Clouds of Glory

by Michael Korda

  There is an element of truth in Freeman’s moving description of Lee’s predicament, but it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. We know that Lee would eventually conclude his first loyalty was to his family, his neighbors, and the state of his birth—he would refuse “to raise his sword” against them when the time came to make a choice—but having taken an oath “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, against all enemies foreign and domestic” when he entered West Point, he had not yet permanently defined himself as “a Virginian before he had been a soldier,” and he still condemned secession as “revolution.”

  He had an intense loyalty toward Virginia, certainly, intensified by pride in Virginia’s role as the “cradle of the Revolution,”* and a dislike of abolitionism that went back to the horrors of Nat Turner’s uprising in 1831, and which can only have been increased by his recent problems with the Custis slaves and by his clash with John Brown at Harpers Ferry. But although Lee might have been reluctant to go to war to defend an institution that he disliked and thought the South would be better off without, like most southerners he also believed that the Federal government had no business imposing northerners’ views on the “slave states.” His opinions, in short, were moderate by the southern standards of his time. As for having his loyalty to Virginia rekindled by plowing her fields, this, while it is a touching turn of phrase, is without foundation. Lee had worked hard to restore Arlington to its former glory and to make the farms profitable in the two years since the death of Mr. Custis, and he was not afraid of physical labor, but the plow was guided by the callused hands of the Custis slaves, not by Lee’s—he was a gentleman farmer, not a farm laborer.

  Having won his father’s blessing after some hesitation on Lee’s part, Rooney, the Lees’ second son, had resigned from the army to wed the young woman he loved and had moved to White House, the plantation on the Pamunkey River in New Kent County, Virginia, where George Washington first courted the widowed Martha Dandridge Custis. Here too there was a decrepit manor house and a disgruntled slave workforce. Lee, learning of a fire at a neighboring farm, wrote a pessmisstic warning to Rooney to “gain the affection of your people, that they will not wish to do you any harm.” It was a sign of Lee’s growing anxiety that he leaped to the conclusion that arson committed by slaves had been the cause of the fire.

  From San Antonio Lee continued to worry about the state of his late father-in-law’s properties, but at least he was spared a daily struggle with the people who worked there, and the constant discovery of still more items on the endless list of things that needed to be cleaned, repaired, painted, or replaced. Nobody would deny Lee’s fondness for Virginia, or his sense of himself and the many branches of his family as Virginian, but his experience with managing a farm in Virginia had given him little pleasure, nor was he content with what he had been able to achieve. He wrote to Custis to sum up his displeasure with his own efforts: “I have been able to do nothing to the grounds around the house, except to clean up on the hill. . . . You will find things, therefore, I fear rough and unsightly, as much as I desire to polish up your mother’s habitation, and to prepare for you an acceptable home.”

  The old sense of failure, which haunted him whenever he thought about his military career, returned to him stronger than ever. He was a fifty-three-year-old man who had been in the army for thirty-five years and felt he had little to show for it, and small hope of promotion. His old friend and classmate Albert Sidney Johnston had been promoted to quartermaster general, a post which carried with it the rank of brigadier general, making Lee feel even more of a failure, and his stay in San Antonio was not calculated to raise his spirits. Since he did not know how long his command would continue, he lodged in a boardinghouse rather than go to the expense of setting up his own headquarters. He enjoyed neither the food nor the company of strangers. His chief concern was Comanche raids, which carried off cattle, horses, and mules, but his troop strength had dropped to such low numbers and the state of his horses was so poor that he was eventually reduced to sending the members of the band out on whatever mounts they could find to search for Indian raiders.

