1863, he 
 writes further showing his solicitude about his 
 freed servants. One he wishes a place gotten 
 for on a Railway; two others who had been 
 hired out he advises to remain where they are 
 till the end of the year, when they are to have 
 their earnings devoted to their own benefit. 
 "But what can be done," he asks, "with poor 
 little Jim ? It would be cruel to turn him out on 
 the world. He could not take care of himself." * 
 
 This is an epitome of the old Virginian s rela 
 tion to his servants, and it will be observed that 
 this representative of his class never speaks of 
 them as his slaves, even in discussing intimately 
 with his son their legal status. 
 
 His love of children and his companionship 
 with them shine forth in his letters, and mark 
 the simplicity that is so often allied to true 
 greatness. In one of his letters to his wife long 
 before the war, when he was on duty in the 
 West, he gives a glimpse of this tenderness 
 toward children which ever distinguished him. 
 He says of a ride he took: "... I saw a num 
 ber of little girls, all dressed up in their white 
 frocks and pantalets, their hair plaited and tied 
 up with ribbons, running and chasing each 
 other in all directions. I counted twenty-three 
 
 * Jones s "Life and Letters of Robert E. Lee," pp. 286-287. 
 
158 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 nearly the same size. As I drew up my horse to 
 admire the spectacle, a man appeared at the 
 door with the twenty-fourth in his arms. My 
 friend/ said I, are all these your children? 
 Yes/ he said, and there are nine more in 
 the house and this is my youngest. 
 
 "Upon further inquiry, however, I found 
 that they were only temporarily his. He said, 
 however, that he had been admiring them be 
 fore I came up, and just wished that he had a 
 million of dollars, and that they were all his in 
 reality. I do not think the eldest exceeded 
 seven or eight years old. It was the prettiest 
 sight I have seen in the West, and, perhaps, in 
 my life. ..." 
 
 Such was the heart of this great Captain who, 
 to some, seemed cold and aloof when, as Emer 
 son says, his genius only protected itself by 
 solitude. 
 
 Writing, years after, to his wife, of three little 
 girls, the children of an old neighbor who had 
 lived near them in happier days at Arlington, 
 who had paid him a visit in his camp near 
 Petersburg, each with a basket in which they 
 had brought him fresh eggs, pickles and a pair 
 of socks, "I begged them," he said, "to bring 
 me nothing but their kisses and to keep the 
 eggs, corn, etc., for themselves." 
 
LEE S CLEMENCY 159 
 
 Of Lee s tranquil mind even amid the most 
 difficult conditions, we have constant proof. No 
 apparent disadvantage of position no threats or 
 impending dangers appear to have disturbed 
 that equanimity which so marks him as among 
 the great. 
 
 While McClellan, accepting the wildest state 
 ments of "intelligent contrabands" was rating 
 the force in his front at two and a half times its 
 actual numbers and was throwing away precious 
 time while he clamored for reinforcements, and 
 while his successors often saw a vast army in 
 their front whose shadows caused them much 
 delay, Lee, from the first, even amid the deep 
 est darkness of the situation saw with a clear 
 ness which no gloom could obscure. Writing 
 from his camp, during the Western Virginia cam 
 paign he says: "The force of the enemy esti 
 mated by prisoners captured is put down at 
 from 17,000 to 20,000. General Floyd thinks 
 18,000. I do not think it exceeds 9,000 or 
 10,000, but it exceeds ours." * 
 
 From camp near Orange Court House he 
 writes on the eve of the battle of Second Man- 
 assas, under date of August 17, 1862: "Gen 
 eral Pope says he is very strong and seems to 
 
 * Letter to Mrs. Lee, October 7, 1861; letter to his son, Major 
 W. H. F. Lee, October 12, 1861. 
 
160 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 feel so; for he is moving apparently up the 
 Rapidan. I hope he will not prove stronger 
 than we are. I learn since I have left that 
 General McClellan has moved down the James 
 River, with his whole army, so we shall have 
 busy times. Burnside and King from Fred- 
 ericksburg have joined Pope, which from their 
 own report has swelled Pope to 92,000. I do 
 not believe it, though I believe he is very big." 
 
 "General Hooker," he wrote, "is agitating 
 something on the other side, or at all events he 
 is agitating his troops. . . . Yesterday he was 
 marching his men up and down the river. . . ." 
 
 And again, "General Hooker is airing him 
 self north of the Rappahannock and again 
 threatening us with a crossing. ... I think he 
 will consider it a few days." And this of an 
 enemy who had, by his own field-reports a little 
 later, 137,378 men, whom he had pronounced 
 "the finest army on the planet," while Lee had 
 only 53,303. But if Hooker prided himself on 
 his fine army, Lee had no less confidence in his 
 own, however outnumbered. "I agree with 
 you," he wrote Hood, "in believing that our 
 army would be invincible if properly organized 
 and officered. There never were such men in 
 an army before. They will go anywhere and do 
 anything if properly led. But there is the diffi- 
 
LEE S CLEMENCY 161 
 
 culty proper commanders; where can they be 
 obtained ?" * 
 
 Once he wrote, "General Hooker is obliged 
 to do something: I do not know what it will be. 
 He is playing the Chinese game, trying what 
 frightening will do. He runs out his guns, 
 starts his wagons and troops up and down the 
 river and creates an excitement generally. Our 
 men look on in wonder, give a cheer, and all 
 again subsides in statu quo ante helium" f 
 
 It has been customary to think of piety as the 
 peculiar attribute of Jackson, the Puritan in 
 type, rather than of Lee, the Cavalier. But, if 
 possible, Lee was even more pious than his 
 great Lieutenant. In fact, both were men who, 
 in the early prime of their manhood, conse 
 crated themselves to God, and thenceforth served 
 him with a single heart. It shines forth in every 
 page they ever penned. It was the basis of their 
 character; it formed the foundation of that 
 wonderful poise which, amid the most difficult 
 and arduous situations left them the supreme 
 tranquillity which was the field in which their 
 powers found exercise. No one can familiarize 
 himself with Lee s life without seeing that he 
 was a man consecrated to the work of his 
 
 * Letter to General J. B. Hood, May 21, 1863. 
 f Letter to his daughter Agnes, February 26, 1863. 
 
162 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 Divine Master and amid all conditions pos 
 sessed a mind stayed on Him. 
 
 Not Cromwell s army was more religious 
 than that which followed Lee, and the great 
 Protector was not so pious as the great Captain 
 who led the army of Northern Virginia. 
 
 The principle on which he acted was stated 
 in one of his letters: "We are all in the hands of 
 a kind God," he wrote, "who will do for us 
 what is best, and more than we deserve, and we 
 have only to endeavor to deserve more and to do 
 our duty to Him and to ourselves. May we all de 
 serve His mercy, His care and His protection."* 
 
 Such was the man to whom Virginia con 
 fided the leadership of her soldiery. 
 
 His advice to his youngest son, whom he had 
 advised on leaving college to enlist in a good 
 company, was characteristic of him: "To be 
 obedient to all authority, and to do his duty in 
 everything, great or small." f 
 
 It was also characteristic alike of him and of 
 the soldiery of the South that he should have 
 refused to procure for this son a commission, 
 as long afterward he promptly discounte 
 nanced the idea of promoting his eldest son 
 (though a soldier so accomplished that he 
 
 * Letter of September i, 1856; cited in Jones s "Lee" p. 81. 
 f " Recollections of General Lee, " by Captain R. E. Lee. 
 
LEE S CLEMENCY 163 
 
 wished for him as his chief of staff) over the 
 heads of officers who had served under him and 
 proved their capacity under his eye. 
 
 "I do not think," says the former, in his in 
 teresting "Recollections" of his father, "that 
 it ever occurred to my father to have me, or 
 rather get me, a position in the army. I know 
 it never occurred to me, nor did I ever hear at 
 that time or afterward from any one that I 
 might have been entitled to better rank because 
 of my father s prominence in Virginia and in 
 the Confederacy." * 
 
 It was not until that son had fought as a pri 
 vate through the Valley campaigns of Jackson, 
 the battles around Richmond, the Maryland 
 campaign, and had distinguished himself, f that 
 he received the promotion to the staff of his 
 brother, General Wm. H. F. Lee. 
 
 Indeed, one of the troubles with which Lee 
 had to contend was the efforts made by poli 
 ticians in the civil government to procure com 
 missions and promotions for their constituents, 
 and the delay experienced in getting his recom 
 mendations for promotion for merit acted on. 
 
 The fact constitutes one of the few com- 
 
 * " Recollections of General Lee," by R. E. Lee. 
 t Moore s "Recollections of a Cannoneer under Jackson." 
 Neale Co. 
 
164 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 plaints in his letters, and he set the example by 
 steadfastly setting his face against any favorit 
 ism toward his own family. His two sons who 
 became generals, were both officers in the old 
 army and were both in the retreat to Appomattox 
 until one of them was captured with five other 
 general officers and some 6,000 men at Taylor s 
 Creek in one of the last fights of the war. Of 
 their character some idea may be formed from 
 the fact that when one of them, General Wm. 
 H. F. Lee was held as a hostage under sentence 
 of death, the other, General G. W. C. Lee, 
 wrote, asking to be accepted as a hostage in his 
 stead, placing the offer on the ground that his 
 brother had a wife and child, while he, his equal 
 in rank, and the eldest son, was unmarried. 
 
 Of his son s confinement under sentence as 
 a hostage which, the father says, was "grievous" 
 to him, Lee writes to his other son. " I had seen 
 in the papers the intention announced by the 
 Federal government of holding him as a hostage 
 for the two captains selected to be shot. If it is 
 right to shoot those men this should make no 
 difference in their execution; but I have not 
 thought it right to shoot them, and differ in my 
 ideas from most of our people on the subject 
 of reprisal. Sometimes I know it to be neces 
 sary, but it should not be resorted to at all 
 
LEE S CLEMENCY 165 
 
 times, and in our case policy dictates that it 
 should be avoided whenever possible." * 
 
 Happy the people that can produce such a 
 father and such sons! 
 
 It is told of Sidney that, when wounded and 
 perishing of thirst, some one brought him water, 
 and he ordered it given to a dying soldier whose 
 need was greater than his. Hardly a soldier in 
 Lee s army would not have done that which gave 
 Sidney fame. Such was the temper and char 
 acter of the men who followed Lee, and such was 
 the temper and character of their beloved com 
 mander, whom they loved to call in affectionate 
 phrase, " Marse Robert." He was their idol and 
 their ideal, and his impress was stamped on his 
 army. 
 
 The Master whom he so faithfully and humbly 
 tried to serve, whose precepts were ever in his 
 heart and whose spirit shone ever in his life, had 
 laid down for him the law: "And to the soldiers 
 he said, Do violence to no man." 
 
 This high rule, like all others of his Divine 
 Master, Lee ever followed and so far as possible, 
 inculcated on his army, by whom, to their 
 eternal honor be it said, the noble example was 
 nobly followed. Unhappily for the world and 
 for the future reputation of some who otherwise 
 
 * Letter to General G. W. C. Lee, August 7, 1863. 
 
1 66 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 might as able soldiers have won the admiration 
 of a whole people, rather than of a mere section 
 of that people, though gentlemen like McClel- 
 lan, McDowell, Burnside and the gentlemen 
 who followed them conducted war on high 
 principles, it was not the invariable rule among 
 all commanders. 
 
 Butler had damned himself to everlasting 
 fame by orders and acts in Louisiana which no 
 soldier can think of without a blush.* Hunter, 
 in despite of expostulations, had burnt his way 
 through the beautiful valley where Lee was to 
 find his last resting place; and had left in his 
 track the scarred and blackened ruins of count 
 less dwellings. To the honor of the brave men 
 he commanded it is said that he " had to de 
 prive forty of his commissioned officers of their 
 commands before he could carry into execution 
 his infamous orders. "f Even Halleck declared 
 his action " barbarous. "f It was reserved for 
 Sherman, possibly the second greatest general 
 on the Northern side, to reverse most completely 
 
 * In his infamous " Order 28 " he had ordered that any woman 
 in New Orleans who should " by word, or gesture, or movement 
 insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United 
 States, should be regarded and treated as a woman of the town, 
 plying her avocation." 
 
 t" Official Report of History Com., Grand Camp C. V., in 
 The Confederate Cause, " p. 103. 
 
 t Sherman s "Memoirs," II, p. 129. 
 
LEE S CLEMENCY 167 
 
 the advances of civilization and hark back almost 
 to the ferocious methods of mediaevalism. To 
 find the proof of this, one has no need to go out 
 side of this officer s own recorded words. 
 
 "War is hell," he was quoted long after as 
 saying. He did more than all others to make it 
 so. He ruthlessly devastated not only for the 
 needs of his army and to deprive his enemy of 
 subsistence, but to horrify and appall. He made 
 war not only on men, but on women and chil 
 dren. He deliberately strove to carry terror into 
 the hearts of the defenceless. 
 
 "In nearly all his dispatches after he had 
 reached the sea," says Rhodes, an historian from 
 his State, who is his apologist and his admirer, 
 "he gloated over the destruction of property." * 
 
 He gloated over the havoc he wrought, first in 
 anticipation, as he wrote how he could "make a 
 wreck of the country from Chattanooga to At 
 lanta, including the latter city,"f and again, how 
 he could "make Georgia howl";f next, in the 
 act of its perpetration, as he issued his orders for 
 his army to "forage liberally on the country," 
 and expressly forbade his officers to give receipts 
 for property taken; authorized the wanton 
 
 * Rhodes s " History of the United States," Vol. V, p. 22. 
 f Official Records, Vol. XXXIX, Pt. 2, p. 202. 
 t Official Records, Vol. XXXIX, Pt. 3, p. 162. 
 
 OF THE ^ 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
1 68 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 destruction of mills and houses; and while sub 
 ordinate officers like Howard and Cox and 
 Schofield were writhing under the robberies of 
 defenceless women, extending even to the tearing 
 of rings from their fingers, chuckled over the 
 robberies committed by his men who quoted 
 his orders to his face and reviewed his "bum 
 mers," an organized corps of robbers, who have 
 never had their counterpart since the Free Com 
 panies passed from the stage under the awaken 
 ing conscience of modern Europe. 
 
 If these are strong words they are largely 
 taken from his own writings. 
 
 He sent an express message to the corps com 
 mander at General Howell Cobb s plantation, 
 General Davis, "to explain whose plantation it 
 was and instruct him to spare nothing."* This 
 was but warring on women, for Cobb was in 
 his honored grave two years ere this, having 
 fallen at the foot of Marye s Heights, as a brave 
 man falls, holding back brave men. "I would 
 not restrain the army," he wrote coolly, "lest 
 its vigor and energy should be impaired. "f 
 
 Speaking of the burning of Columbia, which 
 Sherman wrote his brother he had in his report 
 "distinctly charged to General Wade Hamil- 
 
 * Sherman s "Memoirs," Vol. II, p. 185. 
 f Sherman s "Memoirs," II, p. 255. 
 
LEE S CLEMENCY 169 
 
 ton," he adds, "I confess I did so pointedly to 
 shake the faith of his people in him."* A dis 
 tinguished historian from his own State has 
 declared of this destruction of Columbia, a de 
 fenceless city which had surrendered, that, "It 
 was the most monstrous barbarity of this bar 
 barous march. Before his movements began, 
 General Sherman had begged permission to 
 turn his army loose in South Carolina and 
 devastate it. He used this permission to the 
 full. He protested that he did not wage war 
 upon women and children. But under the 
 operations of his orders the last morsel of food 
 was taken from hundreds of destitute families 
 that his soldiers might feast in needless and riot 
 ous abundance. Before his eyes, rose day after 
 day, the mournful clouds of smoke on every side 
 that told of old people and their grandchildren 
 driven in mid-winter from the only roofs that 
 were to shelter them, by the flames which the 
 wantonness of his soldiers had kindled. Yet, if 
 a single soldier was punished for a single out 
 rage or theft during that entire movement we 
 have found no mention of it in all the volu 
 minous records of the march." f 
 
 Place Lee s general order from Chambersburg 
 
 * Sherman s " Memoirs," II. p. 287. 
 
 t "Ohio in the War," by Hon. Whitelaw Reid. 
 
1 70 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 on invading Pennsylvania, beside Sherman s 
 correspondence with Halleck, and let posterity 
 judge thereby the character of the commanders. 
 Halleck, Chief of Staff and military adviser to 
 President Lincoln, writes to Sherman, "Should 
 you capture Charleston, I hope that by some ac 
 cident the place might be destroyed, and if a lit 
 tle salt should be sown upon its site it might pre 
 vent the growth of future crops of nullification 
 and secession," and Sherman replies,* "I will 
 bear in mind your hint as to Charleston, and do 
 not think salt will be necessary. When I move 
 on, the fifteenth corps will be on the right wing, 
 and their position will bring them naturally into 
 Charleston first, and if you have watched the 
 history of that corps you have remarked that 
 they generally do up their work pretty 
 well." 
 
 While this general was giving orders to burn 
 mills and destroy all food sources on which non- 
 combatants depended for life, and to convey 
 prisoners first, or if prisoners were wanting, then 
 non-combatant inhabitants, over all bridges and 
 other places suspected of being mined, and "could 
 hardly help laughing at their stepping so gin 
 gerly along the road where it was supposed sunk- 
 
 * Dispatch of December 24, 1864. Sherman s "Memoirs," IT, 
 pp. 223, 227-228. 
 
LEE S CLEMENCY 171 
 
 en torpedoes might explode at each step";* and 
 while even Grant, not yet risen to his last splendid 
 act of magnanimity, as he came to rise in the long 
 vigils before Petersburg, was expressing his hope 
 to Hunter that his troops would "eat out Virginia 
 clear and clean, as far as they could go, so that 
 crows flying over it for the balance of the sea 
 son would have to carry their provender with 
 them";f Lee, as he marched into Pennsylvania, 
 issued orders to his troops to remember that they 
 made war only on armed men, and that no 
 greater disgrace could befall the army, and 
 through it the whole South, than the perpetra 
 tion of barbarous outrages on the innocent 
 and defenceless. This whole order can never 
 be too frequently repeated. It gives the man 
 as he was. 
 
 HDQRS. ARMY OF NORTHERN VA., 
 
 CHAMBERSBURG, PA., June 27, 1863. 
 
 GENL. ORDER No. 72. 
 
 The Commanding General has observed with 
 marked satisfaction the conduct of the troops on the 
 march, and confidently anticipates results com 
 mensurate with the high spirit they have manifested. 
 No troops could have displayed greater fortitude or 
 
 * Sherman s " Memoirs," II, p. 194. 
 
 fOfficial Records, Vol. XXXVII, Pt. 2, pp. 300, 301. 
 
172 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 better performed the arduous marches of the past ten 
 days. Their conduct in other respects has, with few 
 exceptions, been in keeping with their character as 
 soldiers and entitles them to approbation and praise. 
 
 There have, however, been instances of forgetfulness 
 on the part of some that they have in keeping the yet 
 unsullied reputation of the army, and that the duties 
 exacted of us by civilization and Christianity are not 
 less obligatory in the country of the enemy than in our 
 own. The Commanding General considers that no 
 greater disgrace would befall the Army, and through it 
 our whole people, than the perpetration of the bar 
 barous outrages upon the innocent and defenceless 
 and the wanton destruction of private property that 
 have marked the course of the enemy in our own 
 country. Such proceedings not only disgrace the 
 perpetrators and all connected with them, but are 
 subversive of the discipline and efficiency of the army 
 and obstructive to the ends of our present movements. 
 [It must be remembered that we make war only on 
 armed men and that we cannot take vengeance for 
 the wrong our people have suffered without lowering 
 ourselves in the eyes of all whose abhorrence has been 
 excited by the atrocities of our enemy, and offending 
 against Him to whom vengeance belongeth, without 
 whose favor and support our efforts must all prove in 
 vain. 
 
 The Commanding General, therefore, earnestly 
 exhorts the troops to abstain with most scrupulous care 
 from unnecessary or wanton injury to private property, 
 
LEE S CLEMENCY 173 
 
 and he enjoins upon all officers to arrest and bring to 
 summary punishment all who shall in any way offend 
 against the orders on this subject. 
 
 R. E. LEE, 
 
 General. 
 
 Colonel Freemantle of the British Army, who 
 was along with the army, says : " I saw no strag 
 gling into the houses; nor were any of the in 
 habitants disturbed or annoyed by the soldiers. 
 I went into Chambersburg and witnessed the 
 singular good behavior of the troops toward the 
 citizens. To one who has seen the ravages of 
 the Northern troops in Southern towns this for 
 bearance seems most commendable and sur 
 prising." 
 
 It is a record of general and of men of which 
 the South may well be proud. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 GETTYSBURG 
 
 POSSIBLY, one other fault in Lee as a soldier 
 may appear to some: that he accounted the 
 abilities of the opposing armies at less than their 
 true value. Study of the war must lead to the 
 conviction that neither courage nor fortitude was 
 the monopoly of either side. The men who with 
 stood at Malvern Hill the fierce charges of the 
 Southern infantry; the men who marched down 
 the rolling plain of Second Manassas against 
 Stonewall Jackson s lines of flame, and dashed 
 like the surging sea, wave upon wave, on Lee s 
 iron ranks at Antietam; the men who charged 
 impregnable defences at Marye s Heights; the 
 men who climbed the slippery steeps of Chatta 
 nooga and swept the crimson plain of Franklin; 
 the men who maintained their positions under 
 the leaden sleet of the Wilderness and seized the 
 Bloody Angle at Spottsylvania; the men who 
 died at Cold Harbor, rank on rank, needed to 
 ask no odds for valor of any troops on. earth, not 
 even of the men who followed Lee. 
 
 174 
 
GETTYSBURG 175 
 
 In a recent discussion of this subject, the 
 philosophical Charles Francis Adams, himself 
 a veteran of the Army of the Potomac, whose 
 laurels were won in opposing Lee, quotes with 
 approval Lee s proud declaration that, "there 
 never were such men in an army before. They 
 will go anywhere and do anything if properly 
 led." "And for myself," he adds, "I do not 
 think the estimate thus expressed was exag 
 gerated. Speaking deliberately, having faced 
 some portions of the Army of Northern Virginia 
 at the time, and having reflected much on the 
 occurrences of that momentous period, I do not 
 believe that any more formidable, or better 
 organized and animated force was ever set in 
 motion than that which Lee led across the Po 
 tomac in the early summer of 1863. It was es 
 sentially an army of fighters men who individu 
 ally or in the mass could be depended upon for 
 any feat of arms in the power of mere mortals 
 to accomplish. They would blench at no dan 
 ger. This Lee, from experience, knew. He had 
 tested them; they had full confidence in him."* 
 
 Lee s error, such as it was, lay not in over 
 rating his own weapon, but in undervaluing 
 the larger weapon of his antagonist. Yet, if 
 this under-rating of his enemy was a fault it 
 
 * Address at Lexington, Virginia, cited ante. 
 
