R. E. Lee: A Biography, Vol 1, Chapt 1-4 – Douglas Southall Freeman (Audiobook)

R. E. Lee: A Biography, Volume 1, Chapters 1-4
Written by Douglas Southall Freeman.
Published by Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York and London, 1934.
Digitalization by Bill Thayer.
Audiobook produced by OpenAudio Recordings.
Read by Nancy, a Microsoft Azure AI Neural Voice.

Douglas Southall Freeman’s Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Robert Edward Lee. Key figures and photos (only if out-of-copyright) from the book are shown when referenced in the audio.

0:00:00, Attribution
0:00:23, Forward
0:17:08, Chapter 1: A Carriage Goes to Alexandria
0:47:54, Chapter 2: A Background of Great Traditions
1:44:21, Chapter 3: First Impressions of West Point
2:09:30, Chapter 4: The Education of a Cadet

R. E. Lee: A Biography, Volume 1, Chapters 1 Through 4 Written by Douglas Southall Freeman. Published by Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York and London, 1934. Digitalization by Bill Thayer. Audiobook produced by OpenAudio Recordings and read by Nancy, a Microsoft Azure AI Neural Voice. Forward

After I had accepted the invitation Charles Scribner’s Sons extended me in 1915 to write a biography of General Robert E. Lee, I was surprised to find that much the larger part of the source material had never been consulted. The records of the Bureau of Engineers and of the United States Military Academy had not been explored for information on Lee’s professional career. Few collections of manuscripts belonging to Southern families had been searched for his letters. No effort apparently had been made to determine his state of mind in the winter of 1860 ‑ 61 by examining the correspondence and memoirs of those who had been with him in Texas. His own unpublished military papers had never been assembled. Of his labors as a military administrator, and of the perplexities he faced in the perennial reorganization of an army that suffered ceaselessly from attrition, virtually nothing was known. Thousands of pages there were on the details of his battles, but surprisingly little concerning the development of his strategy. The wealth of illustrative incident had not been sifted from the lesser-known personal narratives of the War between the States. Even the files of Washington and Lee University, covering the years when he was laboring to save the South from becoming a second Poland, had been in great measure neglected by biographers.

For these reasons it became necessary to conduct a long research. As this brought new facts to light, a work projected for one volume grew to four. Had not the world war demonstrated the importance of the careful study of the campaigns of great strategists, I should feel disposed to apologize for such elaborate presentation. It is, however, indisputable that the British in that struggle certainly were the gainers for their close reading of Henderson’s Jackson, and Foch for his familiarity with Napoleon. The professional soldier who will follow, step by step, the unfolding of Lee’s strategic plans, will, I think, learn much and perhaps equally from the leader of the Army of Northern Virginia. Should this biography facilitate that study, I shall not feel that I have trespassed too much on the time of military men. I hope the general reader, especially if he already has some knowledge of Lee, will find in this book enough of fresh incident to justify his labor in turning so many pages.

Prolonged as my investigation has been, and puzzling as some of its problems have appeared to be, I have been fully repaid by being privileged to live, as it were, for more than a decade in the company of a great gentleman. A biographer can ask no richer compensation. Second only to that has been the satisfaction of meeting many grateful inheritors of the Lee tradition. In the dark period after the War between the States, the most glamorous memory of the South was the Confederate cause, whose finest figure was Lee. In his military achievement, Southern people saw the flowering of their racial stock; in his social graces they beheld their ideals embodied; in the honors paid his memory, every one of Lee’s former soldiers felt that he himself had received the accolade. An old veteran, after meeting “Marse Robert” only once on the road, in the midst of some hurried military movement, would speak of him with a reverence no less marked than that of Colonel Talcott or Colonel Taylor, who had seen Lee daily and in all the revealing cross-lights of victory and of disaster. Nearly all those who gave me their personal recollections of General Lee are dead now, but their sons and their daughters have like devotion to his name. It has been profoundly gratifying to search out these men and women, to gather their family stories of Lee, and to copy those of his letters that they have saved from destruction. These individuals form a company so numerous and so helpful that I have thought it proper to list them, and others to whom I am indebted, in a special appendix of acknowledgments, which will be found at the end of the last volume of this work. I should like to add that in all my research I encountered only three individuals, one historical society, and one private library possessing Lee papers that did not cheerfully permit their use.

For the periods of Lee’s life before and subsequent to the War between the States, my principal task was the interesting but comparatively easy one of bringing material together from many scattered sources. Once these documents revealed Lee as in all respects a man of normal impulses and of simple soul, presentation was not difficult. There were no “secrets” and no scandals to be exposed or explained. His quiet life, as engineer and as educator, did not lend itself to the “new” biography which is already becoming conventionalized. Neither was there any occasion to attempt an “interpretation” of a man who was his own clear interpreter.

Portrayal of Lee the soldier was, from the very nature of war, a more complex undertaking. For military biography, like military history in general, may fail to be instructive because, paradoxically, it is too informative. On occasion I have tried to master some narrative of a campaign, written by an author who manifestly knew the facts, but I have found my guide hustling me from one opposing line to the other and back again so often that he hopelessly confused me and wholly dissipated the “fog of war.” The existence of that “fog” is, however, in military history as in actual hostilities, one of the prime realities. Every soldier’s strategy must be judged, inter alia [that is, “among other things”], by the efforts he makes to get information, by the nature and extent of the information he collects, and by the skill with which he analyzes it. Military biography written without regard for the scope and limitations of this intelligence cannot be accurate. To avoid an unscientific method, which is more often recognized than remedied, I have endeavored to give the reader no information beyond that which Lee possessed at a particular moment regarding the strength, movements and plans of his adversary. Except in one or two instances, as when he follows Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg, the reader remains at Confederate G. H. Q. throughout the war and receives the intelligence reports only as they arrive. Even happenings in the Army of Northern Virginia are not mentioned until they are announced to Lee, though this sometimes has necessitated the lengthy employment of the awkward past-perfect tense. When explanation must be made of Federal operations that were unknown to the Confederate high command, this has usually been done in footnotes.

Whether to include or to exclude military matters not directly related to Lee’s strategy and battles was a second puzzling question. He was constantly hampered because the authority of the Richmond administration was restricted and because the individualism of many of its supporters could not be bent, even in the fire of war, to reasonable co-operation. A revolutionary government was daily brought nearer to death by striving to live constitutionally. Professional soldiers, accustomed to the co-operation of a trained staff, shared responsible command with lawyers, planters, and politicians. Certain men whose names are now forgotten and whose generalship did not rise above mediocrity were figures so powerful at the moment that Lee had to take their peculiarities into account and sometimes had to entrust them with important operations. The necessities of war required the imposition of a strict discipline on an army which, in the words of one of its brilliant survivors, regarded itself at the outset as a “voluntary association of gentlemen, organized to drive out the enemy.” There could be no cold impersonality in directing such a force. Moreover, from the late summer of 1862, the subsistence of the army was a major factor in determining when and where Lee could give battle. The decline in the horse supply progressively decreased the mobility of his forces.

Were these things properly to be explained in a biography of Lee or should they be dismissed with mere mention? And if they were to be treated extensively, how were they to be kept from encumbering and perhaps obscuring the account of field-operations? All these factors, I concluded, were as truly a part of a biography of Lee as his defense of Richmond in 1862 or his march into Pennsylvania. I decided that the simplest way to discuss subjects of a collateral character was to place them in the chapters devoted to winter quarters or in those covering the occasional long pauses in the fighting. This method, I hope, saves the narrative from being loaded with extraneous detail.

The continuity and close relationship of the campaigns on all the Confederate fronts had likewise to be made plain. Never was the government at Richmond able to consider the supply or the reinforcement of the Army of Northern Virginia in the absolute terms of that army’s requirements. Always Lee’s operations were bound up with those in Tennessee, in the Gulf States or along the seaboard. Similarly, the times were very few when Lee could regard any campaign on his front as definitely ended. After June 1, 1862, a new operation was dictated, in almost every instance, by the one that had preceded it. The losses in one limited the possibilities of the next. From Mechanicsville to Appomattox, Lee’s strategy formed a continuous whole not readily broken into chapters or divided into periods. Looking backwards, it is obvious, of course, that the reduction of the food supply, the death of Jackson, the defeat at Gettysburg, the virtual starvation of the horses in the winter of 1863 ‑ 64, the inability of Lee to force Grant back across the Rappahannock after the battle of the Wilderness, and the failure of conscription in the summer of 1864 marked definite stages in the approach of defeat that may have been inevitable from the first. None of this was plain at the time, and even if it had been apparent to the rest of the world, it would not have been admitted by the majority of Southerners. Lee saw clearly and without illusions, but most men hoped the experience of Washington’s continentals would be repeated and that a final Yorktown would redeem disaster. This state of mind was a ponderable factor in the war in Virginia. Any formal grouping of campaigns might, therefore, dispose the reader to attribute to the Confederates a sense of approaching defeat that was never theirs until the winter of 1864 ‑ 65. I consequently have not essayed to divide Lee’s operations into periods.

In respect to military terminology, I have applied that of Hardee’s Tactics to all manoeuvres covered by that standard work, which both armies used. For strategical description, I have, as a rule, adhered to the terms used in the reports of the period I have treated; but where those terms have a different meaning today, or where force and clarity seemed to require it, I have not hesitated to adopt the language of modern war. I have, for example, often referred to a “sector,” and I have changed the familiar phrase “corps of observation” to “column of observation,” because “corps” had at that time another and a more generally employed meaning.

Direct quotation, always a vexing question in historical writing, is doubly so in the case of Lee, who wrote thousands of letters over a period of nearly forty years. There is opportunity, of course, of presenting the “man entire” by the liberal use of his correspondence, but the advantage of this is more than offset, I think, by the fact that a letter which begins with one subject may cover a dozen others and thereby divert attention from the main theme. Those who wish to see Lee as his own biographer, in his writings to his family and friends, will do well to consult Captain Robert E. Lee’s delightful Recollections and Letters of General Lee and the two works on Lee by Reverend J. William Jones. It has seemed to me desirable to avoid long quotations and, instead, to weave into the narrative those brief sentences in which, with characteristic directness, General Lee epitomized his opinions. It has been necessary, however, to publish many letters hitherto unknown and to reprint in extenso [that is, “in full”] a few that have heretofore appeared. In some of these latter cases, the failings of Doctor Jones as a copyist have prompted me to refer directly to the originals. Instances will be given where sharp and critical passages in some of the best-known letters of General Lee were deleted by Jones without any notice to the reader of an omission.

It will be found that I have retained many direct quotations of Lee’s conversation. As these often are embodied in reminiscences written after the occurrence, they present possibilities of misinterpretation at the same time that they may help to create an atmosphere of reality. The canons of criticism that I have applied in accepting or rejecting direct quotation of this character are familiar and simple. I can only hope they have been rigidly applied. The nearer the quotation is to the event, of course, the more reliable it is apt to be. Remarks made by Lee to young soldiers or students, and to those who met him infrequently were, as a rule, more accurately remembered than those addressed to old generals or to staff officers who saw him often and might easily confuse two or more interviews. Exchanges of small moment, thought typical of the man, are less overdrawn than those cited by partisans in historical disputes. Several cases are mentioned in the footnotes where Lee’s plain words have been expanded and glossed until he is made to deliver orations — which he never did. The alleged quotations that are most justly subject to suspicion are those that occur in publications prepared late in life by professional lecturers or raconteurs. In the very few instances where I have accepted direct quotations of this sort I have given in footnotes my reasons for doing so.

À propos of [that is, “regarding”] footnotes, it should perhaps be explained that while this biography has been written from the primary sources, some of the early works on Lee are in a classification midway between first and second-hand testimony. A very good illustration is the Life of General Robert E. Lee by John Esten Cooke. Its author was one of General Jeb Stuart’s staff officers and was frequently with Lee. When he and others who enjoyed a like advantage are cited, it will be understood that, unless otherwise indicated, the references are to their direct evidence on events they witnessed. If secondary sources are quoted on incidents in the career of Lee or of his army, it is because the authors of those works appear to have had access to valid material which, in the absence of specific reference on their part, it is impossible to identify. For the general background of the narrative, I have not attempted to duplicate work of reliable historians but have freely and gratefully availed myself of their findings.

It may be that I shall irritate some readers by restraint and disappoint others by failing to answer some of Lee’s detractors. On the one point, it seems to me that the fame of no man is promoted by extravagant utterance. Truth is not furthered thereby. Seventy years after the event, assertive rhetoric has no place in historical narrative. Comparison of Lee with other great soldiers falls, I think, into much the same category, for, as I have stated in the general review of his achievements as a soldier, in Volume IV, military circumstance is incommensurable. Lee, like every other leader, is to be judged by what he accomplished, where he was, with what he had at his command. Except to call attention to divergent opinion or to conflicts of testimony, I have purposely avoided historical controversy. I have tried to state the facts and to interpret them when it has seemed proper to do so. If other writers have a different interpretation, it is for the reader, and not for me, to sit in judgment.

A biographer, like a dramatist, has no place on the stage. When he has made his bow to his audience and has spoken his prologue, telling what he will try to exhibit, it is his duty to retire to the wings, to raise the curtain and to leave the play to the actors. Before I do this, I have one confession to make. For more than twenty years the study of military history has been my chief avocation. Whether the operations have been those of 1914 ‑ 18, on which I happened to be a daily commentator, or those of the conflict between the states, each new inquiry has made the monstrous horror of war more unintelligible to me. It has seemed incredible that human beings, endowed with any of the powers of reason, should hypnotize themselves with doctrines of “national honor” or “sacred right” and pursue mass murder to exhaustion or to ruin. I subscribe with my whole heart to the view of General Lee that had “forbearance and wisdom been practised on both sides,” the great national tragedy of 1861 might have been prevented. If, in this opinion, I have let my abhorrence of war appear in my description of Malvern Hill after the battle, and in a few indignant adjectives elsewhere, I trust the reader will understand that in these instances I have momentarily stepped back on the stage only because I am not willing to have this study of an American who loved peace interpreted as glorification of war.

D. S. F. William Byrd Park, Richmond, Virginia. Aug. 7, 1934. Chapter 1: A Carriage Goes to Alexandria.

They had come so often, those sombre men from the sheriff. Always they were polite and always they seemed embarrassed, but they asked so insistently of the General’s whereabouts and they talked of court papers with strange Latin names. Sometimes they lingered about as if they believed Henry Lee were in hiding, and more than once they had tried to force their way into the house. That was why Ann Carter Lee’s husband had placed those chains there on the doors in the great hall at Stratford. The horses had been taken, the furniture had been “attached” — whatever that meant — and tract after tract had been sold off to cancel obligations. Faithful friends still visited, of course, and whenever the General rode to Montross or to Fredericksburg the old soldiers saluted him and told their children that he was “Light-Horse Harry” Lee, but she knew that people whispered that he had twice been in jail because he could not pay his debts. Of course, he wanted to pay, but how could he? She could not help him, because her father had put her inheritance in trust. Robert Morris, poor man, had died without returning a penny of the $40,000 he owed Mr. Lee, and that fine plan for building a town at the Great Falls of the Potomac had never been carried out, because they could not settle the quitrents. If General Lee had been able to do that or to get the money on that claim he had bought in east, all would be well. As it was, they could not go on there at Stratford, where the house was falling to pieces and everything was in confusion. Besides, Stratford was not theirs. Matilda Lee had owned it and she had left it to young Henry and he was now of age. So, the only thing to do was to leave and go to Alexandria, where they could live in a simple home and send Charles Carter to the free school and find a doctor for the baby that was to come in February.

That was why they had Smith and three-year‑old Robert in the carriage, with their few belongings, and were driving away from the ancestral home of the Lees. Perhaps it was well that Robert was so young: he would have no memories of those hard, wretched years that had passed since the General had started speculating — would not know, perhaps, that the long drive up the Northern Neck, that summer day in 1810, marked the dénouement [that is, “final resolution”] in the life drama of his brilliant, lovable, and unfortunate father.

Fairer prospects than those of Henry Lee in 1781 no young American revolutionary had. Born in 1756, at Leesylvania, Prince William County, Va., he was the eldest son of Henry Lee and his wife, Lucy Grymes. From boyhood he had the high intelligence of his father’s distinguished forebears and the physical charm of his beautiful mother. He won a great name at Princeton, where he had been graduated in 1773. But for the coming of the war he would have gone to England to study law. Instead, before he was twenty-one, he entered the army as a captain in the cavalry regiment commanded by his kinsman, Theodoric Bland. Behind him had been all the influence of a family which included at that time three of the outstanding men of the Revolution, his cousins Richard Henry Lee, Arthur Lee, and William Lee.

His achievements thereafter were in keeping with his opportunities, for he seemed, as General Charles Lee put it, “to have come out of his mother’s womb a soldier.” A vigorous man, five feet nine inches in height, he had strength and endurance for most arduous of Washington’s campaigns. He made himself the talk of the army by beating off a surprise attack at Spread Eagle Tavern in January, 1778. Offered a post as aide to Washington, he was promoted major when he expressed a preference for field service; he stormed Paulus Hook on the lower Hudson with so much skill and valor that Washington praised him in unstinted terms and Congress voted him thanks and a medal; he was privileged to address his dispatches directly and privately to Washington, whose admiring conference he possessed; he was given a mixed command of infantry and cavalry which was officially designated as Lee’s partisan corps; when he wearied of inaction in the North he was transferred to the Southern department in October, 1780, with the rank of lieutenant colonel. Although he was just twenty-five when he joined General Nathanael Greene in January, 1781, “Light-Horse Harry” Lee was already one of the most renowned of American soldiers.

