Return to story

ROBERT E. LEE BIRTHDAY COMMEMORATION: Today, 11 a.m.-3 p.m., Stratford Hall, Westmoreland County. " Lee for Children Tours," 11:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m., 1:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m.; photographs with Lee as portrayed by Al Stone; scavenger hunt for children, with prizes; period music by Evergreen Shade; special exhibit on rarely seen Lee family items. Refreshments in the visitor center. Events are free; standard fees apply to regular tours of the Great House and grounds. 804/493-8038; stratfordhall.org.

January 19, 2008 12:15 am

"SIR: I HAVE the honour to tender the resignation of my commission as Colonel of the 1st Regt. of Cavalry."

With these few words, penned at Arlington House on Feb. 20, 1861, to Abraham Lincoln's incoming Secretary of War Simon Cameron, Robert Edward Lee brought to an abrupt close his career in the United States army, and branded himself a traitor in the eyes of thousands in the republic he had served with distinction for well over three decades.

For thousands of others he had set himself upon the path to becoming a hero and a shining example of everything to which mankind can aspire.

More than two centuries after his birth, on Jan. 19, 1807, and nearly 143 years after he sheathed his sword at Appomattox, Lee remains a compelling figure, one whose life repays study by those who revile as well as those who revere the man.

And make no mistake, there are those in many places, including the Old Dominion, for whom his name is anathema. Yet even those from north of Mason and Dixon's line, including this writer, would do well to search out the lessons of Lee's life.

Looking for insights

Documentary evidence such as the letter to Cameron is one of the clues in gaining an understanding of Lee as a military leader and as a human being. One key site is the National Archives in Washington, home of the quoted resignation, as well as hundreds of other official papers that detail Lee's activities. It has been my privilege to shepherd scholars through these papers.

Among the gems the Archives contains are hand-drawn plans of fortifications by the young engineer, original battle reports and military correspondence of the general and his antagonists, and the oath of amnesty he signed in Lexington on Oct. 2, 1865, in an effort to regain the citizenship he forswore in 1861.

Official writings are only part of the picture. Lee also left behind numerous revealing personal letters to wife, family and others. These can be found at the Virginia Historical Society and other repositories.

Fortunately, several documentary publications make much Lee material widely available, most notably the U.S. War Department's "Official Records" (1880-1901) and Clifford Dowdey and Louis H. Manarin's "Wartime Papers of R.E. Lee" (1961).

Even today, however, no comprehensive scholarly edition of Lee's writings--one that covers his entire life--is available, and one is needed if we are to have a complete portrait in his own words, rather than a well-executed miniature. Elizabeth Brown Pryor's magnificent "Reading the Man" illustrates the potential in such a project.

Books on Lee

To be sure, documents are but one aspect of Lee's experience. As Emory M. Thomas has pointed out in his invaluable and insightful biography (1995), this often elusive person sometimes acted in ways quite at variance with--and more humanely than--his own words would lead us to believe.

No lack of able, even inspired hands turned to giving us rounded pictures of Lee's life. Most notable of these have been Douglas Southall Freeman's beautifully written and nearly exhaustive four-volume "R.E. Lee: A Biography" (1934-35) and its companion "Lee's Lieutenants."

For younger readers, such books of the 1950s as Hodding Carter's "Robert E. Lee and the Road of Honor" and Mackinley Kantor's "Lee and Grant at Appomattox" are wonderful offerings. I know: I was born in New York City and raised in suburban Philadelphia--but these books gave me an awe and admiration for the general that bordered on the religious.

Changing perspective

Time wrought changes, though. I learned that history, and especially Civil War history, has necessarily been changing. Time has altered those, North and South, who read and write about the past. The world they inhabit has been transformed, new information has come to light, and old assumptions have been brought out of the stable and put through their paces.

So, too, with Lee. We now know that he did not (as Freeman feared) murder a lighthouse keeper in 1835; that he did in fact take an oath to obtain citizenship in 1865 (an application not approved until 1975); that he did not stride to the rail and take communion with a black man in Richmond; and that his famous last words were not uttered by him.

Critical studies of a kind unimaginable in the Freeman era have been published by Thomas M. Connelly (1977) and Alan T. Nolan (1991). They prompted historian Richard M. McMurry to wryly remark "Connelly proved that Lee was human, and Nolan proved that he was Southern."

But broad societal transformation has been at work as well.

The civil-rights revolution has reminded us that the Confederate struggle was only one part of Southern history. Lee, Jackson and Stuart are still recognized, but now so are blacks like Norfolk-born Medal of Honor recipient William H. Carney of the 54th Massachusetts, Harriet Tubman and Martin R. Delany.

White Southern Unionists of the caliber of John Minor Botts, Moncure D. Conway (of Falmouth) and Elizabeth Van Lew are being rediscovered and honored.

The benign portrayal of slavery promoted by Ulrich B. Phillips and others has given way to the harsher critique of Kenneth M. Stampp and his co-adjutors and heirs.

The defense of slavery has been effectively proved to lie at the heart of the secessionist impulse, and the fable of thousands of armed black men willingly enlisting in the Confederate army has been definitively skewered.

Americans today strive to adjust to the knowledge that although Stone Mountain, Ga., bears the indelible outlines of Lee, Jefferson Davis and "Stonewall" Jackson (begun by Gutzon Borglum, of Mount Rushmore fame), it was also the site chosen for the revival of the Ku Klux Klan in 1915.

Lee's Legacy

Ought these developments to consign Lee to oblivion? A careful consideration of his life argues otherwise. He was a man who wrote--and believed--that "the great duty of life is [] the promotion of the happiness & welfare of our fellow man."

Though some historians have argued otherwise, his martial prowess seems manifestly of the highest order.

He took no part in the movement to secede or in the public paeans to slavery that became Southern orthodoxy. In fact, he seems to have tried to hew to a Virginia Federalist political philosophy akin to that of his father Light Horse Harry, a philosophy whose force was spent even before the son was born.

Perhaps most important for the nation, he opposed dispersing his troops into guerilla bands after Appomattox--and instead counseled acceptance of the decision of arms.

When he assumed the presidency of Washington College, and turned toward education as the salvation of the South, he set an example that should continue to resonate across boundaries today, in Maine as in Mississippi, in Vanuatu as in Virginia.

When the lynching of a black man in Lexington seemed imminent, he spoke against it. Finally, graceful submission to a God whose verdict is contrary to all our strivings is something many of us might wish to emulate, whatever our background.

The path to peace

It was a printed form, requiring that only a name, signature and residence be added, but its completion showed the mettle of the man, and paved the way to a peace that, however imperfect, brought full-scale carnage to a close:

"I, Robert E. Lee of Lexington, Virginia, do solemnly swear in the presence of Almighty God, that I will henceforth faithfully support, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the Union of the States thereunder, and that I will in like manner, abide by and faithfully support all the laws and proclamations which have been made during the existing rebellion with reference to the emancipation of slaves, so help me God."