1 76 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 was a noble one; and how often it led to victory! 
 Lee s success was due largely to his splendid 
 audacity. 
 
 If, in attacking the redoubtable forces of 
 Meade on the heights of Gettysburg, he over 
 estimated the ability of that army of sixty 
 thousand Southern men who wore the gray, 
 who can wonder ? In their rags and tatters, 
 ill-shod and ill-armed, they were the flower of 
 the South. Had he not seen them on every 
 field since Mechanicsville ? Seen them, under 
 his masterly tactics and inspiring eye, sweep 
 McClellan s mighty army from the very gates 
 of Richmond ? Seen them send Pope, routed 
 and demoralized, to the shelter of the fortifica 
 tions around Alexandria ? Seen them repel 
 McClellan s furious charges on the field of 
 Antietam and hold him at bay with a fresh 
 army at his back ? Seen them drive Burnside s 
 valorous men back to their entrenchments ? 
 Seen them roll Hooker s great army up as a 
 scroll and hurl it back across the Rappahan- 
 nock ? What was disparity of numbers to him ? 
 What strength of position ? His greatest vic 
 tories had been plucked by daring, which hith 
 erto fortune had proved the wisest of calculation, 
 from the jaws of apparent impossibility. Be 
 sides, who knew so well as he the necessity of 
 
GETTYSBURG 177 
 
 striking such a blow ? The Southwest was being 
 gradually conquered. Vicksburg, the last strong 
 hold of the Confederacy on the Mississippi, was 
 in the last throes of a fatal siege, and, on the 
 same day that Lee faced his fate at the heights 
 of Gettysburg, fell, and the Confederate South 
 was cut in two. His delivering battle here under 
 such conditions has been often criticised. He is 
 charged with having violated a canon of war. 
 He replied to his critics once that even so dull a 
 man as himself could see clearly enough his mis 
 takes after they were committed. 
 
 This battle, now generally esteemed the cru 
 cial battle of the war, has been fought over 
 so often and so fully that it is not necessary 
 to go over its details now, and to do so is not 
 within the scope of this volume, which only 
 deals with Lee s military genius as borne evi 
 dence to by his audacity. Gettysburg was only 
 one factor in the unbroken chain of proof to 
 establish his boldness and his resolution. South 
 ern historians have unanimously placed the 
 chief responsibility for his defeat on Longstreet, 
 whose tendency to be dilatory and obstinate has 
 been noted in connection with the fields of Seven 
 Pines, Frazer s Farm and Second Manassas, 
 and whose slowness and surliness now probably 
 cost Lee this battle and possibly cost the South, 
 
178 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 if not its independence, at least the offer of 
 honorable terms. And in this estimate of him 
 many other competent critics concur. "Lee," 
 says Henderson in his "Life of Stonewall Jack 
 son," "lost the battle of Gettysburg because 
 he allowed his second in command to argue 
 instead of marching." * Lee, we know, held 
 him in high esteem, speaking of him as his 
 "old war horse," and was too magnanimous ever 
 to give countenance to the furious clamor which 
 later assailed his sturdy if opinionated and bull- 
 headed lieutenant. Longstreet seems, indeed, 
 to have been not unlike a bull, ponderous and 
 dull until aroused, but once aroused by the 
 sight of blood, terrible in his fury and a fero 
 cious fighter. But the question here is, did Lee 
 err or not in fighting the battle. 
 
 In brief, the battle of Gettysburg came of the 
 necessity to "yield to a stronger power than 
 General Burnside." Feeling the imperative 
 necessity of relieving Virginia of the burden that 
 was crushing her to the earth, Lee determined 
 as the summer of 1863 drew near, to manoeuvre 
 Hooker from his impregnable position on the 
 Stafford Heights and to transfer the theatre 
 of war to Northern soil. His army, though 
 not large, was a veteran body who, properly 
 
 * Vol. II, p. 488. 
 
GETTYSBURG 179 
 
 led, would go anywhere and do anything they 
 were ordered to do. Accordingly, in the first 
 week of June (from the 3d to the yth), Lee, 
 leaving A. P. Hill to occupy the lines at Fred- 
 ericksburg and cover Richmond, withdrew the 
 major portion of his force to Culpeper, and 
 directed them from there to the Shenandoah 
 Valley, which he immediately cleared of the 
 enemy, capturing in the several engagements 
 fought in his advance from Culpeper to Win 
 chester, over 4,000 men, 29 pieces of artillery 
 and many stores. 
 
 As he anticipated, his strategy drew Hooker 
 back toward the Potomac, and Longstreet was 
 moved forward on the eastern side of the Blue 
 Ridge, while A. P. Hill followed Ewell over the 
 mountains into the Valley of Virginia, the whole 
 being screened by Stuart s cavalry. 
 
 By the middle of the month (June) Lee s ad 
 vanced corps had crossed the Potomac and Long- 
 street was ordered soon afterward to do the same, 
 while Stuart was left to impede Hooker should 
 he attempt to follow across the Potomac, it being 
 left to Stuart s discretion whether to cross east 
 or west of the Blue Ridge; but on crossing he 
 was to cover the right of the army. On the 
 2 ist, Ewell was ordered to advance in the direc 
 tion of Harrisburg, and he reached Carlisle on 
 
i8o ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 the 27th. On the same day Longstreet and A. 
 P. Hill reached the vicinity of Chambersburg. 
 Up to this time no information had come from 
 any source of the crossing of the Potomac by 
 the Federal army, and it was not until the 28th 
 that Lee was apprised by one of his scouts that 
 the army had crossed several days before and 
 was near South Mountain. Lee promptly de 
 cided to concentrate his forces on the east of the 
 mountains, and Hill was ordered to Cashtown, 
 to the north-westward of Gettysburg, to which 
 place a turnpike ran, with Longstreet following 
 next day. 
 
 On the morning of the 3Oth, Pettigrew s 
 brigade, of Heth s division, was ordered to the 
 little town of Gettysburg, a few miles away, to 
 get shoes and other supplies of which it stood 
 sorely in need, and found it occupied by the 
 enemy, who were not known to be nearer than 
 fifteen miles away. General Lee having arrived 
 at Cashtown on the morning of July ist, Heth 
 was sent to ascertain the force of the enemy, but 
 was ordered if he found infantry in force to re 
 port the fact and not force an engagement. At 
 this time Hill had two divisions up and the 
 third not far in the rear, and Ewell was on his 
 way, having been ordered to recall his divisions 
 and concentrate about Cashtown. Before long 
 
GETTYSBURG 181 
 
 the sound of artillery from the direction of Get 
 tysburg gave evidence that an engagement was 
 on, and General Lee, accompanied by Hill, 
 hastened to the front, where they found that 
 the enemy s artillery and infantry, who were 
 present in considerable force, had driven Heth s 
 two advanced brigades back, and the whole 
 division was now hotly engaged. 
 
 This was the beginning of the famous three 
 days battle of Gettysburg; for from this time 
 on the conflict continued with only the inter 
 missions due to darkness and the need for fresh 
 troops. Heth s division would have paid dearly 
 for their shoes had not Ewell learned that 
 morning that Hill was moving toward Gettys 
 burg and headed his column in that direction, 
 and had not Rhodes, whose division was in the 
 lead, caught the sound of guns and pushed for 
 ward, "making his dispositions" for the battle 
 as he hurried on. Even when he reached the 
 field he found the force before him so strong 
 that he was glad to hold his own, and it was 
 not until Early reached the field and put in his 
 division on the left that they forced back the 
 enemy s right, as Fender, rushing to Heth s re 
 lief, made good his advance and the enemy were 
 driven in disorder from the field, through the 
 town and on beyond to the heights where one of 
 
182 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 Steinwehr s brigades of the Eleventh Corps lay 
 in reserve. It was a stubborn and bloody con 
 flict, with from twenty-two thousand to twenty- 
 four thousand men on either side, and while it 
 resulted in a clear victory for the Confederate 
 troops, who not only swept the field but capt 
 ured some 5,000 prisoners, the loss on both 
 sides was heavy. General Lee, who was an eye 
 witness of the victory, sent his adjutant-general 
 with a message to Ewell to say that "from the 
 position he occupied he could see the enemy 
 retreating over those hills without organization 
 and in great confusion, and that it was only 
 necessary to press those people in order to se 
 cure possession of the heights and that, if pos 
 sible, he wished him to do this." * General 
 Ewell, however, "deemed it unwise to make the 
 pursuit," for fear, probably, as Taylor con 
 jectures, of bringing on a general engagement. 
 However this was, the pursuit was not pressed, 
 though Gordon, who was in the full tide of 
 victory, required three or four orders "of the 
 most peremptory character" before he stayed 
 his eager troops. 
 
 Ewell halted his men on the field, and that 
 night the Federals fortified the heights and as 
 new troops came pouring in by forced marches, 
 
 * Taylor s "General Lee," p. 190. 
 
GETTYSBURG 183 
 
 the lines were rapidly strengthened with en 
 trenchments. At this time the commanding 
 position of Gulp s Hill was unoccupied. Han 
 cock states that he ordered Wadsworth s division 
 and a battery to take position there in the 
 afternoon. But two of Ewell s staff officers 
 reported to him that they were on the hill at 
 dark. 
 
 Meade, at Taneytown, Maryland, thirteen 
 miles away, with the Second Corps, received 
 Hancock s report of the situation that after 
 noon, and, issuing orders with a promptness 
 which bore rich fruit, he marched for the 
 heights commanding the battlefield, where he 
 arrived at i in the morning. There was discus 
 sion as to the availability of the position and 
 Meade at one time thought of withdrawing 
 from it. The Fifth Corps, that evening, was at 
 Union Mills, twenty-three miles away, and the 
 Sixth Corps was at Manchester, thirty-four 
 to thirty-six miles away. Lee s army lay close 
 to the battle-field, and might attack before his 
 troops got up or might interpose between him 
 and Washington.* Longstreet says he himself 
 opposed further fighting there. 
 
 Lee, however, was ready for the fight and be 
 lieved he could destroy Meade in detail. He 
 
 * Meade to Halleck. Dispatch, 2 p. M., July 2, 1863. 
 
1 84 ROBERT E, LEE 
 
 had a talk with Longstreet on Seminary Ridge 
 that afternoon at 5 o clock, and that evening he 
 held a conference in the captured town of Get 
 tysburg with Ewell, Early and Rhodes; where it 
 was determined that Longstreet, whose troops 
 were only four miles away, should begin the 
 battle in the morning, by seizing the com 
 manding positions on the enemy s left and thus 
 be enabled to enfilade Meade s flank, while he 
 was attacked by Hill and Early. Lee left the 
 conference to give the order, and that night 
 told General Wm. N. Pendleton, his chief of 
 artillery, that he "had ordered General Long- 
 street to attack on the flank at sunrise next 
 morning." * At daybreak Lee himself was 
 ready and waiting for the battle to begin; but 
 Longstreet, who the evening before had been 
 averse to attacking, says he sought him out 
 again at daybreak and renewed his views 
 against making the attack on this side, an ex 
 postulation which caused Lee to send a staff 
 officer to Ewell to ascertain whether, after exam 
 ining the position by daylight, he could not 
 attack. The position in front of Ewell was, 
 however, now too strongly fortified to make an 
 assault possible, and Meade in contemplation of 
 
 * "Life of General Wm. N. Pendleton," by S. P. Lee. 
 Fitzhugh Lee s "Lee." 
 
GETTYSBURG 185 
 
 assuming the offensive, was massing his forces 
 there. Lee even then rode himself to confer 
 with Ewell, but finding what the situation was, 
 adhered to his original decision and ordered 
 Longstreet at n o clock to attack as already 
 directed. 
 
 Even then, however, Longstreet held back 
 whether from obstinacy and refractoriness, or 
 because "his heart was not in it" longer, or 
 because he felt the situation hopeless the two 
 former of which reasons have been charged 
 against him, and the last of which has been 
 claimed by him, has ever been a question hotly 
 debated. However it was, though his troops, 
 except one brigade, Law s, were encamped close 
 to the battlefield, he failed to move until half 
 the day had been lost, because, as he said, he 
 hated to go into battle with one boot off; and 
 when he moved, Round Top was fully protected. 
 Meade had changed his plan of attacking with 
 his right and had strengthened his left; Sedg- 
 wick s corps, the Sixth, had come up after an 
 epoch-making march of thirty-six miles since 
 9 o clock the night before and was in position 
 while Longstreet sulked and dawdled with his 
 eager troops awaiting orders on the edge of the 
 battlefield. 
 
 Even as it was, in the furious battle which 
 
i86 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 took place that afternoon when Longstreet at 
 last began to fight, Lee seized Big Round Top, 
 held it for some time, and passed beyond it; 
 turned Sickles s left and made a lodgment on 
 Little Round Top, behind which Sedgwick s 
 Sixth Corps, white with the dust of their thirty- 
 six miles march, was massed on the Taneytown 
 road; which Meade declared "the key-point 
 of his whole position/ and held it with his 
 brave Alabamians until driven back by the Fifth 
 Corps, massed for the purpose, and this, if 
 held, would, Meade states, "have prevented him 
 from holding any of the ground he subse 
 quently held to the last." At nightfall Lee had 
 secured possession of the important position 
 known as "The Devil s Den," the Ridge on the 
 Emmitsburg Pike, made lodgment on the bases 
 of both Round Tops; made an impression on 
 the Federal centre, and had occupied a portion 
 of the works on the Federal right.* It was 
 enough to lead Lee to report that the conditions 
 "induced the belief, that with proper concert of 
 action, and with the increased support that the 
 positions gained on the right would enable the 
 artillery to render the assaulting columns, we 
 
 * Cf. Fitzhugh Lee s "Life of Lee." 
 
 Lieutenant-Colonel Henderson s Review of General Long- 
 street s "From Manassas to Appomattox," cited ante; General 
 Humphrey s "Gettysburg Campaign." 
 
GETTYSBURG 187 
 
 should ultimately succeed, and it was accord 
 ingly determined to continue the attack." * 
 
 Longstreet at Gettysburg is a subject that few 
 Southerners can contemplate with philosophic 
 calm. It used to be common soon after the war 
 for old Confederate officers to declare that he 
 should have been shot immediately after the 
 battle, and that Napoleon would certainly have 
 done so. But Lee was cast in a different mould. 
 Of all his army he possibly knew most fully 
 how absolutely Longstreet had frustrated his 
 plans, and certainly of all he treated him with 
 most leniency. But while he was assuming the 
 burden of the responsibility and wrote Long- 
 street the affectionate letters of an old brother 
 in arms who knew his worth and overlooked his 
 errors, Longstreet, with what was not far from 
 ingratitude, was placing on Lee the blame for 
 his own shortcoming and was claiming that had 
 he been allowed to dictate the plan of the cam 
 paign the result would have been different. 
 
 After General Lee was in his honored grave, 
 Longstreet published his own defence, in which he 
 undertook to prove that Lee had made eleven 
 grave errors in the precipitation and conduct of 
 the battle of Gettysburg. He says that he op 
 posed fighting the battle of Gettysburg and that 
 
 * Lee s Report. 
 
188 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 when he, on the evening of the ist, gave his 
 opinion to General Lee that they could not 
 have called the enemy to a position better 
 suited to their plans, and that all they had to do 
 was to file round his left and secure good ground 
 between him and his capital, he was astonished 
 at Lee s impatience, and his vehement declara 
 tion, "If he is there to-morrow, I will attack 
 him," and thereupon he observes, "His des 
 perate mood was painfully evident and gave 
 rise to serious apprehensions." All of which 
 was written long afterward and as a defence 
 against the quite general and serious criticism 
 of his own conduct as the cause of Lee s failure. 
 But why should Lee have been in a desperate 
 mood ? He had an army on which he knew he 
 could count to do anything if they were prop 
 erly led. He had gone into the North to fight; 
 he had just seen a part of his force roll two fine 
 army corps, fighting furiously, back through the 
 town and over the heights, in confusion, leaving 
 in his hands 5,000 captives, and he knew that 
 the bulk of the Federal army was from four to 
 nine times as far from the field as his own corps. 
 His reason for fighting next morning was, 
 therefore, not his desperation, but his appar 
 ently well-grounded hope that he should win a 
 battle before Meade could concentrate, and 
 
GETTYSBURG 189 
 
 then be in a position to force terms. His posi 
 tion has commended itself to clear-headed sol 
 diers since,* and the criticism of it is retroactive 
 and based on events which should not have 
 occurred and in all human probability would 
 not, but for Longstreet s slowness if not his 
 bull-headedness. 
 
 Lee, as he waited next morning for Long- 
 street to move forward, gave Hood, who had 
 been on the ground since daybreak, his chief 
 reason for fighting. "The enemy is here," he 
 said, "and if we don t whip him he will whip 
 us." It was a sound reason and has been ap 
 proved by good critics, and had Longstreet not 
 dallied or sulked for more than half the day, it 
 might have been justified before dark fell on 
 the night of the 2d of July. As we see Long- 
 street, fooling away the hours while spade and 
 shovel rang along the green crest piling up the 
 earthworks, and while Sedgwick s Sixth Corps, 
 hot-footed, pushed along the dusty roads, telling 
 off the long miles hour after hour, we may well 
 understand how different the result would have 
 been had but Stonewall Jackson commanded 
 that day the bronzed and eager divisions lying all 
 
 * Lieutenant-Colonel G. F. R. Henderson s review of Long- 
 street s "From Manassas to Appomattox." "Journal of Royal 
 United States Inst.," October, 1897. 
 
190 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 morning with stacked arms awaiting orders. 
 Doubtless it was this that was in Lee s mind 
 when, long afterward, he said, "If I had had 
 Jackson at Gettysburg, as far as human reason 
 can see, I should have won a great victory." 
 
 The next day Lee assaulted and was repelled 
 in what is known to soldiers as the third day s 
 battle; but his defeat was accomplished in the 
 first half of the preceding day, when Longstreet 
 failed to carry out his orders, and the golden 
 opportunity was lost. 
 
 As the scope of this discussion includes only 
 the question of Lee s ability as a general in 
 offensive operations, it is not within its province 
 to go further into the details of this great battle, 
 except to show that on this day Longstreet 
 again delayed and faltered, and that this time 
 his slowness destroyed finally all possibility of 
 success. This cannot be better shown than by 
 quoting from the illuminating review of his book 
 by Lieutenant-Colonel, afterward Brigadier- 
 General, G. F. R. Henderson, already cited. 
 
 "His conduct on the third day," declares this 
 critic, "opens up a still graver issue. The First 
 Army Corps when at length, on the afternoon 
 of July 2d, it was permitted to attack, had 
 achieved a distinct success. The enemy was 
 driven back to his main position with enormous 
 
GETTYSBURG 191 
 
 loss. On the morning of July 3d, Lee deter 
 mined to assault that position in front and flank, 
 simultaneously; and, according to his chief of 
 the staff, Longstreet s corps was to make the 
 main attack on the centre, while the Second 
 Corps attacked the right. But again there was 
 delay, and this time it was fatal. . . . We may 
 note that according to Longstreet s own testi 
 mony the order (to attack) was given soon after 
 sunrise, and yet, although the Second Corps 
 attacking the Federal right became engaged at 
 daylight, it was not until I P. M., eight hours 
 later, that the artillery of the First Corps 
 opened fire, and not till 2 P. M. that the infantry 
 advanced. Their assault was absolutely iso 
 lated. The Second Corps had already been 
 beaten back. The Third Corps, although a 
 division who were ready to move to any point 
 to which Longstreet might indicate, was not 
 called upon for assistance. Two divisions of 
 his own corps, posted on the right flank, did 
 absolutely nothing, and after a supremely gal 
 lant effort the 15,000 men who were hurled 
 against the front of the Federal army, and some 
 of whom actually penetrated the position, were 
 repulsed with fearful slaughter." 
 
 After discussing in detail Longstreet s tactics 
 and action, this thoughtful critic adds: "But 
 
192 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 the crucial question is this: Why did he delay 
 his attack for eight hours, during which time the 
 Second Corps with which he was to cooperate 
 was heavily engaged ? If he moved only under 
 compulsion, if he deliberately forebore to use 
 his best efforts to carry out Lee s design, and to 
 compel him to adopt his own, the case is very 
 different. That he did so seems perfectly clear." 
 "If Lee was to blame at all in the Gettysburg 
 campaign," adds Henderson, "it was in taking 
 as his second in command a general who was so 
 completely indifferent to the claim of discipline." 
 Had Lee s orders been obeyed, he would 
 probably have won the battle of Gettysburg. 
 He must have won it on the 2d of July, when 
 he had u a fine opportunity of dealing with the 
 enemy in detail"; he might have won it even 
 on the 3d. But fate, that decides the issues of 
 nations, decreed otherwise. The crown of Ceme 
 tery Ridge, seized and held for twenty minutes 
 by that devoted band of gray-clad heroes, marks 
 the highest tide, not of Confederate valor but 
 of Confederate hope. Even so, it appeared at 
 first but a drawn battle. The Army of North 
 ern Virginia had struck Meade so terrible a 
 blow that, as Halleck testified before the Com 
 mission on the Conduct of the War, a council 
 was held to decide whether they should retreat. 
 
GETTYSBURG 193 
 
 All that day the two armies lay on the opposite 
 hills like spent lions nursing their wounds, 
 neither of them able to attack the other. Next 
 day, Lee, with ammunition-chests nearly ex 
 hausted, fell slowly back to the Potomac, cautious 
 ly followed by his antagonist, and after waiting 
 quietly for its swollen waters to subside recrossed 
 into Virginia. It was a defeat, for Lee had failed 
 of his purpose. But it was a defeat which bare 
 ly touches his fame as a captain. No other 
 captain or army in history might have done 
 more. 
 
 The gallant and high-minded Meade was a 
 little later superseded by his Government in 
 favor of the victorious Grant and loyally served 
 under him as commander of the Army of the 
 Potomac to the end; but at the South, neither 
 Lee nor his heroic army ever stood higher with 
 the authorities or the southern people. His 
 very defeat seems even now but the pedestal 
 for a more exalted heroism. With a magna 
 nimity too sublime for common men wholly to 
 appreciate, he took all the blame for the failure 
 on himself. History has traversed his unselfish 
 statement and has placed the blame where it just 
 ly belongs : on those who failed to carry out the 
 plan his genius had conceived. 
 
 Moved possibly by the criticism of the oppo- 
 
194 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 sition press, for there was ever a hostile and 
 intractable press attacking the Government 
 of the Confederacy and reviling all its works, 
 Lee wrote to Mr. Davis and proposed that he 
 should be relieved by some younger and possibly 
 more efficient man. His bodily strength was 
 failing, he said, and he was dependent on the 
 eyes of others. Mr. Davis promptly reassured 
 him in a letter which goes far to explain the 
 personal loyalty to him, not only of Lee, but of 
 the South. 
 