With not more than 280 men, Lee took the field in the Carolinas. The stalwart, dependable Greene was friendly and ready to take counsel. His theatre of operations was wide, the British posts were scattered. Surprises and forays invited the adventuresome commander. Marion and Sumter were worthy rivals. In Wade Hampton and Peter Johnston, father of Joseph E. Johnston, Lee found loyal comrades. Dazzling months opened before him. He was in the raid of Georgetown and won new honors at Guilford Courthouse. At least as much as any other officer, he was responsible for the decision of General Greene to abandon the march after Cornwallis and to turn southward instead, a decision that changed the whole course of the war in that area and brought about the liberation of Georgia and the Carolinas. Rejoining Marion on April 14, 1781, Lee co-operated with him in capturing Fort Watson and Fort Motte, and then advanced with only his own command to Fort Granby, which he bluffed into surrender, though not without starting some murmurs that he allowed overgenerous terms in order that he might receive the capitulation before the arrival of General Sumter. From Fort Granby, Lee swung again to the south. Marching more than seventy-five miles in three days, he reduced Fort Galphin, and had a large part in the capture of Fort Cornwallis at Augusta. His was the most spectacular part in the most successful campaign the American army fought, and his reputation rose accordingly. In the remaining operations of the year he was less successful, though he had the good fortune to be sent with dispatches from Greene to Washington in time to witness the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown.

Then something happened to Lee. In a strange change of mental outlook, the tragedy of his life began. As soon as the fighting was over he became sensitive, resentful, and imperious. He felt that Greene had slighted him, and that his brother officers were envious and hostile. A curious conflict took place in his mind between two obscure impulses. One apparently was a desire to be master of himself and to remain in the profession for which he seems to have known he was best fitted. The other impulse was to quit the camps of contention for the quiet of civil life, there to win riches and the eminence he felt had been unjustly denied him in the army.

This inward battle may have had its origin in the restlessness of a soldier whose campaigning was over. Exhaustion and ill-health may have caused a temporary warp of mind. Resentment may have been at the bottom of it, the resentment that is so easily aroused in the heart of a young man whom praise has spoiled. More particularly, a love-affair then developing doubtless made Henry Lee discontented with his life. The mental conflict, in any case, was one that Lee felt himself unable to win by the exercise of will or of judgment, though he looked upon it as objectively as if it had been the struggle of another man. “I wish from motives of self,” he wrote General Greene, “to make my way easy and comfortable. This, if ever attainable, is to be got only in an obscure retreat.” And again: “I am candid to acknowledge my imbecility of mind, and hope time and absence may alter my feelings. At present, my fervent wish is, for the most hidden obscurity; I want not private or public applause. My happiness will depend on myself; and if I have but fortitude to persevere in my intention, it will not be in the power of malice, outrage or envy to affect me. Heaven knows the issue. I wish I could bend my mind to other decisions. I have tried much, but the sores of my wounds are only irritated afresh by my efforts.”

In this spirit Henry Lee debated — and chose wrongly. Early in 1782 he resigned from the army. He took with him Greene’s acknowledgment that he was “more indebted to this officer than to any other for the advantages gained over the enemy, in the operations of the last campaign,” but he left behind him the one vocation that ever held his sustained interest.

For a while all appeared to go well with him. He seemed to make his way “easy and comfortable,” as he had planned, by a prompt marriage with his cousin, Matilda Lee, who had been left mistress of the great estate of Stratford, on the Potomac, by the death of her father, Philip Ludwell Lee, eldest of the famous, brilliant sons of Thomas Lee. Their marriage was a happy one, and within five years, four children were born. Two of them survived the ills of early life, the daughter, Lucy Grymes, and the third son, Henry Lee, fourth of that name.

Following the custom of his family, Henry Lee became a candidate in 1785 for the house of delegates of Virginia. He was duly chosen and was promptly named by his colleagues to the Continental Congress, which he entered under the favorable introduction of his powerful kinsman, Richard Henry Lee. In that office he continued, with one interruption and sundry leaves of absence, almost until the dissolution of the Congress of the Confederation. To the ratification of the new Constitution he gave his warmest support as spokesman for Westmoreland in the Virginia convention of 1788, where he challenged the thunders of Patrick Henry, leader of the opposition. Quick to urge Washington to accept the presidency, he it was who composed the farewell address on behalf of his neighbors when Washington started to New York to be inaugurated. The next year Lee was again a member of the house of delegates, and in 1791 he was chosen Governor of Virginia, which honorific position he held for three terms of one year each. Laws were passed during his administration for reorganizing the militia, for reforming the courts, and for adjusting the state’s public policy in many ways. Some dreams of improved internal navigation were cherished but could not be attained.

In the achievements of these years Lee was distinguished but not zealous. His public service was all too plainly the by-product of a mind preoccupied. For the chief weakness of his character now showed itself, and the curious impulse with which he had battled before he resigned from the army took form in a wild mania for speculation. No dealer he in idle farm lands, no petty gambler in crossroads ordinaries. His every scheme was grandiose, and his profits ran to millions in his mind.

He plunged deeply, and always unprofitably. Financially distressed as early as 1783 ‑ 85, he put £8000 of hard money into some magnificent and foolish venture in the Mississippi country. Losing there, he sought to recoup by purchasing 500 acres of land at the Great Falls of the Potomac, where he hoped to sell off innumerable lots to those who were to build a great city at the turning-basins of the canal. This project must have had real possibilities, for it won Washington’s approval and it interested James Madison. Despite an attempt to finance it in Europe, the enterprise fell through. Before Lee had abandoned all hope of succeeding with this scheme, he had pondered the possibilities of getting inside information on the financial plans of the new Federal Government, presumably in order that he might buy up the old currency and make a fortune by exchanging it for the new issues. In November, 1789, he presumed on his friendship with Alexander Hamilton to attempt to procure from the Secretary of the Treasury a confidential statement of the administration’s policy. Hamilton affectionately but firmly refused to tell him anything, whereupon this, also, had to be added to Henry Lee’s futile dreams. A little later Lee was involved in transactions that prompted Washington to declare downrightly that Lee had not paid him what was due.

By this time, though there never was anything vicious in his character or dishonest in his purposes, Henry Lee had impaired his reputation as a man of business and was beginning to draw heavy drafts on the confidence of his friends. His own father, who died in 1789, passed over him in choosing an executor, while leaving him large landed property. Matilda Lee who had been in bad health since 1788, put her estate in trust for her children in 1790, probably to protect their rights against her husband’s creditors. Soon afterwards she died, followed quickly by her oldest son, Philip Ludwell Lee, a lad of about seven.

Desperate in his grief, and conscious at last that he had made the wrong decision when he had left the army, Lee now wanted to return to a military life. He sought to get command of the forces that were to be sent to the Northwest to redeem the Saint Clair disaster. When he was passed over for reasons that he did not understand, he was more than disappointed. “It is better,” he wrote Madison, “to till the soil with your own hands than to serve a government which distrusts your due attachment — even in the higher stations.” For a time, he became antagonistic to the fiscal policy of his old commander and was sympathetic with the bitterest foe of the Federalists in the American press, Philip Freneau. He might formally have gone over to the opposition had he not been rebuffed when he made overtures to Jefferson, who seems instinctively to have distrusted him.

If he could not wear again the uniform of his own country there was an alternative, to which Lee turned in the wildest of all his dreams. He was head of an American state, but he would resign, go to France and get a commission in the army of the revolutionaries! First inquiries led him to believe he would be accepted and be given the rank of major-general, but he had some misgivings about the ability of the French to victual and maintain their troops. Before setting out for Paris he decided to take counsel with Washington. “Bred to arms,” he confided to his old commander, then President, “I have always since my domestic calamity wished for a return to my profession, as the best resort for my mind in its affliction.” Washington, of course, warned him to stay away from a conflict that was leading to chaos. The veteran diplomatist, William Lee, his cousin, volunteered like counsel.

Despite his reverence for Washington, Henry Lee might have placed his sword at the disposal of the French terrorists had not his mind been turned to a softer subject: Like many another widower he found consolation for a lost love in a new. Visiting Shirley, the James River plantation of Charles Carter, who was then probably the richest man in Virginia except George Washington, he became attached to Ann Hill Carter, then twenty, Charles Carter’s daughter by his second wife, Anne Moore. Lee was seventeen years her senior but he must have appealed to her from the first. Was he not a Revolutionary hero, a gentleman of impeccable manners and flashing conversation, and was he not Governor of Virginia withal? Besides, there was the romance of his chivalrous purpose to offer his sword to republican France, the distressed land of his comrade Lafayette.

Charles Carter did not look at Lee through his daughter’s eyes. As a father and a man of affairs, he would not permit Ann to marry a Virginian foolish enough to throw in his lot with the madmen of Paris. There were parleys and exchanges that ended finally in Lee’s decision to abandon his French adventure. Carter at once softened and gave his consent to a union which he was considerate enough to say he had opposed on no other grounds. So, on June 30, 1793, when Robespierre was filling the tumbrels with the victims of the law of 22d Prairial, the two were joined in the marriage of which Robert E. Lee was born.

For a time after his second marriage, Henry Lee seemed to be stabilized. Returning to his former political support of his adored Washington, he received the confidences of the President in the delicate matter of French neutrality, and he supported the executive in a much-applauded proclamation. When the “Whiskey Boys’ Rebellion” broke out the next year he forgot his former grievance and gladly led the expedition sent to crush the rising, though his absence almost cost him his office as governor. Meantime, he became vehemently critical of Jefferson.

Retiring, as was then customary in Virginia, on the expiration of his third term as governor, Lee was enough in the public eye to be mentioned as a possible successor to Washington. Instead of climbing onward to that office, however, all that remained to him were a few years of service in the general assembly, a temporary commission as major-general at the time of the threatened war with France, and a single term in Congress, where he eulogized his dead chieftain, as “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” Thereafter he held no political office of importance and probably could have gained none.

The reason was that his old passion for wild speculation returned. Already it had entailed grief, loss, and the estrangement of friends. Now, everything was subordinated to his desperate efforts to make a fortune — his peace of mind, his family’s comfort, his standing in the eyes of old comrades. His own son, Henry, who idolized his father, had to write of him: “He entered into a course of sanguine and visionary speculations, endeavoring to acquire wealth, not by rational and productive industry, but by a combination of bargains which could hardly benefit one party without injury to the other, and which were often mutually detrimental. To the task of making one yield what others failed to return, he devoted no little of misapplied talent and activity — in bearing the weight of distress and ruin which they finally entailed, he wasted a degree of fortitude which, however inglorious the struggle, could not be witnessed without admiration.

Lee became involved with the Marshalls in the purchase of a part of the vast Fairfax estates in the Northern Neck and endeavored to finance it through Robert Morris, but, in the end, advanced Morris $40,000, which the old Philadelphian could not repay. Next Lee, it would seem, was entrusted by some of his friends with the sale of Western lands in 1797. In expectation of early payment, certain of these men made loans or assumed obligations they were unable to meet when the settlement was delayed. Lee worked feverishly to raise the funds through his attorney and agent, William Sullivan of Boston. He was harassed “by those distressed individuals who are all about me now,” as he wrote Sullivan, and he had the humiliation of having one of his creditors, “poor Glassel,” thrown into jail, presumably for debt.

Undeterred, he was lured by the mysterious Western adventure of Aaron Burr, for whom he voted in 1801. He was not in Burr’s counsels, but his interest in the attempt to create a new empire was so great that it was reported he had left Staunton, Va., to join Burr. It was at this stage of his speculative mania, when he was dreaming of a fortune that was to be won by the conquest of a new frontier, that his son Robert was conceived. At the time when the expectancy of the mother kept Henry Lee at home, in January, 1807, he was busy on a scheme to wipe out all his debts and to enjoy affluence once more by prevailing upon the British Lord Chancellor to order a final distribution of an estate which had been contested for sixty years. Lee had no claim to the property through kinship, but he and two others had bought up certain claims to it as a speculation. The letter that bears a closer date to that of Robert’s birth than any of Henry Lee’s extant correspondence is one in which he asked the help of James Monroe, then minister to England, in this chimerical enterprise.

Ann Lee’s pregnancy was not happy. Too many shadows hung over it. During the early years at Stratford, though her husband had forever been spurring restlessly about, she had been content. In the year when Henry Lee had been thundering against the Virginia resolutions, she had written the wife of her brother-in‑law: “I do not find [my life] in the slightest degree tiresome: my hours pass too nimbly away. When in company, if agreeable company, I greatly enjoy it: when alone my husband and Child excepted, I am not sensible of the want of society. In them I have enough to make me cheerful and happy.” She had then been from home for only one night in seven months. But sickness after 1800 had brought suffering and many weeks of invalidism. Henry Lee had been more and more frequently absent for long periods; the pinch of poverty had taken from her the comforts she had known in girlhood; she had lost even her carriage; life had grown gray on the narrowed, untilled acres of Stratford. While the child was in her womb, she had gone to Shirley after the death of her father and had found it a house of mourning. On her return home at the end of December, 1806, she had been forced to ride in an open carriage and had caught a cold from which she was suffering as the time for the delivery of her child approached. Eight days before the pains of labor came upon her she wrote Mrs. Richard Bland Lee, who also was enceinte, “You have my best wishes for your success[,] my dear, and truest assurances, that I do not envy your prospects nor wish to share in them.”

On January 19, 1807, Ann Carter Lee’s fourth child was born, an unblemished boy, who was named Robert Edward, after two of his mother’s brothers, Robert and Edward Carter. His first cry was in the east chamber on the main floor of the old house, the room nearest the garden, the very chamber in which, according to tradition, Richard Henry and Francis Lightfoot Lee, signers of the Declaration of Independence, had seen the light.

When Robert was sixteen months old, his half-brother Henry passed out of his minority and came into possession of Stratford. After that “Light-Horse Harry” and his family by his second marriage could only remain on the estate as the guests of the young master. With this prospect before him and his financial plight daily worse, the old soldier could see no alternative to beating a retreat. He must leave the country, if he could, and find shelter in some foreign land, where his creditors could not pursue him. Contemplating this, and presenting Mrs. Lee’s ill-health as a reason, he solicited a government appointment to Brazil or to the West Indies.

For the time, it was all to no purpose. There were no vacancies to be filled, and no new appointments to be made. Credit was gone, reputation was almost gone, civil judgments against him multiplied with the months. During the spring of 1809, when Robert was receiving his first impressions of Stratford as a place of beauty and of glory, his father came to the last humiliation: Odds and ends of real estate that had been left to him after nearly thirty years of wild trading had to be deeded away. Of everything that could be sold, he was stripped bare. And even this did not save him. On April 11, 1809, he was arrested for a debt of some 5400 Spanish dollars, with accrued interest for nearly seven years, and was confined to jail at the county seat of Westmoreland. Later in the year he was imprisoned for the same reason in Spotsylvania. Not until the spring of 1810 was he at liberty, and then he had nothing left him except some lands he could not market. While incarcerated, he had written a large part of his Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department of the United States. With a shadow of his old optimism, he flattered himself this book would enjoy a great run; but that, of course, was almost as much a gamble as any of those on which he had lost his fortune.

At home again, writing furiously on his book, but with no immediate income, he decided on the move to Alexandria. Henry was twenty-four and could not be expected to supply food and shelter indefinitely. There was no money with which to employ a tutor for the three children, who were now requiring instruction. Everything left to Mrs. Lee and her young brood was the return from a trust that had been set up for her benefit under the will of her father. When the estate was settled, the revenue from this fund, which Henry Lee could not dissipate, would provide shelter, food, and clothing but nothing besides.

The little caravan from Stratford ended its journey at a small, but trim and comfortable brick house on Cameron Street in Alexandria, close to the Episcopal church. Life was easier there than in the sprawling Stratford mansion, but cares increased. During the winter, after the family settled in town, the new baby, a girl, was born to the burdened mother. There were now five children, ranging from the new-born infant to a boy of thirteen, and one of the quintet, Ann, was sickly. Before the infant had ceased to be an hourly charge, and when Robert was five and a half, the final blow came.

Henry Lee’s strong Federalism had led him to oppose a second war with Great Britain. Seeing no grievance that he did not believe could be corrected in amity, he had written repeatedly to Madison, over a period of five years, in the interest of peace. When hostilities opened in June, 1812, Lee was unreconciled to the conflict and quick to sympathize with those who became the victims of war’s passions. Among these sufferers was the young editor of The Baltimore Federal Republican, Alexander C. Hanson, whose plant, press and building were wrecked by a mob which an antiwar editorial in his paper had inflamed. Hanson was no coward, and though he left Baltimore temporarily and came to Georgetown, not far up the Potomac from Alexandria, he determined to return to the city and to resume the circulation of his journal.

Hearing some whisper of Hanson’s plan, Lee was aroused. On July 20, he wrote the editor how to conduct a defense in a barricaded house, though he advised him to call on the authorities for assistance and not to provoke the mob again. Lee apparently was not privy to Hanson’s movements, but he either had business in Baltimore about the time of the expected return of the editor, or else he made business an excuse for going there to see what befell the courageous critic of Madison’s war policy.

On July 27, 1812, Hanson issued in Baltimore a paper which had been printed in Georgetown. Henry Lee had paid two visits to Hanson after he had reached Baltimore, and when he observed the sensation created by the paper, he hastened to him again. He found the editor and a few friends assembled in a house that Hanson was using as a combined office and residence. Soon after Lee arrived, idlers in the street were swollen into a wrathful mob that threatened an assault. As an experienced soldier, Lee was asked to assist in protecting the premises. Undertaking this task with his war-time alacrity, he sent out for additional arms, barricaded the place, and disposed the little garrison. Firing soon broke out. One man was killed in the street and another was wounded. Maddened by these casualties, the mob would doubtless have attacked the building and would have slain the volunteer garrison then and there, had not the militia arrived and taken position in the street.

