(1807-1870)
[Illustration: Robert Lee. [TN]]
It is my wish to give a short outline of General Lee's life, and to
describe him as I saw him in the autumn of 1862, when at the head of
proud and victorious troops he smiled at the notion of defeat by any
army that could be sent against him. I desire to make known to the
reader not only the renowned soldier, whom I believe to have been the
greatest of his age, but to give some insight into the character of
one whom I have always considered the most perfect man I ever met.
As a looker-on, I feel that both parties in the war have so much to be
proud of that both can afford to hear what impartial Englishmen, or
foreigners, have to say about it. Inflated and bubble reputations were
acquired during its progress, few of which will bear the test of time.
The idol momentarily set up, often for political reasons, crumbles in
time into the dust from which its limbs were perhaps originally
moulded. To me, however, two figures stand out in that history,
towering above all others, both cast in hard metal that will be
forever proof against the belittling efforts of all future detractors:
one, General Lee, the great soldier; the other, Mr. Lincoln, the
far-seeing statesman of iron will, of unflinching determination. Each
is a good representative of the genius that characterized his country.
As I study the history of the secession war, these seem to me the two
men who influenced it most, and who will be recognized as its greatest
heroes when future generations of American historians record its
stirring events with impartiality.
General Lee came from the class of landed gentry that has furnished
England at all times with her most able and distinguished leaders. The
first of his family who went to America was Richard Lee, who, in 1641,
became Colonial Secretary to the Governor of Virginia. The family
settled in Westmoreland, one of the most lovely counties in that
historic State, and members of it from time to time held high
positions in the government. Several of the family distinguished
themselves during the War of Independence, among whom was Henry, the
father of General Robert E. Lee. He raised a mounted corps known as
"Lee's Legion," in command of which he obtained the reputation of
being an able and gallant soldier. He was nicknamed by his comrades
"Light-Horse Harry." He was three times Governor of his native State.
To him is attributed the authorship of the eulogy on General
Washington, in which occurs the so-often quoted sentence, "First in
war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen,"
praise that with equal truth might have been subsequently applied to
his own distinguished son.
The subject of this slight sketch, Robert Edmund Lee, was born January
9, 1807, at the family place of Stratford, in the county of
Westmoreland, State of Virginia. When only a few years old, his
parents moved to the small town of Alexandria, which is on the right
bank of the Potomac River, nearly opposite Washington, but a little
below it.
He was but a boy of eleven when his father died, leaving his family in
straitened circumstances. Like many other great commanders, he was in
consequence brought up in comparative poverty, a condition which has
been pronounced by the greatest of them as the best training for
soldiers. During his early years he attended a day-school near his
home in Alexandria. He was thus able in his leisure hours to help his
invalid mother in all her household concerns, and to afford her that
watchful care which, owing to her very delicate health, she so much
needed. She was a clever, highly gifted woman, and by her fond care
his character was formed and stamped with honest truthfulness. By her
he was taught never to forget that he was well born, and that, as a
gentleman, honor must be his guiding star through life. It was from
her lips he learned his Bible, from her teaching he drank in the
sincere belief in revealed religion which he never lost. It was she
who imbued her great son with an ineradicable belief in the efficacy
of prayer, and in the reality of God's interposition in the every-day
affairs of the true believer. No son ever returned a mother's love
with more heartfelt intensity. She was his idol, and he worshipped her
with the deep-seated inborn love which is known only to the son in
whom filial affection is strengthened by respect and personal
admiration for the woman who bore him. He was her all in all, or, as
she described it, he was both son and daughter to her. He watched over
her in weary hours of pain, and served her with all that soft
tenderness which was such a marked trait in the character of this
great, stern leader of men.
He seems to have been throughout his boyhood and early youth perfect
in disposition, in bearing, and in conduct--a model of all that was
noble, honorable, and manly. Of the early life of very few great men
can this be said. Many who have left behind the greatest reputations
for usefulness, in whom middle age was a model of virtue and perhaps
of noble self-denial, began their career in a whirlwind of wild
excess. Often, again, we find that, like Nero, the virtuous youth
develops into the middle-aged fiend, who leaves behind him a name to
be execrated for all time. It would be difficult to find in history a
great man, be he soldier or statesman, with a character so
irreproachable throughout his whole life as that which in boyhood,
youth, manhood, and to his death, distinguished Robert Lee from all
contemporaries.