 These letters give a picture of the two men in 
 their relation to each other and to the cause 
 they represented, and should be read in full by 
 all who would understand the character of the 
 two leaders of the Confederacy. 
 
 Lee s letter was as follows: 
 
 CAMP ORANGE, August 5, 1863. 
 
 MR. PRESIDENT: 
 
 Your letters of the 28th of July and 2d of 
 August have been received, and I have waited 
 for a leisure hour to reply, but I fear that will 
 never come. I am extremely obliged to you for 
 the attention given to the wants of this Army, 
 and the efforts made to supply them. Our ab 
 sentees are returning, and I hope the earnest 
 and beautiful appeal made to the country in 
 
GETTYSBURG 195 
 
 your proclamation may stir up the whole people 
 and that they may see their duty and perform 
 it. Nothing is wanted but that their fortitude 
 should equal their bravery to insure the suc 
 cess of our cause. We must expect reverses, 
 even defeats. They are sent to teach us wisdom 
 and prudence, to call forth greater energies, 
 and to prevent our falling into greater disasters. 
 Our people have only to be true and united, to 
 bear manfully the misfortunes incident to war, 
 and all will come right in the end. I know how 
 prone we are to censure, and how ready to 
 blame others for the non-fulfilment of our ex 
 pectations. This is unbecoming in a generous 
 people, and I grieve at its expression. The 
 general remedy for the want of success in a 
 military commander is his removal. This is 
 natural, and in many instances proper; for no 
 matter what may be the ability of the officer, if 
 he loses the confidence of his troops, disaster 
 must sooner or later ensue. 
 
 I have been prompted by these reflections 
 more than once since my return from Penn 
 sylvania to propose to your Excellency the pro 
 priety of selecting another commander for this 
 Army. I have seen and heard of expressions of 
 discontent in the public journals as the result of 
 the expedition. I do not know how far this 
 
196 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 feeling extends to the Army. My brother offi 
 cers have been too kind to report it, and so far 
 the troops have been too generous to exhibit it. 
 It is fair, however, to suppose that it does exist, 
 and success is so necessary to us that nothing 
 should be left undone to secure it. I, therefore, 
 in all sincerity, request your Excellency to take 
 measures to supply my place. I do this with the 
 more earnestness, because no one is more aware 
 than myself of my inability to discharge the 
 duties of my position. I cannot even accom 
 plish what I myself desire. How can I fulfil the 
 expectations of others ? In addition, I sensibly 
 feel the growing failure of my bodily strength. 
 I have not yet recovered from the attack I ex 
 perienced the past spring. I am becoming 
 more and more incapable of exertion, and am 
 thus prevented from making the personal ex 
 amination, and giving the supervision to the 
 operations in the field which I feel to be 
 necessary. I am so dull, that in undertaking 
 to use the eyes of others I am frequently 
 misled. 
 
 Everything, therefore, points to the advantage 
 to be derived from a new commander, and I 
 the more anxiously urge the matter upon your 
 Excellency from my belief that a younger and 
 abler man than myself can be readily obtained. 
 
GETTYSBURG 197 
 
 I know that he will have as gallant and brave an 
 army as ever existed to second his efforts, and 
 it would be the happiest day of my life to see at 
 its head a worthy leader one that would ac 
 complish more than I can perform and all that 
 I have wished. I hope your Excellency will 
 attribute my request to the true reason the 
 desire to serve my country and to do all in my 
 power to insure the success of her righteous 
 cause. 
 
 I have no complaints to make of any one but 
 myself. I have received nothing but kindness 
 from those above me, and the most considerate 
 attention from my comrades and companions in 
 arms. To your Excellency I am specially in 
 debted for uniform kindness and consideration. 
 You have done everything in your power to aid 
 me in the work committed to my charge with 
 out omitting anything to promote the general 
 welfare. I pray that your efforts may at length 
 be crowned with success, and that you may long 
 live to enjoy the thanks of a grateful people. 
 With sentiments of great esteem, I am, 
 
 Very respectfully and truly yours, 
 R. E. LEE. 
 
 General. 
 
 His Excellency Jefferson Davis, President Con 
 federate States. 
 
198 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 To this letter President Davis sent the follow 
 ing reply: 
 
 RICHMOND, VA., August n, 1863. 
 
 GEN. R. E. LEE, Commanding Army of North 
 ern Virginia: 
 
 Yours of the 8th inst. has just been received. 
 I am glad that you concur so entirely with me 
 as to the wants of our country in this trying 
 hour, and am happy to add that after the first 
 depression consequent upon our disasters in the 
 West, indications have appeared that our peo 
 ple will exhibit that fortitude which we agree 
 in believing is alone needed to secure ultimate 
 success. 
 
 It well became Sydney Johnston when over 
 whelmed by a senseless clamor to admit the 
 rule that success is the test of merit; and yet 
 there has been nothing which I have found to 
 require a greater effort of patience than to bear 
 the criticisms of the ignorant who pronounce 
 everything a failure which does not equal their ex 
 pectations or desires, and can see no good result 
 which is not in the line of their own imaginings. 
 
 I admit the propriety of your conclusions that 
 an officer who loses the confidence of his troops 
 should have his position changed, whatever may 
 be his ability; but when I read the sentence I 
 
GETTYSBURG 199 
 
 was not at all prepared for the application you 
 were about to make. Expressions of discontent 
 in the public journals furnish but little evidence 
 of the sentiment of the army. I wish it were 
 otherwise, even though all the abuse of myself 
 should be accepted as the results of honest ob 
 servation. Were you capable of stooping to it, 
 you could easily surround yourself with those 
 who would fill the press with your laudations, 
 and seek to exalt you for what you had not done, 
 rather than detract from the achievements 
 which will make you and your army the subject 
 of history and the object of the world s admira 
 tion for generations to come. 
 
 I am truly sorry to know that you still feel the 
 effects of the illness you suffered last spring, and 
 can readily understand the embarrassments you 
 experience in using the eyes of others, having 
 been so much accustomed to make your own 
 reconnaissances. Practice will, however, do 
 much to relieve that embarrassment, and the 
 minute knowledge of the country which you 
 have acquired will render you less dependent 
 for topographical information. 
 
 But suppose, my dear friend, that I were to 
 admit, with all their implications, the points 
 which you present, where am I to find the new 
 commander who is to possess the greater ability 
 
200 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 which you believe to be required ? I do not 
 doubt the readiness with which you would give 
 way to one who could accomplish all that you 
 have wished, and you will do me the justice to 
 believe that if Providence should kindly offer 
 such a person for our use I would not hesitate 
 to avail myself of his services. 
 
 My sight is not sufficiently penetrating to dis 
 cover such hidden merit, if it exists, and I have 
 but used to you the language of sober earnest 
 ness when I have impressed upon you the pro 
 priety of avoiding all unnecessary exposure to 
 danger, because I felt our country could not 
 bear to lose you. To ask me to substitute for 
 you some one, in my judgment, more fit to com 
 mand or who would possess more of the confi 
 dence of the Army or of the reflecting men of 
 the country, is to demand an impossibility. It 
 only remains for me to hope that you will take 
 all possible care of yourself, that your health 
 and strength will be entirely restored, and that 
 the Lord will preserve you for the important 
 duties devolved upon you in the struggle of our 
 suffering country for the independence which 
 we have engaged in war to maintain. 
 
 As ever, 
 
 Very respectfully and truly, 
 
 JEFFERSON DAVIS 
 
GETTYSBURG 201 
 
 With these letters to portray the character of 
 Lee, history will endorse with its infallible pen 
 what the President of the Confederacy wrote: 
 There was no better man to take his place. 
 
 Though Lee failed of final success, to the 
 student of history who weighs opportunities 
 and compares resources, this in no wise mars his 
 fame. He lay in the face of the enemy twenty- 
 four hours and then, with the swollen Potomac 
 at his back, brought off his army intact and 
 undisspirited and proceeded to prepare for the 
 next campaign. Indeed, with the Army of the 
 Potomac in his front, he sent two divisions under 
 Longstreet to reinforce Bragg and defeat Rose- 
 crans at Chickamauga. When Meade crossed 
 the Rappahannock into Culpeper, Lee ma 
 noeuvred so threateningly that Meade retired, 
 and only the lack of shoes and equipment 
 prevented Lee from again crossing the Po 
 tomac.* 
 
 The chief disaster of Gettysburg lay not so 
 much in the first repulse of the intrepid lines, 
 which, in the face of a constantly increasing 
 storm of shot and shell, swept across that deadly 
 plain and on up the flaming slopes of Cemetery 
 
 * Letter to Mrs. Lee, Oct. 19, 1863. Fitzhugh Lee s "Lee," 
 P- 317- 
 
202 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 Ridge and Little Round Top, as in the conse 
 quences which were soon disclosed. 
 
 The North was enabled to recruit her armies 
 by drafting all the men she needed, and her 
 command of the sea gave her Europe as a re 
 cruiting ground. On October 17, 1863, the 
 President of the United States ordered a draft 
 for 300,000 men. On February I, 1864, he 
 called for 500,000, allowing a deduction for 
 quotas filled under the preceding draft; and on 
 March 14, 1864, he issued an additional call for 
 200,000 more, "to provide an additional reserve 
 for all contingencies." * 
 
 The South was almost spent. Her spirit was 
 unquenched, and was, indeed, unquenchable; 
 but her resources both of treasure and men were 
 well-nigh exhausted. Her levies for reserves 
 of all men between fifteen and sixty drew from 
 President Davis the lament that she was grind 
 ing the seed-corn of the Confederacy. Yet more 
 significantly it satisfied the new General, who, 
 with his laurels fresh from the dearly won heights 
 
 * Under the first call 369,380 men were drawn, of whom 52,- 
 288 paid commutation; under the second 259,575 men were 
 drawn, of whom 32,678 paid commutation. Again on July 18, 
 1864, a call was made for 500,000 more men, of whom 385,163 
 were furnished; and on December 19, 1864, 300,000 more were 
 called for and 211,755 were furnished. Rhodes s "History," 
 Vol. IV, p. 429, citing " Statistical Rec. Phisterer," pp. 6, 8, 9. 
 
GETTYSBURG 203 
 
 of Missionary Ridge, succeeded (on March 12,) 
 the high-minded Meade, in the command of the 
 Union Army on the Potomac, that a policy of 
 attrition was one, and possibly the only one, which 
 must win in the end. Clear-headed, aggressive, 
 and able, he began his campaign with this policy 
 from which he never varied, though the attrition 
 wore away two men in his own ranks for every 
 one in Lee s army, and he found himself forced 
 to abandon the line which he somewhat boast 
 fully declared he would fight it out on if it took 
 all summer. 
 
 Grant, acting on his policy of "persistent 
 hammering" (a phrase coined by him after the 
 events which proved its effectiveness), and 
 assured of vast levies and of a free hand to carry 
 out his plan on his own line, no matter what the 
 cost, crossed the Rapidan on the night of the 
 3d of May, 1864. His army numbered over 
 140,000 men of all arms double the number 
 that Lee commanded and he had 318 field 
 guns. His equipment was possibly the best that 
 any army could boast that ever took the field. 
 His baggage train would, as he states, have 
 stretched in line to Richmond, sixty odd miles 
 away. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE WILDERNESS CAMPAIGN 
 
 TF Grant had harbored any delusion that Lee 
 was a general strong only in defensive opera 
 tions, he had reason quickly to be undeceived. 
 Lee, who for reasons of his own, had permitted 
 him to cross the river unopposed, waited until 
 he had reached the tangles of the Wilderness, 
 where his superiority in men and arms might 
 prove less preponderant, and two days later, 
 having called in his widely separated divisions, 
 separated for the want of subsistence though 
 he was outnumbered two to one * he threw him 
 self upon him, inflicting upon him losses be 
 fore which any other general who had yet com 
 manded the Army of the Potomac would have 
 recrossed the river, and even Grant recoiled. 
 For two days (the 5th and 6th) the battle raged, 
 and Lee forced Grant, with losses of 17,666 
 men,f from his direct line of march and led him 
 
 * Rhodes s "History of The United States/ IV, p. 480. Hum 
 phrey s Va. Campaign of 64 and 65, p. 17. 
 
 t The Century Co. s "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War," 
 IV, p. 182. 
 
 204 
 
THE WILDERNESS CAMPAIGN 205 
 
 to call on his Government for reinforcements. 
 " Send to Belle Plain," he wrote on the loth, " all 
 the infantry you can rake and scrape." And he 
 needed them all. On the evening of the second 
 day an attack similar to Jackson s at Chancel- 
 lorsville was made on Grant s flank, and his left 
 taken in reverse was driven back when an acci 
 dent similar to that which changed the issue of 
 that day changed this day s issue. As Long- 
 street, who commanded the advancing troops, 
 rode down the plank-road accompanied by 
 Generals Kershaw and Jenkins, a volley was 
 poured into them by his own men, and Jenkins 
 was killed and Longstreet dangerously wounded. 
 It stopped the movement which otherwise might 
 have forced Grant back across the Rapidan. 
 Lee s forces were largely outnumbered, but to 
 make good the difference Lee offered at more 
 than one critical moment to lead them in person. 
 Officers and men alike refused to advance while 
 he remained at a point of danger, and he was 
 forced to the rear. But not only in the battle of 
 the 6th, but also in the battle of the loth and in 
 the furious fight at the "bloody angle," where, 
 when his army was imperilled, he again rode for 
 ward to inspire his straining troops and was 
 again driven by them to the rear, the fact that 
 he had felt it necessary to place himself at their 
 
206 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 head called forth new efforts from the jaded 
 soldiers and stirred them to redoubled valor. 
 
 "These men, General," said Gordon, as he 
 rode with him down the lines at Spottsylvania, 
 where they rested for a moment prior to the final 
 charge, "are the brave Virginians." Lee ut 
 tered no word. He simply removed his hat and 
 passed bare-headed along the line. I had it 
 from one who witnessed the act. "It was," 
 said he, "the most eloquent address ever deliv 
 ered." And a few minutes later as the men ad 
 vanced to the charge, he heard a youth, as he ran 
 forward crying and reloading his musket, shout 
 through his tears that "any man who would not 
 fight after what General Lee said was a 
 coward." 
 
 In no battle of the war did Lee s genius shine 
 forth more brightly than in the great battle of 
 Spottsylvania Court House, where, after the 
 bloody battle of the Wilderness, he divined 
 Grant s plans, and again cutting him off from 
 the object of his desire, threw himself upon him 
 in a battle whose fury may be gauged by the 
 fact that the musketry fire continued in one un 
 broken roar for seventeen hours, and large trees 
 were shorn down by the musket balls. 
 
 By the evening of the yth, while his staff were 
 yet in darkness as to Grant s next move, Lee, 
 
THE WILDERNESS CAMPAIGN 207 
 
 with his unerring sense of the soldier, had di 
 vined it, and he sent General Anderson with his 
 division to relieve Stuart at Spottsylvania.* 
 His adjutant-general, who was sent to apprise 
 Stuart of the approach of the infantry, found 
 him already engaged. The supports arrived 
 just in time; for the cavalry had been driven 
 back, and Grant already occupied the Court 
 House, as he reported in his dispatch of the 8th. 
 But Lee s promptness "deranged this part of 
 the programme," driving him back and holding 
 him off during a week s fierce fighting, when 
 Grant, having lost 40,000 men, finding his 
 enemy too obstinate and ready to die in the last 
 ditch, drew off by the flank, toward the south 
 ward, whereupon Lee again headed him and 
 facing him at Hanover Junction, forced him 
 down the north bank of the Pamunkey to Han 
 over town. 
 
 "Before the lines of Spottsylvania," says 
 Swinton, "the Army of the Potomac had for 
 twelve days and nights engaged in a fierce 
 wrestle in which it had done all that valor may 
 do to carry a position by nature and art impreg 
 nable. In this contest, unparalleled in its con 
 tinuous fury and swelling to the proportions of 
 a campaign, language is inadequate to convey 
 
 * Taylor s "General Lee," p. 238. 
 
2 o8 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 an impression of the labors, fatigues and suffer 
 ings of those who fought by day, only to march 
 by night from point to point of the long line, 
 and renew the fight on the morrow. Above forty 
 thousand men had already fallen in the bloody 
 encounters of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania, 
 and the exhausted army began to lose its spirits." 
 
 Such was the defence which Lee presented 
 to his able antagonist, and his great army, after 
 the exhaustion of the hungry winter of sixty- four. 
 Had he not been ill and half delirious in his am 
 bulance when Grant attempted to cross the 
 North Anna and failed to get his centre over 
 after his two wings were across, Grant s star 
 might have set on the banks of the North Anna 
 instead of rising to its zenith at Appomattox. 
 But Lee was suddenly stricken down, and while 
 he was murmuring in his semi-delirium, "We 
 must strike them we must never let them pass 
 us again," Grant, after the most anxious night of 
 the war, drew back his wings and slowly moved 
 down the Pamunkey to find Lee still across his 
 path at the historic levels of Cold Harbor, where 
 valor and constancy rose to their highest point. 
 
 "I stood recently in the wood where Gregg s 
 Texans put on immortality," wrote a Southern 
 historian; "where Kershaw led three of his bri 
 gades in person to compensate them for the ab- 
 
THE WILDERNESS CAMPAIGN 209 
 
 sence of the fourth."* It was this need to com 
 pensate their troops for want of reserves or 
 equipment which so often led the generals of 
 the Confederacy to the firing line. But it was 
 a costly expedient. Four times, in what ap 
 peared the very hour of complete victory, the 
 prize was stricken from the hand by the com 
 mander being shot from his saddle. First, 
 when General Albert Sydney Johnston was 
 slain at Shiloh, in the moment of victory. Next, 
 when at Seven Pines Joseph E. Johnston was 
 struck from his horse, and what might have 
 proved a crushing defeat for McClellan was 
 turned into an indecisive battle. Again, when 
 Jackson was driving all before him at Chancel- 
 lorsville, and fell like WolfF, victorious. And, 
 finally, when in the Wilderness Longstreet was 
 wounded and incapacitated at the critical mo 
 ment when victory hovered over his arms. 
 
 It is related that on one occasion, Lee, being 
 asked by his staff to leave during a battle one 
 spot after another where he had posted himself, 
 finally exclaimed, "I wish I knew where my 
 place is on the battlefield. Wherever I go some 
 one tells me it is not the place for me." 
 
 In fact, so far from Lee being chiefly good in 
 
 * Leigh Robinson s Address on the Wilderness Campaign, 
 Memorial Volume: Army of Northern Virginia. 
 
210 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 defence, the quality of his military spirit ap 
 pears to one who studies his career to have 
 been distinctly aggressive, possibly even too 
 aggressive. No captain ever knew better the 
 value of a quarter of an hour or the importance 
 of striking first when the enemy was preparing 
 to deliver his blow. In truth, he was an ardent 
 fighter, and possessed in an extraordinary 
 degree the qualities of both physical and moral 
 courage. Lee s personal daring was the talk 
 of his army. "I hear on all sides of your ex 
 posing yourself," wrote one of his sons during 
 the Wilderness campaign, urging him to be more 
 careful for the sake of the cause. And again 
 and again, at some moment of supreme crisis, 
 as at the "bloody angle" at Spottsylvania, which 
 Grant had seized and where he was massing 
 his picked troops to the number of 50,000, he 
 rode forward to put himself at the head of his ex 
 hausted troops to lead them in a charge on 
 which hung the fate of his army. Yet, as Hen 
 derson says in discussing Lee s audacity in at 
 tacking with an inferior force McClellan s well- 
 equipped army, secure in their entrenchments, 
 "he was no hare-brained leader, but a profound 
 thinker, following the highest principles of the 
 military art." That this will be the final verdict 
 of History there can be little doubt. 
 
THE WILDERNESS CAMPAIGN 211 
 
 After crossing the Rapidan the advance of 
 Grant by the flank was under almost continu 
 ous attack by Lee. "Measured by casualties," 
 says Rhodes, in his history of this campaign, 
 "the advantage was with the Confederates." 
 This far from expresses the real fact that Grant 
 received a drubbing which, as Lee s Adjutant- 
 General, Colonel Walter H. Taylor, said the 
 next day in his note-book, would have sent any 
 other general who had hitherto commanded the 
 Union Army back in haste across the river. 
 It was Grant s fortitude which saved him, and 
 led him to tell General James H. Wilson that 
 he would fight again. As Lee had assaulted 
 at the Wilderness, so again at Spottsylvania he 
 barred the way of his indomitable antagonist, 
 and again and again forced the fighting, until, 
 after holding him at the North Anna, where he 
 offered battle, he had wedged Grant from his 
 direct march on Richmond and forced him 
 down the left bank of the Pamunkey, to end his 
 direct march on Richmond at last on the doubly 
 bloody field of Cold Harbor, the only battle 
 which Grant declared afterward he would not 
 have fought over again under the same circum 
 stances. 
 
 Foiled in that campaign of his immediate ob 
 ject, and having lost more men than Lee had 
 
212 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 at any time in his entire army, Grant adopted 
 a new line of attack, and secretly crossing to the 
 south side of the James, which he might at any 
 time have reached by water without the loss of a 
 man, attempted to seize Petersburg, as McClel- 
 lan had planned to do, by a coup, but, failing in 
 his object, began to lay siege to that place with 
 a view to cutting off Richmond from the South, 
 a feat which he only accomplished after eight 
 months fighting, in which he lost over 60,000 
 more men. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 LEE AND GRANT 
 
 "^JECESSARILY a comparison arises between 
 the two captains who confronted each 
 other in this great campaign of 1864. 
 
 Grant s fame, when he was made lieutenant- 
 general and came into Virginia, rested on the 
 three great feats of Donelson, Vicksburg and 
 Missionary Ridge. And to these three a fourth 
 was added a year later, when at Appomattox, 
 Lee, on the Qth of April, 1865, surrendered to 
 him the starving remnant of the Army of North 
 ern Virginia, which the exigencies of the Con 
 federacy had held before Petersburg as in a vise 
 till it had slowly perished. Current history has 
 chosen to assign to Grant the greater praise for 
 this last campaign, partly because he finally 
 crushed Lee, but chiefly because it ended the 
 war. And possibly the lasting fame of the suc 
 cessful captain will be based chiefly on this. It 
 may be well, however, to recall the simple, but 
 often overlooked, principle, that while success is 
 without doubt the gauge of a general s ability, 
 
 213 
 
2i 4 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 this does not necessarily mean final success. 
 History shines with the names of generals who 
 have failed at last and have yet borne off the 
 palm in the great contest in which Fame is the 
 reward. Hannibal was not the less the superior 
 of Scipio Africanus because the latter finally 
 conquered him and saved Rome. Charles XII. 
 was not the less a greater captain than Peter s 
 forgotten general because the latter drove him 
 from Russia to seek an asylum in Turkey. Nor 
 was Napoleon inferior to Wellington though he 
 died defeated and a prisoner, while Wellington 
 became prime minister and first citizen of the 
 England he had been so capable and fortunate 
 as to save. 
 