After a night of excitement, negotiations were opened between the troops and the friends of Hanson. Finally the twenty-three occupants of the house submitted themselves to the officers of the law, who escorted them to a large cell in the jail as the safest place in which they could remain until the passions of the hour had cooled. But the rioters were not so easily shaken off. All day of the 28th, the mob spirit spread through the town. After nightfall, a crowd of armed men gathered before the jail, intent on murder. Through negligence or connivance, the troops were not called out again. The jailer was helpless. An entrance was soon forced. The hallway was immediately packed with wild ruffians. Death seemed so certain that Lee proposed to his companions that they should take the few weapons they had and shoot one another rather than let themselves be torn to pieces by the mob. But better judgment prevailed, and when the door of the cell was beaten down, the defenders made a sally. Instantly there was a confused mêlée. When it was over, half of Hanson’s friends had escaped, but one of them had been killed and eleven others had been frightfully beaten. Eight were thought to be dead and were piled together in front of the building, where they were subjected to continued mutilation.

Henry Lee was among this number. Drunken brutes thrust penknives into his flesh, and waited to see whether there was a flicker when hot candle grease was poured into his eyes. One fiend tried to cut off his nose. After a while, by asserting that they merely wished to give him decent burial, some of the town physicians succeeded in carrying him to a hospital. His condition was so desperate that his death was reported in Washington, but his great physical strength sufficed to keep him alive, and good nursing made it possible for him to return home later in the summer. But he was weak, crippled, and disfigured, doomed to invalidism for the remaining six years of his life, wholly dependent on the income of his wife, and of course incapable of accepting the military command that would almost certainly have been given him when the first tide of the war in Canada turned against the United States.

Hope was dead now in the heart of Henry Lee. He dreamed no more of the fortune that was to be made in his very next venture. His one ambition was to leave the country, both for his health and for his peace of mind. In pressing for the means of escape, he did not even attempt to conceal his poverty. “As to my change of clime,” he wrote Monroe, “without money, as I am, it will be difficult to execute my object even with your promised aid.” It was doubly difficult because Lee wished to go to a British island, inasmuch as he spoke neither French nor Spanish. The consent of the British admiral had to be procured if he was to pass the blockading squadrons and land unhindered. But Monroe was as good as his word, and after some months he arranged for Lee to go to the Barbadoes.

So, one day in the early summer of 1813, Robert must have shed tears with the rest, as he shared the final embraces of his father. Behind him, in his own household, “Light-Horse Harry” left only sorrow. For, with all his financial follies, he had never lost the respect, much less the affection, of his family. Fully conscious of his failings, which they pitied, they still were awed by his dignity and fascinated by his conversation. On the youthful mind of Robert, his father’s vices made no impress, but always in his memory the picture of his sire was glamorous with charm.

But Henry Lee could not have been greatly comforted, as he went down the Potomac, by the knowledge that he was still king of his fireside. He had received Congress’s medal and had enjoyed the entrée to the commander-in‑chief; his name had been on every patriot’s tongue; he had told General Greene that he wished to put himself where it would not be “in the power of malice, outrage or envy” to affect him. And now he was sailing away from the state he had governed, from the creditors he could never pay, from a family he might not see again, and he knew he was passing over the gray horizon of failure.

Chapter 2: A Background of Great Traditions.

The city that Henry Lee left behind him, the city of Robert Lee’s widening consciousness, was a pleasant place of 7500 people, situated on the west bank of the Potomac River, six miles below the fields where the capital of the republic was rising. Organized in 1749, Alexandria had been peopled in part by Scotch of good station, but had later received Pennsylvania Quakers and native Virginia colonials in such numbers that by 1815 it differed little from the other towns of the Old Dominion.

Despite war, smallpox, building booms, and fires, the kindred plagues of most early American cities, Alexandria had grown. Ships of many flags tied up at its ample wharves. Fishermen brought thither their weighty catches from the lower stretches of the river. Hundreds of hogsheads of tobacco rolled in from nearby plantations and disappeared in the deep holds of ships bound for England. Thirty-four tavern keepers and more than 260 merchants competed sharply for the trade of sailor, farmer, traveller, and resident. Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist, Quaker, Baptist, and Roman Catholic churches all offered the comforts of religion to the pious, or held the threat of hell above the profligate’s head. Justice sat with dignity, for Alexandria had become a part of the District of Columbia in 1791 and was under exclusive federal jurisdiction. A town hall Alexandria boasted, a market place, a Library even, and a jail atop whose chimneys stood grim pikes where once the town had set in lasting warning the heads of slaves who had preached insurrection. In her prosperity the city abandoned wooden building dwellings for enduring brick, but in her thrift she allowed herself few gardens. At some of her corners deep wells rewarded with clear water those who would tug at the complaining windlass. Buried cannon, placed there before the Revolution, marked other crossings. There were oil lamps on the streets, and in each ward the town paid a watchman to go the rounds every night, to cry the hours, and to make the drowsy burgher glad of his shelter by telling him in loud tones how hard the wind was biting. And if fire broke out, was not the Friendship Company ready to race to the flames with its engine? Did not each member of the Sun Company hasten with his two leather buckets and with his two-bushel Osnaburg bag, in which to store salvaged valuables?

To boys a trifle older than Robert, the town held high charm, even though a harsh ordinance of the unyielding city fathers forbade all bandy, ball, and kite-flying in the streets. Down on the waterfront were Jones’s Point and the lighthouse, the ships and the flotsam, the landings and the loitering sailors. Northeast of the town were “King George’s Meadows,” a marshy place of adventure that got its odd name, tradition said, because his Majesty of colonial times had most ungraciously withheld his consent from a prudential bill of the Virginia burgesses for the draining of the flats. The streams were full of fish, and the tall grass sheltered unreckoned rabbits, providentially placed there, as it seemed, for disporting boys.

For elders who scorned the diversions that allured youth, the town had a social life of some dignity. Nearby were Abingdon and Preston, homes of the Alexanders who had given their name to the town. Mount Ida was the seat of Charles Alexander, Jr., who in 1813 claimed the title of Earl of Stirling. Up the river was a new mansion on a commanding hill, with heavy Greek columns on its high portico. Its builder had styled it Arlington, but neither he nor any who visited the hospitable place divined what connotations of sorrow and of strife that name was to have. Down the river was Mount Vernon and, four miles farther on, Gunston Hall, the home of George Mason, the Plato of the Revolution. In the town itself, surrounded by less imposing residences, rose the handsome Carlyle house, built in 1752 and long owned by the family whose patronymic it bore. Its prospective owner, George William Carlyle, had been killed while fighting under “Light-Horse Harry” Lee at Eutaw Springs.

Ties of blood or of common service joined the Lees to this society. Cousins uncounted lived in Alexandria. One of Henry Lee’s brothers, Edmund Jennings Lee, was a luminary of the town. Their sister Mary had married Philip R. Fendall, a local lawyer of much social charm. Out at Ravensworth, in Fairfax County, lived William H. Fitzhugh, distant kinsman but close friend, the broad door of whose ample home was always open to Mrs. Lee and her children. For counsel or for assistance of any sort, Mrs. Lee always turned to Fitzhugh, who admired her both for her character and for her success in keeping up her home on her scant income.

Twenty members of Lee’s Legion had enlisted from Alexandria and nearly all of them affectionately remembered their unfortunate commander. Military titles were to be heard every hour on the street. There one might meet Colonel Charles Simms, the mayor, General Daniel Roberdeau, who always wore tight leather breeches, Colonel George Gilpin, the postmaster, Colonel Philip Marsteller, and Colonel Charles Little, who rode in from Denbigh in Fairfax County. Judge Cranch, whose name is familiar to all constitutional lawyers, presided over the United States court and lived on Washington Street.

At intervals that were all too far apart on the calendar of impatient lovers, the socially elect of the town gathered at Gadsby’s City Tavern for formal “assemblies.” The brilliance of these events was somewhat eclipsed, now that Washington was dead, but the memory of his presence on many a festive evening still lifted the gathering above the commonplace and helped to draw to them, across the new Potomac “Long Bridge,” the families of patrician congressmen, glad enough to escape the mud of the capital’s streets and the monotony of its bad boarding-houses.

Somewhat less formal, but written large on the social calendar of the town, were the Masonic celebrations on the two Saint-John’s days of the year. The fellowcraft then assembled for a sermon at the Presbyterian church and thereafter marched to John Wise’s tavern, where they banqueted fraternally and later threw open their doors for a dance. Rarely was there lack of mirth, for the town did not frown on the spirituous refreshment its many taverns abundantly offered. In fact, if the worst must be told, when the worthy vestry of the Episcopal church supped together at their regular meetings, the wine flowed so freely that it produced a merriment most shocking to the religious sensibilities of the pious new rector, Reverend William Meade. He did not rest him from his protests till he broke up that brotherly supping, to the lasting loss of fellowship, if to the gain of temperance.

None of these things meant so much to the town as did its associations with George Washington. He had been dead more than ten years when the Lee coach brought the family up from Stratford. By the time Robert was old enough to understand something of the spirit of the Father of his Country, Washington had been twenty years in his tomb at Mount Vernon. But he was alive in the hearts of old Alexandrians. Reminders of him were everywhere. In the market place he had drilled his Virginia rangers ere he had set out with Braddock. In the City Tavern hardby he had kept his headquarters and had written out his reports in his swift, neat autograph. To the post office he had often come in person. Many still lived to tell, in Robert’s time, how majestically the General had ridden by, and with what gracious dignity he had acknowledged their salutes. In the Masonic Hall he had repeated the ancient responses of the order. The very water of the town was a memorial, for it had been at Washington’s instance, while he was a trustee of Alexandria, that the wells at the street-corners had been dug. Doctor James Craik, who had been Washington’s physician and his closest friend in Alexandria, might have been seen by Robert, at seven years of age, when the old gentleman was driven in from Vaucluse.

Amid these surroundings, Washington was a part of the life of Robert Lee from earliest childhood. Doubtless his mother remembered and perhaps preserved the letter in which Washington had written Henry Lee his congratulations upon the marriage: “As we are told that you have exchanged the rugged and dangerous field of Mars for the soft and pleasurable bed of Venus,” Washington had written, “I do in this as I shall in everything you may pursue like unto it, good and laudable, wish you all imaginable success and happiness.” Henry Lee, who had the temerity to jest on one occasion with the pater patriae, had spoken often and reverently of him before he had sailed away. Pride in the friendship of the first citizen of the country had been the consolation of “Light-Horse Harry’s” blackest days, and from his exile he was to write of “the great Washington,” and was to repeat his old commander’s words for the admonition of his son, Charles Carter. The family held fast to this reverence. In the home where Robert was trained, God came first and then Washington.

In Robert’s eyes, of course, the centre of the town and of all its traditions was the home on Cameron Street. Over it presided his mother, charged for the rest of her days with the entire care of her five children, their finances, their religious training, and their education. Physically it overtaxed her, but spiritually she was equal to it. Ann Carter Lee was thirty-seven when they moved to Alexandria, and forty when Henry Lee went to the West Indies. Her sister Mildred had died not long after her father and had left her some property that supplemented the income from the trust fund Charles Carter had set up, but the contrast between the rich ease of her girlhood and the adversity of her married life was sharp. Yet it did not embitter her. She continued to love the author of her misfortune. And he, for all his distresses, kept his devotion to her and his high respect for her. In his exile he remembered the anniversary of their marriage, and he sprinkled his letters to Charles Carter Lee with references to her. But she had taken Henry’s tragedy to heart, and the reasons for his fall, and she was determined that his grim cycle of promise, overconfidence, recklessness, disaster, and ruin should not be rounded in the lives of her children. Self-denial, self-control, and the strictest economy in all financial matters were part of the code of honor she taught them from infancy. These qualities which were the precise reverse of those his brilliant father had displayed, were inculcated in Robert so early and so deeply by his mother that they became fundamentals of his character. He probably never knew a time when they were not held up before him as great axioms of conduct. Thanks to Ann Lee, the weakness of the sire became the strength of the son. No wonder he was accustomed to say in later life that he “owed everything” to his mother.

Although Robert lived among the Lees, the atmosphere of his home was that of the Carters. His mother corresponded with them, talked of them, and at least once a year endeavored to take her younger children with her on a visit to Shirley, her old home on James River. It was a gracious place. Built early in the eighteenth century, it had been adorned by each generation of Hills and of Carters, as though they owed it a debt they were eager to discharge with generous interest. The parlors contained rich old furniture, on which the presentments of approving ancestors looked down from gilt frames. In the great hall was a majestic hanging stair; in the dining-room was Charles W. Peale’s full-length picture of Washington, a portrait in which one could see the lines that Valley Forge had cut on a face still young, and all the misgiving that a doubtful war had put in honest, anxious eyes. Outside, to the south, was the turbid, silent river. Across the lawn lay the garden with ancient walks and dreamy odors. Here, on successive visits, as he grew older, Robert heard how John Carter had come to Virginia, had acquired much land, had outlived three wives and had died in 1669, leaving a son Robert who had reaped richly where his father had sown. So wealthy did this Robert Carter become, and so widely did his acres spread that he was known as “King” Carter and lived with a dignified luxury befitting his estate. Around the door of the church which he built and furnished at his own expense, the admiring neighbors would wait on the Sabbath until his outriders had arrived and the great coach had rumbled up, and “King” Carter and his family had entered the house of prayer. Then the simpler folks would stamp after, glad enough to bow the knee on the same floor with so fine a gentleman.

Of the twelve children born to “King” Carter while he lived in splendor at Corotoman, his son John inherited perhaps the largest share of the property. He continued to reside at Corotoman and added as much again to his estate by marrying Elizabeth Hill, heiress to the Shirley plantation on James River. Their wealthy son, Charles Carter, Robert Lee’s grandfather, was reared at Corotoman and brought his first wife there. After her death, Charles Carter married Anne Butler Moore, daughter of Augustine Moore and a descendant of Alexander Spotswood, perhaps the most popular and renowned of the colonial governors of Virginia. With her Charles Carter moved to Shirley, which had become his property. His household was large, for he had eight children by his first marriage, and by his second, thirteen, among them Ann, Robert Lee’s mother.

Young Robert had a friendly multitude of close Carter cousins, for hundreds, literally, were descended from the twelve children of “King” Carter. Charles Carter’s record of twenty-three by two wives was rivalled by that of his first cousin, Robert, or “Councillor” Carter, whose single marriage yielded the sixteen children that appear in the charming Journal of their blue-stockinged tutor, Philip Fithian. Kinsmen were joined in marriage until the lines are at some points confused. The prime family characteristic of geniality and friendliness seemed to be accentuated with each new generation. The size and endogamy of the Carter tribe made it socially self-contained. Every true Carter liked everybody, but most of all he liked his kinspeople. Often and joyfully they visited one another. Of journeying and letter-writing and the exchange of family news, the years brought no end. It was at Shirley, amid the infectious laughter and the kindly chatter of his cousins, that the youthful Robert developed early the fondness for the company of his kin that was so marked in his maturity.

While Robert instinctively adopted the social attitude of the Carters, he was too young to observe in childhood — if, indeed, he ever realized — this most remarkable fact about his mother’s family: The males of the Carter stock did not often aspire to public life or shine in it, but the women of the blood of “King” Carter, when they married into other lines, became the mothers and grandmothers of a most extraordinary number of distinguished men.

Robert Carter the first, “King” Carter, had five daughters.

The eldest of the five, Elizabeth, had a daughter of the same name who married William Nelson, president of council of Virginia. Their son, Thomas Nelson, was a signer of the Declaration and a man of high patriotism. By a second marriage, this granddaughter of Robert Carter became the wife of George Nicholas and was mother of a treasurer of Virginia and grandmother of a governor, Edmund Randolph.

Judith, the second daughter of Robert Carter, married Mann Page of Gloucester. Among the descendants of this union were a governor and many men of station.

Still another of Robert Carter’s daughters, Anne, married Benjamin Harrison and was mother of a son of the same name, Governor of Virginia and signer of the Declaration of Independence. Another of her sons was a brigadier-general in the Revolutionary army, and a third was president of the state senate. This same Anne Carter Harrison was grandmother of one President of the United States, William Henry Harrison, and great-great‑grandmother of another President, Benjamin Harrison.

Mary, fourth daughter of Robert Carter, chose George Braxton as her husband. Their son was Carter Braxton, publicist and signer of the Declaration. The fifth daughter of “King” Carter was Lucy, who became the wife of Henry Fitzhugh, progenitor of distinguished Virginians not a few.

The families into which these daughters granddaughters of “King” Carter were married in the eighteenth century were among those, to be sure, from which the leaders of an aristocratic society would naturally spring. But that society was fairly large by the time of the Revolution. It is hard to believe that pure chance should have made the five daughters of Carter the ancestresses of three signers, three governors, and two Presidents. Again, although the families with which the blood of the daughters of the Carter stock was blended, by these various marriages, were socially of equal distinction, this fact can be established: outside the branches that formed the Carter connection, none of them produced more than the average number of men of superior intellect and achievement. Inexplicable as it may seem in the present limited knowledge of genetics, one is almost forced to conclude that there was something in the stock of the Carters that bred greatness through the female side, or else that something in the dealings of the Carter mothers with their sons inspired successive generations to high endeavor. The Alexandria boy who played on the lawn of Shirley, during his mother’s visits, was wholly unconscious of it but his possession of his mother’s blood, in descent from Robert Carter, was the best endowment for greatness that he could have had in the Virginia of his day. In some subtle way, he was advantaged in the contests of men because his mother was of the Carters of Corotoman.