He entered the Military Academy of West Point at the age of eighteen,
where he worked hard, became adjutant of the cadet corps, and finally
graduated at the head of his class. There he mastered the theory of
war and studied the campaigns of the great masters in that most
ancient of all sciences. Whatever he did, even as a boy, he did
thoroughly, with order and method. Even at this early age he was the
model Christian gentleman in thought, word, and deed; careful and
exact in the obedience he rendered his superiors, but remarkable for
that dignity of deportment which all through his career struck
strangers with admiring respect.
He left West Point when twenty-two, having gained its highest honors,
and at once obtained a commission in the engineers. Two years
afterward he married the granddaughter and heiress of Mrs. Custis,
whose second husband had been General Washington, but by whom she left
no children. It was a great match for a poor subaltern officer, as his
wife was heiress to a very extensive property and to a large number of
slaves. She was clever, very well educated, and a general favorite; he
was handsome, tall, well made, with a graceful figure, and a good
rider; his manners were at once easy and captivating. These young
people had long known one another, and each was the other's first
love. She brought with her as part of her fortune General Washington's
beautiful property of Arlington, situated on the picturesque wooded
heights that overhang the Potomac River, opposite the capital to which
the great Washington had given his name. In talking to me of the
Northern troops, whose conduct in Virginia was then denounced by every
local paper, no bitter expression passed his lips, but tears filled
his eyes as he referred to the destruction of his place, that had been
the cherished home of the father of the United States. He could
forgive their cutting down his trees, their wanton conversion of his
pleasure-grounds into a graveyard, but he could never forget their
reckless plunder of all the camp equipment and other relics of General
Washington that Arlington House had contained.
Robert Lee first saw active service during the American war with
Mexico in 1846, where he was wounded, and evinced a remarkable talent
for war that brought him prominently into notice. He was afterward
engaged in operations against hostile Indians, and obtained the
reputation in the army of being an able officer of great promise.
General Scott, then the general of greatest repute in the United
States, was especially attracted by the zeal and soldierly instinct of
the young captain of engineers, and frequently employed him on distant
expeditions that required cool nerve, confidence, and plenty of
common sense. It is a curious fact that throughout the Mexican War
General Scott in his despatches and reports made frequent mention of
three officers--Lee, Beauregard, and McClellan--whose names became
household words in America afterward, during the great Southern
struggle for independence. General Scott had the highest opinion of
Lee's military genius, and did not hesitate to ascribe much of his
success in Mexico as due to Lee's "skill, valor, and undaunted
energy." Indeed, subsequently, when the day came that these two men
should part, each to take a different side in the horrible contest
before them, General Scott is said to have urged Mr. Lincoln's
Government to secure Lee at any price, alleging he "would be worth
fifty thousand men to them." His valuable services were duly
recognized at Washington by more than one step of brevet promotion: he
obtained the rank of colonel and was given command of a cavalry
regiment shortly afterward.
I must now pass to the most important epoch of his life, when the
Southern States left the Union and set up a government of their own.
Mr. Lincoln was in 1860 elected President of the United States in the
abolitionist interest. Both parties were so angry that thoughtful men
soon began to see that war alone could end this bitter dispute.
Shipwreck was before the vessel of state which General Washington had
built and guided with so much care during his long and hard-fought
contest. Civil war stared the American citizen in the face, and Lee's
heart was well-nigh broken at the prospect. Early in 1861 the seven
Cotton States passed acts declaring their withdrawal from the Union,
and their establishment of an independent republic, under the title of
"The Confederate States of America." This declaration of independence
was in reality a revolution; war alone could ever bring all the States
together.