 A captain s rank must be measured by his 
 opportunities and the manner in which he uses 
 them. That Grant was a general of rare abil 
 ity, clear-headed, capable, far-sighted, single- 
 minded, prompt, resourceful, resolute even to 
 obstinacy, no one who studies his campaigns 
 will deny; that he was the equal of Lee in that 
 high combination of these and other qualities 
 which go to make up the greatest soldier, no 
 one who studies with open mind the campaign 
 of 1864 may successfully affirm. 
 
 The heroic manner in which Lee with his 
 half-starved veterans sustained the repeated 
 
LEE AND GRANT 215 
 
 shocks of the " persistent hammering " of Grant s 
 great army through so long a period must ever 
 be a cause of wonder to the true student of his 
 tory, and the key will only be found by him 
 who, looking beyond mere natural forces, shall 
 consider the power that, springing from love of 
 country, animates the breast of those who, firm 
 in their conviction of right, fight on their own 
 soil for their homes and their firesides. Study 
 of the subject has, at least, convinced one writer, 
 who has desired to give the truth and nothing 
 but the truth, that never has there been such an 
 army led by such a leader. Grant s persistent 
 hammering, as attritive as it was, was far less so 
 than the attrition of hunger and want. Lee, 
 who early in the war had sighed for a force of 
 veteran troops to whom to confide the trust, had 
 long been at the head of the most experienced 
 veterans who ever fought on American soil. 
 He believed in his soul that they would go any 
 where where properly led. But he was too 
 clear-eyed a soldier not to know that the most 
 veteran legions that ever followed the eagles of 
 Rome or France or the flag of the Confederacy 
 must be shod and fed or they could not fight. 
 From the first there had been difficulty in the 
 equipment of the troops, owing to the absence 
 of manufactories of even elementary articles. 
 
216 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 The arms were largely of the oldest and most 
 obsolete kind; and many troops were armed 
 with old muskets roughly changed from flint 
 locks to percussion; saddles were wanting to 
 the cavalry, and swords were made on country 
 forges.* Artillery had to be mounted on farm 
 wagons; f and uniforms were woven on coun 
 try looms. This deficiency was in time partially 
 overcome by captures from the enemy, and by 
 blockade-running; but the matter of subsistence 
 of the army was one which always caused grave 
 alarm and serious and, at last, fatal trouble. 
 The means of transportation were so limited 
 that any break in even one line of railway was 
 a perilous loss and the absence of manufactories 
 contributed to frustrate Lee s boldest designs. 
 
 In October, 1863, after Gettysburg, Lee 
 writes of his troops : " If they had been properly 
 provided with clothes I would certainly have 
 endeavored to have thrown them north of the 
 Potomac; but thousands were barefooted; 
 thousands with fragments of shoes, and all 
 without coats, blankets or warm clothing. I 
 could not bear to expose them to certain suffer 
 ing on an uncertain issue." J 
 
 * "Life of Forrest," by Dr. John A. Wyeth. 
 
 t "Life of General Wm. N. Pendleton," by S. P. Lee. 
 
 t Letter to Mrs. Lee, October 19, 1863. 
 
LEE AND GRANT 217 
 
 Again on October 28th he writes to his wife: 
 "I am glad you have some socks for the Army. 
 Send them to me. Tell the girls to send all 
 they can. I wish they could make some shoes, 
 too. We have thousands of barefooted men. 
 There is no news. General Meade, I believe, 
 is repairing the railroads and I presume will 
 come on again. If I could only get some shoes 
 and clothes for the men I would save him the 
 trouble." 
 
 In the preceding winter, lying before Fred- 
 ericksburg, he writes that his army is suffering 
 so that he "may have to yield to a stronger 
 force than General Burnside." 
 
 Could anything be more tragic than this gen 
 eral bound in his trenches by the nakedness of 
 his army, while his opponent prepared to over 
 whelm him! Or could anything be more pa 
 thetic than this general of an army acting as re 
 ceiver of a few dozen pairs of socks knitted for 
 his barefooted army by his invalid wife! Not 
 merely here, but from now on he acts as dis 
 penser of the socks knitted by her busy needles. 
 Truly, the South may well point with pride to 
 her gifted son, who in his head-quarters in a 
 "nice pine thicket," showed such antique sim 
 plicity of character. 
 
 An historian of the Wilderness campaign, in 
 
218 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 a remarkable study of that campaign, has called 
 attention to an unconsciously pathetic phrase 
 used by Lee in relation to his cavalry: Now 
 that "the grass is springing," he says he hopes 
 to be able to use his cavalry effectively.* 
 
 By the beginning of the year 1864, the sub 
 sistence of the army had become almost impos 
 sible. "Many of the infantry," writes General 
 Lee in an official communication, "are without 
 shoes, and the cavalry worn down by the pur 
 suit of Averill. We are now issuing to the troops 
 a fourth of a pound of salt meat, and have only 
 three days supply at that rate. Two droves of 
 cattle from the West that were reported to be 
 for this army, I am told have been directed to 
 Richmond. I can learn of no supply of meat on 
 the road to the army, and fear I shall be unable 
 to retain it in the field." f 
 
 In another official letter to the Commissary- 
 General, he writes: "I regret very much to 
 learn that the supply of beef for the army is so 
 nearly exhausted. . . . No beef has been issued 
 to the cavalry corps by the chief commissary 
 that I am aware of for eighteen months. Dur 
 ing that time it has supplied itself, and has now, 
 
 * Leigh Robinson in the Memorial Volume of the Army of 
 Northern Virginia. 
 
 f Letter to President Davis, January 2, 1864. 
 
LEE AND GRANT 219 
 
 I understand, sufficient to last until the middle 
 of February." * 
 
 Two weeks later he writes the Quarter 
 master-General as follows: "General: The 
 want of shoes and blankets in this army con 
 tinues to cause much suffering and to impair its 
 efficiency. In one regiment I am informed there 
 are only fifty men with serviceable shoes, and a 
 brigade that recently went on picket was com 
 pelled to leave several hundred men in camp 
 that were unable to bear the exposure of duty, 
 being destitute of shoes and blankets. "j* 
 
 He thereupon urges that instead of trusting 
 to the precarious supplies procured by running 
 the blockade, the South should spare no efforts 
 to develop her own resources. 
 
 But the time had passed when the South could 
 develop her resources, and it was soon to come 
 when even the precarious supply by blockade- 
 running was to cease altogether. 
 
 On the 24th of January he wrote his wife: 
 
 1 . . . I have had to disperse the cavalry as 
 
 much as possible to obtain forage for their 
 
 horses, and it is that which causes trouble. 
 
 Provisions for the men, too, are very scarce, and 
 
 * Letter to Colonel L. B. Northrop, Commissary-General, 
 January 5, 1864. 
 
 f Letter to Brigadier-General R. A. Lawton, Quartermaster 
 General, January 18, 1864. 
 
220 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 with very light diet and light clothing I fear 
 they suffer. But still they are cheerful and un 
 complaining. I received a report from one di 
 vision the other day in which it stated that over 
 four hundred men were barefooted and over one 
 thousand without blankets. . . ." 
 
 Such was the condition of the army in the 
 depth of the winter of 1863-1864, and it steadily 
 grew worse. By the opening of spring Lee stood 
 face to face with the gravest problem that can 
 confront a general, the impossibility of subsisting 
 his army, and moreover his own strength was 
 waning, although he was yet to put forth the 
 supreme effort which was to make his defence 
 of Virginia against Grant possibly the greatest 
 defensive campaign in history. In a letter to 
 his eldest son, expressing his hearty acquiescence 
 in an order substituting a chief engineer in place 
 of his son for whom he had applied, wishing 
 to make him chief of staff, he says: "I thought 
 that position presented less objections to your 
 serving with me than any other. ... I want 
 all the aid I can get, now. I feel a marked 
 change in my strength since my attack last spring 
 at Fredericksburg, and am less competent for 
 my duty than ever." * 
 
 All through the spring, with undimmed 
 
 * Letter of April 6, 1864. 
 
LEE AND GRANT 221 
 
 vision, he had foreseen the tragic fate awaiting 
 him, and his letters show plainly how clear this 
 vision was, yet never once does he show aught 
 but the same heroic constancy which had dis 
 tinguished him in the past. " In none of them," 
 says Long, "does he show a symptom of de 
 spair, or breathe a thought of giving up the con 
 test. To the last, he remained full of resources, 
 energetic and defiant, and ready to bear on his 
 own shoulders the whole burden of the conduct 
 of the war." * 
 
 In March, when lying opposite Grant s great 
 army on the Rapidan, he wrote the President of 
 the indication that Grant was concentrating a 
 great force to operate in Virginia. And on 
 April 6th, he writes of the great efforts that, 
 according to all the information he received, 
 were to be made in Virginia. A week later he 
 writes him again: 
 
 HEAD-QUARTERS, April 12, 1864. 
 
 MR. PRESIDENT: My anxiety on the subject 
 of provisions for the Army is so great that I can 
 not refrain from expressing it to your Excellency. 
 I cannot see how we can operate with our pres 
 ent supplies. Any derangement in their arrival, 
 or disaster to the Railroad, would render it im- 
 
 * Long s "Lee." 
 
222 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 possible for me to keep the Army together, and 
 might force a retreat into North Carolina. 
 There is nothing to be had in this section for 
 men or animals. We have rations for the 
 troops to-day and to-morrow. . . . Every ex 
 ertion should be made to supply the depots at 
 Richmond and at other points. ... I am, 
 with great respect, your obedient servant, 
 
 R. E. LEE, General. 
 
 Three weeks later in a letter stating the 
 movements of Grant s troops along the Rappa- 
 hannock, and the signs of "large preparations 
 on the part of the enemy and a state of readi 
 ness for action," he adds, "If I could get back 
 Pickett, Hoke and B. R. Johnson, I would feel 
 strong enough to operate. ... I cannot get 
 the troops together for want of forage and 
 am looking for grass." It was a tragic situa 
 tion. Three days later, on the night of May 3, 
 1864, Grant crossed the Rapidan with an 
 army of over 140,000 men, many of them vet 
 eran troops, as brave men as ever carried a 
 musket armed and equipped in a manner 
 unsurpassed, if equalled, in the annals of war, 
 officered by the flower of the North. He 
 had also 318 guns and a wagon-train that, 
 stretched in a line, would have reached to 
 
LEE AND GRANT 223 
 
 Richmond.* He controlled, with the aid of the 
 exceedingly efficient navy, the York and the 
 James to Dutch Gap, where Butler lay with 
 an army which could spare him 10,000 men, 
 to help in the deadly assaults at Cold Harbor, 
 and a few days later could carry the formi 
 dable outer defences of Petersburg. 
 
 To meet this force, Lee had 62,000 men and 
 but 224 guns. His army was less efficiently 
 armed and with an equipment which would have 
 been hopelessly insufficient for any other army 
 than the one he commanded: the war-worn 
 veterans of the Army of Northern Virginia, 
 inured to hunger and hardship and battle. 
 
 On the I2th day of June, when Grant crossed 
 the James to the south side, of the 140,000 men 
 who had crossed the Rapidan one month and 
 nine days before he had lost 60,000 men, 
 almost as many men as Lee had had during 
 the campaign. On the Qth of April follow 
 ing, when Lee surrendered, Grant s losses had 
 mounted up to 124,000, two men for every man 
 that Lee had in his army at any time. By this 
 record judge the two captains. 
 
 * "The Army immediately opposed to Lee numbered, when it 
 crossed the Rapidan, on May 4th, 1864, 149,166 men. While Lee 
 had within call 62,000, but with only half that number he moved 
 on and attacked Grant s army in the Wilderness." Jones s "Life 
 and Letters of R. E. Lee," p. 310. 
 
224 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 The adverse criticism of Grant as a captain 
 of the first rank is based on the charge that he 
 sacrificed over 50,000 men to reach the James, 
 when he might have reached the south side of 
 James River and laid siege to Petersburg and 
 Richmond without the loss of a man.* As to 
 whether, had he done this, he could have suc 
 ceeded in the destruction of Lee s army, the im 
 pregnable defence of the Confederate Capital, 
 can never be known. It was necessary for him 
 not only to defeat Lee, but at the same time pro 
 tect Washington, failure to do which had cost 
 McClellan his place. His policy of " persistent 
 hammering," no matter what the cost, won out 
 in the end; for while the attrition wore away 
 the thin gray line, which, stretched from Rich 
 mond to Petersburg, ever grew thinner, the 
 drafts for the ranks of the Union ever grew 
 larger. 
 
 No one knew so well as Lee the disastrous 
 consequences of this policy of attrition. From 
 August on his letters express plainly his recog- 
 
 * Grant s losses, from May 4th, when he crossed the Rapidan, 
 to June 1 2th, when staggering back from Cold Harbor he abandoned 
 his first plan of attack and crossed to the south side of the J ames, 
 was, according to the Union authorities, 54,929. (Rhodes s "His 
 tory," Vol. IV, p. 447. The Century Co. s " Battles and Leaders 
 of the Civil War," Vol. IV, p. 182.) And among these were the 
 flower of his army, as gallant officers and men as ever faced death 
 on a battlefield. 
 
LEE AND GRANT 225 
 
 nition of the terrible fact that his army was 
 wearing down without the hope of his losses 
 being repaired.* His soldierly prevision en 
 abled him to predict precisely what afterward oc 
 curred: the extension of Grant s lines to envelop 
 him, and the consequent loss of Richmond, f 
 
 Applause has been accorded Grant because 
 he slipped away from Lee and crossed to the 
 south side of the James without molestation. 
 It was a capital piece of work. In truth, how 
 ever, he failed absolutely in the immediate object 
 of this movement: the securing, as he wrote 
 Halleck, of the city of Petersburg, by a coup 
 before the Confederates could get there in much 
 force. { 
 
 The design of Grant to capture Petersburg, 
 and by cutting off Richmond from the South 
 force the capitulation of the Confederate Capital, 
 was undoubtedly able strategy and why it had 
 not been attempted by him before seems even 
 now somewhat singular, for McClellan had urged 
 it in July 1862, and a dash had been made to 
 seize Richmond from this side by a daring raid 
 which, possibly, had failed only because of a rise 
 in James River which prevented the raiding party 
 
 * Letter to Secretary of War, August 23, 1864. Letter to Presi 
 dent Davis, September 2d, 1864. 
 
 t Letter of October 10, 1864, W. R., 1144. 
 t Official Records, Vol. XI, pp. i, 12. 
 
22 6 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 from crossing; and the mouth of the Appomattox 
 was as securely in the hands of the Union as the 
 mouth of the Delaware. 
 
 Grant s plan to seize Petersburg with its 
 slender garrison of less than 2,500 men was, 
 however, foiled by Beauregard, to whom on his 
 urgent request Lee sent men from the north 
 side of the James, and though Grant was en 
 abled to seize on June I5th "the formidable 
 works to the north-east of the town," when he 
 attacked in force on three successive days he 
 was repulsed with the loss of 10,000 men, losses 
 which shook and disheartened his army even 
 more, possibly, than the slaughter at Cold 
 Harbor. 
 
 The demoralization consequent on Lee s 
 victories from the Wilderness to Petersburg, 
 over "the crippled Army of the Potomac," which 
 now enabled him to detach Early and, with a 
 view to repeating the strategy of 1862, send him 
 to the Valley of Virginia, followed by that gen 
 eral s signal success, in conjunction with Breck- 
 inridge, in clearing the valley of Sigel and 
 Hunter, and, after defeating Wallace at Monoc- 
 acy Bridge, in immediately threatening Wash 
 ington itself, sent gold up to 285, the highest 
 point it reached during the war.* 
 
 *Rhodes s "History of the United States," IV, p. 509. 
 
LEE AND GRANT 227 
 
 The authorities in Washington, more alarmed 
 even than when Lee was at Sharpsburg or at 
 Chambersburg, were clamoring for Grant to 
 come and assume personal command of the 
 forces protecting the city. And it is charged 
 that Grant escaped the fate of his predecessors 
 only because there was no one else to put in his 
 place. It was even charged that he had fallen 
 "back into his old habits of intemperance," a 
 charge which Mr. Lincoln dryly dismissed with 
 a witticism.* 
 
 Congress, by resolution, requested the Presi 
 dent "to appoint a day for humiliation and 
 prayer," and the President, "cordially concurring 
 ... in the pious sentiments expressed" in this 
 resolution, appointed the first Thursday in Au 
 gust as a day of national humiliation and prayer 
 
 The simple truth is that, against great out 
 side clamor, Grant was sustained by the au 
 thorities in Washington because he was mani- 
 
 * "Despondency and discouragement," says Rhodes, the latest 
 and among the most thoughtful of all the Northern historians of 
 the war, are words which portray the state of feeling at the North 
 during the month of July, and the closer one s knowledge of affairs, 
 the gloomier was his view; but the salient facts put into every 
 one s mind the pertinent question, Who shall revive the withered 
 hopes that bloomed on the opening of Grant s campaign? " 
 This question he quotes from the New York World, a paper which 
 he states was not unfriendly to Grant. " History of the United 
 States," IV, p. 507. 
 
228 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 festly the best general in sight, and not because 
 he had proved himself the equal of Lee. 
 
 So great was the feeling of despondency at 
 the North at this time that several serious, if 
 somewhat informal, embassies were sent by the 
 authorities at Washington to ascertain the feel 
 ing of the Confederate authorities touching 
 peace on the basis of a restoration of the Union, 
 coupled at first with a condition of " an abandon 
 ment of slavery," but later without even this 
 condition. 
 
 On the very day that Mr. Davis, yielding to 
 clamor at the South against the Fabian policy 
 of the cautious Johnston, who had been falling 
 back before Sherman, relieved that veteran of 
 ficer of his command, he accorded an interview 
 to two gentlemen, who had come on an irregular 
 mission, with the knowledge and consent of Mr. 
 Lincoln, to ask whether any measure could be 
 tried that might lead to peace. Mr. Davis re 
 jected the proposal to make peace, unless with 
 it came the acknowledgment of the right of the 
 South to self-government; "and," declares the 
 historian above quoted, "taking into account the 
 actual military situation, a different attitude on 
 the part of the Richmond Government could not 
 have been expected."* 
 
 *Rhodes s "History of the United States," IV, pp. 514-516. 
 
LEE AND GRANT 229 
 
 In truth, it was not until long afterward, 
 and after it was found that the resources of the 
 South were exhausted, that Grant s costly policy 
 of attrition was accepted by the Government or 
 the people, and his star which had been waning 
 once more ascended. That it ever ascended 
 again was due in part to his constancy of pur 
 pose, and for the rest, to successes elsewhere and 
 to the exhaustion of the South: particularly to 
 the destruction of the means of communication. 
 
 Viewed in the cold light of the inexorable 
 facts, the honors at this time were all with the 
 Confederate general, and later comparisons 
 so fulsome to Grant and so invidious to Lee 
 have all been made in the light of subsequent 
 events, over which neither Grant nor Lee ex 
 ercised control. 
 
 Early failed to seize the golden moment which 
 presented itself on July nth and take Wash 
 ington, if indeed, it was ever possible to take it. 
 On July iyth, the day Sherman crossed the 
 Chattahoochee and began his direct march 
 on Atlanta, Johnston was relieved from the 
 command of the Southern Army, in obedience 
 to popular clamor, at the moment when, if his 
 strategy had not prepared the way for the pos 
 sible destruction of the invading force, the vet 
 eran general was, at least, preparing to carry 
 
2 3 o ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 out the consistent plan he had laid down from 
 the beginning. His army was placed under the 
 command of the daring but rash Hood, who, 
 reversing Johnston s plan, and assuming the of 
 fensive, was speedily defeated, thus leaving Sher 
 man free to devastate the South and close the 
 last Southern port through which outside sup 
 plies could be secured. 
 
 No step could have given more aid and com 
 fort to the North, or have been more disastrous 
 to the South, than the removal of Johnston. 
 Abroad it satisfied the anxious nations of Eu 
 rope that the South was at her last gasp and 
 established their hitherto vacillating policy in 
 favor of the Union cause, and the Southern 
 cause thereafter steadily declined to its end. 
 
 The same day that the President of the Con 
 federate States removed Joseph E. Johnston, 
 the President of the United States, appalled 
 at the effect of Lee s masterly defence of Rich 
 mond, issued a proclamation calling for 500,000 
 men, and before Grant learned of this call he 
 wrote urging a draft of 300,000 immediately.* 
 
 Meantime, Europe had changed front. The 
 skilful diplomacy of Charles Francis Adams 
 had prevented the delivery to the Confederacy of 
 the rams which had been built for her; the sym- 
 
 *Rhodes s "History of the United States," IV, pp. 506-507. 
 
LEE AND GRANT 231 
 
 pathies of the European nations had changed, 
 and the South was, as has been well said by 
 the son and namesake of the able diplomat re 
 ferred to, as securely shut up to perish as if she 
 had been in a vast vacuum. The victories of 
 diplomacy are little considered beside those of 
 the battlefield. But, taking into consideration 
 what the Merrimac had accomplished during 
 her brief but formidable cruise in Hampton 
 Roads, where she sank the Cumberland, capt 
 ured the Congress s crew and drove the famous 
 Monitor into shoal water, it is probable that the 
 blockade of the Southern ports might have been 
 broken had not Mr. Adams s unremitting efforts 
 availed to prevent the Confederate rams being 
 delivered. 
 
 As it was, the end was clearly in view to Lee. 
 The destruction of Hood s army at Nashville 
 removed the only force capable of blocking the 
 way of Sherman across the South, and left him 
 free to march to the sea, and, having got in touch 
 with the fleet there, continue through the Caro- 
 linas, marking his way with a track of devasta 
 tion which has been likened to that made when 
 Saxe carried fire and sword through the Pala 
 tinate. 
 
 Lee, with "Richmond hung like a millstone 
 about his neck," a figure he is said to have em- 
 
232 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 ployed, was forced to guard a line extending 
 from the south of Petersburg to the north of 
 Richmond, and to withstand with his thinning 
 ranks his able antagonist with an ever-growing 
 army and an ever-increasing confidence. 
 
 All that winter Lee lay in the trenches, while 
 his army withered and perished from want and 
 cold, and while Sherman, almost unopposed, 
 burnt, in sheer riot of destruction, supplies that 
 might, had they been available, have subsisted 
 that army for ten years, and yet by the policy 
 of the Confederate Government were left un 
 protected. 
 
 By the end of the year all available resources 
 were exhausted. 
 
 On the nth of January, 1865, Lee sent this 
 dispatch to the Secretary of War: "Hon. J. A. 
 Seddon, there is nothing within reach of this 
 army to be impressed. The country is swept 
 clear. Our only reliance is upon the railroads. 
 We have but two days supplies." 
 