By those same Carters at Shirley, as by his mother in his own home, Robert saw exemplified a very simple, straightforward loyalty to family, to church, and to God. This was traditional with the Carters, though only one of them, it seems, could ever have been called a religious fanatic. In the daily walk of Charles Carter, Robert’s grandfather, revealed religion and noblesse oblige were blended without any thought of creed or system. Owning perhaps 25,000 acres of land and a multitude of servants, Charles Carter rode in a great coach with postillions, but he abhorred waste, and in his will wrote, “I earnestly request my family and friends that they do not go into mourning or wear black clothes, and this whim I expect they will gratify me in, as I always thought the custom absurd and extravagant answering no good purpose that I know of.” In the belief that his second wife would outlive him, he stated that he considered the £3000 due her under her marriage settlement as “too small a pittance for so valuable a woman she having been every moment of her life a most agreeable, dutiful, and affectionate wife.” He accordingly left her a life-interest in Shirley and the nearby estates.

If crops were a failure on James River, when the season had been favorable on his Rappahannock plantations, he hauled great caravans of corn across the peninsulas and sold it at the normal price to those who needed it. His agent in England had standing orders to give to the hungry of London a certain percentage of the proceeds of the Carter tobacco, because he held that there were not enough poor people in Virginia to call forth the measure of charity he felt he should dispense. One of his many farms he placed at the disposal of a clergyman to whom he was attached, stipulating at the last that the minister’s widow should remain undisturbed on the land during her lifetime. Similarly, he enjoined his executors not to foreclose a mortgage he held on the farm of friends at Malvern Hills — a name destined to suggest something not akin to kindness in the life of his grandson. “From the mansion of hospitality,” read one obituary published not long after Charles Carter’s death on June 28, 1806, “his immense wealth flowed like the silent stream, enlivening and refreshing every object around.” Another friend wrote: “In him the poor have lost their best friend, and of him it might be truly said that he was a father to the fatherless and a husband to the widow — the appeal of the wretched always was effectually attended to by him.”

The same spirit showed itself in Robert’s godfather, Robert Carter. Having abandoned agriculture because of his dislike of slavery, Robert Carter became interested in medicine while nursing one of his sons who had sustained a physical injury. His religion and his art were as one. Both were illuminated in a letter of advice he wrote his children in October, 1803, when he was about to sail for Europe to further his medical education. In intimate, affectionate terms, he exhorted his boys and girls to heed the word of God, to obey the ten commandments, to believe the New Testament, to avoid strong drink, and to be kind to their servants, of whom it was not likely they could be rid. Robert Carter’s religion was of the sort that lives and thrives in friendly, family talk. The extant letter addressed him by Robert E. Lee’s mother displays characteristically both the love and the unfeigned faith of the Carters

Stratford October 1st — 1805 — I hope my dearest Brother has not supposed that his illness has caused me less affliction than his other friends from my not having expressed it to him, for I must ever believe my regret to be more poignant than any other persons, our Parents excepted —

But having been so often an invalid, I imagine myself adequate to judging the feelings of those in a similar situation, and nothing at those periods excited more painful sensations than letters of condolence from affectionate friends.

Your return to America was one of the events I anticipated the greatest happiness from. That happiness is destroyed by your ill health, but I hope my beloved Brother it will soon be realized by your complete recovery.

I wish so anxiously to see you, that trifling difficulties shall not prevent my being gratified as soon after Mr. Lee’s return from the upper Country, as we can make arrangements for the journey, and I implore my Heavenly Father, that I may find you, my best beloved Brother daily progressing in health! Ann Lee.

Dr. Robert Carter Shirley Via City Point.

As in this letter, so in every other expression of her religious life, Ann Lee was typically a Carter. Henry Lee himself held to no creed but he paid tribute to the nobility of his wife’s faith: “Your dearest mother,” he wrote to one of his sons, “is singularly pious from love to Almighty God and love of virtue, which are synonymous; not from fear of hell — a base, low influence.” At home there were prayers, and on Sunday attendance on the Episcopal church of Alexandria, later known as Christ Church, where the solemn words of Holy Writ were made the more impressive because they were read from George Washington’s own Bible, within the walls where his pew still stood intact.

When Robert was seven the war that his father had opposed before his departure for the West Indies had been in progress nearly two years. Robert’s half-brother Henry was commissioned major of the 36th Infantry and was ordered to the Canadian border. Ere long, the boy’s ears caught the report of artillery — the first time that baleful sound had ever reached him. He was told that the town was celebrating because word had come from Lake Erie that Lieutenant Perry had “met the enemy and they are ours.” The next year the rumble of guns had a more ominous pitch. This time the people did not smile. Instead, they blanched, for British ships were in the Potomac and were fighting with the fort below Alexandria. On August 28, 1814, Admiral Cockburn’s squadron appeared off the unarmed, undefended town. Immediately surrendered by her mayor, Alexandria was put under heavy contribution before the war-vessels sailed down the river again. It is likely that Robert was kept indoors or was sent into the country while the redcoats were in the city streets, but during that same humiliating campaign, if he had looked, he might have seen the smoke rising from the capitol which the British had set afire in Washington. A grim early memory it was for a soldier’s son, destined to be a soldier himself!

Before the war was over, the time had come for Robert to begin his formal education. His first books doubtless were opened to him by his mother, who had instructed him thus far in everything else. A little later he was sufficiently advanced in the rudiments to be sent away to the family school. For the Carters were so numerous and so intimate that they maintained two schools for their children, one for girls at Shirley and one for boys at Eastern View, Fauquier County, the home of Mrs. Henry Lee’s sister, Elizabeth Carter, who had married Robert Randolph. It is not known when Robert went to Eastern View, or how long he stayed there. The setting was among the rolling, grass-covered hills where the Robin Hood of the Confederacy, John S. Mosby, was to execute Lee’s orders in later years. Robert’s schoolmates were boy-cousins of his own age. The sons of Robert and Elizabeth Carter Randolph — Beverley, Robert, and Charles Carter — were too old for the instruction given at Eastern View.

Not all of Robert’s first reactions to school were favorable. Character, the essential quality of the man, was discernible already in the boy. From his self-imposed exile, his father wrote of him, “Robert was always good, and will be confirmed in his happy turn of mind by his ever-watchful and affectionate mother. Does he strengthen his native tendency?” But at Eastern View, away from the daily discipline of his mother, he became a trifle headstrong, after the manner of the imperious Lees. When he came home, perhaps for a holiday, this was observed by his careful mother, who mentioned it with sisterly frankness to Mrs. Randolph when she wrote to thank her for her kindness to the lad. Mrs. Randolph replied that she had always found Robert “a most engaging child,” not difficult to handle, but that if he had become so, the only advice she could give was that which she applied with her own boys — to “whip and pray, and pray and whip.”

The life of the family changed somewhat during the years Robert probably was at Eastern View. For a time the finances of Mrs. Lee had been less strained. In 1813 she had been able to visit Long Branch and had purchased a new carriage. By 1816, and perhaps a little earlier, the family had moved from Cameron Street to a house on Washington Street at the corner of Princess. From this home, in 1816, the oldest of Ann Carter Lee’s children, Charles Carter Lee, started for Harvard, which his father for some reason preferred at the time to his own alma mater, Princeton, and to William and Mary, where Henry had been a student. Carter remained at Cambridge three years and graduated second in the class of 1819. Apparently he was supported while there by an allowance from his mother. Not long after Carter left, the elder Henry Lee’s letters told of his plans to return home. Ill or better, he was determined to come back to his own state. But months passed, and no ship was available. Finally, Lee wrote that he would sail for Savannah, Ga., and would attempt to procure passage thence to Virginia. The next news was that Robert’s father had been stricken mortally on the voyage and had been put ashore at Dungeness, Cumberland Island, Ga., the property of the daughter of his old commander, General Greene. He had refused to be operated upon when the physician had urged it as a means of saving his life. “My dear sir,” he had said, “were the great Washington alive, and here, and joining you in advocating it, I would still resist.” Babbling something about his son Carter, he had died at Dungeness, March 25, 1818. The details of his passing were not known to the family until the next autumn.

The death of Henry Lee meant financial relief, rather than otherwise for his family, but it was not mourned the less on that account. Despite his failure to practise all that he preached, his sons honored his memory and cherished his sayings. Perhaps certain of the qualities of Robert Lee may have been strengthened by the exhortations his father addressed to Carter in letters the family took care to preserve:

“I would rather see you unlettered and unnoticed, if virtuous in practice as well as theory, than see you the equal in glory to the great Washington.” “Fame in arms or art, however conspicuous, is naught, unless bottomed on virtue.”

“It is hard to say whether too much eating or too much drinking most undermines the constitution.” “Cleanliness of person is not only comely to all beholders, but is indispensable to sanctity of body. Trained by the best of mothers to value it, you will never lose sight of it.”

“Many lads . . . fall into another habit which hurts only themselves and which certainly stupefies the senses — immoderate sleeping.”

“You know my abhorrence of lying, and you have been often told by me that it led to every vice and cancelled every tendency to virtue. Never forget this truth and disdain this mean and infamous practice.”

“Self command . . . is the pivot upon which the character, fame and independence of us mortals hang.”

“Avoid debt, the sink of mental power and the subversion of independence, which draws into debasement even virtue, in appearance, certainly, if not in reality. ‘A man ought not only to be virtuous in reality, but he must always appear so,’ thus said to me the great Washington.”

“. . . Avoid all frivolous authors, such as novel writers, and all skeptical authors, whether religious, philosophic, or moral.”

“The rank of men, as established by the concurrent judgment of ages stands thus: heroes, legislators, orators, and poets. The most useful and, in my opinion, the most honorable is the legislator, which so far from being incompatible with the profession of law, is congenial to it. Generally, mankind admire most the hero; of all, the most useless, except when the safety of a nation demands his saving arm.”

These pathetic admonitions were rendered the more impressive on Robert’s mind when he was old enough to realize that Henry Lee had written them, from his sorrowful exile, in the spirit of Wolsey’s “Mark but my fall and that that ruined me.”

Although Robert was only eleven when his father died, responsibility was soon to fall heavily on his straight young shoulders. His sister Ann, to whom he showed special devotion, continued sickly and sometimes required medical attention in Philadelphia. Mrs. Lee was slowly slipping into chronic invalidism. Carter returned from Cambridge in 1819 but opened his law office in Washington, and was not much at home to aid in the management of the household. The next year President Monroe gave a midshipman’s commission in the navy to Smith, who went to sea. The duties of an only son and of a daughter as well fell on Robert. Besides attending to the horses, he “carried the keys,” in a now-forgotten Virginia phrase, and apportioned the food-supplies of the family. When free from his lessons he often accompanied his mother if she drove out during the afternoon. In case she was in low spirits, he admonished her that the drive would not do her good unless she were cheerful. On cold days, when the chill from the Potomac crept into the vehicle, he sometimes pulled out his jackknife and pretended to keep out the wind by stuffing paper into the cracks.

This attendance upon his mother continued until Robert left Alexandria. More than anything else, perhaps, his filial attention to her was the prime obligation of his youth, precisely as care for an invalid wife was to be one of the chief duties of his mature years. The man who was to order Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg got part of his preparation for war by nursing sick women. The self-command that his mother had inculcated from his babyhood was confirmed at the bedside. Yet his association with his mother did not make the boy effeminate, though it gave him a love for the company of women. He stayed at home uncomplainingly when his mother required his attendance, but when he was free he delighted to swim in the Potomac, to share in the sports of the neighborhood boys, with his cousin and playmate, Cassius Lee, or to follow the chase all day in the rolling country behind Alexandria.

If Robert had a longer holiday he spent it at Chatham, or at Ravensworth with the Fitzhughs, or at Stratford with his brother Henry, who, about the time Robert was ten, married Anne McCarty of Westmoreland County. The dates of his visits to the old home of the Lees are not known, but he must have gone there not infrequently, because in later life he cherished clear memories of a place of which he could have had only the vaguest impressions before the family moved to Alexandria.

The great brick mansion-house, Stratford Hall, had been built about 1730, in the form of a large B. Below was a half-cellar with small windows. The principal apartments were on the floor above, reached by long steps. Over all was a high attic under a shingle roof. From the two wings, corridors ran to a central hall, some thirty feet square, with bookcases in panelled walls. Here were the portraits of the earlier Lees.

Robert not only explored every corner of the house, but heard all the myths that were told him about the greater glories of an earlier Stratford — how it had boasted a hundred chambers, with four outbuildings of fifteen rooms each, how its stables had stalls for five score horses, how it had been burned in the days of Thomas Lee, how the East India Company had rebuilt it in tribute to that worthy, and how from the privy purse Queen Caroline herself had made a gift for reconstruction. None of this was true except that George II probably granted the distressed proprietor a few hundred pounds. The house the boy visited was, in reality, the only one that ever stood on the site, but the fanciful stories formed a respected tradition, real in every detail to Robert. As he sat in the hall, he must have seen the ghosts of his ancestors. When he walked along the winding way that led through the vast, affrighting garret to promenades framed on the roof around the central chimneys, he must surely have heard the scraping of the fiddles in the band that the builder of Stratford was reputed to have kept at the call of his daughters, while they took the air or danced with their suitors in the hall.

In front of the mansion-house, where the none-too‑fertile fields of Westmoreland stretched away, the widespreading lawn was dotted with oaks and poplars. On one side of the greensward was a grove of sugar-maples, past which a driveway curved up to the entrance. Flanking the central building was the garden. Toward the Potomac were open fields and then woodland, through which a lane led to a high bluff, whence there was a long sweep of shining waters. Set off from each corner of the residence were four smaller brick structures, to which Robert Edward Lee must have been a frequent visitor, especially the kitchen, with a fireplace like a dragon’s mouth, hot and steaming, but with the lure of sweet odors. Beyond the outhouses, to the left as one approached the mansion from the highway, were the large brick stables, where horses were forever stamping, and hens were always scratching and clucking. It was a realm of endless marvels for a boy of ten.

The young master of Stratford at that time could have had little in common with his half-brother Robert. Henry Lee the fourth was later called “Black-Horse Harry” or “Black Harry,” both to describe his conduct and to distinguish him from “Light-Horse Harry,” his father. Born the year the Philadelphia convention met, he was twenty years older than Robert. He had been to the College of William and Mary in 1808, though there is no record of his graduation. His father’s facility for composition, somewhat accentuated, he had inherited, and he was developing a deep, partisan interest in politics. as the rich member of the family, he must have seemed an awesome person to Robert, but he had about him then little to suggest the passionate tragedy that was to wreck his career.

As visits and pleasure were interspersed with hard work for Robert, he developed rapidly in physique and in character, and by the time he was thirteen he had learned all that could conveniently be taught him at home and at Eastern View. Accordingly, by 1820, possibly before that year, Robert entered the Alexandria academy. This had been established about 1785, and had been privileged to list Washington as one of its first trustees. Occupying a one‑story brick house on the east side of Washington Street, between Duke and Wolfe, the school was made free to all Alexandria boys after January, 1821. Here Robert met at their desks the boys with whom he had played in the fields, and here he came under the tutelage of William B. Leary, an Irishman for whom young Lee acquired enduring respect.

For approximately three years Robert studied the rudiments of a classical education under Mr. Leary. He read Homer and Longinus in Greek. From Tacitus and Cicero he became so well-grounded in Latin that he never quite forgot the language, though he did not study it after he was seventeen. Late in life, he expressed deep regret that he had not pursued his classical course further. In mathematics he shone, for his mind was already of the type that delighted in the precise reasoning of algebra and geometry.

By the end of 1823, and perhaps earlier, he had completed the course of study at the Alexandria academy. What should he do next? It was a question not easily answered. He could not continue to follow cultural study and settle down as a country-gentleman, after the manner of his ancestors, because he did not have money for the education, much less the land on which to live in leisure. He possessed no aptitude for public utterance and no taste for the law. Although a moral, high-minded boy and an attendant upon Christ Church, deeply if indirectly influenced by Reverend William Meade, he had never presented himself for confirmation and he probably never gave a thought to the ministry. There is no record that he ever debated the possibilities of a medical career, despite his contact with the sick and his growing skill in nursing. What, then, should he do?

While this question was being debated, Henry Lee wrote a book that may have contributed in an unexpected way to the answer. In 1822, Judge William Johnson of the Supreme Court of the United States published in two volumes his Sketches of the Life and Correspondence of Nathanael Greene, a work in which he pointed out various errors and exposed what he regarded as false claims in “Light-Horse Harry” Lee’s Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department. There probably was no animus on Johnson’s part toward Lee, but some of his criticisms were severe. Henry Lee the younger felt that his father’s honor and military reputation had been assailed, and he wrote in reply a book of more than 500 pages under the title The Campaign of 1781 in the Carolinas; with Remarks Historical and Critical on Johnson’s Life of Greene. It is more than likely that Johnson’s charges and the preparation of Henry Lee’s reply were both discussed in Alexandria, and that an hereditary fondness for a career of arms was thereby strengthened in Robert. His brother Smith had gone into the navy: why should not Robert go to the United States Military Academy at West Point and be a soldier? His love of mathematics would help; his education would cost him nothing. By this process of reasoning, it would appear, Robert E. Lee decided to become a soldier. He lived to see the time when he considered that decision the greatest mistake of his life, though he then had behind him all his military achievements from Vera Cruz to Petersburg.