Lee viewed this secession with horror. Until the month of April, when
Virginia, his own dearly cherished State, joined the Confederacy, he
clung fondly to the hope that the gulf which separated the North from
the South might yet be bridged over. He believed the dissolution of
the Union to be a dire calamity not only for his own country, but for
civilization and all mankind. "Still," he said, "a 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." In common with all Southerners he firmly believed that each
of the old States had a legal and indisputable right, by its
individual constitution, and by its act of union, to leave at will the
great Union into which each had separately entered as a sovereign
State. This was with him an article of faith of which he was as sure
as of any divine truths he found in the Bible. This fact must be kept
always in mind by those who would rightly understand his character, or
the course he pursued in 1861. He loved the Union for which his father
and family in the previous century had fought so hard and done so
much. But he loved his own State still more. She was the sovereign to
whom in the first place he owed allegiance, and whose orders, as
expressed through her legally constituted government, he was, he felt,
bound in law, in honor, and in love to obey without doubt or
hesitation. This belief was the mainspring that kept the Southern
Confederacy going, as it was also the corner-stone of its
constitution.
In April, 1861, at Fort Sumter, Charleston Harbor, the first shot was
fired in a war that was only ended in April, 1865, by the surrender of
General Lee's army at Appomattox Court House, in Virginia. In duration
it is the longest war waged since the great Napoleon's power was
finally crushed at Waterloo. As the heroic struggle of a small
population that was cut off from all outside help, against a great,
populous, and very rich republic, with every market in the world open
to it, and to whom all Europe was a recruiting ground, this secession
war stands out prominently in the history of the world. When the vast
numbers of men put into the field by the Northern States, and the
scale upon which their operations were carried on, are duly
considered, it must be regarded as a war fully equal in magnitude to
the successful invasion of France by Germany in 1870. If the mind be
allowed to speculate on the course that events will take in centuries
to come, as they flow surely on with varying swiftness to the ocean of
the unknown future, the influence which the result of this Confederate
war is bound to exercise upon man's future history will seem very
great. Think of what a power the re-United States will be in another
century! Of what it will be in the twenty-first century of the
Christian era! If, as many believe, China is destined to absorb all
Asia and then to overrun Europe, may it not be in the possible future
that Armageddon, the final contest between heathendom and
Christianity, may be fought out between China and North America? Had
secession been victorious, it is tolerably certain that the United
States would have broken up still further, and instead of the present
magnificent and English-speaking empire, we should now see in its
place a number of small powers with separate interests.
Most certainly it was the existence of slavery in the South that gave
rise to the bitter antagonism of feeling which led to secession. But
it was not to secure emancipation that the North took up arms,
although during the progress of the war Mr. Lincoln proclaimed it, for
the purpose of striking his enemy a serious blow. Lee hated slavery,
but, as he explained to me, he thought it wicked to give freedom
suddenly to some millions of people who were incapable of using it
with profit to themselves or the State. He assured me he had long
intended to gradually give his slaves their liberty. He believed the
institution to be a moral and political evil, and more hurtful to the
white than to the black man. He had a strong affection for the negro;
but he deprecated any sudden or violent interference on the part of
the State between master and slave. Nothing would have induced him to
fight for the continuance of slavery; indeed, he declared that had he
owned every slave in the South he would willingly give them all up if
by so doing he could preserve the Union. He was opposed to secession,
and to prevent it he would willingly sacrifice everything except honor
and duty, which forbade him to desert his State. When in April, 1861,
she formally and by an act of her Legislature left the Union, he
resigned his commission in the United States army with the intention
of retiring into private life. He endeavored to choose what was right.
Every personal interest bade him throw in his lot with the Union. His
property lay so close to Washington that it was certain to be
destroyed and swept of every slave, as belonging to a rebel. But the
die was cast; he forsook everything for principle and the stern duty
it entailed. Then came that final temptation which opened out before
him a vista of power and importance greater than that which any man
since Washington had held in America. General Long's book proves
beyond all further doubt that he was offered the post of
commander-in-chief of the Federal army. General Scott, his great
friend and leader, whom he loved and respected, then commanding that
army, used all his influence to persuade him to throw in his lot with
the North, but to no purpose. Nothing would induce him to have any
part in the invasion of his own State, much as he abhorred the war
into which he felt she was rushing. His love of country, his unselfish
patriotism, caused him to relinquish home, fortune, a certain future,
in fact, everything, for her sake.