 R. E. LEE. 
 
 A few weeks later he telegraphed again to 
 the Secretary of War, under date of February 
 8, 1865. 
 
 SIR: 
 
 All the disposable force of the right wing of 
 the army has been operating against the enemy 
 
LEE AND GRANT 233 
 
 beyond Hatcher s Run since Sunday. Yester 
 day, the most inclement day of the winter, they 
 had to be retained in line of battle, having been 
 in the same condition the two previous days 
 and nights. I regret to be obliged to state that 
 under these circumstances, heightened by as 
 saults and fire of the enemy, some of the men 
 had been without meat for three days, and all 
 were suffering from reduced rations and scant 
 clothing, exposed to battle, cold, hail and sleet. I 
 have directed Colonel Coler, Chief Commissary, 
 who reports that he has not a pound of meat at 
 his disposal, to visit Richmond and see if noth 
 ing can be done. If some change is not made 
 and the Commissary Department reorganized, 
 I apprehend dire results. The physical strength 
 of the men, if their courage survives, must fail 
 under such treatment. Our cavalry has to be 
 dispersed for want of forage. Fitz Lee s and 
 Lomax s divisions are scattered because sup 
 plies cannot be transported where their services 
 are required. I had to bring Wm. H. F. Lee s 
 division forty miles Sunday night to get him in 
 position. Taking these facts in connection with 
 the paucity of our numbers you must not be 
 surprised if calamity befalls us. ... 
 
 R. E. LEE, 
 
 General. 
 
234 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 President Davis endorsed on this report: 
 "This is too sad to be patiently considered and 
 cannot have occurred without criminal neglect 
 or gross incapacity. . . . " A comment, as true 
 to-day as when Lee set before him plainly the 
 tragic fact that his army was fast perishing at 
 its post. 
 
 Unfortunately for the South, the rest of the 
 President s endorsement, "Let supplies be had 
 by purchase or borrowing or other possible 
 mode," was inefficacious. There was no longer 
 any possible mode by which supplies could be 
 had. The South was exhausted, because Vir 
 ginia had been swept clean and there were no 
 means of transporting supplies from elsewhere. 
 
 The following day General Lee assumed the 
 office of Commander-in-Chief of the military 
 forces of the Confederate States to which he 
 had been appointed on the 6th; but it was too 
 late. He had already carried the fortunes of 
 the Confederacy on his shoulders for, at least, 
 two years longer than the Confederacy could 
 have survived without his genius to sustain it; 
 and now the time had come when no mortal 
 power could longer support it. Its end had 
 come. All had gone except the indomitable 
 and immortal spirit of its people. 
 
 Grant s sagacious disposition of his forces, 
 
LEE AND GRANT 235 
 
 together with his command of the Chesapeake 
 and its great tributaries, enabled him to threaten 
 at pleasure either of the two cities. With his 
 pontoon bridge across the James, protected by 
 his gunboats and veiled by his heavy entrench 
 ments, he could at any time mass a sufficient 
 number of troops on the north side of that river 
 to cause grave anxiety and compel Lee to 
 transfer a sufficient force from before Peters 
 burg to withstand him. And, at the same time, 
 he could still retain on the Appomattox a force 
 superior to Lee s, prepared to assault Lee s 
 depleted lines whenever a chance presented 
 itself. 
 
 Yet, for nearly ten months after Grant s first 
 attempt on Petersburg, Lee held him at bay. And 
 even at the last he succumbed not so much to the 
 attacks in his front, as to the failure of the Con 
 federate Government to supply his troops with 
 the necessaries of life a failure, in its turn, due 
 to the perishing or the destruction of all means 
 of transportation. His reports to the President 
 of the Confederate States during the winter set 
 forth plainly the impossibility of maintaining 
 his position unless subsistence should be fur 
 nished his troops. But subsistence could not 
 be, or, at least, was not, furnished, and while the 
 sword attacked in front, hunger assailed in the 
 
236 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 rear. His men had, he wrote the War Depart 
 ment in February, endured all that flesh and 
 blood could endure. In the battle-line suffer 
 ing from cold and exhaustion, they had not had 
 meat for three days. No wonder that his 
 numbers dwindled and that his tardy elevation, 
 in February, to the position of Commander-in- 
 Chief was futile to recoup the destruction. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE RETREAT TO APPOMATTOX 
 
 AS a sequel to these far-reaching conditions, 
 ^- the policy of attrition simply went on from 
 month to month, until on the fatal 2d of April, 
 Lee, who had only a few weeks before been 
 made Commander-in-Chief, and almost whose 
 first act had been the reinstatement of John 
 ston in his command, following an extension of 
 Grant s lines around his flank, which broke 
 his connection with the South and threatened 
 to envelop him, announced to his Government 
 that he could no longer maintain the long line 
 from south of Petersburg to north of Richmond. 
 On the ZQth of March, as he was preparing to 
 evacuate Petersburg and start south to unite 
 with Johnston and attack Sherman, Grant, who 
 was apprehensive of such a movement, began 
 to move around his right to foil it. To prevent 
 this, Lee was forced to withdraw troops from 
 other parts of his line, and Grant promptly 
 proceeded to take advantage of this fact. 
 
 On the ist of April, following a repulse on 
 237 
 
238 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 the evening before in front of Lee s extreme 
 right, Sheridan attacked and defeated at Five 
 Forks Pickett, who had left a long gap of several 
 miles defended only by pickets between his 
 troops and the nearest line. And Grant, having 
 carried Lee s outer defences, ordered a general 
 assault for the next day. Lee, knowing the 
 wasted condition of his army and the impossi 
 bility of holding against Grant s contemplated 
 assault his long-stretched line, decided to exe 
 cute at once, if possible, his plan to abandon 
 the lines he had held for nearly ten months and 
 move southward to effect a junction with John 
 ston. He notified the Government in Rich 
 mond, arranged for provisions to meet him at 
 Amelia Court House, and that night executed 
 with consummate skill the difficult feat of extri 
 cating his reduced army from its perilous position 
 and started on a retreat southward. 
 
 His letters show his entire appreciation of the 
 difficulty and peril of his situation; but there is 
 not a trace of dismay in all his writing. Never 
 more than now, when he made his last move in 
 the great game of war, did the mens equa in ar- 
 duis, that mark of noble minds, which ever dis- 
 distinguished him, shine forth in him. 
 
 His letter to his wife, on the eve of the move 
 ment which was to prove the closing act in the 
 
THE RETREAT TO APPOMATTOX 239 
 
 great drama of the war, reflects his serenity 
 amid the rising difficulties which were soon to 
 engulf him. He thanks her for the socks she had 
 knitted for his barefooted and suffering men; en 
 closes for her a life of General Scott, for whom 
 he had a word of old-time affection and esteem, 
 and commends her to God. 
 
 That night he executed successfully the diffi 
 cult movement to which he referred and with 
 drew his hungry troops from their long-held 
 and historic entrenchments. 
 
 Some historians, who under the natural im 
 pulse to laud the commanders of the Union 
 armies yet have instinctively felt that on the 
 plain face of the records Lee had the honors as 
 a soldier, have undertaken to assert that "the 
 conditions were not unequal: that Lee might 
 have withdrawn his army and effected a junction 
 with Johnston, but was outgeneraled by Grant." 
 To support this claim they assign to Lee the 
 highest number of men that by any computation 
 could possibly be assigned to him and take no 
 account of the absent and the disabled. 
 
 The latest of these historians, and among 
 the most broad-minded of the class, has as 
 signed to Lee at the beginning of his retreat 
 49,000 men, against Grant s 113,000, and de 
 clares that with "the game escape or surrender 
 
2 4 o ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 the conditions were not unequal, and Lee was 
 simply outgeneraled." * 
 
 Conditions not unequal! When Grant, as 
 commander of all the Northern armies, had 
 nearly one million men under his command, 
 and Lee, as commander of the Southern armies, 
 had less than two hundred thousand under his 
 command; and when Grant had a great navy 
 to support and transport subsistence for his ar 
 mies, and Lee had no navy and no means of trans 
 portation. If Lee was simply outgeneraled some 
 change must have taken place in the two men, 
 since, with an army never more than ten thou 
 sand in excess of the numbers assigned him 
 here,f Lee fought through the month of May, 
 1864, Grant s army of 140,000, defeated him in 
 battle after battle from the Wilderness to Peters 
 burg, caused him losses of 124,000 men, and 
 must have destroyed him but for his inexhaust 
 ible resources of men and munition. 
 
 But, by the records, the statement quoted is 
 erroneous, and, laying aside the imperfect records 
 of the Confederate Army, the evidence is beyond 
 question that when Lee began his retreat he had 
 only about half of the number of men assigned 
 
 * Rhodes s " History," Vol. V. 
 
 t In fact, the 49,000 was before the great losses at the end of 
 February. 
 
THE RETREAT TO APPOMATTOX 241 
 
 to him by these historians. Colonel Walter 
 H. Taylor, of his staff, estimates that Lee had on 
 March 3ist 33,000 muskets, and General Lee 
 told General Fitz Lee that he had at that time 
 35,000 men; "but after Five Forks and in the 
 encounters of March 3ist, April ist and 2d, he 
 had only 20,000 muskets available, and of all 
 arms not over 25,000, when he began the retreat 
 that terminated at Appomattox Court House."* 
 
 Whatever may be the numbers shown on 
 records scatteringly made, and, at best, most im 
 perfect, Lee s statement for those who know him 
 settles the question. 
 
 But even these men were little more than 
 spectres. Ill-fed, ill-clad, kept for ten months 
 on a constant strain in the face of an army that 
 might at any time mass treble their number on 
 either flank; stretched in a line thirty-five miles 
 in length, every point of which it was vital to 
 hold; wasted by hunger, disease and cold, these 
 veterans made no plea of being outnumbered. 
 Under Lee they answered every demand and 
 held Grant at bay until not only subsistence, 
 but hope of subsistence, perished. 
 
 Then, as Grant, on the opening of spring, 
 moved to overwhelm them and threatened Lee s 
 line, Lee led them out, as he had already planned 
 
 *Fitzhugh Lee s "Life of Lee," p. 373. 
 
242 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 to do should necessity arise and his Government 
 permit. It was a delicate and perilous move 
 ment, and one that would have taxed the powers 
 of the greatest general in history. For Grant, 
 with his overwhelming army stretching south 
 of him, lay close against him in a line thirty odd 
 miles long which at many points was not a 
 musket-shot away. 
 
 Lee having given Longstreet, who protected 
 Richmond on the north, orders to cross and join 
 him at a given point on the night of the 2d of 
 April, withdrew his men from their trenches, 
 crossed to the north of the Appomattox on the 
 south bank of which rested Grant s left, and, 
 marching up the north bank, recrossed to the 
 south side beyond Grant s lines and directed his 
 course for Amelia Court House, to which point 
 he had ordered provisions to be sent to meet him. 
 Had his orders been obeyed, it is the opinion of 
 many competent critics that he might have 
 eluded Grant s pursuit, prompt and efficient as 
 it was. But no provisions were there. Some one 
 had blundered. It appears that a provision-train 
 had arrived on April ist, but had been fatuously 
 ordered to Richmond. However it was, a day 
 was lost in the effort to obtain subsistence from 
 the depleted countryside for his famished army, 
 men and horses, and in the interval Grant was 
 
THE RETREAT TO APPOMATTOX 243 
 
 enabled to come up, and thenceforth, in the light 
 of subsequent events, further retreat was un 
 availing. From this moment it was merely a 
 question of whether the endurance of his starv 
 ing force would hold out to march and fight 
 until he had outstripped Grant with his pre 
 ponderant force possessed of ample subsistence 
 and baggage trains. So great was the confi 
 dence of his men in Lee that many of them be 
 lieved that the retreat was a movement designed 
 by him to draw Grant from his base of supplies 
 with a view to turning on him and destroying 
 him. 
 
 Every step was in face of the enemy massing 
 in force under the able direction of men like 
 Meade, Ord and Sheridan. The fighting was 
 almost hourly, and, while fortune varied, the 
 balance of success was largely with the pursuing 
 forces. At Sailor s Creek, Swell s command 
 was cut off and overwhelmed, as was Anderson s, 
 with a loss together of nearly 6,000 men. Among 
 the prisoners were six generals, Ewell, Custis 
 Lee, Kershaw, Dubose, Corse and Hunton. 
 
 At Farmville, reached on the 6th, provisions 
 were found and the men were served with ra 
 tions for the first time since they left Petersburg; 
 but for the most part they lived on such scanty 
 fare as they could secure from the already 
 
244 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 well-swept region which they passed. So de 
 nuded was the country of all that would sustain 
 life, that men thought themselves well off when 
 a corn-house was found with grain yet left in it 
 and corn was distributed to them to be parched. 
 Even this was not always to be had, and as corn 
 was necessary for the artillery horses, guards 
 were posted where they fed to prevent the men 
 from taking it from the horses. They were re 
 duced to the necessity of raking up the scattered 
 grains from the ground where the horses had 
 been fed and even to picking the grains from 
 the droppings of the horses. Many of the 
 men became too weak to carry their muskets. 
 Small wonder that they dropped out of the 
 ranks by hundreds. Yet still the remainder 
 kept on, with unwavering courage, unwavering 
 devotion and unwavering faith in their com 
 mander, and wherever a chance was presented 
 they gave a good account of themselves. 
 
 In their rags and tatters, ill-clad, ill-shod, ill- 
 fed, ill-armed, and, whenever armed, armed for 
 the most part with the weapons they had capt 
 ured from brave foes on hard-fought battle 
 fields, they were the abiding expression of 
 Southern valor and fortitude; the flower of 
 Southern manhood; the pick of every class; the 
 crystallized residue of the Army of Northern 
 
THE RETREAT TO APPOMATTOX 245 
 
 Virginia, with which Lee had achieved his fame 
 and on which to future ages shall rest the fame 
 of the South. 
 
 Like a wounded lion that spent and wasted 
 army dragged itself across the desolated land; 
 now turning at bay and at every turn leaving its 
 deep mark on its pursuers, now retreating again 
 without haste or fear, and simply in obedience 
 to the instinct of self-preservation, and at the 
 last, sinking with exhaustion, with crest unlow- 
 ered, heart undaunted and face steadfastly set 
 to the foe. 
 
 The spring rains had made the roads so deep 
 in that region of deep roads as to be well- 
 nigh impassable to the well-equipped troops of 
 Grant, and operations, just before the evacu 
 ation of Richmond, had once to be suspended. 
 To Lee s ill-fed teams they became at times 
 actually impassable and batteries had to be 
 abandoned because the exhausted horses could 
 not longer pull the guns. In some cases the ar 
 tillery-men armed themselves with muskets 
 picked up on the march and were formed into 
 infantry companies. But in face of Grant s cap 
 ital generalship, using his great army to best ad 
 vantage, attacking and capturing bodies of 
 troops day after day, the end could no longer be 
 doubtful. On the yth, General Pendleton, 
 
24 6 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 chief of Lee s reserve artillery, at the request of 
 some of the high officers, approached the com 
 mander with the suggestion that their united 
 voice was that the situation was hopeless, and 
 that further righting was useless. Lee, how 
 ever, was more far-sighted. He had not yet 
 abandoned hope and he replied that he had too 
 many brave men to think of laying down his 
 arms, and that they still fought with great spirit. 
 Furthermore, if he should first intimate to Grant 
 that he would listen to terms an unconditional 
 surrender might be demanded. "And sooner 
 than that," he added, "I am resolved to die."* 
 
 The end justified his determination. Grant, 
 approaching in his pursuit the limit of what he 
 thought a safe distance to place between his 
 army and his base, the following day opened 
 negotiations with Lee for the surrender of his 
 army. 
 
 Long before, in writing to one of his brothers 
 from Mexico where he contributed so much to 
 the brilliant victories which ended in the capture 
 of the Mexican capital, Lee had said, "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 for 
 
 * Fitzhugh Lee s " Life of Lee," p. 392. 
 
THE RETREAT TO APPOMATTOX 247 
 
 a crushed foe, I would fight them ten years; but 
 I would be generous in exercising it." * 
 
 Would it not be likely that this letter should 
 recur to him in this crisis of his life ? 
 
 In another letter he says, in referring to the 
 terms of peace: "These are certainly not hard 
 terms for Mexico, considering how the fortune 
 of war has been against her. For myself, I 
 would not exact more than I would have taken 
 before the commencement of hostilities, as I 
 should wish nothing but what was just."f 
 
 The continuous fighting held Lee back, and 
 enabled Sheridan, followed by Ord, marching 
 by a parallel route, to reach Appomattox Sta 
 tion before him and bar his further progress. 
 
 A proposal was made to Lee that the army 
 should scatter and make its way to Johnston by 
 various routes. This plan Lee promptly dis 
 posed of. He declared that he would go to 
 General Grant and surrender himself, though 
 he went alone, and take the consequences of his 
 acts. { 
 
 On the 8th of April orders were issued for 
 
 * Letter to his brother, Sydney Smith Lee, March 4, 1848, 
 cited in Jones s "Life and Letters of Lee," p. 57. 
 
 t (Letter cited in Jones s "Lee," p. 54.) John Russell Young 
 once told the writer that Grant stated to him that he could not 
 have kept up his pursuit a half day longer. 
 
 t" Military Memoirs of General E. P. Alexander," p. 605. 
 
248 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 a last effort. The artillery was directed to be 
 brought up during the night and massed with a 
 view to breaking through Grant s forming lines, 
 and steps were taken to deliver battle once more. 
 All night the men toiled, but next morning the 
 officer charged with the task* notified Gordon 
 that his utmost efforts had been able to bring up 
 only two batteries the rest of the artillery had 
 taken another route and could not be reached 
 the horses of the other batteries available 
 were gone; the residue of that artillery which 
 had once helped to make the artillery duels of 
 Lee and Grant the fiercest in the records of war 
 was silenced forever. 
 
 On this small fragment of his once redoubt 
 able artillery, and on the remnant of his infantry 
 and cavalry, one more call was made by Lee. 
 As the sun rose on the morning of the Qth of 
 April, the worn and wasted squadrons, with a 
 response as prompt and generous as in the best 
 days of his most victorious campaigns, advanced 
 to their last charge to drive for the last time their 
 foes before them. The first onset was success 
 ful. Sheridan s cavalry was driven back in 
 confusion and the situation was possibly saved 
 only, as the supporting general himself stated, 
 
 * Colonel Thomas H. Carter, a gallant and efficient soldier, and 
 Lee s near kinsman. 
 
THE RETREAT TO APPOMATTOX 249 
 
 by the timely arrival of Ord, the commander of 
 the Army of the James, with abundant troops 
 to bar the way.* 
 
 Lee, after his surrender, asked for 25,000 ra 
 tions, and this is accepted as the number of his 
 army. But the actual number of muskets sur 
 rendered on the Qth of April was less than 9,000. 
 Lee had fought his army until it had simply 
 worn away. 
 
 Whatever men Lee had on his rolls, whether 
 ten thousand, twenty-five thousand or forty 
 thousand, they were in their famished and spent 
 condition too few to defeat Grant s ably led 
 force, whether that force were 100,000 or 180,000, 
 and Lee, acting in accord with the views of his 
 general officers who had urged on him this 
 course, at last decided to avail himself of Grant s 
 generous proposal. He asked and received 
 from him honorable terms for the surrender of 
 whatever remained of the Army of Northern 
 Virginia. A detached portion of the cavalry 
 had broken through and started to make its 
 way to Johnston, but Lee recalled the officer 
 in command and informed him that he was in 
 cluded in his surrender. 
 
 * " Ord left Petersburg with 20,000 troops, all arms; Fifth Corps, 
 15,973 (Report of March 31, 1865); Sheridan s Cavalry, 13,810; 
 to which add 1,000 for the Fifth Corps Artillery, makes 50,783." 
 Fitzhugh Lee s " Life of Lee," p. 388, note. 
 
250 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 The greatness of the occasion appears to 
 have lifted Grant to a higher plane than that of 
 the mere soldier from which he had looked ap 
 parently unmoved on the sacrifice of thousands 
 of the gallant men and officers who, from the 
 Wilderness to Cold Harbor, had died at his bid 
 ding; and from which he had refused with cold 
 calculation the offers of the South to exchange 
 prisoners and had left men to die like sheep in 
 prisons made noisome largely by their numbers. 
 
 In the long vigils before Petersburg, faced 
 by a brave and steadfast foe, his mind had ap 
 parently been elevated as it mainly became in 
 the presence of a great crisis as it became years 
 afterward when, clutched fast in the grip of 
 his last and conquering foe, he held death at 
 bay while he completed the remarkable work 
 on which his family were to depend for their 
 support. However this was, his generosity justi 
 fied Lee s declaration that he would give his 
 army as good terms as it had a right to expect, 
 and his correspondence with Lee will bear com 
 parison with that of any victor in history.* 
 
 * An incident of the surrender told by Grant to Dr. Fordyce 
 Barker was related by him to Dr. Wm. M. Polk. Dr. Barker 
 asked Grant how he felt when he met Lee at Appomattox. Was 
 he not sensible of great elation over his achievement ? 
 
 Grant replied that on the contrary he was sensible rather of hu 
 miliation. When he found Lee in full-dress uniform while he 
 
THE RETREAT TO APPOMATTOX 251 
 
 Ten days after Lee s surrender, Sherman, 
 moved thereto by a more generous impulse than 
 had hitherto appeared to inspire him, and plainly 
 influenced by Grant s magnanimity, offered to 
 Johnston terms even more generous, if possible, 
 than Grant had proposed to Lee, and after a 
 brief period of negotiation in which Sherman s 
 far-sighted views were scornfully disavowed and 
 rejected by the authorities in Washington, just 
 unbridled by the tragic death of Lincoln, John 
 ston surrendered on the same terms that Lee 
 had accepted. 
 
 In this convention all the remaining forces 
 of the South were included, and, in so far as the 
 South could effect it, the war was over. The 
 
 himself was in a simple fatigue-suit: a private s blouse with only 
 a general s shoulder-straps to denote his rank, and with his boots 
 spattered to their tops, he was afraid that Lee might imagine that 
 he intended a discourtesy to him because of an incident that had 
 occurred in Mexico. General Scott, he said, was exceedingly par 
 ticular as to all matters of etiquette, and had given orders that 
 no officer should appear at head-quarters without being in full- 
 dress. On some occasion thereafter Grant had gone to head-quar 
 ters in an ordinary fatigue-uniform and that not as neat, perhaps, as 
 it should have been, and had reported to Lee, who was at the time 
 serving on Scott s staff. After the business had been transacted, 
 Lee said, " I feel it my duty, Captain, to call your attention to 
 General Scott s order that an officer reporting at head-quarters 
 should be in full uniform." 
 
 This incident, said the general, suddenly flashed across his 
 mind and made him uncomfortable lest General Lee should recall 
 it also, and imagine that he intended to affront him. 
 