  Another of Lee’s concerns was the Mexican bandit Juan Cortinas, who raided American settlements along the Rio Grande. The Mexican authorities did little or nothing to discourage him. Lee himself rode in pursuit of Cortinas accompanied by a company of cavalry, only to discover that Cortinas had fled across the river into Mexico. Lee was perfectly willing to pursue him across the border into Mexico if necessary, but not before writing a notably stiff letter to the closest Mexican authority, “His Excy. Andres Trevino, Govr. Of State of Tamulipas, etc.,” bringing to his attention that Lee had been “instructed by the Sec’y of War of the U.S. to notify the authorities of Mexico on the Rio Grande frontier, that they must break up and disperse the bands of banditti which have been concerned in these depredations and have sought protection in Mexican territory.”

  This did not halt the problem, and ten days later Lee received a protest from General G. Garcia about some Texas Rangers who had crossed the river frontier in pursuit of the elusive Cortinas. His reply to Garcia was even sharper than his first message to the governor. “For the attainment of this object,” he wrote, “I shall employ, if necessary, all the force in this Department.” Though Lee eventually made good on his warnings by sending two companies of U.S. cavalry across the Rio Grande into Mexico, the wily Cortinas continued to evade those sent in pursuit of him. This can only have added to Lee’s gloom. One might have supposed that getting away from his desk and back into the saddle with saber and pistol by his side, in pursuit of armed bandits, would have cheered Lee up, but it does not seem to have done so.

  Even the birth of a child to Rooney and his wife, Charlotte, did not shake Lee from his melancholy. He looked on the future with the grim realism of a professional soldier who knows the army—with twenty-two men ahead of him in rank and seniority, he would very likely never reach the rank of brigadier general before he retired. He shared his thoughts with his cousin Anna Fitzhugh: “A divided heart I have too long had, and a divided life I have too long led. . . . Success is not always attained by a single undivided effort, [but] it rarely follows a halting vacillating course. . . . And thus I live and am unable to advance either. But while I live I must toil and trust.” He complained to her not only of his “slow progress,” but of “a thousand anxieties,” presumably about Mary’s declining health and the future of Arlington, and added that he was “worn and racked to pieces,” strong words for a man who exhibited in every way an extraordinary degree of dignity and self control, and no self-pity. To his twenty-one-year-old daughter Annie he wrote that, lonely as he was, and much as he missed her and the rest of his family, they were perhaps better off without him. “You know I was very much in the way of everybody,” he wrote, “and my tastes and pursuits did not coincide with the rest of the household. Now I hope everybody is happier.” It is an odd confession, and may have had its origin in Lee’s difficulty in relating to his daughters now that they were no longer girls but grown-up young women. Benevolent as Lee was as a father, he was no more tolerant than any other father of his time toward his daughters’ romantic yearnings and their choice of beaux. To the ailing Mary he complained about his own health, problems that ranged from a stubborn cold to painful rheumatism in his right arm (Emory M. Thomas in his biography of Lee speculates that this pain may already have been the first symptom of cardiovascular disease). This was not exactly a midlife crisis (a phrase that did not yet exist) even though Lee was fifty-three, but rather the first sign of aging in a man who felt that he had not only failed in his career and lost his chance of a place in history, but also failed his family.

  Much as Lee disliked San Antonio, he was no more pleased when he was ordered to return to his regiment in Fort Mason, and replaced as commander of the Department of Texas by David Twiggs, who was now a brevet major general. Lee had been in command, after all, of 1,000 miles of border between the United States and M
exico for almost ten months, and was now merely commander of a much reduced cavalry regiment in one of the remote, dusty, jerry-built “forts” that were supposed to discourage the Comanche and the Kiowas from raiding the new settlements in eastern and central Texas.