He was not, however, to remain a spectator of the coming conflict; he
was too well known to his countrymen in Virginia as the officer in
whom the Federal army had most confidence. The State of Virginia
appointed him major-general and commander-in-chief of all her military
forces. In open and crowded convention he formally accepted this
position, saying, with all that dignity and grace of manner which
distinguished him, that he did so "trusting in Almighty God, an
approving conscience, and the aid of my fellow-citizens." The scene
was most impressive. There were present all the leading men of
Virginia, and representatives of all the first families in a State
where great store was attached to gentle birth, and where society was
very exclusive. General Lee's presence commanded respect, even from
strangers, by a calm, self-possessed dignity the like of which I have
never seen in other men. Naturally of strong passions, he kept them
under perfect control by that iron and determined will, of which his
expression and his face gave evidence. As this tall, handsome soldier
stood before his countrymen, he was the picture of the ideal patriot,
unconscious and self-possessed in his strength; he indulged in no
theatrical display of feeling; there was in his face and about him
that placid resolve which bespoke great confidence in self, and which
in his case--one knows not how--quickly communicated its magnetic
influence to others. He was then just fifty-four years old, the age of
Marlborough when he destroyed the French army at Blenheim. In many
ways and on many points these two great men much resembled each other.
Both were of a dignified and commanding exterior; eminently handsome,
with a figure tall, graceful, and erect, while a muscular,
square-built frame bespoke great activity of body. The charm of manner
which I have mentioned as very winning in Lee, was possessed in the
highest degree by Marlborough. Both, at the outset of their great
career of victory, were regarded as essentially national commanders.
Both had married young, and were faithful husbands and devoted
fathers. Both had in all their campaigns the same belief in an
ever-watchful Providence, in whose help they trusted implicitly, and
for whose interposition they prayed at all times. They were gifted
with the same military instinct, the same genius for war. The power of
fascinating those with whom they were associated, the spell which they
cast over their soldiers, who believed almost superstitiously in their
certainty of victory, their contempt of danger, their daring courage,
constitute a parallel that is difficult to equal between any other two
great men of modern times.
From the first Lee anticipated a long and bloody struggle, although
from the bombastic oratory of self-elected politicians and patriots
the people were led to believe that the whole business would be
settled in a few weeks. This folly led to a serious evil, namely, the
enlistment of soldiers for only ninety days. Lee, who understood war,
pleaded in favor of the engagement being for the term of war, but he
pleaded in vain. To add to his military difficulties, the politicians
insisted upon the officers being elected by their men. This was a
point which, in describing to me the constitution of his army, Lee
most deplored.
The formation of an army with the means alone at his disposal was a
colossal task. Everything had to be created by this extraordinary man.
The South was an agricultural, not a manufacturing, country, and the
resources of foreign lands were denied it by the blockade of its ports
maintained by the fleet of the United States. Lee was a thorough man
of business, quick in decision, yet methodical in all he did. He knew
what he wanted. He knew what an army should be, and how it should be
organized, both in a purely military as well as an administrative
sense. In about two months he had created a little army of fifty
thousand men, animated by a lofty patriotism and courage that made
them unconquerable by any similarly constituted army. In another month
this army, at Bull Run, gained a complete victory over the Northern
invaders, who were driven back across the Potomac like herds of
frightened sheep.
The Confederates did not follow up their victory at Bull Run. A rapid
and daring advance would have given them possession of Washington,
their enemy's capital. Political considerations at Richmond were
allowed to outweigh the very evident military expediency of reaping a
solid advantage from this their first great success. Often afterward,
when this attempt to allay the angry feelings of the North against the
act of secession had entirely failed, was this action of their
political rulers lamented by the Confederate commanders.
In this article, to attempt even a sketch of the subsequent military
operations is not to be thought of. Both sides fought well, and both
have such true reason to be proud of their achievements that they can
now afford to hear the professional criticisms of their English
friends in the same spirit that we Britishers have learned to read of
the many defeats inflicted upon our arms by General Washington.