252 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 war, however, practically ended when Lee sur 
 rendered his army at Appomattox. 
 
 The highest tribute to this army is the simple 
 fact that with its surrender the war was over. 
 The fortunes of the Confederacy had been nailed 
 to its tattered standards and with them went 
 down. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 LEE IN DEFEAT 
 
 A ND now, having adverted thus hastily to 
 ^ those glorious campaigns which must, to the 
 future student of military skill, place Lee among 
 the first captains of history, I shall not invite 
 attention further to Lee the soldier not to Lee 
 the victorious general of the Seven Days fights; 
 of Second Manassas; of Fredericksburg; of 
 Chancellorsville; of the Wilderness; ofSpottsyl- 
 vania Court House; of Cold Harbor not to 
 Lee the Strategist, who relieved Richmond in 
 three campaigns. Not to Lee the Victorious, 
 shall I ask further attention; but to a greater 
 Lee to Lee the Defeated. 
 
 As glorious as were these campaigns, it is on 
 the last act of the drama, the retreat from Peters 
 burg, the surrender at Appomattox and the dark 
 period that followed that surrender, that we 
 must look to see him at his best. His every 
 act, his every word, showed how completely 
 he had surrendered himself to Duty; and with 
 
 253 
 
254 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 what implicit obedience he followed the com 
 mand of that 
 
 " Stern daughter of the voice of God." 
 
 "Are you sanguine of the result of the war ?" 
 asked Bishop Wilmer of him in the closing days 
 of the struggle. His reply was : 
 
 "At present I am not concerned with results. 
 God s will ought to be our aim, and I am quite 
 contented that His designs should be accom 
 plished and not mine." 
 
 On that last morning when his handful of 
 worn and starving veterans had made their last 
 charge, to find themselves shut in by ranks of 
 serried steel; hemmed in by Grant s entire 
 army; he faced the decree of Fate with as much 
 constancy as though that decree were Success, 
 not Doom. 
 
 "What will history say of the surrender of 
 an army in the field ? " asked an officer of his staff 
 in passionate grief. 
 
 "Yes, I know they will say hard things of 
 us; they will not understand that we were over 
 whelmed by numbers; but that is not the ques 
 tion, Colonel. The .question is, is it right to 
 surrender this army ? If it is right, then I will 
 take all of the responsibility." 
 
 It was ever the note of duty that he sounded. 
 
LEE IN DEFEAT 255 
 
 "You will take with you," he said to his 
 army in his farewell address, "the satisfaction 
 that proceeds from the consciousness of duty 
 faithfully performed; and I earnestly pray that 
 a merciful God will extend to you His blessing 
 and protection. With an unceasing admiration 
 of your constancy and devotion to your country 
 and a grateful remembrance of your kind and 
 generous consideration of myself, I bid you an 
 affectionate farewell." 
 
 "We are conscious that we have humbly tried 
 to do our duty," he said, a year or more after the 
 war, when the clouds hung heavy over the 
 South; "we may, therefore, with calm satisfac 
 tion trust in God and leave results to Him." 
 
 The sun, which has shone in the morning, 
 but has become obscured by clouds in the after 
 noon, sometimes breaks forth, and at its setting 
 shines with a greater splendor than it knew even 
 at high noon. 
 
 So here. Sheathing his stainless sword, sur 
 rendering in the field the remnant of an army 
 that had once been the most redoubtable body 
 of fighting men of the century, the greatest cap 
 tain, the noblest gentleman of our time, expect 
 ing to slip into the darkness of oblivion, suddenly 
 stepped forth from the gloom of defeat into the 
 splendor of perpetual fame. 
 
256 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 I love to think of Grant as he appeared that 
 April day at the surrender: the simple soldier, 
 the strenuous fighter, who, though thrashed, 
 was always ready to fight again; who, now 
 though he had achieved the prize for which he 
 had fought so hard and had paid so dearly, was 
 so modest, and so unassuming, that but for his 
 shoulder-straps and that yet better mark of 
 rank, his generosity, he might not have been 
 known as the victor. Southerners generally 
 have long forgiven Grant all else for the mag 
 nanimity that he showed that day to Lee. By 
 his orders no salutes of joy were fired, no public 
 marks of exultation over his fallen foe were 
 allowed. History contains no finer example of 
 greatness. Not Alexander in his generous 
 youth excelled him. 
 
 Yet, it is not more to the victor that posterity 
 will turn her gaze than to the vanquished, her 
 admiration at the glory of the conqueror well- 
 nigh lost in amazement at the dignity of the 
 conquered. 
 
 Men who saw the defeated general when he 
 came forth from the chamber where he had 
 signed the articles of capitulation say that he 
 paused a moment as his eyes rested once more 
 on the Virginia hills; smote his hands together 
 as though in some excess of inward agony, then 
 
LEE IN DEFEAT 257 
 
 mounted his gray horse, Traveller, and rode 
 calmly away. 
 
 If that was the very Gethsemane of his trials, 
 yet he must have had then one moment of su 
 preme, if chastened, joy. As he rode quietly 
 down the lane leading from the scene of capitu 
 lation, he passed into view of his men of such 
 as remained of them. The news of the sur 
 render had got abroad and they were waiting, 
 grief-stricken and dejected upon the hillsides, 
 when they caught sight of their old commander 
 on the gray horse. Then occurred one of the 
 most notable scenes in the history of war. In 
 an instant they were about him, bare-headed, 
 with tear- wet faces; thronging him, kissing his 
 hand, his boots, his saddle; weeping; cheering 
 him amid their tears; shouting his name to the 
 very skies. He said, "Men, we have fought 
 through the war together; I have done my best 
 for you; my heart is too full to say more." 
 
 Thus, with kindly words, as of a father, and a 
 heart that must have felt some solace in such de 
 votion, he bade them farewell, and left them like 
 the devoted band that wept for the great Apostle 
 to the Gentiles, weeping most of all that they 
 should see his face no more. 
 
 The cheers were heard afar off over the hills 
 where the victorious army lay encamped, and 
 
258 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 awakened some anxiety. It was a sound they 
 well knew: 
 
 "The voice once heard through Shiloh s woods, 
 
 And Chickamauga s solitudes, 
 The fierce South cheering on her sons." 
 
 It was reported in some of the Northern papers 
 that it was the sound of jubilation at the sur 
 render. But no! Some of those who are still 
 here know what it was; for they were there. 
 It was the voice of jubilation, yet not for surren 
 der: but for the captain who had surrendered 
 their muskets, but was still the commander of 
 their hearts. 
 
 This is Lee s final victory and the highest 
 tribute to the South: that the devotion of the 
 South to him was greater in the hour of defeat 
 than in that of victory. It is said that Na 
 poleon was adored by the men of France; but 
 hated by the women. It was not so with Lee. 
 No victor ever came home to receive more signal 
 evidences of devotion than this defeated general. 
 
 Richmond was in mourning. Since the 
 Union army had entered her gates, every house 
 had been closed as though it were the house of 
 death. One afternoon, a few days after the 
 surrender, Lee, on his gray horse, Traveller, 
 attended by two or three officers, crossed the 
 
LEE IN DEFEAT 259 
 
 James and rode quietly up the street to his 
 home on Franklin Street, where he dismounted. 
 That evening it was noised abroad that General 
 Lee had arrived; he had been seen to enter his 
 house. Next morning the houses were open as 
 usual; life began to flow in its accustomed chan 
 nels. Those who were there have said that 
 when General Lee returned they felt as safe as 
 if he had had his whole army at his back. 
 
 His first recorded words on his arrival were 
 a tribute to his successful opponent. "General 
 Grant has acted with magnanimity/ he said 
 to some who spoke of the victor with bitterness. 
 It was the keynote to his after life. 
 
 Over forty years have gone by since that day 
 in April when Lee, to avoid further useless 
 sacrifice of life, surrendered himself and all 
 that remained of the Army of Northern Virginia 
 and gave his parole d honneur to bear arms no 
 more against the United States. To him, who 
 with prescient mind had long borne in his bosom 
 knowledge of the exhausted resources of the 
 Confederacy, and had seen his redoubtable 
 army, under the "policy of attrition," dwindle 
 away to a mere ghost of its former self, it might 
 well appear that he had failed, and, if he ever 
 thought of his personal reputation, that he had 
 lost the soldier s dearest prize; that Fame had 
 
2 6o ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 turned her back and Fate usurped her place. 
 Thenceforth, he who had been the leader of 
 armies; whose glorious achievements had filled 
 the world; who had been the prop of a high 
 hearted nation s hope, was to walk the narrow 
 byway of private life, defeated, impoverished 
 and possibly misunderstood. 
 
 But to us who have survived for the space of 
 more than a generation, how different it ap 
 pears. We know that Time, the redresser of 
 wrongs, is steadily righting the act of unkind 
 Fate; and Fame, firmly established in her high 
 seat, is ever placing a richer laurel on his brow. 
 
 Yea, ride away, thou defeated general! Ride 
 through the broken fragments of thy shattered 
 army, ride through thy war-wasted land, amid 
 thy desolate and stricken people. But know 
 that thou art riding on Fame s highest way: 
 
 "This day shall see 
 Thy head wear sunlight and thy feet touch stars." 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 AFTER THE WAR 
 
 T^HE sternest test of Lee s character was yet 
 to come. Only those who went through it 
 can know the depth of the humiliation in which, 
 during the next few years, malignity, with Igno 
 rance for ally, strove to steep the South. 
 
 Out of it Lee came without a trace of rancor 
 or of bitterness. In all the annals of our race 
 no man has ever shown a nobler or more Chris 
 tian spirit. 
 
 Lincoln, who was of Southern blood and 
 whose passion was a reunited Union, was in 
 his grave, slain by a madman, and after life s 
 fitful fever was sleeping well, his last message 
 being one of peace and good-will. His successor 
 began by flinging himself into the arms of those 
 who had hated Lincoln most. 
 
 On the 2Qth of May, President Johnson issued 
 a proclamation of amnesty, but General Lee, 
 with all others of rank, was excluded from its 
 operation, and he was indicted for treason, 
 
 261 
 
2 6a ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 by a grand jury, composed partly of negroes, 
 especially selected for the purpose of returning 
 indictments against him and Mr. Davis. There 
 were those who stood proudly aloof and gave no 
 sign of desiring reinstatement as citizens. Some 
 scornfully declared their resolution to live and die 
 without accepting parole. Not so the broad- 
 minded and wise Lee. He immediately wrote (on 
 June 1 3th) to the President apply ing for the "ben 
 efits and full restoration of all rights and privi 
 leges extended to those included in the terms of 
 the proclamation." This application he inclosed 
 on the same day in a letter to General Grant 
 informing him that he was ready to meet any 
 charges that might be preferred against him 
 and did not wish to avoid trial, but that he had 
 supposed that the officers and men of the army 
 of Northern Virginia were by the terms of 
 surrender protected by the United States Gov 
 ernment from molestation so long as they con 
 formed to its conditions. 
 
 Grant immediately rose to the demand of the 
 occasion as he had a way of doing in great 
 emergencies. He informed General Lee that 
 his understanding of the convention at Appo- 
 mattox was identical with his; and he is said to 
 have threatened Johnson with the surrender 
 of the command of the army unless the indict- 
 
AFTER THE WAR 263 
 
 ment were quashed and the convention honor 
 ably observed. 
 
 Johnson himself, confronted by an ever- 
 strengthening phalanx of enemies within his own 
 party, soon, for his own reasons, underwent a 
 change of heart, and from denouncing against 
 the South measures that should "make treason 
 odious," began to speak of the South to South 
 erners in a more conciliatory manner. Gover 
 nor Letcher, of Virginia, who had been arrested, 
 was treated in Washington with kindness and 
 consideration. It was on learning of this that 
 General Lee declared his opinion that the deci 
 sion of war having been against the South, it was 
 " the part of wisdom to acquiesce in the result, 
 and of candor to recognize the fact." The inter 
 ests of the State of Virginia, he said, were the same 
 as those of the United States. Its prosperity 
 would rise or fall with the welfare of the country. 
 The duty of its citizens then appeared to him 
 too plain to admit of doubt. He urged that all 
 should unite in honest efforts to obliterate the 
 effects of war and to restore the blessings of 
 peace. That they should remain if possible 
 in the country; promote harmony and good 
 feeling; qualify themselves to vote and elect 
 to the State and general legislatures wise and 
 patriotic men who would devote their abilities 
 
264 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 to the interests of the country and the healing 
 of all dissensions. "I have," he asserted, "in 
 variably recommended this course since the 
 cessation of hostilities, and have endeavored 
 to practise it myself."* 
 
 He was much disturbed about this time by 
 the tendency of some of his old friends in their 
 despair to emigrate from the South. That con 
 stant soul knew no defeat, much less despair, 
 and he had not despaired of the South. He 
 protested against leaving the State for any reason, 
 avowing his unalterable belief in the duty of 
 every man to remain and bear his part in what 
 ever trials might befall. "The thought of 
 abandoning the country and all that must be 
 left in it," he wrote, "is abhorrent to my feel 
 ings, and I prefer to struggle for its restoration 
 and share its fate rather than to give up all as 
 lost, and Virginia has need for all her sons."f 
 And this devotion he exemplified to the fullest 
 extent in his life. 
 
 The war had scarcely ceased and his con 
 dition of narrow circumstances become known, 
 when offers of places of honor and profit began 
 to come to him: offers of the presidency of 
 insurance companies and of other industrial 
 
 * Letter of August 28, 1865, to ex-Governor Letcher. 
 
 t Letter to Commodore M. F. Maury, September 8, 1865. 
 
AFTER THE WAR 265 
 
 enterprises proposals that he should allow his 
 name to be used for the highest office in the gift 
 of the State; even offers from admirers in the 
 old country of an asylum on that side of the 
 water, where a handsome estate was tendered 
 him, as a tribute of admiration, so that he 
 could spend the residue of his life in peace and 
 comfort. 
 
 His reply to all these allurements was that 
 which we now know was the only one he could 
 make: a gracious but irrevocable refusal. Dur 
 ing the war, when a friend had suggested to 
 him the probability that the people of the 
 South would demand that he should be their 
 President, he had promptly and decisively de 
 clared that he would never accept such a posi 
 tion. So now, when the governorship of Vir 
 ginia was proposed to him, he firmly refused to 
 consider it. With the same firmness he rejected 
 all proposals to provide him with honorable 
 commercial positions at a high salary. 
 
 On one of these occasions he was approached 
 with a tender of the presidency of an insurance 
 company at a salary of $50,000 a year. He de 
 clined it on the ground that it was work with 
 which he was not familiar. "But, General," 
 said the gentleman who represented the insur 
 ance company, "you will not be expected to do 
 
266 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 any work; what we wish is the use of your 
 
 name." 
 
 "Do you not think," said General Lee, "that 
 if my name is worth $50,000 a year, I ought to 
 be very careful about taking care of it ?" 
 
 Amid the commercialism of the present age 
 this sounds as refreshing as the oath of a knight 
 of the Round Table. 
 
 Defeated in one warfare, he was still a captain 
 militant in the service of Duty: Duty, that like 
 the moon, often shows her darkened face to 
 her votary, though in the future she may beam 
 with radiance. 
 
 Duty now appeared to him to send her sum 
 mons from a little mountain town in which 
 was a classical school which Washington had 
 endowed, and Lee, turning from all offers of 
 wealth and ease, obeyed her call. 
 
 "They are offering my father everything," 
 said one of his daughters, " but the only thing 
 he will accept: a place to earn honest bread 
 while engaged in some useful work." That 
 speech, made to a Trustee of the Institution re 
 ferred to, brought Lee the offer of the presidency 
 of Washington College at a salary of $1,500 a 
 year and after some hesitation, due to his fear 
 that his association with an institution might 
 in the state of political feeling then existing 
 
AFTER THE WAR 267 
 
 prove an injury rather than a benefit to it, he 
 accepted it. 
 
 Thus, the first captain of his time, and almost, 
 if not quite, the most famous man in the world, 
 with offers that might well, in that hour of trial, 
 have allured even him with all his modesty, 
 turned his back on the world, and, following 
 the lamp with which Duty appeared to light his 
 way, rode quietly to that little mountain town 
 in Rockbridge to devote the remainder of his 
 life to fitting the sons of his old soldiers to 
 meet the exactions of the coming time. On his 
 old war-horse, he rode into Lexington alone, 
 one afternoon in the early autumn, and, after a 
 hush of reverent silence at his first appearance, 
 was greeted on the streets by his old soldiers with 
 the far-famed rebel yell which he had heard 
 last as he rode down the lane from Appomattox. 
 
 Ah! ride on alone, old man, with Duty at thy 
 bridle-bit: behind thee is the glory of thy mili 
 tary career; before thee is the transcendent 
 fame of thy future. Thou shalt abide there 
 henceforth; there shall thy ashes repose; but 
 thou shalt make of that little town a shrine to 
 which pilgrims shall turn with softened eyes so 
 long as men admire virtue and the heart aspires 
 to the ideal of Duty. 
 
 He was sworn in as president on the ad of 
 
268 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 October, 1865, and thenceforth his life was de 
 voted to the new service he had entered on, with 
 the same zeal with which he always applied him 
 self to the dutv before him. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 LEE AS COLLEGE PRESIDENT 
 
 part of his life reflects greater honor on 
 his memory than that which was now 
 to come. Here, as in everything else, he ad 
 dressed all his powers to the work in hand. 
 He found the institution merely an old and de 
 nominational college, dilapidated and well-nigh 
 ruined, without means and without students. 
 The mere fact of his connection with it gave it 
 at once a reputation. He changed the little col 
 lege, as if by an enchanter s wand, from a mere 
 academy to a great institution of learning. He 
 instituted or extended the honor system that 
 Southern system which reckons the establish 
 ment of character to be at once the basis and 
 end of all education. Students flocked there 
 from all over the South. He knew them all 
 and, what is more, followed them all in their 
 work. He was as prompt at chapel as the 
 chaplains; as interested in the classes as the 
 professors and certainly more than the students. 
 "I have led the young men of the South to 
 269 
 
270 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 battle," he said on one occasion; "I have 
 seen many of them die on the field. I shall de 
 vote my remaining energy to training young 
 men to do their duty in life." And nobly he 
 performed this high task. The standard he 
 ever held up was that of duty. 
 
 His old soldiers, often at great sacrifice, sent 
 their sons to be under his direction, and to 
 learn at his feet the stern lesson of duty. But 
 it was he who made the college worthy of their 
 confidence. He elevated the standards, broad 
 ened the scope, called about him the most ac 
 complished professors to be found and inspired 
 them with new enthusiasm. No principle was 
 too abstruse for him to grasp; no detail too 
 small for him to examine. He familiarized 
 himself alike with the methods employed at the 
 best institutions, and with the conduct and 
 standing of every student at his own. 
 
 An educational official has stated that of a 
 number of college presidents to whom he ad 
 dressed an inquiry relating to educational 
 matters, General Lee was the only one who 
 took the trouble to send him an answer. He 
 who had commanded armies, "the lowliest 
 duties on himself did lay." He audited every 
 account; he presided at every faculty meeting; 
 studied and signed every report. 
 
LEE AS COLLEGE PRESIDENT 271 
 
 In fact, the chief stimulus to the students 
 was the knowledge that General Lee was fa 
 miliar with every student s standing, and to 
 some extent, with every man s conduct. An 
 invitation to visit him in his office was the most 
 dreaded event in a student s life, though the 
 actual interview was always softened by a noble 
 courtesy on the President s part into an expe 
 rience which left an impress throughout life and 
 ever remained a cherished memory. 
 
 To one thus summoned, the General urged 
 greater attention to study, on the ground that 
 it would prevent the failure which would other 
 wise inevitably come to him. 
 
 " But, General, you failed," said the youth 
 meaning, as he explained afterward, to pay 
 him a tribute. 
 
 "I hope that you may be more fortunate 
 than I," replied the General quietly. 
 
 On another occasion, a youth from the far 
 South having "cut lectures" to go skating, an 
 accomplishment he had just acquired, was 
 summoned to appear before the president, and 
 having made his defence was told by the General 
 that he should not have broken the rule of the 
 institution, but should have requested to be 
 excused from attendance on lectures. 
 
 "You understand now?" 
 
272 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 "Yes, sir. Well, General, the ice is fine 
 this morning. I d like to be excused to-day," 
 promptly replied the ready youngster. 
 
 It was occasionally the habit of the young 
 orators who spoke in public at celebrations to 
 express their feelings by indulging in compli 
 ments to General Lee, and the reverse of com 
 pliments to "the Yankees." Such references, 
 clad in the glowing rhetoric and informed with 
 the deep feeling of youthful oratory, never 
 failed to stir their audiences and evoke unstinted 
 applause. General Lee, however, promptly put 
 a stop to this. He notified the speakers that 
 such references were to be omitted. "Those 
 to me are embarrassing to me; those to the 
 North tend to promote ill feeling and injure 
 the institution." 
 
 Among the students at this time were quite 
 a number who had been soldiers and were ha 
 bituated to a degree of freedom. Pranks among 
 the students were, of course, common, and were 
 not dealt with harshly. One episode, however, 
 occurred which showed the strong hand in the 
 soft gauntlet. 
 
 Prior to General Lee s installation as presi 
 dent, it had always been the custom to grant 
 at least a week s holiday at Christmas. This 
 custom the faculty, under the president s lead, 
 
LEE AS COLLEGE PRESIDENT 273 
 
 did away with, and thenceforth only Christmas 
 Day was given as a holiday. 
 
 A petition to return to the old order having 
 failed, a meeting of the students was held and 
 a paper was posted containing many signatures 
 declaring the signers determination not to at 
 tend lectures during Christmas week. Some 
 manifestation appeared on the part of certain 
 of the faculty of giving in to the students de 
 mand. General Lee settled the matter at once 
 by announcing that any man whose name ap 
 peared on the rebellious declaration would be 
 expelled from the college. And if every student 
 signed it, he said, he would send every one home 
 and simply lock up the college and put the key 
 in his pocket. 
 
 The activity displayed in getting names off 
 the paper was amusing, and the attendance 
 at lectures that Christmas was unusually large. 
 
 I cannot forbear to relate a personal incident 
 which I feel illustrates well General Lee s 
 method of dealing with his students. I was so 
 unfortunate while at college as to have always an 
 early class, and from time to time on winter 
 mornings it was my habit "to run late," as the 
 phrase went. This brought me in danger of 
 meeting the president on his way from chapel, 
 a contingency I was usually careful to guard 
 
274 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 against. One morning, however, I miscalcu 
 lated, and as I turned a corner came face to 
 face with him. His greeting was most civil, and 
 touching my cap I hurried by. Next moment 
 I heard my name spoken, and turning I re 
 moved my cap and faced him. 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "Tell Miss (mentioning the daughter 
 
 of my uncle, General Pendleton, who kept 
 house for him) that I say will she please have 
 breakfast a little earlier for you." 
 