The age-limits for admission to West Point were fourteen to twenty years, for boys who were at least four feet, nine inches, free of physical defects, able to read and write well, familiar with arithmetic, and willing to sign articles to remain five years in the army, including the four years of cadetship. Robert could meet all these requirements, if he could have the good fortune to be named one of the 250 cadets for whom the government made provision. The appointments were at the pleasure of the President, on the nomination of the Secretary of War, who at that time followed no rule respecting their geographical distribution. Nine Virginians had been appointed in 1822. Six more had been named in 1823, but thirty-six applications had then been rejected. In an effort to satisfy as many as he might, the secretary, John C. Calhoun, was lavishly accepting nominations, beyond Monroe’s term of office; but the number did not suffice even then, and the scramble was keen. Robert’s age and his mother’s circumstances were such that he could not afford to wait on a chance appointment. He must either begin soon as a soldier, or turn immediately to something else. It consequently was decided in the family circle that he should make personal application to the Secretary of War. But who would introduce him to that august personage? The duty fell to the family’s counsellor, William H. Fitzhugh of Ravensworth, whose kindness had not weakened in all the years of the Lees’ residence in Alexandria. He wrote Secretary Calhoun as follows:

Ravensworth Feb 7th 1824. My dear Sir,

I cannot permit the young gentleman, who will hand you this letter, to make his intended application, without carrying with him, such testimony in his behalf, as a long & an intimate acquaintance with himself and his family, justify me in giving. He is the son of Genl. Henry Lee, with whose history, you are, of course, acquainted; and who (whatever may have been the misfortune of his latter years) had certainly established, by his revolutionary services, a strong claim to the gratitude of his country. He is the son also of one of the finest women, the State of Virginia has ever produced. Possessed, in a very eminent degree, of all those qualities, which peculiarly belong to the female character of the South, she is rendered doubly interesting by her meritorious & successful exertions to support, in comfort, a large family, and to give to all her children excellent educations.

The young gentleman, whom I have now the pleasure of introducing to you, as a candidate for West-point, is her youngest son. An intimate acquaintance, & a constant intercourse with him, almost from his infancy, authorize me to speak in the most unqualified terms of his amiable disposition, & his correct and gentlemanly habits. He is disposed to devote himself to the profession of arms. But his final determination on this subject, must, of course, depend on the result of his present application, and you will find him prepared to acquiesce in whatever decision, circumstances may require you to make in his case. Next, however, to promising him the commission, which he asks, the greatest favor you can do him will be to tell him promptly if you think the obstacles to his success are insurmountable. His own age (eighteen I believe) and the situation of his mother require that he should lose no time in selecting the employment to which his future life is to be devoted.

Accept my dear Sir the assurance of the very great respect with which I am                                      Yor &c                             W. H. Fitzhugh

Robert presented this letter in person. A strange interview it must have been between the man who would soon be the “father of nullification” and the boy who, in maturity, was to carry the burden of the bloody struggle that was, in a sense, the unescapable consequence of the application of that doctrine. Calhoun could not have failed to be impressed by the young Lee and probably told him that if he produced suitable recommendations, they would be considered. The boy promptly filed an endorsement from Wm. B. Leary, his teacher, but as this was clothed in rather general terms, Robert presented another and more specific statement to this effect.

“Robert Lee was formerly a pupil of mine. While under my care I can vouch for his correct and gentlemanly deportment. In the various branches, to which his attention has been applied, I flatter myself that his information will be found adequate to the most sanguine expectations of his friends. With me he has read all the minor classics in addition to Homer & Longinus, Tacitus & Cicero. He is well versed in arithmetic, Algebra & Euclid. In regard to what he has read with me I am certain that when examined he will neither disappoint me or his friends.

W B Leary”

Robert must also have had an intimation from some sources that his chances would be better if he had the backing of some members of Congress. As a resident of the District of Columbia he had, of course, no representation, but the Lees were traditionally of Westmoreland and had never formally quit the county. Robert or some member of the family, accordingly invoked the help of Congressman R. S. Garnett, who wrote Calhoun as follows:

Washington City        Feb 16 1824 Sir

I beg leave to recommend to your favorable attention, Master Robert Lee who is desirous to be placed in the Military academy as a cadet. He is a son of the late General Henry Lee and has strong hereditary claims on the country. I am not able to state what proficiency he has made in his studies, but testimonials will be exhibited by him in relation to this subject, that I presume will prove satisfactory. He is about 18 years of age, and of excellent disposition. If he can obtain the appointment he desires, I have no doubt that he will justify the expectations which his recommendations would authorize

Very respectfully               Your Servant R S Garnett

C. F. Mercer, congressman from a part of Virginia immediately adjacent to the district, also wrote a general letter of endorsement which Henry Lee, or some interested friend, took the trouble to circulate among senators and members of the House of Representatives. This was dated from the Senate, as though it had originated there. Of its signers, George Tucker, like Mercer and Garnett, was a member of the House from Virginia. James Barbour was senator from Virginia and was to succeed Calhoun as Secretary of War. Richard H. Johnson, then senator from Kentucky, later became Vice-President under Van Buren. Henry Johnson, senator from Tennessee, soon resigned to become Governor of Louisiana. The other Tennessee senator, Wm. Kelly, likewise signed, as did David Holmes, a native of Virginia, and spokesman for Mississippi in the upper house. Their joint letter read:

Senate Chamber        Feb. 23d 1824 Sir We beg leave to recommend to your favorable consideration Mr Robert Edward Lee, a son of the late Genl. Henry Lee of Virginia as an applicant for admission to the military academy at West Point.

The assurances which we have received of the talents and attainments of this young gentleman apart from the regard we feel for the military services of his deceased father, induces us to hope that the gratification of his wishes may prove compatible with the rules which you have deemed it proper to establish for the admission of cadets into the academy.

We are, Sir                                      Very respectfully                 Your Obedient Servants       C. F. Mercer George Tucker R.S. Garnett James Barbour Rh. M. Johnson H. Johnson David Holmes Wm Kelly

Endorsement by five senators and three representatives was certain to be weighty, especially when given the son of a Revolutionary officer, who had fought in Secretary Calhoun’s native South Carolina. This helpful paper was supplemented by a letter of a more personal character from Robert’s older brother Charles Carter in these terms: “Sir,

“I enclose you a letter from my youngest brother, who is an applicant, as you know, for a place at the Military Academy. Permit me to add, by way of a supplement to his statement, what it would have been unbecoming in him to have averred, but what I hope I may be excused for alledging, [sic] viz: that his intellect is seems to be a good one, that he appears to be sufficiently inclined to study, that his disposition is amiable, & his morals irreproachable. I can adduce no other merits on which to rest his claims to the preferment he seeks at your hands, unless perhaps the revolutionary services of the father should obtain some favour for the son.

“I had rather have taken any other opportunity than the present to assure you of the sincere respect & esteem of Sir, Your most obedient & humble servant                 C. C. Lee. Alex. Feb. 28th 1824 To J. C. Calhoun Esquire.”

Henry Lee added his influence in behalf of Robert with a longer letter, in which the claims of the boy were based in large part on his father’s military service: “Sir, “My brother Robert E Lee has applied to you for the appointment of a Cadet

I know of no principle of rational selection, that should exempt him from the hazards of a fair competition upon the ground of personal advantages and mental qualifications, (for which he is well prepared) but the just and admitted one of refering to the services of the Father in estimating the claims of the Son. In the case of the late Genl. Lee it was confessed by Mr. Monroe that the title of his offspring to national patronage ceteris paribus was emminently strong; and on the principle here suggested, he appointed my brother Smith a Midshipman in 1820, against a force of competition and a weight of previous application, as great at least as those which now exist.

“On this principle I beg leave to rest the claims of Robert. To a person of your enlarged sentiments, and accurate knowledge of our national history it would be unnecessary to enumerate the exertions of my father in the cause of this country, or to trace the grand and beautiful process of morality, by which the orphans of publick benefactors, become the children of the State.

I have the honour to be                            with perfect respect Sir,                        Your very obedient & very humble Servant H. Lee Fredericksburg, Virgina. 6th March 1824.”

Calhoun had before him numerous applications from Virginia and was being importuned in behalf of new candidates every few weeks. Robert could only wait and hope, because he had now brought to bear all the influence his family could exert. Finally there came notice from the War Department: As of March 11, Robert was appointed to West Point, but owing to the long list of applicants, he could not be admitted until July 1, 1825. That entailed a year’s delay but it meant opportunity then!

Doubtless there was much excitement in the mind of the boy, and doubtless, too, he made several drafts before he concluded his letter of acceptance which, for all his care, did not escape one error of spelling. It is the earliest letter in his autograph now extant. “Sir

“I hereby accept the appointment to the station of a Cadet in the service of the United States, with which I have been honnoured by the President. “The above is the declaration of consent which my letter of appointment instructs me should accompany my acceptance. “I remain with the highest respect, Sir

Your most obliged & most obedient Servant           R. E. Lee Alexandria. April 1st 1824 to The Honble J. C. Calhoun” Mrs. Lee’s consent, in the simple terms of the army regulations, was written at the top of her son’s letter in this language: “Sir

“As the surviving Parent of Robert E. Lee I consent to his signing articles, binding himself to serve as a Cadet five years, to be computed from the time of his joining the Military Academy. Ann H. Lee”

It is a singular fact that the next appointee of Calhoun, after the date on which Lee and one other boy were named, should have been Joseph E. Johnston. Oddly enough, also, the first letter of Jefferson Davis that has survived the years is one in which he, like Lee, acknowledged and accepted an appointment from Calhoun to the military academy.

The very atmosphere of Alexandria seemed to lend itself to martial affairs after Robert learned that he would be admitted to the military academy. Greece was struggling for liberty, and all the intellectuals of the Potomac were much interested in the contest. Soon they had promise of a sensation closer at hand: Lafayette was coming! “America’s Friend,” now an old man, was revisiting the scenes of his greatest adventure. He was, of course, to make a pilgrimage to Mount Vernon and would walk the streets of Washington’s city. All that the little town could offer, of hospitality and display, was put forth for the venerable marquis when he arrived in October, 1824. On Washington Street, which is 100 feet wide, the city erected a triple arch, north of King Street. The central span over the roadway was sixty-eight feet. Each sidewalk had a lesser arch of eighteen feet. In the direction of Lafayette’s approach, this greeting was blazoned: “Welcome LaFayette! A Nation’s Gratitude Thy Due.” On the opposite face of the main arch was a quotation from one of his speeches: “For a Nation to Be Free, It is Sufficient That She Wills It.” Atop the arch, as a crowning touch of realism, Colonel Mountford, father of the Alexandria Museum, placed a live eagle from the city’s collection. On the great day, the bird obligingly spread its wings just at the moment the city’s guest was passing beneath. At least it was so reported.

For no family in the town was Lafayette’s visit more interesting than for the Lees. The marquis had not forgotten the brilliant cavalryman of Washington’s army, who was only a year and a half his senior. Hearing that the widow of his comrade was residing in Alexandria, he made a call on the morning of October 14, 1824, when Robert doubtless saw him. That contact of his youth was one of the many that bound the boy in spirit to the Revolution.

The very day before Lafayette called, a young Quaker named James Hallowell had brought his bride to Oronoko Street, where he proposed to open a boys’ school in the house adjoining that of the Lees. For a while he had no pupils. Then it was discovered that he was a man of unusual ability and of much skill in teaching. About January 1, 1825, Robert Lee’s chum, Cassius, son of Edmund Jennings Lee, was sent by his father to Mr. Hallowell.

Perhaps it was on the basis of Cassius’s report that the family began to talk of giving Robert a few months under the new dominie. The boy had not been in school for a season; he naturally was “getting rusty” on his mathematics. Would it not be well to have him refurbish that subject and prepare himself somewhat ahead on the more advanced mathematics he was to study at West Point? Robert entered in February, 1825, and remained with Mr. Hallowell until he was ready to set out for West Point. The charges were $10 a quarter, no small item to a widow who had to count costs carefully, but the expense was justified. Hallowell was ambitious and as his students were still few in number, he was able to give the boy intimate and close instruction. Robert responded to Hallowell’s full satisfaction. “He was a most exemplary pupil in every respect,” Hallowell wrote long after. “He was never behind time at his studies; never failed in a single recitation; was perfectly observant of the rules and regulations of the institution; was gentlemanly, unobtrusive, and respectful in all his deportment to teacher and his fellow-students. His specialty was finishing up. He imparted a finish and a neatness, as he proceeded, to everything he undertook. One of the branches of mathematics he studied with me was Conic Sections, in which some of the diagrams are very complicated. He drew the diagrams on a slate; and although he well knew that the one he was drawing would have to be removed to make room for another, he drew each one with as much accuracy and finish, lettering and all, as if it were to be engraved and printed.” The early, earnest lessons in self-control were yielding results.

On March 17, 1825, unknown to him, Robert’s name was read out at the military academy as a member of the incoming class. Soon thereafter he must have started to acquire the leather trunk and all the clothing and equipment called for in the precise regulations of West Point — from ” prs. of Monroe shoes” to ” foul-clothes’ bag, made of ticken.” When June came, all was ready, but his mother was bewildered: “How can I live without Robert?” she asked, “he is both son and daughter to me.” Loath he was to leave her, but he was then past eighteen, very well grown, and anxious to try the reputed hard classes and stern discipline of the military academy. He set out while Abraham Lincoln was battling for the rudiments of an education in the Indiana backwoods. Three-year‑old Ulysses Grant was then toddling about his father’s farm in Clermont County, Ohio.

Chapter 3: First Impressions of West Point.

By steamer and stage, Robert Lee journeyed toward West Point in June, 1825. At New York City, which was then a bewildering Babel of at least 200,000 people, Robert doubtless took the Hudson River steamboat. In a few hours he was deposited in a skiff off his landing place, for the vessel disdained to stop at the nascent academy. He reported to the superintendent, and then to the adjudant, who assigned him to quarters.

The institution that Robert saw at dawn the next day, as he watched the cadets muster for roll-call, has one of the loveliest sites in America. West Point is situated thirty-seven miles north of New York, on the west bank of the Hudson, at a point where the river bends from east to south. The high hills that close in on the stream are here brought down to a lofty plain, as if some giant had toppled the heights into the river, and then had smoothed out a bit of land in order to give favored mortals a vantage point from which to view the Hudson. At the tip of the point was old Fort Clinton. Above the plain the ramparts of Fort Putnam were already weathering. Beyond them were piled up the wooded hills and the unmarred mountains.

The military academy was then twenty-three years old, though its corps of cadets had been small until 1817, eight years before Robert’s arrival. Its buildings, which were few and unimpressive, had been erected to the west of Fort Clinton and not far from the river. The largest structures were two stone dormitories of approximately the same graceless age, set at right angles to each other and known as the North and South Barracks. The North were of four stories, and the South of three, with a most unattractive piazza. West of the South Barracks was the two‑story Academy, or academic building, which made some languid pretenses at architectural dignity. Beyond the Academy was the long mess-hall, also of two stories, a forlorn place, used as a hotel by the mess contractor, William B. Cozzens, who nightly crowded into its ten rooms most of those who came to the Point to visit friends. These buildings were all that were used at that time by the students. To all four of them stucco had been applied with generous hand and with much success in adding to their natural ugliness.

Not far off were the wooden “Long Barracks” put up during the Revolution and formerly occupied by cadets. Overlooking the north crest of the plain was one double stone building, while a solitary brick residence defaced the western side of the plain. The house that had been Washington’s headquarters was to the north of the Point, about a quarter of a mile away. To the south, as steep and narrow a path as ever the righteous walked led up from the cottage where Kosciusko had lived. On the east were a howitzer, a couple of mortars and the ten cannon of the academy, two of which had been sent over with the French during the 1770’s and bore the somewhat undemocratic inscription, Ultima Ratio Regum. More conspicuous than barracks or battery — a warning to all newcomers that the soldier’s life was not one of ease — was the well-trampled field where the cadets did their drilling. Out of bounds were a few houses of unhappy aspect and of reputation not uniformly of the best. Chief among them was North’s Tavern, at which, as a sorrowing board of visitors not long before had affirmed, the cadets individually were spending an average of $50 per annum. It was all unfamiliar to Robert, and doubtless most impressive, but the landscape could not have seemed altogether alien to him. There was something about it that suggested the upper stretches of the Potomac, near the falls where his luckless father had fashioned in fancy a great metropolis.

The worst thing at the academy was among the first to which the new cadets were introduced — the food. At seven o’clock they were marched to the mess-hall where they could not fail to get an unpleasant opinion of the hospitality of Mr. Cozzens. One of the boys who was received at the same time with Robert found the diet of indescribable badness. The soup was unpalatable at dinner time, the molasses was inedible, and the pudding was untouchable.

Not long after his arrival, Robert was summoned before the academic board for his preliminary examination. There at the head of a table, where a number of officers and professors sat in inquisition, he saw at closer range the gentleman to whom he had reported when he reached West Point, Sylvanus Thayer, brevet lieutenant-colonel of engineers and superintendent of the military academy. Then forty years of age, with clean-cut features and the bearing of an aristocrat, Thayer was flawlessly apparelled in uniform, with the white drilling trousers that he never put aside till frost. He was an austere man in his official relations and steadfastly repelled any appeal to sentiment or emotion. An instructor at West Point prior to the War of 1812, he had been an engineer during that struggle. In 1815 he had been sent to Europe to study the allied operations in front of Paris and to report on military schools and works. After two years, he was called to the weak academy at West Point. As superintendent there, he had greatly raised the standards of instruction and had placed the school under a stern and exacting discipline. Robert Lee was to find that while thoughtful people recognized Thayer’s service to his country in training young soldiers, the cadets disliked him and accused him of constant espionage. No matter how venal or disreputable the source, Thayer would always give ear to every accusation against any member of the corps.

Robert’s examination was oral and easy, and after it had been completed, he and his fellow-newcomers were assigned tents on the plain, Camp Adams, as it was styled in honor of the new President, John Quincy Adams. No announcement of the board’s decision as to which of the applicants would be admitted to the academy was made until June 28. At 8 P.M. that day, the applicants were ordered to form in front of the barracks. When they were in line and at attention, they were told that an alphabetical list of those who had passed the examination would be read, and that as each man’s name was called he was to advance four paces.