  Although it may have been Lee’s nature to “leave politics to the politicians,” he still paid close attention to events in Washington; it is hard to imagine how he could do otherwise, as the nation seemed about to tear itself in two. Many of Lee’s own officers “were talking of secession if the ‘Black Republicans,’ as the new party was called in the South, carried the presidential election.” Although Lee deplored such talk, he also deplored any attempt to coerce Virginia; and the Republican ticket of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin can hardly have pleased him. Nor was he impressed by Stephen A. Douglas and Herschel Johnson, who were the choice of the northern wing of the Democratic Party, for that party too, like the Whigs in the previous election, was dividing itself terminally into a northern and southern wing. As early as July Lee had expressed his opinion that Senator Douglas should “withdraw” from the race and join or support John C. Breckinridge, the candidate of the southern, pro-slavery Democrats. “Politicians,” Lee concluded, “I fear are too selfish to become martyrs.”

  The split among the Democrats virtually guaranteed a Republican victory in the North, and with it enough electoral votes to bring Lincoln to the White House. Though Lee did not dwell on the subject, his views were not very far from Lincoln’s at this time. Both men disliked slavery as an institution, and hoped it would be allowed to dwindle away peacefully. Neither man believed that Negroes and white men could or should live together as equals. Lee was no more enthusiastic than Lincoln on the issue of extending slavery to the new territories, although the two men might have differed on the subject of returning fugitive slaves to their masters from the “free” states. Lee had already showed his willingness to pursue his slave “property” and have it returned to him, a right reinforced by the Dred Scott decision, but one that Lincoln would certainly have opposed. The southerners’ rising passion for states’ rights was a subject that Lee approached cautiously, as did Lincoln, since apart from economic issues the only rights actually under dispute were the recovery of fugitive slaves and the extension of slavery into the new territories to the west. Virtually all the other complaints of the southern states against the Federal government might have been negotiated, given a minimum of goodwill on both sides, but the subject of slavery polarized the country on both sides of the issue to the point where talk of secession would swiftly become a reality. This was as alarming a prospect to Lee as it was to Lincoln—both wanted to preserve the Union, but Lee stopped short of any threat of force to coerce the southern states. This was a small chink in the solidity of his loyalty to the Union, but one that was to have enormous consequences, both for him and for the United States.

  It is important to realize that Lee moved toward secession reluctantly, with infinite doubt and sadness, but with a firm line in mind that he would not or could not cross. He was not in sympathy with the cheering crowds calling for secession when it became clear that Lincoln had won the presidency on November 6, 1860; nor was he eager to give up the rank in the U.S. Army that had taken him so long to achieve. Then too, he was a Virginian, born in a manor house which George Washington had often visited; he grew up in a town where George Washington had worshipped and attended the Masonic Lodge; his son owned the home in which George Washington had courted his wife, Martha. The Federal government was not a faraway abstraction for Lee; it was only a short ride from his house to the War Department. It would not be easy for Lee to think of that government as the enemy.

  Four days after Lincoln’s election, the South Carolina state legislature “issued a call for a convention to withdraw the state from the Union.” In Texas Lee saw the Lone Star flag of the Texas Republic replacing the Stars and Stripes—the Union flag. It was, he wrote to Custis, “a convulsion,” and one of which he could not approve. It was already clear that Texas would secede, despite the opposition of Governor Sam Houston, who, when evicted from office, said to an angry crowd: “Let me tell you, what is coming. After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundred of thousands of lives, you may win Southern independence if God not be against you, but I doubt it. . . . The North is determined to preserve this Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people as you are, for they live in colder climates. But when they begin to move in a given direction, they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche.” Houston expressed what Lee already feared. Long before Houston’s eviction from office, Lee wrote Custis: “I hope, however, the wisdom and patriotism of the country will devise some way of saving it. . . . The three propositions of [the outgoing] President Buchanan are eminently just.” He doubted that Buchanan’s plan would prevail, but he added, “It is, however, my only hope for the preservation of the Union, and I will cling to it to the last. . . . While I wish to do what is right, I am unwilling to do what is wrong, either at the bidding of the South or the North. One of their plans seems to be for a renewal of the slave trade. That I am opposed to on every ground.”

