Robert E. Lee
The Leader of the Confederate Armies
More and more, Americans are coming to realize that in the great War between the States men on both sides were animated by a sense of duty and devotion to what they thought right. On the one side, brave, loyal-hearted men upheld the Union; on the other, men as brave and loyal upheld the supremacy of the state. You have read how Grant, the victor, won the love and reverence of his countrymen; no less loved and reverenced was his defeated opponent, the great Confederate leader, Lee.
Robert Edward Lee was born January 19, 1807, at Stratford, a handsome old country home in Virginia. His father, General Henry Lee, was the famous “Light Horse Harry” of the Revolution. When Robert was only four years old, General Lee moved to Alexandria in order to give his children the benefit of better schools. From childhood Robert was an apt and faithful student, careful to do his best at any task which he undertook. His childhood was darkened by the illness and death of his father. Robert cared tenderly for his invalid mother who said, “He is both son and daughter to me.”
ROBERT E. LEE
From the school at Alexandria Robert went to West Point, where at the end of four years he was graduated second in his class. Two years after leaving West Point, he married Mary Randolph Custis, the daughter of Washington’s adopted son, Washington Parke Curtis. Lieutenant Lee and his wife made their home at Arlington, a stately mansion on the Potomac River, in sight of the city of Washington. Here he passed a few happy months. But a soldier cannot choose his post of duty, and Lee was summoned from home to engineer work in the West. Then came the war with Mexico in which he took part. In this war served as privates or officers many others destined to fame in the War between the States—Johnston, McClellan, Pickett, Grant, Jackson. Among his brave and able comrades, Lee made a distinguished record. In the advance on the city of Mexico, he explored and made a road over a pathless lava field across which he guided troops; then he rode back alone in the darkness and rain to report to his commanding officer. General Scott said that this midnight journey was the greatest deed of the war, and Lee “the greatest military genius in America.”
After the war with Mexico was over, Captain Lee made a visit home. In 1852 he was made superintendent of the Military Academy at West Point. Thence he was sent to Texas to fight against the Indians. He was in Virginia in 1859 and he was sent to suppress John Brown’s raid. He performed his duty at Harper’s Ferry in soldierly fashion, treated his prisoners kindly, and turned them over to the civil authorities to be punished for breaking the laws. In 1860 he was again in Texas, but the next spring he returned to Virginia. The period of disunion and secession was a sad one for Colonel Lee. He loved dearly the Union which his father had aided to establish. He had entered its army expecting to devote his life to its service. He believed, indeed, in the supreme authority of the state, but he thought secession unwise and was confident that in the Union the vexing questions about slavery and the tariff could be settled.
“If the four million slaves in the South were mine,” he said, “I would give them all up to keep the Union.”
But dearly as he loved the Union he thought that his first duty was to his native state, Virginia, his second to the Union of which he was a part. When Lincoln issued his call for troops, by General Scott’s advice the command of the Union army was offered to Lee. He declined, resigned his commission in the army, and accepted the command of the Virginia forces. It was a sad day when he and his family left beautiful Arlington which was never again to be a home. It fell into the hands of the Union soldiers and is now the site of a great national cemetery.
Lee fought at first in western Virginia; then he was sent to aid in fortifying the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia. Afterwards he was put in charge of the army in Virginia, and there he remained, as general and commander-in-chief of the southern army until the end of the war. The southern army was small but it was commanded by brave and able generals. Lee’s “right hand” was Stonewall Jackson, a fearless soldier and earnest Christian, one of the greatest military leaders the world has ever known. A famous cavalry-leader was J. E. B. Stuart, a dashing cavalier who loved battle as a boy loves play. Both Jackson and Stuart were killed before the war was over.
As you have been told, it was the great aim of the northern armies to capture Richmond; it was the aim of Lee and his little army to defend the city. Lee led his soldiers with masterly skill in the Seven Days’ Fight about Richmond. Then he marched north; having defeated Pope at the second battle of Manassas, he advanced into Maryland and fought a great drawn battle at Antietam, or Sharpsburg. Lee then returned to Virginia. He fought at Fredericksburg against Burnside who had supplanted McClellan in command. The next spring “Fighting Joe” Hooker was defeated at Chancellorsville, but in the death of Jackson, the Confederates sustained a greater loss than that of many battles.
Lee marched north again, and a great battle was fought at Gettysburg. General Longstreet failed to advance as ordered, the Confederates who had charged fell unsupported, and the day was lost. General Lee led his crippled army back to Virginia. At Gettysburg the tide had turned against the Confederates. From that day defeat and surrender were but a question of time. For a long time Lee’s little army held its own in defence of Richmond. Grant, the victor of the West, was sent against it. It cost him a month and sixty thousand men to march seventy-five miles. With masterly skill, Lee opposed him in the great battles of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania Court House, and Cold Harbor, but the Confederate line was broken at last.
Forced to give up the defense of Richmond, General Lee endeavored to withdraw his army, but Grant followed, and the little army was surrendered at Appomattox Court House, April 9, 1865. As Lee bade farewell to his soldiers, they sobbed aloud and tears were in his eyes. He said with a broken voice, “Men, we have fought the war together. I have done my best for you. My heart is too full to say more.”
Great as had been Lee’s work in war, it was no less great in peace. Bravely and uncomplainingly he accepted the results of defeat, and endured the horrors of the reconstruction days. No word of bitterness was ever heard to pass his lips. Nor would he in their hour of woe and poverty desert his people. Wealth and position were offered him abroad, and at home he might have had affluence by lending his name to business enterprises. But he steadfastly refused all such offers. “I think it better to do right,” he said, “even if we suffer in so doing, than to incur the reproach of our consciences and posterity.”
He set himself to aid in the upbuilding and restoring of the South. At a salary of a few hundred dollars, he became president of Washington College, now Washington and Lee University, in Lexington, Virginia. Wisely and conscientiously he performed his duties until the autumn of 1870. One evening at tea his voice failed as he was about to ask a blessing and he sank back in his chair. After lingering a few days, he died October 12, 1870.