Down the roll, through an interminable list of H’s” the adjutant went — “Charles W. Hackley, Archibald Hall, James W. Hamilton, William Hoffman, Theophilus H. Holmes, Chileab S. Howe, Franklin E. Hunt, Hampton Hunter.” Next into the “J’s”: “Peter Johnson, Joseph E. Johnston, Fayette Jones.” The “K’s” followed: “John L. Keffer, Miner Knowlton”

Then — “Robert E. Lee —” The boy stepped forward four paces, and became Cadet Lee.

Together with his future room-mates, Lee now proceeded to purchase the Spartan requirements for their joint toilet — a looking-glass, a wash-stand and basin, a pitcher, a tin pail, a broom, and a scrubbing brush. He bought, also, a regulation gray uniform, four pair of white trousers, a blue fatigue jacket and trousers, two silk stocks, and that crowning adornment of the cadet, a cap. This was of black leather, bell crowned, seven inches high, with a polished leather visor, a diamond-shaped yellow plate, an eight-inch black plume for dress parade, and, for less formal use, a leather cockade, to say nothing of the eagle and the yellow scales that could be fastened in front or under the chin. In procuring this equipment young Lee had his first acquaintance with his account-book, on which all purchases were entered, to be charged against his pay of $16 a month or against his subsistence allowance of $12 a month. He needed all his shining new array almost as soon as he got it, for on July 2 there was much pomp and a formal review in honor of Lafayette, who paid the academy a visit. Robert doubtless saw the marquis again, but hardly at so close range as when the old veteran had visited Mrs. Lee in Alexandria.

Lee’s duties while the corps was under canvas consisted of four hours’ drill each day, much of it, at the outset, directed by an upperclassman. In addition, he probably had instruction in the mysteries of the dance, which had become compulsory at West Point for third and fourth classmen. There were, however, no classes during July and August, and many of the men who had just completed their second year at the academy were away on leave. It was a period of extreme heat, followed by a long succession of rainy days.

The boy had ample time to prepare for the work of the coming winter and to learn the “Thou-shalt‑nots” that constituted a large part of life at West Point. No cadet could drink or play cards, or use tobacco, or bring the weed on the grounds or keep it on his person. He might not have in his room any cooking utensils, any games, any novel, any romance or any play. With the consent of the superintendent, he might subscribe to one periodical, but to only one. Too much reading was accounted bad for a soldier: the library was open only two hours a week — on Saturday afternoons. If the cadet possessed any musical instrument, he might not perform on it except during the hour of recreation. Societies and meetings were forbidden without the consent of the superintendent. No visitors might call on Sunday, in study hours, or in the evenings. A cadet was forbidden to go beyond designated limits, or to drop in at North’s, or to loiter a bit around the public wharf, or even to bathe in the river without the permission of constituted authority. As for the favorite pranks of academicians, woe to him who slyly dropped a bucket of waste-water on a fellow cadet passing under the window. And a double woe to him who answered for another at roll-call or reviled a sentinel. Any compact on the part of old cadets to haze the “plebes” by refusing to speak to them carried with it the threat of instant dismissal. Fist fights and their far more foolish counterpart, the duello, were forbidden in all forms and in all circumstances. A cadet might not sign any statement regarding any fellow-cadet’s behavior or grievance in an affair of honor, and if he heard of any challenge in the making or of any rendezvous with pistols at dawn, he was supposed to report it. And so for a still longer list of things that a gentleman and soldier should not do — if Colonel Thayer knew it. If a student were aggrieved, he had an appeal to the superintendent, who was required to investigate forthwith, and if the verdict of the superintendent did not satisfy the complainant, he could formally address the Secretary of War. Such were the regulations; the practice fell far short of this stern assumption of the perfectibility of youth. There was drunkenness and fighting and abstention from parade and occasional visits after taps to North’s, where supper and strong drink were to be had. Cadets were caught often and not infrequently were court-martialled but were rarely dismissed.

While in camp that first summer, Robert was directly under the charge of the commandant of cadets, whose rule only Colonel Thayer himself could dispute during the two months when classes were not held. The commandant was Major William J. Worth, whom Lee was to know better in the years that lay ahead. Although only thirty-one at that time, Worth had behind him already a record of service in the War of 1812. Tall, handsome, and a splendid horseman, he was physically the ideal soldier. To the irreverent cadets, who admired him but saw his weaknesses with the clear eye of youth, he was known as “Old Hant,” perhaps because he “haunted” the barracks at hours when the boys thought he might well have been in his own quarters.

The first-classmen stood only a little lower than the officers themselves in the estimation of a new “plebe” like Lee. The outstanding cadet among the boys who had just become first-classmen was a youth of twenty-two, of superb physique and magnificent head. All his fellow-cadets looked up to him and expected him to become a leader of men. His name was Albert Sidney Johnston. At the head of that class stood William H. C. Bartlett, a mathematician of high promise, already designated as acting assistant professor of mathematics. Midway this new first class stood a lad who was writing a diary every night and was occasionally playing a flute, unaware that he was to make a far louder noise in the world — Samuel P. Heintzelman. And near the bottom of the class, was a youngster fated to be remembered whenever the battle of Seven Pines was mentioned — Silas Casey.

Of these lordlings of the institution, “Plebe” Lee saw little that first summer. Somewhat less awesome, but still of a dignity not to be presumed upon, were the new second-classmen, most of whom were then absent on summer leave, after two years of hard work. When they returned, Lee discovered that some of them were brilliant students, but that few of them had outstanding soldierly qualities. Among them was a versatile young Virginian named Philip Saint George Cooke. He was to become the father of a girl who afterwards married a gay young soldier, then unborn, whose triple initials prompted every one to call him “Jeb” Stuart. Then there was a lad with a great head and luminous eyes, Leonidas Polk of Louisiana. Close to Polk in the standing of the class was Gabriel J. Rains, who was to develop inventive ability. High on the roll was Napoleon B. Buford.

The third class, that summer of 1825, consisted of the boys who had just been promoted from the lowly rank of the “plebes” and who, in consequence, like most new gentry, were exceedingly jealous of their prerogatives and scornfully superior to the lads who had come to the academy only the week before. Intellectually, the leader of this class was a lovable, genial youth, Albert E. Church, by name, who shone in mathematics. The boy who cut the largest and the most tragic figure in life, among all the class of 1828, was a tall youngster of sharp, clean-cut features. It is not known when Lee first saw him, or how he came to hear his name, but it is certain the newcomer learned on August 29 that a military court had been appointed to try Cadet Jefferson Davis, who was in an exceedingly embarrassed plight. He had gone out of bounds to a place where liquor had been sold — both acts strictly forbidden by the regulations. Not only so, but he had imbibed personally. The evidence was conclusive, and on September 3 the court-martial found him guilty, with a sentence of dismissal. Clemency was recommended, however, in view of Davis’s previous good record, and he was allowed to remain at the academy.

Of Lee’s own classmates, the boy destined to be his chief rival for honors was a New Yorker of studious habits and uncommon ability, Charles Mason. Another who was to contest academic leadership was William H. Harford, a Georgian, keen-minded and diligent. A third boy who displayed promise from the outset was Ormsby MacK. Mitchel, later a famed astronomer. The lad to whom Lee was to be most drawn was Jack Mackay of Georgia. Next to him, perhaps, was to come Joseph E. Johnston, a Virginian whose father had fought with “Light-Horse Harry” Lee in the Carolinas.

By the time Lee had become acquainted with the corps and had learned the rudiments of drill, August 27 arrived, the encampment ended and the corps went back to barracks. The cadets had formed four companies while in camp; now they were only two, one in the North Barracks, four men to a room, the other in the South, with three men bunked together. Every boy in turn was room-orderly for a week, and if he failed to keep the quarters in condition to pass daily inspection, he served an additional week. Saturday afternoon, he had the pleasure of scrubbing the room-floors, preparatory to turning over his duties to his successor on Sunday morning.

It was a full and instant routine on which Robert entered when recitations were resumed on September 1. At dawn of day, reveille was sounded, and the cadets had to dress immediately and answer roll-call. Quarters had then to be put in order and arms and accoutrements had to be cleaned. Half an hour after reveille, the cadet officers made their rounds of the barracks. From the firing of the sunrise gun until seven o’clock, the first-classmen studied mathematics. Then they formed squads in front of the South Barracks and marched to the commons. Each squad was composed of the men who sat at the same table, and each was in charge of the “carver,” a gentleman-cadet who had little meat to cut, but that of the toughest. Within the mess-hall, all had their regular places and might neither indulge in promiscuous conversation nor summon the slow-footed serving-man. Only the “carver” could enjoy that measure of intimacy with the waiter.

Thirty minutes for breakfast, then came guard-mount at 7:30, and at eight class parade. Following this each section of the class in mathematics formed on the parade-ground, or, if the weather was bad, in the lower hall of the North Barracks. There was another roll-call, and a brisk march to the academy, for Colonel Thayer fulfilled to the letter the army regulation that the cadets spend not less than nine, nor more than ten hours a day, at their studies.

The academic building to which Lee and his classmates tramped at eight o’clock each week-day morning had the chapel in the centre on the ground level, with the library above. To the west of the chapel was the chemical laboratory, over which was the “philosophical room,” or physics laboratory. East of the chapel was the engineering department and, on the second story, the adjutant’s office. In the room where mathematics was taught, blackboards covered the walls. All the “academies,” as the separate classrooms were styled, had sand on the floor.

Robert found very exact regulations in force for reporting the absentees from class, with a strict record of those who stayed away, and stiff penalties for those who shirked. Once the class in mathematics was in place, instruction began. Three men were called to the blackboards and were given problems to demonstrate. Questions were answered. Difficulties were eased. Till the minute-hand went thrice around the clock the work went on, as the teacher sought to make sure that every student knew the assignment for the day.

At eleven o’clock the class was dismissed, and the cadets went back to their rooms, where they spent an hour, presumably reviewing the lesson in mathematics and preparing for the next day. When noon came, the boys forsook Euclid for Gil Blas and kept the company of that delectable until dinner, which was at one o’clock. From the time they finished the meal until two o’clock the cadets were free, and might even indulge in music, within the limits laid down by Colonel Thayer. At two, there was formation, and then two hours of study and recitation of French.

From four o’clock to sunset or later was the time given over to military exercises, which for fourth-classmen consisted only of the school of the soldier, and of the evolutions of the line. At sunset came dress parade and roll-call, with supper immediately thereafter. When the meal was done, the signal was given to retire to quarters, where the cadet was to wrestle once more and until 9:30 with mathematics. Tattoo and roll-call ended the day — ended it, that is, except for a precautionary inspection of quarters just before ten o’clock, when lights were extinguished.

It was a long day, regulated overmuch, and with too little time for recreation. In winter, the cold, the bad food, and the lack of exercise — for drill had virtually to be suspended — made it too hard a schedule for boys who were not of the most robust. Robert was equal to it physically, and he found it academically easy. He had gone further in mathematics before he came to West Point than the curriculum carried him during the whole of the first year. Probably he found nothing to balk him in Farrar’s translation of the Treatise on Plane and Spherical Trigonometry, and on the Application of Algebra to Geometry, by Lacroix and Bezout. Legendre’s Geometry may have been the very text he had used at home. Lacroix’s Elements of Algebra and his Complement were not unduly difficult. Lee accordingly found himself very soon enrolled in the first of the several sections into which the fourth-year class in mathematics was divided. This placed him under the tutelage of Professor Charles none, the good-natured and capable head of the department, then a young man of only twenty-five, but already preparing to publish a book on descriptive geometry. Davies illustrated his lectures with many apposite anecdotes, and had unfailing patience and good humor in clearing away his students’ misconceptions, but he had no mercy on the cadet who failed to prepare himself. His familiar name, in Who’s Who of irreverent youth, was “Old Tush.” The first assistant professor, Lieutenant Edward C. Ross, was an oddity. When he first put an exercise on the blackboard, and tried to explain it to the section, he would twist and wriggle, pulling at his long whiskers and spitting much tobacco-juice. He often ended for the day in making the problem more confusing than at the start. But at the next session of the class, when a cadet started the demonstration, Ross would begin a series of questions so searching and so logical that they brought out everything in the problem. One of his students, who subsequently became an educator of distinction, declared Ross the best teacher he had ever seen. Ross’s orderly approach probably had larger influence on some of his pupils’ methods of reasoning than they realized.

Lee’s only other academic study that winter was French, to which two hours of study and one hour of recitation were given daily, with the class divided into sections of not more than twenty men each. In theory, the course was designed to cover translating French into English, and English into French, and “pronouncing the language tolerably.” As a matter of academic fact, the instruction did not carry the boys much beyond the point where they could read their French texts with reasonable ease. Conversational French was not taught, which probably accounts for the fact that in all Lee’s recorded conversation there are few French words not solely related to military affairs. The reason for this shortcoming was the institution’s emphasis on mathematics, rather than any lack of equipment on the part of the professor of French. Claudius Bérard, the “first teacher” of French, was a fine scholar of good taste, with an excellent knowledge of English, much diligence, and some sense of humor. It seems not to have been held against him that he, an instructor in a stern academy of military art, had employed a substitute in Napoleon’s army and had subsequently fled from France, lest he be again called to the colors, after his substitute had been killed in the Spanish campaign. The books with which the cadets began their study of French were Bérard’s own — his French Grammar and his Lecteur Français. The survey of French literature during the first year did not progress beyond “le tome premier” of Gil Blas.

Military instruction was limited in Robert’s first year to what a private soldier would have received at an active army post under a good company-officer. Drill, however, ate up the little time that French and mathematics left. When the weather was good, there were few hours for outside study. Fortunately for the larger culture of the cadets, there came to the academy that year a man who taught the boys some things not set down in Colonel Thayer’s tables of instruction and some they might not have sought out for themselves. This man was Reverend Charles P. McIlvaine, chaplain and professor of geography, history, and ethics. He was then twenty-six, tall and majestic in bearing, with a voice of much richness, and a moving eloquence. Cadets who came to hear him, in the expectation of nodding or reading during his sermon, were entranced by his oratory and enthralled by his earnestness, even though his sermons sometimes consumed two hours. The spiritual life of the school was improved somewhat by McIlvaine’s coming, and Cadet Leonidas Polk was inspired by the chaplain to decide on the ministry as a life-calling. It was perhaps well for Lee, as for many another young man at West Point, that the zealous ministry of McIlvaine entered so soon after he left home.

The first six months at the school were probationary. The instructors made daily notes of individual proficiency and filed weekly reports, in all classes supplemented by examinations in January. Not until these tests had been passed by a cadet did he receive his warrant and become a regular member of the corps. After November 1, when bad weather forced even Colonel Thayer to suspend most of the field exercises, Robert had longer hours in which to prepare for the coming test. French he found somewhat difficult because he was unfamiliar with its idioms, but through the stern, early winter he applied himself to it.

On January 2, 1826, the semi-annual examinations began. The confident and the fearful alike were subjected to an hour’s quizzing. Robert Lee came out well, though he discovered that some of his classmates had been working as hard as he had, and were possessed of keen minds. Charles Mason, Catharinus P. Buckingham, and William H. Harford were tied with him in mathematics, and as his patronymic was alphabetically the third of the quartet, he got that rating. In French, he was fifth. On conduct he was third, but had no offenses recorded against him. He received his warrant, and settled down to a hard battle to improve his showing in the June examination.

Chapter 4: The Education of a Cadet.

With the return of spring, the corps’ field exercises were less interrupted by bad weather, and there were fewer extra hours for study, but Robert made the most of them, despite an assignment in April, 1826, to special duty. Meantime, he was developing a military bearing, and by his friendliness and good humor was winning friends in the corps.

June came, and with it the board of visitors. This board consisted of five men of distinction, to supervise examinations and to report on the needs and condition of the institution. The new head of the War Department, James Barbour of Virginia, who had been one of those to recommend Robert for appointment, was interested in the academy and availed himself of a clause in the regulations which authorized him to invite to the examination, along with the board, such other “literary and scientific gentlemen” as he pleased. Jared Sparks, George Ticknor, Lieutenant-Colonel J. G. Totten, and General Samuel Houston were among those he named that year. From their presence, in his regular turn, Robert emerged the third man in his class. Charles Mason led and William Harford was second. Pressing close behind Lee were William Boylan and James Barnes. Neither Lee, Mason, nor Barnes had received a demerit during the year, but Harford had seven and Boylan thirty-five, which made the standing of Boylan all the more remarkable. In mathematics Lee was fourth, and received a credit of 197 of a possible 200. In French he was fifth, and was rated 98¼ of a possible 100. On the roll of general merit, he was put at the sum of these two ratings — 295¼ of a gross 300.

This was a good showing and it brought immediate rewards. For it was a part of the code of Colonel Thayer to honor the diligent while punishing the wayward and dismissing the slothful. Robert was placed on the list of “distinguished cadets” — the first five in each class — whose names were certified to the Secretary of War for inclusion in the army register. His first appearance in that document was in the edition of 1826 when he was credited with special proficiency in mathematics and in French.

Another honor awaited him. Under the rules of the corps, the best soldiers of good standing acted as officers. From the boys who had just completed their first year’s work were chosen the corporals. The second class previously had furnished sergeants, and the first the lieutenants, the captains, and the most-sought‑after post of all, that of adjutant. During the winter of 1825 ‑ 26, the regulations had been so changed that the sergeancies did not all go to the second class. Robert had done so well in his drill, and had already developed such good military bearing that on June 23, when the appointments were read out, he was named staff sergeant, as high a position as any to which a man just finishing his first year at the academy could then aspire.

A week later, on July 1, 1826, a great date was set on the calendar: Robert and his fellow-toilers ceased to be “plebes” and overnight became “upper-classmen,” fit to hold fellowship with the lofty souls of the class of 1828, and permitted to look without apology on the faces of those who were now the first class. On the same day, the annual encampment on the plain began. Lee, with his comrades, had the monotony of infantry drill broken for the first time by their introduction to artillery. For about nine weeks they had two hours daily with their muskets and four with artillery; work enough for warm days when the woods called and the river lured the boys who were sweating under canvas.