  Although there has been an immense effort to dissociate Lee from the subject of slavery, it is notable that the three “propositions” of Buchanan’s to which he referred as his “only hope for the preservation of the Union” all relate to slavery—(1) the recognition of the “right of property in slaves” in the states where it then existed “or may hereafter exist,” the last four words being something that many northerners would regard an as invitation to extend slavery; (2) the “duty” of “protecting this right in the territories,” exactly what abolitionists were fighting against in Kansas; and (3) “the enforcement of the fugitive-slave laws, with a declaration of the unconstitutionality of state laws modifying them,” which amounted to having the Federal government enforce slavery on the northern states. Lee did not think “that the Northern and Western states [would] agree” to these propositions, and he was absolutely correct, but those who suppose that his only concern was the armed coercion of southern states by the Federal government should consider that he wrote to Custis, who was then serving in the War Department, as early as December 14, 1860, of his belief that national acceptance of Buchanan’s three propositions about slavery was the only way to save the Union.

  Since Lee would never have dissembled—least of all to his own son—the conventional description of him as being indifferent or opposed to slavery is not altogether correct. He may have disliked it—his personal experience of slavery on a large scale had been for the most part unhappy—but he recognized that the institution of slavery was the central political issue for all southerners, and that to allow any interference by northerners would make all southerners second-class citizens, and uproot the social structure and conventions of the South.

  Lee also rejected for himself any automatic support of “southern nationalism,” describing the “Cotton States” in terms that are, for him, very strong indeed, and objecting to their attempts to coerce the “Border States” in the same terms as he objected to northerners’ attempts to coerce Virginia. That he was against renewing the slave trade (he meant the slave trade across the Atlantic from Africa, not internal slave trading in the United States) is hardly surprising. Almost everybody was against it, and in any case Britain’s Royal Navy had been taking vigorous action against slave ships since 1807, treating their captains and their crews as pirates.

  Ultimately, Lee was opposed to any attempt to dictate radical alterations to the status quo in the South. His position was, not surprisingly, that of a landed Virginian social conservative, similar to that of most of his family,* although unlike many of the radical southern firebrands, he preferred to keep the Union intact, both out of self-interest as an officer in the U.S. Army and out of patriotism. Still, he was no longer optimistic that it would not be torn apart, and he had some presentiment of what the future was likely to bring, since he told Custis
to “hold on to specie,” that is, United States currency—sound advice given the rapid descent into worthlessness of Confederate currency once it appeared, and the difficulties southern banks would face once they were cut off from the national banking system. Lee’s advice, both to his wife and to his children, was always objective, practical, and sensible, and the steps he took regarding his own career were equally careful and well thought out. America might be descending into chaos, but Lee remained determined not to be swept along by the tide himself.

  A good example of this is a “confidential pamphlet”† that General Scott sent at about this time to a number of officers, summarizing his opinions about what might be done to prevent the outbreak of war, and the strategy he intended to follow if it should break out, written in his inimitable style. This was a fairly rash act on Scott’s part—the new president would not be inaugurated for another four months, and Scott had no idea as yet what his views might be on the subject. If the pamphlet was “leaked” to the press it could only inflame the feelings of southerners, as well as give them a broad outline of Scott’s plans to defeat them. Lee successfully urged his fellow officers in San Antonio not “to suffer these Views to get in the newspapers,” rightly concerned that Scott’s opinions would infuriate Texans and convince doubters that the Federal government intended to attack them. When Dr. Willis G. Edwards, who had read Scott’s Views, asked him whether “a man’s first allegiance was due his state or the nation,” Lee, perhaps resenting the fact that he had been put on the spot about the opinion he most wanted for the time being to keep to himself, replied abruptly “that he had been taught to believe, and he did believe that his first obligations were towards Virginia.” If that is truly what Lee believed in December 1860, then it is hardly surprising that he prayed for the Union to be preserved. Armed conflict between the Federal government and Virginia would place him in a painful situation, in which his sense of duty and his loyalty to his roots would inevitably clash.