As a student of war I would fain linger over the interesting lessons
to be learned from Lee's campaigns; of the same race as both
belligerents, I could with the utmost pleasure dwell upon the many
brilliant feats of arms on both sides; but I cannot do so here.
The end came at last, when the well-supplied North, rich enough to pay
recruits, no matter where they came from, a bounty of over five
hundred dollars a head, triumphed over an exhausted South, hemmed in
on all sides, and even cut off from all communication with the outside
world. The desperate, though drawn battle of Gettysburg was the
death-knell of Southern independence; and General Sherman's splendid
but almost unopposed march to the sea showed the world that all
further resistance on the part of the Confederate States could only be
a profitless waste of blood. In the thirty-five days of fighting near
Richmond which ended the war in 1865, General Grant's army numbered
190,000, that of Lee only 51,000 men. Every man lost by the former was
easily replaced, but an exhausted South could find no more soldiers.
"The right of self-government," which Washington won and for which Lee
fought, was no longer to be a watchword to stir men's blood in the
United States. The South was humbled and beaten by its own flesh and
blood in the North, and it is difficult to know which to admire most,
the good sense with which the result was accepted in the so-called
Confederate States, or the wise magnanimity displayed by the victors.
The wounds are now healed on both sides; Northerners and Southerners
are now once more a united people, with a future before them to which
no other nation can aspire. If the English-speaking people of the
earth cannot all acknowledge the same sovereign, they can, and I am
sure they will, at least combine to work in the interests of truth and
of peace for the good of mankind. The wise men on both sides of the
Atlantic will take care to chase away all passing clouds that may at
any time throw even a shadow of dispute or discord between the two
great families into which our race is divided.
Like all men, Lee had his faults; like all the greatest of generals,
he sometimes made mistakes. His nature shrank with such horror from
the dread of wounding the feelings of others, that upon occasions he
left men in positions of responsibility to which their abilities were
not equal. This softness of heart, amiable as that quality may be,
amounts to a crime in the man intrusted with the direction of public
affairs at critical moments. Lee's devotion to duty and great respect
for obedience seem at times to have made him too subservient to those
charged with the civil government of his country. He carried out too
literally the orders of those whom the Confederate constitution made
his superiors, although he must have known them to be entirely
ignorant of the science of war. He appears to have forgotten that he
was the great revolutionary chief engaged in a great revolutionary
war, that he was no mere leader in a political struggle of parties
carried on within the lines of an old, well-established form of
government. It was very clear to many at the time, as it will be
commonly acknowledged now, that the South could only hope to win under
the rule of a military dictator. If General Washington had had a Mr.
Davis over him, could he have accomplished what he did? It will, I am
sure, be news to many that General Lee was given the command over all
the Confederate armies a month or two only before the final collapse;
and that the military policy of the South was all throughout the war
dictated by Mr. Davis as President of the Confederate States. Lee had
no power to reward soldiers or to promote officers. It was Mr. Davis
who selected the men to command divisions and armies. Is it to be
supposed that Cromwell, King William the Third, Washington, or
Napoleon could have succeeded in the revolutions with which their
names are identified, had they submitted to the will and authority of
a politician as Lee did to Mr. Davis?
Lee was opposed to the final defence of Richmond that was urged upon
him for political, not military, reasons. It was a great strategic
error. General Grant's large army of men was easily fed and its daily
losses easily recruited from a near base; whereas if it had been drawn
far into the interior after the little army with which Lee endeavored
to protect Richmond, its fighting strength would have been largely
reduced by the detachments required to guard a long line of
communications through a hostile country. It is profitless, however,
to speculate upon what might have been, and the military student must
take these campaigns as they were carried out. No fair estimate of Lee
as a general can be made by a simple comparison of what he achieved
with that which Napoleon, Wellington, or Von Moltke accomplished,
unless due allowance is made for the difference in the nature of the
American armies, and of the armies commanded and encountered by those
great leaders. They were at the head of perfectly organized,
thoroughly trained, and well disciplined troops; while Lee's soldiers,
though gallant and daring to a fault, lacked the military cohesion and
efficiency, the trained company leaders, and the educated staff which
are only to be found in a regular army of long standing. A trial heat
between two jockeys mounted on untrained horses may be interesting,
but no one would ever quote the performance as an instance of great
racing speed.