With the return to barracks on September 1, 1826, Lee and his class plunged into more advanced mathematics — calculus, analytical and descriptive geometry and difficult conic sections, with instruction chiefly by Professor Davies. A course in perspective, shades and shadows was included with the mathematics. French was continued, with Gil Blas the text, followed late in the session by Voltaire’s Histoire de Charles [that is, History of Charles the Twelfth], as suited for the education of a soldier. The one added academic study was free-hand drawing of the human figure. This was under the tutelage of Thomas Gimbrede, an amiable Frenchman, a good miniaturist, and a competent engraver, who was not altogether without the blessed quality of humor. It was Mr. Gimbrede’s custom to give each class of beginners an introductory lecture, in the course of which he endeavored to prove to unbelieving third-classmen that every one could learn to draw. His proof was: “There are only two lines in drawing, the straight line and the curve line. Every one can draw a straight line and every one can draw a curve line — therefore, every one can draw.” Gimbrede was Lee’s only new teacher that winter, though there were eleven changes in the academic staff. No material difference was made in the schedule, except that drawing alternated in the afternoons with the study and recitation of French. Infantry drill continued, in the school of the company, with instruction in the duties of corporals. Two hours every second afternoon during the academic term were devoted to artillery, under the direction of Lieutenant Z. J. D. Kinsley, a West Pointer of the class of 1819.

This was a busy routine, but Robert was now so well-grounded that he felt he could indulge himself in a little outside reading. For his first study, he borrowed from the library the second volume on Montholon’s Memoirs of Napoleon and during October and November he seems to have steeped himself in the early operations of the Corsican, notably in the Italian campaign of 1796, and the advance on Moscow. To this same study he was to turn again, twenty-six years thereafter.

In addition to his reading, Robert essayed some teaching. The regulations authorized the appointment of a number of “senior cadets” to serve as acting assistant professors of mathematics, with a compensation of $10 a month and the assurance — as if in apology for the smallness of the pay — that the post was in the nature of a honorary distinction. Generally, the words “senior cadets” were interpreted to mean members of the first class. This year, however, either because of their own proficiency, or else because a large number of new cadets were backward in their mathematics, Lee and the three others members of this class who had stood first in that subject were made acting assistant professors. The duties of the position were largely tutorial, and they consumed hours that Lee must have wished he could have given to other subjects, but they were helpful. His mother was greatly pleased at the distinction and was delighted that he received compensation for it. He must have been encouraged as he faced the tests of the second year, already staff sergeant and an acting assistant professor of mathematics.

But Robert’s outside activities proved too much for him. On the semi-annual examination in January, 1827, his rating reflected the loss of the time he had devoted to reading and to teaching. In mathematics he was fourth, in French he was fifth, and in drawing fifth. He still had no demerits, and his drill-record was clean. William Boylan, who had stood next after Lee at the end of their first year, was no longer at the academy, but Catharinus P. Buckingham, No. 9 in June, 1826, was pushing ahead. Charles Mason and William Harford continued to do admirably. Warned by their progress, Robert forthwith abandoned most of his extra reading and buckled down to his classes.

But there was one historical work he probably he could not resist. That was the new edition of his father’s Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department. This had been prepared by his half-brother, Henry Lee, at the instance and expense of Colonel John R. Fenwick, who had been interested in the book both as a South Carolinian and as a soldier. The work was in a single volume, and though poorly printed by Peter Force, it contained some useful notes and addenda. Robert doubtless had read the first edition in boyhood, but now he could bring to bear on the book something of the understanding of a soldier, and could appreciate more fully the military qualities of his father.

“Light-Horse Harry” Lee, it will be remembered, had written late in life that “mankind admire most the hero; of all, the most useless, except when the safety of a nation demands his saving arm.” Yet it was plain to Robert that his father had loved military life and had possessed high ability in it. Washington had thought so. After the Paulus Hook affair he had praised Henry Lee for displaying “a remarkable degree of prudence, address, enterprise, and bravery.” Greene often mentioned Lee in orders. “Everybody knows I have the highest opinion of you as an officer,” he told Lee in the correspondence preceding Lee’s resignation from the army in 1782.

What were the military qualities, then, that Robert Lee discovered in his father when he read the new edition of his Memoirs? The answer could not be without some effect on the education of the son as a soldier.

Skill in reconnaissance Henry Lee undoubtedly possessed, and with it a positive military logic, and a definite strategic sense, well illustrated in his advocacy of operations in South Carolina after Cornwallis had started into Virginia. Perhaps the most notable quality of Henry Lee, the soldier, as revealed again in his book, was his ability in creating and maintaining an esprit de corps [that is, a sense of unity and mutual loyalty]. His command, the biographer of Greene admitted, “was, perhaps, the finest . . . that made its appearance on the arena of the Revolutionary War.” The first mention of his troopers in “Light-Horse Harry” Lee’s extant correspondence shows him planning to have them make a good appearance. “How happy would I be,” he wrote his colonel, “if it was possible for my men to be furnished with caps and boots, prior to my appearance at headquarters. You know, my dear Colonel, that, justly, an officer’s reputation depends not only on the discipline, but appearance of his men.” Months later, when he took a British fort, he created much murmuring by appropriating the available stores, and supplying his men with new uniforms, in which he proudly paraded them next morning. Each member of the corps in time acquired a Potter’s sword, “the weapon most highly estimated for service, taken in personal conflict with the enemy,” according to one of Lee’s officers.

As he read his father’s Memoirs Robert discovered, also, that “Light-Horse Harry” was stern in his discipline. Immediate death had been threatened any soldier who did not observe absolute silence during the advance on Paulus Hook. When desertion began to spread, that same summer of 1779, he captured a man who had gone over to the enemy, hanged him, then cut off his head, with the rope still around the neck, and sent head and rope to Washington’s headquarters, much to the horror of the commander-in‑chief. Desertion, however, ended that day.

On the other hand, when his men behaved with bravery, “Light-Horse Harry” saw to it that they were rewarded. After some of his dragoons had helped him and his brother officers beat off the attack at Spread Eagle Tavern, he assured the soldiers, in the words of one of his admirers, “that he should consider their future establishment in life as his peculiar care, and he honorably kept his word. They were all in turn commissioned. . . .” He was careful not to expose them or himself needlessly, and was always so vigilant that after the episode at the tavern, he was never surprised. The animals of his command received almost as much attention at his hands as did the men. If his command deserved credit, he saw that they got it. “No officer,” said Johnson, “was ever more devoted to the interests of his own corps or his own fame.”

The effect upon Robert of the probable reading of this edition of his father’s Memoirs does not show in any of his letters but it must have confirmed him in his determination to follow the career of a soldier. In ways that neither biographer nor psychologist may fathom, it is possible, also, that Robert’s admiration for his father led him to magnify and to copy the military virtues of the sire. The morale of the Army of Northern Virginia may have been inspired in 1781, though it was not until 1862 that the army itself was created.

Much closer to Robert in the winter of 1826 ‑ 27 than any dream of emulating his father in military achievement, was the daily round of his duty. He adjusted his hours to his teaching duties and began to form plans to win a furlough in July. No cadet could leave, except for serious illness, until he had been two years at the academy, and even then, only those could go home who had received the written consent of their parents and stood well on Colonel Thayer’s records. Robert procured Mrs. Lee’s written approval of his application; the money he was earning would suffice to pay his expenses; the rest depended chiefly on his own efforts. April arrived at last, and field exercises were resumed. May drew on, and the student settled to their special preparation for the June ordeal. Finally the examinations were over, and the results were announced. In mathematics Robert was fourth in his class and had earned 286 of a possible 300. His acquaintance with Gil Blas and his mental marching with Charles the Twelfth left him fifth in French, receiving 98½ of a maximum 100. Among those whom Mr. Gimbrede was trying to convince they could draw, he was fourth, being credited with 46 of a possible 50. Leading in not a single class, he had not fallen far behind the pace-makers in any of them. His total on the roll of general merit was 430½, and this put him second in the class. Charles continued first. Robert remained staff sergeant, kept on the list of “distinguished cadets,” and, of course, won his furlough.

This began on June 30, in time to permit him to reach northern Virginia when sociable kinspeople of his name were starting their summer visits to one another. He found his mother residing in Georgetown, deeper in her invalidism, old at fifty-four by reason of disease and the burdens she had borne. He was able, however, to take her with him on at least one journey to the home of some of her Carter cousins. As her escort, dressed in his gray cadet uniform, with its white bullet buttons, his looks and his manner so‑called forth admiring comment from the girls of his stock. He was becoming by this time an exceedingly handsome young man, with manners in keeping. At the academy he was already styled the “Marble Model.” A fellow-cadet testified years afterwards, “His personal appearance surpassed in manly beauty that of any cadet in the corps. Though firm in his position and perfectly erect, he had none of the stiffness so often assumed by men who affect to be very strict in their ideas of what is military. His limbs, beautiful and symmetrical, looked as though they had come from the turning lathe, his step was as elastic as if he spurned the ground upon which he trod.”

Shortly after his return to the academy on August 28, 1827, just as the encampment was about to end, Lee resumed his work as acting assistant professor of mathematics. Simultaneously he entered on scientific studies that were entirely new to him. Mathematics was dropped. Drawing was continued and was given a higher credit. It called for two hours’ work each week-day afternoon and included landscape and topography. Chemistry and “natural philosophy” — physics in modern academic terminology — became his major studies for the year.

The course in “natural philosophy,” had a valuation of 300 on the merit roll, three times as much as the year’s work in chemistry. Taught only to men of the second class, it covered the elements of mechanics, experimental physics, light, heat, magnetism, electricity, and astronomy. The cadets on the upper half of the merit-roll were instructed by the professor, Jared Mansfield; those on the lower half were in the care of the assistant professors, S. Stanhope Smith and Thomas S. Twiss. Mansfield had been one of the pioneer physicists of the country, had also served as lieutenant colonel of engineers before the War of 1812, and had been a teacher at the academy for fifteen years when Robert entered his class. He was then sixty-nine and about to retire. Smith, the senior assistant, was a young man of promise but was destined to die within a year. Twiss, who had stood No. 2 in the class of 1826, did not remain long at the academy. Twiss’s predecessor was a very interesting man who, in 1826, had turned from physics to mathematics and was then teaching that subject as an assistant professor. Lee probably saw something of him in his own rôle as an instructor of the mathematical dullards. He was Robert Parker Parrott, later the inventor of the “Parrott gun” that roared in so many battles of the War between the States.

Physics was taught every week-day from 8 to 11, and was supposed to command the study of second classmen from sunrise to 7 A.M. and from half an hour after sunset until 9:30. The texts were Newton’s Principia, Gregory’s Treatise on Mechanics, and Enfield’s Institutes of Natural Philosophy. The subject interested Robert. It dealt with material, practical things that always appealed to him; it was an approach to engineering, which was the goal of nearly all ambitious cadets; and it meant much in determining a cadet’s standing. Lee seems to have concentrated on it his best energies during his third year at West Point.

The work in chemistry was the first half of a two-year course designed to cover the theory of the science, “chemical philosophy,” as it was styled, and the application of chemistry to certain of the arts. The text was Henry’s Chemistry, and the time allotted to the subject was one hour daily for study and one hour for recitation. The professor in charge was Doctor John Torrey, who subsequently became a botanist of repute. The assistant was Lieutenant Nicholas Tillinghast, of the class of 1824.

In military study, Lee’s class passed that year through the school of the battalion, learned the duties of sergeants, and was drilled in the exercise and manoeuvres of artillery pieces. A new assistant professor of tactics had come to the academy that autumn, in the person of Lieutenant John H. Winder, destined to have charge of many Federal prisoners, first at Richmond and then at Andersonville. Lee probably saw little of him, as most of the second class’s instruction was in artillery, with Lieutenant Kinsley again in charge.

Corps activities took a certain amount of Lee’s time that winter. Kosciuszko was in those days the patron saint of West Point. He had designed the Revolutionary forts, Clinton and Putnam, and had resided in the little cottage that had been preserved. For some years, the corps had been contributing twenty-five cents monthly per man toward the construction of a monument in honor of the Lithuanian supporter of American independence. Lee was one of the committeemen entrusted with completing the fund. Their progress was such in 1827 ‑ 28 that the formal preparation of a model was begun by the designated artist, John H. B. Latrobe. He was a former cadet, who became more famous as the inventor of the stove that bears his name than as a maker of monuments. It was the plan of the committee to raise a total of $5000 and to unveil the shaft within the ramparts that Kosciusko had laid out.

While the cadets were preparing to add a memorial of the struggle for independence, one possessed by West Point was destroyed; on December 26, 1827, the “Long Barracks” were burned. This two‑story building, which was near the site of the hotel, had been constructed during the first war with England, as already noted, for the use of the garrison, and from the establishment of the academy until the erection of the South Barracks, had housed the cadets. The weathered old structure had been the largest and, except for the forts, the most familiar of man’s work at West Point to remind the country’s prospective soldiers that they were in a literal sense sons of the Revolution.

The winter of 1827 brought a lesser sensation — but perhaps a deeper sorrow. It was not often that changes in the academic staff were made during the term, for the vigilant Colonel Thayer saw to it that such upsetting things occurred while the cadets were encamped and had no classes. Now came news that Chaplain McIlvaine had received a call to Saint Ann’s Church, Brooklyn, and had accepted. At the end of 1827, to the vast regret of the corps, he left West Point, and on January 1, his successor, Reverend Thomas Warner, took up his duties, as chaplain and professor of moral and political philosophy. He was an elderly man of fine appearance, somewhat resembling Andrew Jackson. A strong logician, he lacked the brilliant appeal of the eloquent McIlvaine, and in his lectures, he usually disported himself intellectually in waters beyond the depth of the cadets. Fear lest he would make Sunday chapel the ordeal it had been before the coming of McIlvaine was removed by the pleasing discovery on the part of the boys that the reverend gentleman seldom preached longer than ten minutes.

At Mr. Warner’s coming there was little time for an appraisal of his qualities, for the cadets were groaning over their extra study for the semi-annual examinations. On January 7, the solemn academic board met, the blackboards were put in place, and the troubled cadets were commanded to give evidence of the knowledge that was in them. Robert Lee came out from the inquisition with an excellent showing. The wisdom of his concentrated attack on natural philosophy was rewarded by a standing of No. 2 in that subject. He was third in chemistry, and in drawing fourth.

Encouraged by this showing and relieved after April 1 of his mathematical teaching, Robert had more time for independent reading during the late winter and early spring of 1828 than in any other period of his cadetship. Between January 26 and May 24, he drew fifty-two books from the library. They covered a wide field — navigation, travel, strategy, biography, and history. His principal interest seems to have been in seamanship and in the works of Alexander Hamilton, for he borrowed Atkinson’s Navigation seven times, and the second volume of Hamilton’s Works no less than nine times during this period. This volume contains The Federalist, which Lee must have read very thoroughly. He indulged himself, moreover, in a reading of a French edition of Rousseau’s Confessions.

The whole list for these months has interest and is as follows: Jan. 26, 1828: Museum of Foreign Literature, vols. 5 and 6. Feb. 2: The same, vol. 6. Feb. 2: Martin’s Optics. Feb. 9: Westminster Review, vols. 1 and 2. Feb. 16: Rousseau, vol. 23. Feb. 23: The same, vol. 24. Feb. 23:

Leslie’s Geometry, vol. 2. Feb. 23: Atkinson’s Navigation. Feb. 23: Machiavelli’s Art of War. March 1: Chartekkun’s Travels, etc. March 1: North American Review, vol. 2. March 1: Rousseau, vols. 24, 25. March 1: Leslie’s Geometry, vol. 2. March 1: Atkinson’s Navigation. March 8: Rousseau, vol. 26. March 15: North American Review, vol. 18.

March 22: Hamilton’s Works, vol. 2. March 29: The same. March 29: Atkinson’s Navigation. March 29: Edinburgh Review, vols. 33, 34. April 5: Hamilton’s Works, vol. 2. April 5: Atkinson’s Navigation. April 5: Retrospective Review, vols. 6 and 7. April 5: Drean’s Military Dictionary. April 12: Hamilton’s Works, vols. 1 and 2. April 12:

Atkinson’s Navigation. April 12: Retrospective Review, vol. 2. April 26: Hamilton’s Works, vol. 2. April 26: Wamery’s Anecdotes. April 26: Life of Paul Jones. April 26: Bonnyearth’s Algebra. April 26: Retrospective Review, vols. 5 and 6. May 3: The same, vol. 3. May 3: Atkinson’s Navigation. May 3: Hamilton’s Works, vol. 2. May 3:

Lempriere’s Biographical Dictionary, vols. 1 and 2. May 10: Atkinson’s Navigation. May 10: Hamilton’s Works, vol. 2. May 10: Ferguson’s Astronomy, vol. 4. May 10: Arrowsmith’s Atlas. May 24: Hamilton’s Works, vol. 2. May 24: Ferguson’s Astronomy, vols. 1 and 2.

Robert’s reading did not interfere that spring with his studies or with his military duty. He went into the annual oral test with the comforting assurance that his record in drill and in conduct was clean. Under the rules of the academy, however, the advantage from these things in the examinations of the second classmen was moral only. The credits for tactics, for artillery, and for conduct were deferred until the final computation of standing at the end of the fourth year. When the examinations were over, about June 19, 1828, Robert had not headed Charles Mason but he was immediately below him on the roll of general merit. He was credited with 295 of a possible 300 in physics and was second in that subject. He stood No. 3 in chemistry, with 99 of the allowable 100. In drawing, he was third, higher than he had ever stood in Mr. Gimbrede’s course, which now yielded him 97 of a maximum 100 points. His general merit for the year was very high — 491.