 "Yes, sir." And I hurried on once more, re 
 solved that should I ever be late again I would, 
 at least, take care not to meet the General. 
 
 Craving due allowance alike for the imma 
 turity of a boy and the mellowing influence of 
 passing years, I will try to picture General Lee 
 as I recall him, and as he must be recalled by 
 thousands who yet remember him. He was. in 
 common phrase, one of the handsomest men I 
 ever knew and easily the most impressive looking. 
 His figure, which in earlier life had been tall and 
 admirably proportioned, was now compact and 
 rounded rather than stout, and was still in fine 
 proportion to his height. His head, well set on his 
 shoulders, and his erect and dignified carriage 
 made him a distinguished and, indeed, a noble 
 figure. His soft hair and carefully trimmed beard, 
 
LEE AS COLLEGE PRESIDENT 275 
 
 silvery white, with his florid complexion and dark 
 eyes, clear and frank, gave him a pleasant and 
 kindly expression, and I remember how, when he 
 smiled, his eyes twinkled and his teeth shone. 
 He always walked slowly, and even pensively, 
 for he was, without doubt, already sensible 
 of the trouble which finally struck him down; 
 and the impression that remains with me chiefly 
 is of his dignity and his gracious courtesy. I do 
 not remember that we feared him at all, or even 
 stood in awe of him. Collegians stand in awe 
 of few things or persons. But we honored him 
 beyond measure, and after nearly forty years 
 he is still the most imposing figure I ever saw. 
 
 Even here, in his seclusion, while honored by 
 the best of those who had bravely fought against 
 him, he was pursued by the malignity of those 
 haters of the South, who, having kept carefully 
 concealed while the guns were firing, now that 
 all personal danger was over endeavored to 
 make amends by assailing with their clamor 
 the noblest of the defeated. It was a period of 
 passion, and those who, under other conditions, 
 might have acted with deliberation and reason, 
 gave the loose to their feeling, and surrendered 
 themselves blindly to the direction of their wild 
 est and most passionate leaders. Those against 
 whose private life the purity of his life was an 
 
276 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 ever-burning protest reviled him most bitterly. 
 The hostile press of the time was filled with 
 railing against him; the halls of Congress rang 
 with denunciation of him as a traitor: the fool 
 ish and futile yelping of the cowardly pack that 
 ever gather about the wounded and spent lion. 
 And with what noble dignity and self-command 
 he treated it all! To the nobility of a gentleman 
 he added the meekness of a Christian. When, 
 with a view to setting an example to the South, 
 he applied to be included in the terms of the 
 general amnesty finally offered, his application 
 was ignored, and to his death he remained "a 
 prisoner on parole." 
 
 He was dragged before high commissions and 
 was cross-examined by hostile prosecutors pant 
 ing to drive or inveigle him into some admission 
 which would compromise him, but without avail, 
 or even the ignoble satisfaction to his enemies 
 that they had ruffled his unbroken calm. 
 
 From this time he gave all the weight of his 
 great name to the complete re-establishment 
 of the Union, and as his old soldiers followed 
 and obeyed him on the field of battle, so now 
 the whole South followed him in peace. Only 
 the South knows as yet what the Union owes 
 to Lee. 
 
 Happily, as we know, his serene soul, lifted 
 
LEE AS COLLEGE PRESIDENT 277 
 
 too high to be disturbed by any storms of doubt, 
 was untroubled by any question born of his 
 failure. "I did nothing more," he said to Gen 
 eral Hampton, one of his most gallant lieuten 
 ants, "than my duty required of me; I could 
 have taken no other course without dishonor, 
 and if it were all to be done over again, I should 
 act in precisely the same manner." 
 
 Thus, in the lofty calm of a mind conscious 
 of having tried faithfully to follow ever the 
 right; of having obeyed without question the 
 command of duty, in simple reliance on the 
 goodness of God, the great captain passed the 
 brief evening of his life, trying by his constant 
 precept and example to train the young men 
 of the South as Christian gentlemen. 
 
 He read little on the war, and though he at 
 one time contemplated writing a history of, at 
 least, some part of it, he put aside the tempta 
 tion and contented himself with writing a brief 
 memoir of his honored father to accompany a 
 new and revised edition which he edited of the 
 latter s "Memoirs of the War in the Southern 
 Department of the United States." 
 
 It was his diversion to ride his old war-horse, 
 Traveller, among the green hills of that beauti 
 ful country about Lexington, at times piloting 
 through the bridle-paths the little daughters of 
 
278 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 some professor, sun-bonneted and rosy, riding 
 two astride the same horse; or now and then 
 meeting an old soldier who asked the privilege 
 of giving for him once more the old cheer, which 
 in past days had at sight of him rung out on so 
 many a hard-fought field. 
 
 One of his biographers* relates that seeing him 
 one day talking at his gate with a stranger to 
 whom, as he ended, he gave some money, he 
 enquired who the stranger was. "One of our 
 old soldiers," said the General. "To whose 
 command did he belong?" "Oh, he was one 
 of those who fought against us," said General 
 Lee. "But we are all one now, and must make 
 no difference in our treatment of them." 
 
 Thus, in simple duties and simple pleasures, 
 untouched by the slings and arrows of outra 
 geous fortune, he passed life s close among his 
 own people, a hallowed memory forever to those 
 who knew him, an example to all who lived in 
 that dark time, or shall live hereafter; the pat 
 tern of a Christian gentleman, who did justice, 
 loved mercy, and walked humbly with his God. 
 
 No more devout or humble Christian ever 
 lived than he. 
 
 His last active work was done in a vestry meet 
 ing of his church, whose rector was one of his 
 
 * Rev. J. Wm. Jones. 
 
LEE AS COLLEGE PRESIDENT 279 
 
 old lieutenants, the Rev. Dr. Wm. N. Pendle- 
 ton, formerly his chief of artillery; his last 
 conscious act was to ask God s blessing at his 
 board. As he ended, his voice faltered and he 
 sank in his chajr. 
 
 Surrounded by those who honored and loved 
 him best, he lingered for a few days, murmur 
 ing at times orders to one of the best of his lieu 
 tenants, the gallant A. P. Hill, who had fallen 
 at Five Forks, till on the I2th day of October, 
 1870, he that was valiant for truth passed quietly 
 to meet the Master he had served so well, "and 
 all the trumpets sounded for him on the other 
 side." 
 
 Many places claimed the honor of guarding 
 his sepulchre; but to Lexington it was fittingly 
 awarded. Here he lived and here he died, and 
 here in the little mountain town in the Valley 
 of Virginia his sacred ashes lie hard by those of 
 his great lieutenant, who, in the fierce sixties, 
 was his right arm. 
 
 Happy the town that has two such shrines! 
 Happy the people that have two such examples! 
 Both have forever ennobled the soldier s pro 
 fession, where to face death in obedience to 
 duty is a mere incident of the life. Both were 
 worthy successors of that noble centurion of 
 whom Christ said, "I have not found so great 
 
2 8o ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 faith; no, not in Israel." Well may we apply 
 to him his own words, written about the pro 
 posal to remove the remains of the Confederate 
 dead from Gettysburg: "I know of no fitter 
 resting place for a soldier than the field on 
 which he has nobly laid down his life." 
 
 To those of us who knew him in the im 
 pressionable time of our youth, as, untouched 
 by the furious railing of his enemies, he passed 
 the evening of his life in unruffled calm, he 
 seems the model of a knightly gentleman, ever 
 loyal to duty and ever valiant for truth. 
 
 Well might he have said with that other 
 Valiant-for-truth : " My sword I give to him that 
 shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my cour 
 age and skill to him that can get it. My marks 
 and scars I carry with me to be a witness for me 
 that I have fought His battles who will now be 
 my rewarder." 
 
 No sooner had he passed away than the ig 
 noble enemies of the South, safe at the moment 
 from her resentment, set forth anew to insult 
 her people by the rancor of their insults to her 
 honored dead. While her bells were tolling, 
 the halls of Congress and the hostile press rang 
 anew with diatribes against her fallen leader. 
 
 But the wolfish hatred that had hounded him 
 so long and now broke forth in one last bitter 
 
LEE AS COLLEGE PRESIDENT 281 
 
 chorus was soon drowned in the acclaim of the 
 world that one had passed away whose life had 
 honored the whole human race. 
 
 The world had already recognized and fixed 
 him forever among her constellation of great 
 men, and the European press vied with that 
 of the South in rendering him the tribute of 
 honor. Thus, the only effect of the attacks 
 made on him by the enemies of the South was 
 to secure for them the hatred or contempt of 
 the Southern people. 
 
 "As obedient to law as Socrates," wrote of 
 him one who had studied his character well, and 
 the type was well chosen. All through his 
 life he illustrated this virtue; and never so fully 
 as when he put aside high preferment in the 
 profession he so passionately loved and so nobly 
 illustrated to obey the laws under which he had 
 been reared and cast in his lot with his people, 
 though the sacrifice cost him tears of blood. 
 Among the foolish charges made by some in the 
 hour of passion was this: that he believed the 
 South would win in the war and achieve its 
 independence, whereupon he would be its idol. 
 In other words, that he was lured by ambition. 
 Only ignorance wedded to passion could assert 
 so baseless a charge. Even had he thus imagined 
 that the South might win its independence, Lee 
 
282 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 was, of all men, the last to be swayed by such 
 a consideration. But as a fact, we know that it 
 was at great sacrifice he made his choice and 
 that only the purest motives of love of Liberty 
 and obedience to Duty influenced his choice. 
 The entrance of Virginia into the Confederacy 
 of the South threw him out of the position to 
 which his rank entitled him. But while others 
 wrangled and scrambled for office and rank, he 
 with utter self-abnegation declared himself 
 "willing to serve anywhere where he could be 
 most useful." And it is known to those who 
 knew him well that at one time he even thought 
 of enlisting as a private in the company com 
 manded by his eldest son, Captain G. W. C 
 Lee.* Such simplicity and virtue are antique. 
 Field Marshall Viscount Wolseley, referring 
 long afterward to his first meeting with Lee, 
 in the summer of 1862, says: "Every incident 
 in that visit is indelibly stamped on my memory. 
 All he said to me then and during subsequent 
 conversations is still fresh in my recollection. 
 It is natural it should be so; for he was the 
 ablest general and to me seemed the greatest 
 man I ever conversed with, and yet I have had 
 the privilege of meeting Von Moltke and Prince 
 Bismarck. General Lee was one of the few 
 
 * Jones s "Life and Letters of Robert E. Lee," p. 164. 
 
LEE AS COLLEGE PRESIDENT 283 
 
 men who ever seriously impressed and awed 
 me with their inherent greatness. Forty years 
 have come and gone since our meeting and yet 
 the majesty of his manly bearing, the genial, 
 winning grace, the sweetness of his smile, and 
 the impressive dignity of his old-fashioned style 
 of dress, come back to me among my most cher 
 ished recollections. His greatness made me 
 humble and I never felt my own insignificance 
 more keenly than I did in his presence. . . . He 
 was, indeed, a beautiful character, and of him 
 it might truthfully be written, In righteousness 
 did he judge and make war!" 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 SOURCES OF CHARACTER 
 
 INHERE is something in all of us that responds 
 to the magic of military prowess. That wise 
 observer, Dr. Johnson, once said: "Every man 
 thinks meanly of himself for not having been a 
 soldier or been at sea," and when Boswell said, 
 "Lord Mansfield would not be ashamed of it," 
 he replied, "Sir, if Lord Mansfield were in the 
 presence of generals and admirals who had seen 
 service, he would wish to creep under the table. 
 . . . If Socrates and Charles XII. of Sweden 
 were in company, and Socrates should say, 
 * Follow me and hear a lecture on philosophy/ 
 and Charles XII. should say, Follow me and 
 help me to dethrone the Czar/ a man would be 
 ashamed to follow Socrates." 
 
 Military glory is so dazzling that it blinds 
 wholly most men; and a little all men. An Alex 
 ander conquering worlds until he weeps because 
 no more are left to conquer; a Hannibal crossing 
 the Alps and blowing his trumpets outside the 
 
 very gates of Rome; Caesar and Napoleon over- 
 
 284 
 
SOURCES OF CHARACTER 285 
 
 sweeping Europe with their victorious eagles, 
 are so splendid that the radiance of their achieve 
 ments makes us forget the men they were. Alex 
 ander carousing at Babylon; Caesar plotting 
 to overthrow his country s liberties; Napoleon 
 steeping the world in blood, but bickering in his 
 confinement at St. Helena, are not pleasant to 
 contemplate. There the habiliments of majesty 
 are wanting; the gauds of pomp are stripped 
 off and we see the men at their true worth. 
 
 Now, let us turn for a moment to Lee. Had 
 we known him only as the victor of Mechanics- 
 ville, Fredericksburg, Manassas, Chancellors- 
 ville and Cold Harbor, we should have, indeed, 
 thought him a supreme soldier. But should we 
 have known the best of him ? Without Gettys 
 burg, without the long campaign of 1864, with 
 out the siege of Petersburg and without Appo- 
 mattox, should we have dreamed of the sublime 
 greatness of the man ? 
 
 History may be searched in vain to find Lee s 
 superior, and only once or twice in its long 
 course will be found his equal. To find his 
 prototype, we must go back to ancient times, 
 to the half-legendary heroes who have been 
 handed down to us by Plutarch s matchless 
 portraiture; yet, as we read their story, we see 
 that we have been given but one side of their 
 
286 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 character. Their weaknesses have mainly been 
 lost in the lapse of centuries, and their virtues 
 are magnified in the enhaloing atmosphere of 
 time. But, as to Lee, we know his every act. 
 
 There was no act nor incident of his life on 
 which a light as fierce as that which beats upon 
 a throne did not fall. He had in his lifetime 
 what Macaulay, in speaking of Dr. Johnson, 
 terms "posthumous fame." He was investi 
 gated by high commissions; his every act was 
 examined by hostile prosecutors. His conduct 
 was inquired into by those who had every in 
 centive of hostility to secure his downfall and 
 his degradation. Yet, amid these fierce as 
 saults, he remained as unmoved as he had stood 
 when he had held the heights of Fredericks- 
 burg against the furious attacks of Burnside s 
 intrepid infantry. From this inquisition he 
 came forth as unsoiled as the mystic White 
 Knight of the Round Table. In that vivid 
 glare he stood revealed like the angel bathed 
 in light; the closest scrutiny but brought forth 
 new virtues and disclosed a more rounded char 
 acter: 
 
 "Like Launcelot brave, like Galahad clean." 
 
 Had he been Regulus, we know that he would 
 have returned to Carthage with undisquieted 
 
SOURCES OF CHARACTER 287 
 
 brow to meet his doom. Had he been Aristides, 
 we know that he would have faithfully inscribed 
 his name on the shell entrusted to him for his 
 banishment. Had he been Caesar, none but 
 a fool would have dared to offer him a crown. 
 Ambition could not have tempted him; Ease 
 could not have beguiled him; Pleasure could not 
 have allured him. 
 
 Should we come down to later times, where 
 shall we find his counterpart, unless we take 
 the Bayards, the Sidneys and the Falklands, 
 the highest of the noblest ? 
 
 So, to get his character as it is known to thou 
 sands, we must take the best that was in the 
 best that the history of men has preserved. 
 Something of Plato s calm there was; all of 
 Sidney s high-mindedness; of Bayard s fearless 
 and blameless life; of the constancy of William 
 the Silent, of whom it was said that he was 
 Tranquillus in arduis. It has been finely said 
 of him* that, "He was Caesar without his ambi 
 tion, Frederick without his tyranny, Napoleon 
 without his selfishness and Washington without 
 his reward." 
 
 But most of all, h 
 
 Here in that great Virginian and here only do 
 we find what appears to be an absolute parallel. 
 
 * By Senator Hill of Georgia. 
 
288 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 Something must account for this wonderful 
 development. Character does not reach such 
 consummate flowering alone, and by accidental 
 cause! It is a product of various forces and 
 such a character as Lee s is the product of high 
 forces met in conjunction. Genius may be born 
 anywhere; it is a result of prenatal forces. A 
 Keats may come from a horse-jobber s fireside; 
 a Columbus may spring from a wool-comber s 
 home; a Burns may come from an Ayrshire cot 
 tage; but it is a law of Nature that character 
 is a result largely of surrounding conditions, 
 previous or present. 
 
 A distinguished scholar* has called attention 
 to the resemblance between the situation of the 
 Southerners in the Civil War and the Southern 
 Greeks in the Peloponesan War. He has 
 further noted the resemblance in certain funda 
 mental elements of character between the Vir 
 ginians and both the Greeks and the Romans, 
 marking particularly their poise, a poise unaf 
 fected by conditions which might startle or 
 seduce. The Greeks and the Romans were 
 both peoples of the South, and like the Southern 
 people whose character Lee illustrated, their 
 successes were founded upon their character as 
 a people, among the elements of which were a 
 
 * Dr. Basil L. Gildersleeve. 
 
SOURCES OF CHARACTER 289 
 
 passion for liberty and a passion for dominance. 
 It was this poise which Lee illustrated so ad 
 mirably throughout life, a poise which, as Dr. 
 Gildersleeve has said, gave opportunity for first 
 the undazzled vision, and then the swoop of the 
 eagle. 
 
 Whatever open hostility or carping criticism 
 may say in derogation of Southern life, and it 
 may be admitted that there was liable to be the 
 waste and inertia of all life that is easy and 
 secluded; yet, the obvious, the unanswerable re 
 ply is that it produced such a character as Rob 
 ert E. Lee. As Washington was the consum 
 mate flower of the life of Colonial Virginia, so 
 Lee, clinging close to "his precious example," 
 became the perfect fruit of her later civilization. 
 
 It was my high privilege to know him when 
 I was a boy. It was also my privilege to see 
 something of that army which followed him 
 throughout the war, and on whose courage 
 and fortitude his imperishable glory as a cap 
 tain is founded. I question whether in all the 
 army under his command was one man who 
 had his genius; but I believe that in character, 
 he was but the type of his order, and as noble 
 as was his, ten thousand gentlemen marched 
 behind him who, in all the elements of private 
 character, were his peers. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 T STOOD not a great while ago on the most im- 
 pressive spot, perhaps, in all Europe: be 
 neath the majestic dome of the Invalides where 
 stands the tomb of Napoleon. It was a summer 
 evening, and we descended the steps and stood at 
 the door of the crypt where repose the ashes of 
 him who was doubtless the greatest soldier of 
 all time; who by his genius took France from 
 the throes of a revolution and lifted her while 
 he lived, to the head of the nations. Just then 
 the hour came for closing, and suddenly in the 
 marble rotunda above us began the roll of a 
 drum, which swelled and throbbed until the 
 whole earth seemed reverberating to its martial 
 tone. It was the long roll which had sounded 
 before so many hard-fought fields, and as it 
 throbbed and throbbed in the falling dusk of 
 that summer evening, there seemed to troop be 
 fore the mental vision the long lines that had 
 fought and fallen on so many a glorious field: 
 
 290 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 291 
 
 the soldiers of Lodi and of Austerlitz, of Fried- 
 land and Wagram and Borodino. 
 
 So, as I have immersed myself in the subject 
 of this great captain and noble gentleman, there 
 has appeared to come before me from a misty 
 past that other army, inspired by higher mo 
 tives by the highest motive : love of Liberty, on 
 whose imperishable deeds is founded the fame 
 of an even greater, because a nobler soldier; that 
 army of the South, composed not only of the 
 best that the South had, but wellnigh of all she 
 had. Gentle and simple, old and young, rich 
 and poor, secessionist and anti-secessionist, 
 with every difference laid aside, animated by 
 one common spirit: love of country, they flocked 
 to the defence of the South. Through four years 
 they withstood to the utmost the fiercest assaults 
 of fortune, and submitted only with their anni 
 hilation. 
 
 "The benediction of the o ercovering Heavens 
 Fall on their heads like dew, for they were worthy 
 To inlay Heaven with stars." 
 
 Through more than twice four years their 
 survivors and their children endured what was 
 bitterer than the sharpest agony of the battle- 
 time, and strong in the consciousness of their 
 rectitude, came out torn and bleeding, but 
 
2 9 2 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 victorious. Such fortitude, such courage and 
 sublime constancy cannot be in vain. The 
 blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church; 
 so the blood of patriots is the seed of liberty. 
 ~TTie history of their valor and their fortitude 
 in defence of Constitutional Liberty is the heri 
 tage of the South, a heritage in which the North 
 will one day be proud to claim a share, as she 
 will be the sharer in their work. 
 ""Some day, doubtless, there will stand in the 
 Nation s capital a great monument to Lee, 
 erected not only by the Southern people, whose 
 glory it is that he was the fruit of their civiliza 
 tion and the leader of their armies; but by the 
 American people, whose pride it will be that he 
 was their fellow-citizen. Meantime he has a 
 nobler monument than can be built of marble 
 or of brass. His monument is the adoration of 
 the South; his shrine is in every Southern heart. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
APPENDIX A 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM LETTER TO AUTHOR FROM 
 GENERAL MARCUS J. WRIGHT 
 
 WASHINGTON, September 26, 1907. 
 ********* 
 
 THE military population (men between eighteen 
 and forty-five years old, not exempt by law) of the 
 Northern States in 1860, was 3,769,020, omitting 
 California, Colorado, Dakota, District of Columbia, 
 Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Washing 
 ton Territory and West Virginia, not given in the 
 tables, but which may be stated as aggregating 135,627. 
 This added to 3,769,020, the military population of 
 eighteen Northern States makes a total of 3,904,647 
 subject to military duty in the States and Territories 
 of the North. 
 
 The military population of the Southern States 
 (exclusive of Kentucky, Maryland and Missouri) in 
 1860, was 1,064,193. Deducting from this number 
 the 86,009 tnat entered the Federal service and 80,000, 
 the estimated number of Union men who did not 
 take up arms, there remained to the Confederacy 
 898,184 men capable of bearing arms from which 
 to draw. 
 
 295 
 
296 APPENDIX 
 
 It stands thus: 
 
 Military population of the North 3,904,647 
 Military population of the South 898,184 
 
 Difference in favor of the North 3,006,463 
 The military population in 1860: 
 
 Of Kentucky 180,589 
 
 " Maryland 102,715 
 
 Missouri 232,781 
 
 516,085 
 
 These three States gave to the Federal army 231,509 
 men. Of these 190,744 were whites and 40,765 were 
 negroes. 
 
 An official published statement of the Adjutant- 
 General of the United States Army gives the total 
 number of men called for and furnished to the United 
 States Army from April 15, 1861, to the close of the 
 war as 2,865,028 men. Of this number 186,017 were 
 negroes and 494,900 were foreigners. 
 