Who shall ever fathom the depth of Lee's anguish when the bitter end
came, and when, beaten down by sheer force of numbers, and by
absolutely nothing else, he found himself obliged to surrender! The
handful of starving men remaining with him laid down their arms, and
the proud Confederacy ceased to be. Surely the crushing, maddening
anguish of awful sorrow is only known to the leader who has so failed
to accomplish some lofty, some noble aim for which he has long striven
with might and main, with heart and soul, in the interests of king or
of country. A smiling face, a cheerful mien, may conceal the sore
place from the eyes, possibly even from the knowledge of his friends;
but there is no healing for such a wound, which eats into the very
heart of him who has once received it.
General Lee survived the destruction of the Confederacy for five
years, when, at the age of sixty-three, and surrounded by his family,
life ebbed slowly from him. Where else in history is a great man to be
found whose whole life was one such blameless record of duty nobly
done? It was consistent in all its parts, complete in all its
relations. The most perfect gentleman of a State long celebrated for
its chivalry, he was just, gentle, and generous, and childlike in the
simplicity of his character. Never elated with success, he bore
reverse, and at last, complete overthrow, with dignified resignation.
Throughout this long and cruel struggle his was all the
responsibility, but not the power that should have accompanied it. The
fierce light which beats upon the throne is as that of a rush-light
in comparison with the electric glare which our newspapers now focus
upon the public man in Lee's position. His character has been
subjected to that ordeal, and who can point to any spot upon it? His
clear, sound judgment, personal courage, untiring activity, genius for
war, and absolute devotion to his State mark him out as a public man,
as a patriot to be forever remembered by all Americans. His amiability
of disposition, deep sympathy with those in pain or sorrow, his love
for children, nice sense of personal honor, and genial courtesy
endeared him to all his friends. I shall never forget his sweet,
winning smile, nor his clear, honest eyes, that seemed to look into
your brain. I have met many of the great men of my time, but Lee alone
impressed me with the feeling that I was in the presence of a man who
was cast in a grander mould, and made of different and of finer metal
than all other men. He is stamped upon my memory as a being apart and
superior to all others in every way: a man with whom none I ever knew,
and very few of whom I have read, are worthy to be classed. I have met
but two men who realize my ideas of what a true hero should be: my
friend Charles Gordon, was one, General Lee was the other.
* * * * *
The following beautiful letter was written by Lee to his son in
1860:[11]
[Footnote 11: Copied, with the kind permission of the
publisher, G. W. Dillingham, from John Esten Cooke's Life of
Lee.]
"You must study to be frank with the world; frankness is the child of
honesty and courage. Say just what you mean to do on every occasion,
and take it for granted you mean to do right. If a friend asks a
favor, you should grant it, if it is reasonable; if not, tell him
plainly why you cannot; you will wrong him and wrong yourself by
equivocation of any kind. Never do a wrong thing to make a friend or
keep one; the man who requires you to do so, is dearly purchased at a
sacrifice. Deal kindly, but firmly, with all your classmates; you will
find it the policy which wears best. Above all, do not appear to
others what you are not. If you have any fault to find with anyone,
tell him, not others, of what you complain; there is no more dangerous
experiment than that of undertaking to be one thing before a man's
face and another behind his back. We should live, act, and say,
nothing to the injury of anyone. It is not only best as a matter of
principle, but it is the path to peace and honor.
"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
gloom and darkness--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 unaccountable darkness coming on, they shared in the
general awe and terror. It was supposed by many that the last day--the
day of judgment--had come. Someone, in the consternation of the hour,
moved an adjournment. Then there arose an old Puritan legislator,
Davenport, of Stamford, 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 willingness to obey present duty. Duty,
then, is the 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 and your mother wear one gray hair for
any lack of duty on your part."