The academic mortality in the class, however, had been heavy. Of the eighty-seven who had started in July, 1825, seventeen had fallen by the way at the end of the first session. Several had dropped out during 1826 ‑ 27, and three more had failed by July, 1827. Now eight men went down, and others were despairing. Of the four Virginians who had entered together in 1825 only half were left, Lee and Joe Johnston, nicknamed “The Colonel.” These two were drawn closer together when they realized they were the sole representatives of their state, and they spurred themselves to new effort in order that Virginia might not be discredited. “We had the same intimate associates, who thought as I did,” Johnston wrote years afterwards, “that no other youth or man so united the qualities that win warm friendship and command high respect. For he was full of sympathy and kindness, genial and fond of gay conversation, and even of fun, while his correctness of demeanor and attention to all duties, personal and official, and a dignity as much a part of himself as the elegance of his person, gave him a superiority that every one acknowledged in his heart. He was the only one of all the men I have known that could laugh at the faults and follies of his friends in such a manner as to make them ashamed without touching their affection for him, and to confirm their respect and sense of his superiority.

These qualities and his high standing made Lee a contender in the mind of every cadet for that most coveted of West Point honors, the office of corps adjutant, which was awarded about July 1, when a class entered its final year. The appointment usually was awarded the first-classman of good standing who had the finest military bearing and the best record on the drill ground. Would it go now to Charles Mason, who had been No. 1 since the first examination, or would the post be awarded some other cadet high on the honor roll? The answer came positively and promptly, as was the way with the decisions of Colonel Thayer and of Major Worth: The adjutant of the corps for 1828 ‑ 29 was to be Robert E. Lee of Virginia.

The award was popular and made Lee the most prominent cadet in the corps, though some of the young men thought that his Southern birth had something to do with the selection. He was again certified to the War Department as a “distinguished cadet.” Mason, Buckingham, and himself had this recognition on all three subjects of their study; Harford and Barnes had it on natural philosophy and chemistry. Temporarily, in June and in August, Lee resumed duty as acting assistant professor of mathematics, for a reason that does not appear from the records. It probably was to coach backward cadets.

Now began the term for which all else was preparatory, the term into which was crowded all the technical military training, together with a second course in chemistry and a hurried, superficial survey of geography, history, ethics, and moral philosophy. Lee put aside all extra reading and concentrated his efforts. His day began, as previously, at dawn. From sunrise until seven o’clock, he studied engineering and the science of war. After breakfast and class parade he went to the academy and spent three hours daily in drafting and in recitation of the subjects on which he had just prepared himself. Then came rhetoric and moral philosophy, with lectures and study periods alternating until one o’clock daily. At 2 P.M., as in previous years, military instruction began for all cadets and continued until sunset. Following supper, Lee worked over his engineering until 9:30.

In this subject he found especial satisfaction. His mind was scientific in its interests. As among the sciences, the applied meant more to him than the theoretical, though his devotion to mathematics was always high. When he began engineering he may have felt, also, that this more fully than anything else represented the profession he had chosen. He gave to it, in any case, high interest and warm enthusiasm.

The course was comprehensive, considering the limitations of time, and was divided into five parts — field fortification, permanent fortification, the science of artillery, grand tactics, and civil and military architecture. The instruction in field fortification covered the description and analysis of various systems of fortified lines, the building of batteries and redoubts, calculation of the labor, time, and materials for the construction of different kinds of field works, military bridges, the defense of posts, and field defilement. All of these, as far as possible, were taught “on the ground.” Permanent fortification included the attack and defense of fortified places, analysis of the systems of Vauban, Cohorn, Cormontaigne, and of the later improvements, the construction of mines and fougasses and their use in attack and defense, the erection of works, the art of defilement, and the armament of fortresses. The “science of artillery” covered a technical study of the various types of guns and projectiles, followed by institution in the principles of gunnery, as far as range-finding and ballistics were understood at the time. “Grand tactics” comprised strategy as well as tactics — the organization of armies, the conduct of marches, the preparation of orders of battle, combat, the review of the general maxims of war deducted from the most important operations of history, and the study of castrametation, or the art of laying out a camp. Civic and military architecture dealt with the elementary parts of buildings and arches, canals, bridges, and other public works, a description of the machines used for them, and the execution of drawings to illustrate the course.

The principal textbook for these studies was S. F. Gay de Vernon’s Treatise on the Science of War and Fortification, which had been translated in two volumes, with a separate atlas, by Captain J. M. O’Connor. Cadets who did not remember much that was contained in the work rarely forgot that it cost twenty dollars — more than a month’s pay. It was, however, perhaps the best book then available on the subject, for Baron Gay de Vernon had been eminent in the French Ecole Polytechnique. O’Connor added to his translation “A summary of the principles of grand tactics and operations,” taken largely from Jomini, who, said O’Connor, “transcended all writers on war, and . . . exhibited the most extraordinary powers of analyzing and combining military operations.” The gunnery book was Lallemand’s Treatise on Artillery, and the work on mechanics was Hackett’s untranslated Traité des Machines [that is, Treatise on Machines]. For architecture, the text was Szannin’s Programme d’un Cours de Construction [that is, Program of a Construction Course].

Under the regulations of the academy the section that stood first on the merit roll received personal instruction from the professor of engineering. This put Lee directly under the eye of David B. Douglass, head of the department of engineering. Douglass was then thirty-eight and a man of great versatility. A Master of Arts of Yale, he had served brilliantly as a young engineer in the War of 1812, and among other feats he had repaired Fort Erie under the guns of the enemy. Ordered to West Point, he had first been assistant in physics, then professor of mathematics, and, after May, 1823, professor of engineering. His summer vacations were given over to special professional work, chiefly as consulting engineer for the state of Pennsylvania. His reputation was of the highest, and his standards of instruction and performance probably as good as any in the United States at the time. Douglass’s assistant professors were Lieutenant W. H. C. Bartlett, who subsequently turned to physics, teaching that subject at West Point for thirty-seven years, and Lieutenant William Bryant, a Virginian, later a clergyman. Bryant assisted in engineering only for the session of 1828 ‑ 29.

In chemistry and mineralogy the work was a continuance of what had gone before. The other course for the graduating class, was supposed to cover geography, history, and ethics. In the first-named subject the text was Morse’s Geography. History, according to the regulations, was to “comprise a general summary of universal history, with a view, most particularly, of the history and political relations of the United States,” but the only text, so far as is known, was Tytler’s Elements of General History. Ethics was taught from Paley’s Principles of Moral Philosophy, and was to “include moral philosophy, and the elements of national and political law.” Vattel was the authority on international law.

This course was an omnium gatherum [that is, miscellaneous collection] of the subjects a soldier should know but could not learn in the other departments. It was so crowded and instruction was of necessity so hurried that the board of visitors in 1826 had recommended that it be “broken up.” Under Chaplain McIlvaine, who was a man of wide reading and varied interests, the curriculum was changed from year to year. During the term of 1825 ‑ 26, a course on American constitutional law was given. The textbook was Rawle’s On the Constitution, in which the right of secession by the states was plainly and repeatedly set forth, though the exercise of that right, in other than extreme cases, was reprobated.

It has been assumed that Rawle was a text in subsequent years, also, and that Jefferson Davis, Robert Lee, and other Southern leaders got their views of secession from Rawle, or had their Southern opinions on the subject confirmed by the book officially used in the military academy of their country. In the case of Davis, it is probable that if he had been brought to trial after the War between the States he would have sought to vindicate the constitutionality of secession by reference to the use of Rawle at West Point. But Davis himself is authority for the statement that though Rawle had been used by preceding classes, he was himself taught Kent’s Commentaries. As for Lee, there is no first-hand evidence that he was instructed in Rawle, or that he ever read the book. The course during his last year at West Point covered geography, rhetoric, and moral philosophy, with nothing in the records to indicate that constitutional law was included. Lee’s individual accounts at West Point do not show that he purchased Rawle. Moreover, Mr. McIlvaine, who previously had adventured with Rawle and various other authors, was no longer at West Point. In his place was an older man, not so well furnished for instruction in new subjects and interested primarily in “moral philosophy.” It is hardly probable that the Reverend Mr. Warner in the first year of his service as chaplain would have gone beyond the regular curriculum. Warner may have used Rawle in 1831 ‑ 32, for B. S. Ewell, who graduated at the end of that session, owned a copy; but even this instruction is not certain. A little later, when constitutional law is known to have been taught again, the textbook was not Rawle, but Kent, which had been employed in 1827 – 28. Kent was used for many years thereafter and was the textbook during Lee’s own superintendency. The only evidence of any consequence, as distinguished from tradition, in support of the view that Lee was taught Rawle at West Point, is a letter of Joseph Wilmer, in which he said: “I have a distinct recollection of my father’s [Bishop Wilmer’s] statement that General Lee told him the ‘Rawle’ was a textbook during his cadetship at West Point.” This, it will be noted, is not direct affirmation that Lee himself was instructed in the theories of that author.

Whether Rawle was among the textbooks or not, Lee spent a winter that was devoid of sensation, and full of crowded work. Seven changes in the academic staff had been made that autumn, but none of these affected the departments in which Lee was studying. In November, however, it became known that on January 1, 1829, the commandant, Major Worth, was to be transferred. Robert had been under Worth during the whole of his cadetship and esteemed him greatly. To him, perhaps more than to any one else, Lee owed the military bearing that was to distinguish him throughout his military career. Other cadets felt as Lee did toward Worth, and they united in a petition that they might present the departing commandant with a sword. The request was duly forwarded to Washington, but for reasons that were hidden in the always curious logic of the executive mind, it was disallowed by the President. Worth went to other duty, much lamented, and on March 13, 1829, Captain Ethan A. Hitchcock, an able man, well-equipped and earnest, assumed charge of the cadets. In less than twenty years thereafter the new commandant and the young cadet who formed the battalion and presented it to him on parade were to be serving together on Scott’s staff, battering their way to Mexico City.

Before Hitchcock took command, the critical semi-annual examinations of Lee’s final year were held. Robert must have thought himself weak on his geology, for, thrifty as he was, he paid for special coaching on that subject, with the result that he was second in chemistry and mineralogy. He had like rating in rhetoric and moral philosophy. In engineering he was tied with Buckingham at the head of the class, and for the first time in any subject he stood ahead of the invincible Charles Mason. After the examinations, with even greater energy, he turned to the work of the final half term. On April 1 he procured relief as adjutant of the corps, got permission to board at Cozzen’s Hotel, and thereafter, for two months, he concentrated on his studies.

Quickly enough the finals approached, and the board of visitors arrived. The new president of that august company was General Pierre van Cortlandt of Peekskill, N. Y., grandson of Stephenus van Cortlandt and great-grandson of the redoubtable Oloff Stevense van Cortlandt, one of the pioneers of New Amsterdam. General Pierre van Cortlandt’s title had been won in the militia, not in the country’s wars, but he had his distinctions, for he had studied law under Alexander Hamilton, and while at the head of the Winchester levies he had named James Fenimore Cooper as one of his aides. Another member of the board was Major Worth, now Lieutenant Colonel Worth, who so recently himself had been subject to successive visitors. Still another of the fifteen members of the board was Doctor Robert Archer, then an assistant surgeon, stationed at Fort Monroe, a man of great ingenuity, who subsequently worked with his son-in‑law, Joseph R. Anderson, in developing the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, where many of Lee’s cannon of the ‘sixties were cast.

Beginning June 1 the visitors and the academic board met jointly every day for a fortnight. It was a ceremonious test. In the examination room, at the head of one table, sat Colonel Thayer in full uniform, with the professors around the board. At the other table were General Van Cortlandt and the visitors. In front of this awesome group, three large blackboards were placed on easels. Six cadets were called in at a time, two for each board. While one demonstrated orally, the others prepared their problems. In this setting, Robert made his appearance when his name was called, and for five separate grillings of an hour each he explained what he knew of engineering, of strategy, and of the other subjects of the year’s work.

At last it was done; all forty-six members of the class were examined; the credits were all computed. Lee’s consistent good conduct and soldierly bearing now found their reward in these entries on the roll of general merit: Mathematics (maximum 300) 369 French (maximum 100) 98½ Natural Philosophy (maximum 300) 374 Drawing (maximum 100) 377

Engineering (maximum 300) 380 Chemistry and Mineralogy (maximum 100) 383 Geography, Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy (maximum 200) 386 Tactics (maximum 200) 389 Artillery (maximum 100) 392 Conduct (maximum 300) 395 General Merit (maximum 2000) 1966½

These credits put him at the head of the class in artillery and tactics and gave him equal place in conduct with Barnes, Burbank, Harford, Kennedy, and Mason, who had received no demerits during the whole of their four years at the academy. In final class standing Mason was No. 1; Lee was No. 2; Harford, Joseph A. Smith, and James Barnes followed in order. Lee finished his fourth year, as he had all the others, with a place on the list of “distinguished cadets.”

Exercising the right accorded the class-leaders of selecting the arm of the service in which they desired to be commissioned, he asked to be assigned to the Engineer Corps. This was the usual choice of those who stood highest on the merit roll and it conformed to Lee’s own inclination. No subject of study at the academy had enthralled him so much as that which he now made the basis of his professional work in the army.

Commencement at West Point a century ago was not the great event it is today. There was usually a valedictory address and sometimes a speech by the Secretary of War or some other dignitary, but that was all. Each graduate received a formal diploma, signed by the superintendent and academic board. Likewise, each was granted a two-months furlough and to each was given whatever balance of pay and allowances his account book showed was due him. In Lee’s case this amounted to $103., for while he had spent as much as the average cadet with the tailor, and something more than the average for postage, he had been most economical in all his other personal expenditures.

The tragedy of commencement was the separation of boys who had spent four years together in close and revealing companionship. Death was to claim seventeen of Robert’s forty-five classmates and nine were to quit the service prior to the War between the States. Of the 323 who were with him at the academy and graduated in the classes of 1826 ‑ 32, inclusive, 119 came to their end before 1861. Seventy resigned and, so far as is known, did not return to the service when North and South took up arms. Robert’s intimates and his rivals for academic honors found varying fortune. Jack Mackay, who was perhaps his closest friend, served in the Artillery and in the Engineers, chiefly in and near his native Georgia, until 1846, when protracted illness forced him to procure sick leave. He died in 1848, aged forty-two. William Harford left the Army in 1833 and lived only three years thereafter. Charles Mason remained at the academy for two years, as principal assistant professor of engineering, then practised law in New York and served as temporary editor of The Evening Post until 1836, when he went to Wisconsin. He later had a civil career of some eminence in Iowa, living to be seventy-seven. Mason, however, was by no means the last survivor of his class: Joseph B. Smith, No. 7, defied time until he was ninety-three.

The only men of ’29 with whom Lee was closely associated in 1861 ‑ 65 were Joseph E. Johnston and Theophilus H. Holmes, but eleven of the cadets who were at “the Point” during his four years were to become general officers in the Confederacy, and one was to be president. Lee’s future chief of artillery, W. N. Pendleton, was in the class of 1830. L. B. Northrop, the commissary general who was to cause Lee many an agonizing hour, graduated in 1831, and Abraham C. Myers, quartermaster general of the South until 1863, was an humble “plebe” in Lee’s last year.

Two of Lee’s classmates, James Barnes, who was No. 5, and Sidney Burbank, No. 17, were later to face him in Virginia, though not as commanding generals. Silas Casey, of the class of 1826, as already noted, was to stand stubbornly on the doubtful field of Seven Pines. Samuel P. Heintzelman, also of 1826, served with the Army of the Potomac, as division and corps commander, until October, 1863. W. H. Emory, a third classman in Lee’s last year, came, in time, to command the Nineteenth Federal Corps in the Shenandoah valley, in the campaign against Early. Erasmus D. Keyes, of the class of 1832, served with the Federals in the Peninsular campaign, as did Philip Saint George Cooke of ’27. Randolph B. Marcy, a graduate of 1832, later acted as chief of staff to his son-in‑law, George B. McClellan, who was a child of three years when Lee quit West Point. George W. Turner, a second classman, was to appear in the grisly tragedy of the John Brown raid, and was to be killed by the insurrectionaries whom Lee put under arrest at Harpers Ferry. Others of the corps were to fight in the west for the Union. A boy of the second class in Lee’s final year, A. A. Humphreys, at the head of a famous corps, was to oppose Longstreet on the last day of all Lee’s warring. In the main, however, cadets who were with Robert Lee at West Point were not those with whom or against whom he was to fight. Such pre-war knowledge of his opponents as he was to use effectually in the ‘sixties he acquired in the Mexican campaigns, or in his later service, and not during the years that came to a close, that June day, 1829, when he shook hands and said good-bye to some, and climbed aboard the steamship with others to go down the Hudson, on the way home.

As the ship churned southward, Robert Lee doubtless looked back to get his last glimpse of West Point. He was then twenty-two and a half, full grown to his height of five feet, ten and a half inches, with brown eyes that sometimes seemed black. His hair was ebon and abundant, with a wave that a woman might have envied. There was dignity in his open bearing, and his manners were considerate and ingratiating. He had candor, tact, and good humor. The self-control he had learned from his mother was his in larger measure. The habit of “finishing up” that Hallowell had observed in him at Alexandria had been strengthened by the fine discipline and precise instruction of the academy. Already his character was formed and his personality was developed. It was easy for him to win and to hold the friendship of other people. His professional interest was fixed in engineering and thereafter it never wavered until disappointment over slow promotion led him to accept a cavalry commission. He was not, of course, a finished, or even an accomplished soldier. For him, as for all other cadets of his day, drill had been needlessly prolonged at the academy, and the technical instruction in war had been crowded into too brief a period. But the training he had received was the best his country could give. The rest lay with him.