 From all reliable data that could be secured, it has 
 been estimated by the best authorities that the strength 
 of the Confederate armies was about 600,000 men, 
 and of this number not more than two-thirds were 
 available for active duty in the field. The necessity 
 of guarding a long line of exposed seacoast, of main 
 taining permanent garrisons at different posts on inland 
 waters, and at numerous other points, deprived the 
 Confederate Army in the field of an accession of 
 strength. 
 
APPENDIX 297 
 
 The large preponderance of Federal forces was 
 manifest in all the important battles and campaigns 
 of the war. The largest force ever assembled by the 
 Confederates was at the seven days fight around 
 Richmond. 
 
 General Lee s report showed 80,835 men present 
 for duty, when the movement against General Mc- 
 Clellan commenced, and the Federal forces numbered 
 115,249. 
 
 At Antietam the Federals had 87,164, and the 
 Confederates 35,255. 
 
 At Fredericksburg the Federals had 110,000 and 
 the Confederates 78,110. 
 
 At Chancellorsville the Federals had 131,661, of 
 which number only 90,000 were engaged, and the 
 Confederates had 57,212. 
 
 At Gettysburg the Federals had 95,000, and the 
 Confederates 44,000. 
 
 At the Wilderness the Federals had 141,160, and 
 the Confederates 63,981. 
 
 At the breaking of the Confederate lines at Peters 
 burg, April i, 1865, General Lee commenced his re 
 treat with 32,000 men, and eight days after he surren 
 dered to General Grant, who had a force of 1 20,000 men. 
 
 From the latter part of 1862 until the close of the 
 war in 1865, there was a constant decrease of the 
 numerical strength of the Confederate Army. On 
 the other hand, the records show that during that 
 time the Federal Army was strengthened to the extent 
 of 363,390 men. 
 
298 APPENDIX 
 
 The available strength of the Confederate Army at 
 the close of the war has been the subject of much 
 discussion. 
 
 Estimates have been made varying from 150,000 
 to 250,000 men. 
 
 The number of paroles issued to Confederate sol 
 diers may be taken as a basis of calculation. Mr. 
 Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, on November 22, 
 1865, made the following official statement of pris 
 oners, surrendered by different Confederate armies 
 that were paroled: 
 
 Army of Northern Virginia . . . 27,805 
 
 Army of Tennessee 3 J ,243 
 
 Army of Missouri 7>97^ 
 
 Army of Department of Alabama . 42,293 
 
 Army of Trans-Mississippi Dept. . 17,686 
 
 Army of Department of Florida . 6,428 
 
 133433 
 
 Miscellaneous Departments of Vir 
 ginia 9,072 
 
 Cumberland, Maryland, &c. . . 9,377 
 
 Department of Washington . . . 3>3QO 
 
 In Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, 
 
 Alabama, Louisiana and Texas . 13,922 
 
 Nashville and Chattanooga . . . 5,029 
 
 40,790 
 
 These two lists aggregate 174,223, the number of 
 paroled Confederates reported by Secretary Stanton. 
 
APPENDIX 299 
 
 Those who have estimated the strength of the Con 
 federate Army at the close of the war at 250,000 
 reached that result by adding to the 174,223 the 
 number of men, 75,777, which they assumed to have 
 returned to their homes without paroles. If this 
 were true, it would appear, taking into account the 
 40,790 men reported as paroled at various places, 
 that 116,567 Confederate soldiers did not surrender, 
 and were not paroled with the armies to which they 
 belonged. 
 
 This is at variance with the estimated strength of 
 these armies just previous to the surrender. 
 
 The report of Secretary Stanton is misleading, be 
 cause it conveys the impression that the 174,223 men 
 reported as paroled were bearing arms at the time of 
 their surrender. An examination of the parole lists 
 shows that such was not the case. These lists em 
 brace men in hospitals, men retired from the army by 
 reason of disability and non-arms bearing men who 
 sought paroles as a safeguard. There were Con 
 federate soldiers who returned to their homes without 
 paroles, but they did not exceed in number those em 
 braced in Secretary Stanton s list, that were not borne 
 upon the roll. 
 
 In April, 1865, the aggregate of present and absent 
 showed the strength of the Confederate Army to be 
 about 275,000 men. Of this number 65,387 were in 
 Federal military prisons and 52,000 were absent by 
 reason of disability and other causes. Deducting the 
 total of these two numbers, 117,387 from 275,000, we 
 
300 APPENDIX 
 
 have 157,613 as showing the full effective strength of 
 the Confederate Army at the close of the war: 
 
 SUMMARY 
 
 Strength of Federal Army at close of war: 
 Present ......... 797,807 
 
 Absent ......... 202,700 
 
 1,000,507 
 
 Strength of Confederate Army at close of war: 
 Present ......... 157,613 
 
 Absent ......... I1 >% 
 
 275,000 
 
 ****** 
 (Signed) 
 
 MARCUS J. WRIGHT. 
 
EXTRACT FROM LETTER TO AUTHOR FROM COLONEL 
 THOMAS C. LIVERMORE 
 
 GRANT S ARMY PRESENT FOR DUTY 
 
 On the Rapidan and James, April 30, 1864, 168,198 
 (68 War Records 69 W. R., 195-198-427). 
 
 On the James, May, 31, 1864, 133,728 (69 W. R., 
 426-427). 
 
 On the James, January 3 1, 1865, 99,214 (95 W. R.,6i). 
 
 On the James, February 25, 1865, 98,457 (Ibid.). 
 
 On the James, March 31, 1865, 100,907 (Ibid.). 
 
 LEE S ARMY PRESENT FOR DUTY 
 
 On the Rapidan and James, Army of North Virginia, 
 April 30, 1864, 54,344 (60 W. R., 1,297-1,298). 
 
 2 div. and McLaw s brigade (est. 1,253) of Longstreet s 
 corps, March 31, 1864, 10,428* (59 W. R., 721). 
 
 Dept. of Richmond, April 20, 1864, 7,265 (60 W. R., 
 1,299). 
 Total, 72,037. 
 
 On the James, January 31, 1865, 57,387! (95 W. R., 
 386-95 W. R., 387, 388, 389, 390). 
 
 * Colonel Taylor of Lee s staff and Longstreet in their books 
 estimate Longstreet s command at 10,000. 
 
 t Excluding the cavalry of the Valley District, the number of 
 which is not reported, but probably was about 1,000 (Warren Court, 
 482). 
 
 301 
 
302 APPENDIX 
 
 On the James, February 25, 1865, 63,500.* 
 On the James, March 31, 1865, 56,840! (97 W. R., 
 1,331, Warren Court, 482). 
 
 (Signed) T. C. LIVERMORE. 
 
 * The number of the infantry estimated at about 7 per cent, and 
 the cavalry at about 15 per cent, more than the "effectives" re 
 ported. 
 
 f The result of deducting estimated losses and desertions re 
 ported and estimated, at 6,760 for March, from number given 
 above for February, 25, 
 
APPENDIX B 
 
 EXTRACT FROM LETTER TO AUTHOR FROM ANDREW 
 R. ELLERSON, ESQ., OF ELLERSON S, HANOVER 
 COUNTY, VA. 
 
 RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, June 10, 1908. 
 ********** 
 BEFORE the battles around Richmond began, my 
 regiment (4th Virginia Cavalry) was encamped on 
 the extreme left of the army in the neighborhood of 
 Goodairs. The day before the battle of Mechanics- 
 ville, my company (Company G) was detached from 
 the regiment and camped that night at Emanuel 
 Church, a few miles north of Richmond. The next 
 morning Jack Stark and myself were ordered to report 
 to General Longstreet, for what purpose we had no 
 idea, but congratulated ourselves upon the fact that we 
 should at least make a good breakfast. * * * The 
 evening of the battle of Cold Harbor, General Long- 
 street got each division of his corps and placed them in 
 position. This was just before the battle com 
 menced. I stood in the front until the bullets were 
 flying thick and fast, and feeling very uncomfortable, 
 and having no business there, I thought I would retire 
 to a hill in the rear where I could have the pleasure of 
 
 303 
 
3 o 4 APPENDIX 
 
 looking on at a battle without being in any apparent 
 danger. Upon this hill I found General Jackson, 
 seated entirely alone upon his horse. We had been 
 there some time when a shell burst some few feet to his 
 left, and in a few minutes a second shell burst. Even 
 before this time I had become again very uncomfort 
 able, and would have liked very much to change my 
 position, but I did not like to show the white feather 
 in the presence of General Jackson, who had not 
 winced, but after the second shell had burst near him, 
 he remarked in a quiet way, "When two shells burst 
 near you it is well to change your position if you can 
 do so, * so we both rode some distance to our right 
 and got out of range of the bullets. 
 
 That night General Lee and General Longstreet 
 made their head-quarters in Hogan s dwelling. I was 
 sitting on the steps of this building about ten o clock, 
 when General Jackson rode up with Lincoln Sydnor, 
 who was his guide on this occasion. General Jackson 
 gave his horse to Sydnor to hold and went into the 
 house, as I afterward learned, for a consultation with 
 all of the higher officials of the army. Sydnor told me 
 that the reason General Jackson reached Cold Harbor 
 as late as he did was due to the fact that, although he 
 was very near his old home, and where he was perfectly 
 familiar with the country, the Yankees had cut down 
 so many trees and made so many new roads that he 
 actually got lost, and that just before reaching the 
 point to which General Jackson had directed him to 
 guide him, he found that he was on the wrong road, 
 
APPENDIX 305 
 
 and had to turn round the artillery in the woods and 
 had to countermarch for quite a distance, which de 
 layed them very materially. Sydnor told me that 
 General Ewell, who was present, wanted to hang him 
 to a tree, but General Jackson said it was all right; 
 that we would get there in plenty of time. You know 
 General Jackson has been frequently blamed for being 
 late on this occasion, and it has often occurred to me 
 that this simple reason may have been the cause of it, 
 although I never heard it so stated. * * * 
 
 With best wishes and kind remembrances, I am 
 * * * Yours, 
 
 A. R. ELLERSON. 
 
 NOTE 
 
 To Mr. Charles Francis Adams, I wish, before closing this brief 
 memoir, to make my acknowledgments for his courage, his breadth 
 and the classic charm of his recent addresses on Lee. He is the 
 worthy son and namesake of that true gentleman who, when 
 taunted in England with the victories won by the Confederate 
 generals, replied nobly, " They are my countrymen." It was the 
 same note which Lee sounded at Chambersburg in his order to 
 his then conquering army and which he ever sounded to the end. 
 
 T. N. P. 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 ADAMS, CHARLES FRANCIS, SR., 
 mentioned, 57; his estimate 
 of Lee, 155; his opinion of 
 the Southern Army, 175; 
 prevents the delivery of iron 
 clads by England to the 
 Confederacy, 230-231. 
 
 BLAIR, THE HON. MONTGOM 
 ERY, mentioned, 3 2. 
 
 Blair, The Hon. Francis P., 
 mentioned, 32. 
 
 Beauregard, General, C. S. A., 
 mentioned, 53. 
 
 Butler, Benjamin, General, U. 
 S. A. mentioned, 91; his 
 order in Louisiana, 166. 
 
 CAMERON, THE HON. SIMON, 
 mentioned, 32. 
 
 Carter, Anne, mother of R. E. 
 Lee, mentioned, 5. 
 
 Cobb, Howell, General, C. S. A., 
 mentioned, 168. 
 
 Cold Harbor, battle of, 208- 
 209. 
 
 Custis, Mary Parke, her mar 
 riage to R. E. Lee, 16. 
 
 DAVIS, JEFFERSON, his letter 
 to General Lee after Gettys 
 burg, 198-200. 
 
 Douglass, Colonel, C. S. A., 
 killed at Sharpsburg, 129. 
 
 Du Pont, Admiral, U. S. N., 
 reduces the forts on Port 
 Royal Inlet, 90. 
 
 ELLERSON, ANDREW R., letter 
 from, Appendix B, 303-305. 
 
 Ewell, General, C. S. A., at the 
 battle of Sharpsburg, 1 29. 
 
 FARRAGUT, ADMIRAL, U. S. N., 
 
 leads his fleet up the Missis 
 
 sippi, 91. 
 Floyd, General, C. S. A., men 
 
 tioned, 77; mentioned, 159. 
 Franklin, General, U. S. A., at 
 
 the battle of Sharpsburg, 132. 
 Fredericksburg, battle of, 141- 
 
 145- 
 
 Freemantle, Colonel, officer of 
 the British Army. His esti 
 mate of the Southern Army, 
 
 GARNETT, GENERAL, U. S. A., 
 mentioned, 77. 
 
 Games Mill, battle of, 102- 
 103. 
 
 Gettysburg, battle of, 181-197. 
 
 Gordon, General, C. S. A., at 
 the battle of Gettysburg, 182. 
 
 Grant, General U. S., as a slave 
 holder, 46; mentioned, 58- 
 59; author s opinion of his 
 character, 214; crosses the 
 Rapidan, 222; adverse criti 
 cism of, 224; his losses in 
 the Wilderness campaign, 
 226-227; his generosity and 
 magnanimity, 256; his de 
 fence of Lee after Appo- 
 mattox, 262. 
 
 39 
 
3 io 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Greeley, Horace. His criticism 
 of Lincoln s methods, 135. 
 
 HAMPTON, WADE, GENERAL, 
 C. S. A., mentioned, 55. 
 
 Hartford Convention, the, men 
 tioned, 40. 
 
 Henderson, Colonel G. F. R., 
 biographer of Stonewall Jack 
 son, 40-41; quoted, 49-50; 
 quoted, 60; his account of the 
 battle of Chancellorsville, 
 149. 
 
 Hill, A. P., General, C. S. A., 
 fight at Meadow Bridge, 101; 
 mentioned, 279. 
 
 Hill, D. H., C. S. A., capture of 
 Lee s plan of battle in his 
 camp, 123-124. 
 
 Hood, General, C. S. A., de 
 struction of his army at 
 Nashville, 231. 
 
 Hooker, Fighting Joe, General 
 in command of the army of 
 the Potomac, 147. 
 
 JACKSON, STONEWALL, GEN 
 ERAL, C. S. A., his devotion 
 to duty, 56; mentioned, 77; 
 explanation of his delay at 
 Ashland, 104-107; captures 
 Harper s Ferry, 127; sent by 
 Lee around Hooker s right at 
 Chancellorsville, 148; attacks 
 at Bristow Station, 153. 
 
 Janney, Hon. John, speech of, 
 71-72. 
 
 Johnson, Reverdy, mentioned, 
 32. 
 
 Johnson, President, his treat 
 ment of the South, 263. 
 
 Johnston, Albert Sydney, Gen 
 eral, C. S. A., death of, at 
 Shiloh, 90. 
 
 Johnston, Joseph, General, 
 C. S. A., mentioned, 15; at 
 tacks Keys at Seven Pines, 
 92; relieved from his com 
 mand, 230. 
 
 Jones, J. R., General, C. S. A., 
 commander of Jackson s di 
 vision at Sharpsburg, 129. 
 
 KANAWHA, the, mentioned, 77. 
 
 LAWTON, GENERAL, C. S. A., 
 wounded at Sharpsburg, 129. 
 
 Lee, Richard, founder of the 
 Lee family in America, offers 
 Charles II a kingdom in 
 Virginia, 4. 
 
 Lee, Thomas, grandson of 
 Richard Lee, mentioned, 3. 
 
 Lee, Francis Lightfoot, uncle 
 of Robert Lee, mentioned, 4. 
 
 Lee, Richard Henry, father of 
 R. E. Lee, mentioned, 4; his 
 letter to Mr. Madison, 38. 
 
 Lee, Robert E., birth of, 4; 
 ancestry of, 5-6; the influ 
 ence of Washington s char 
 acter on, 8-1 o; his care of his 
 mother and boyhood char 
 acter, 10-12; enters West 
 Point, 13-14; Joseph E. 
 Johnston s opinion of, 15-16; 
 marries Mary Parke Custis, 
 1 6; his first service, 18; ser 
 vice in the Mexican war, 19- 
 23; capture of John Brown 
 by, 24; his letters to his wife 
 quoted, 24-25; manumits 
 his slaves, 31; offered com 
 mand of U. S. army by Presi 
 dent Lincoln, 32; resigns 
 his commission in U. S. army , 
 34; letter to his wife in 1856 
 showing his feeling for the 
 United States, 42; his oppo 
 sition to secession, 43-44; 
 his opposition to a dissolu 
 tion of the Union, 50; letter 
 to General Scott, 52-53; let 
 ter to General Beauregard, 
 53-54; greatness of Lee as a 
 soldier and the resources at 
 his command, 57-65; his re 
 ply to the Hon. John Janney, 
 
INDEX 
 
 3 11 
 
 Lee, Robert E. Continued. 
 72-73; assumes command in 
 West Virginia, 78; failure to 
 capture Rosecrans at Sewell s 
 Mountain, 80; failure of his 
 first campaign, 81; appointed 
 military adviser to Jefferson 
 Davis, 82; placed in com 
 mand of the Confederate 
 forces, 92; keeps Fremont 
 and McDowell from rein 
 forcing McClellan, 98; de 
 fence of Richmond, 96-103; 
 plan for defeat of McClellan, 
 100; sends Jackson to circle 
 Pope s right, 114; makes a 
 stand at Sharpsburg, 126; 
 general order of, issued to his 
 army after Sharpsburg, 135- 
 137; refuses to retreat after 
 Antietam, 135; zenith of 
 his fame, 145; credit given 
 for winning Chancellorsville, 
 149; not informed by Stuart 
 that Meade was at Gettys 
 burg, 152; his letter to Long- 
 street after Gettysburg, 153; 
 letter to General G. W. C. 
 Lee, 156; his confidence in his 
 army, 160; his belief in God, 
 162; his general order at 
 Chambersburg, Pa., 163; 
 his error at Gettysburg, 176; 
 plans to invade the North, 
 178; his letter to Jefferson 
 Davis after Gettysburg, 194- 
 197; letters of, showing con 
 dition of Confederate army 
 after the Wilderness, 216- 
 222; his letter to the Hon. 
 T. A. Seddon, 232-234; his 
 last stand at Appomattox, 
 246-252; his character in de 
 feat, 253-260; his tribute to 
 Grant, 257; his soldiers 
 tribute to, after the sur 
 render, 257; his treatment 
 by President Johnson after 
 the surrender, 261-262; as 
 
 a college president, 269-283; 
 his death, 279; his character, 
 284-292. 
 
 Lee, Wm. H. F., General, 
 C. S. A., son of Robert E. 
 Lee, mentioned, 163; held as 
 hostage by U. S. Army, 
 164. 
 
 Lee, G. W. C., General, C. S. 
 A. son of Robert E. Lee, 
 164. 
 
 Livermore, Colonel T. C., his 
 letter to author giving esti 
 mate of Grant s army, Ap 
 pendix A, 301-302. 
 
 Longstreet, General, conduct 
 at the battle of Manassas, 
 118; his conduct at Gettys 
 burg responsible for the de 
 feat of Lee, 177; neglects to 
 attack at Gettysburg, 185; 
 his defence of his failure to 
 attack at Gettysburg, 187- 
 188; wounded, 205. 
 
 Loring, General, C. S. A., 
 mentioned, 77. 
 
 MCCLELLAN, GEORGE B., GEN 
 ERAL, U. S. A., his plans 
 for attack on Richmond, 86- 
 88; besieges Yorktown, 89; 
 checked at Williamsburg, 
 93; relieves Harper s Ferry, 
 124; refuses to allow Frank 
 lin to attack at Sharpsburg, 
 133; Lee s opinion of, 140. 
 
 McDowell, General, U. S. A., 
 mentioned, 93. 
 
 Mclntosh, Colonel, U. S. A, 
 capture of his battery at 
 Sharpsburg, 133. 
 
 McLaws, General, C. S. A., 
 mentioned, 125. 
 
 Malvern Hill, battle of, 97. 
 
 Manassas, second battle of, 
 117-120. 
 
 Marshall, Colonel Charles, C. 
 S. A., member of Lee s staff, 
 154. 
 
3 I2 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Meade, General, U. S. A., 
 mentioned at battle of 
 Sharpsburg, 130; at Gettys 
 burg, 183. 
 
 PENDLETON, WM. N., GEN 
 ERAL, C. S. A., Lee s Chief 
 of Artillery, 184. 
 
 Porter, Fitz John, General, 
 U. S. A., mentioned, 98; 
 mentioned, 121. 
 
 Pope, General, U. S. A., escape 
 of, 113. 
 
 Preston, General, U. S. A., 
 mentioned, 22. 
 
 REYNOLDS, GENERAL, U. S. A., 
 defeated by Lee at Chestnut, 
 79- 
 
 SAILOR S CREEK, battle of, 243. 
 
 Scott, General, his opinion of 
 Lee as a soldier in the Mexi 
 can War, 1 8; considers Lee 
 "the greatest living soldier 
 in America," 22. 
 
 Sharpsburg, battle of, 129. 
 
 Sheridan, P. H., General, 
 U. S. A., defeats Pickett at 
 Five Forks, 238. 
 
 Sherman, W. T., General, 
 U. S. A., mentioned, 166- 
 167; his methods in the 
 South compared with Lee s 
 in Pennsylvania, 169-171; 
 offers terms to Johnson, 
 251; his order to General 
 Wade Hampton for burning 
 of Columbia, 253. 
 
 Shirley, home of Lee s mother, 
 
 Smith, General, U. S. A., at 
 battle of Sharpsburg, 132. 
 
 South, the, resources of, 61. 
 
 "Spec," General Lee s dog, 
 mentioned, 27. 
 
 Spottsylvania Court House, 
 battle of, 206-208. 
 
 Stratford, Lee estate in Vir 
 ginia, named after English 
 estate of Richard Lee, 4. 
 
 Stuart, J. E. B., General, 
 C. S. A., Stuart s Raid, 99; 
 capture of his Adjutant 
 General with valuable papers 
 by McClellan, 112; capture 
 of Pope s headquarters by, 
 112; captures Pope s stores 
 at Manassas Junction, 116. 
 
 TAYLOR, W. H., COLONEL, 
 C. S. A., Lee s Adjutant 
 General, his opinion of 
 Grant, 211. 
 
 Thomas, General, U. S. A., his 
 victory at Mill Springs men 
 tioned, 89. 
 
 "Traveller," General Lee s 
 war horse, mentioned, 
 27. 
 
 WASHINGTON, GEORGE, portrait 
 of, given to grandmother of 
 R. E. Lee, 7. 
 
 Westmoreland, County of, 
 mentioned, 3. 
 
 Wise, General, C. S. A., men 
 tioned, 77. 
 
 Wolseley, Viscount, his opinion 
 of Lee s campaigns, 5; his 
 opinion of Lee at Antietam, 
 141; his first meeting with 
 Lee, 282. 
 
 Wright, Marcus T., General, 
 C. S. A., his letter Appendix 
 A, 295-300. 
 
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