This man could reason, but he was a fighter,
Skilful in every weapon of defence
But never defending when he could assault,
Taking enormous risks again and again,
Never retreating while he still could strike,
Dividing a weak force on dangerous ground
And joining it again to beat a strong,
Mocking at chance and all the odds of war
With acts that looked like hairbreadth recklessness
—We do not call them reckless, since he won.
We do not see him reckless for the calm
Proportion that controlled the recklessness—
But that attacking quality was there.
He was not mild with life or drugged with justice,
He gripped life like a wrestler with a bull,
Impetuously. It did not come to him
While he stood waiting in a famous cloud,
He went to it and took it by both horns
And threw it down.
Picture Section
John Brown
{National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution / Art Resource, NY}
Colonel Robert E. Lee.
{Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ds-04730}
Lee’s mentor, General Winfield Scott.
{Culver Pictures / The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY}
Stratford, Lee’s birthplace.
{© G.E. Kidder Smith / Corbis}
Arlington
{Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HABS VA,7-ARL,1-2 (CT)}
Lee’s rented home at 707 East Franklin Street, Richmond, Virginia.
{Detroit Publishing Co., Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-det-4a12504}
The president’s house, Washington College, Lexington, Virginia.
{Dennis Johnson / Getty Images}
Mary Custis Lee
{Lee Papers, Special Collections, Leyburn Library, Washington and Lee University}
Eleanor Agnes Lee
{Virginia Historical Society}
MRS. LEE AND HER DAUGHTERS
Mary Anne Custis Lee and Robert E. Lee, Jr.
{Virginia Historical Society}
Anne Carter Lee
{Courtesy of Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial}
Mildred Childe Lee
{Virginia Historical Society}
Robert E. Lee
{Getty Images}
William Henry Fitzhugh Lee
{Lee Papers, Special Collections, Leyburn Library, Washington and Lee University}
ROBERT E. LEE AND HIS SONS
George Washington Custis Lee
{Lee Papers, Special Collections, Leyburn Library, Washington and Lee University}
Robert E. Lee, Jr.
{Virginia Historical Society}
The “Three Heroes” of the Confederacy: Jackson, Lee, and Stuart.
{F.C. Buroughs, Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-22750}
Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America.
{Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-cwpbh-00879}
Lee at Fredricksburg.
{Henry Alexander Ogden, Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-pga-01927}
Chancellorsville
{Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-USZ62–118168}
Lee cheered by his troops after his victory at Chancellorsville.
{Henry Alexander Ogden, copyrighted by F.E. Wright, Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-USZ62–51832}
Lieutenant-Colonel Fremantle in later years.
{Author’s Collection}
Henry Thomas Harrison, General Longstreet’s scout, who brought the news to him on the night of June 28, 1863, that General Meade was marching toward Gettysburg.
{Author’s collection}
ROBERT E. LEE AND THE PRINCIPAL GENERALS OF THE ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA
J. E. B. Stuart
{© 2014 Stock Sales WGBH / Scala / Art Resource, NY}
James A. Longstreet
{SSPL via Getty Images}
A. P. Hill
{Author’s collection}
Robert E. Lee
{Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-cwpb-07494}
John Bell Hood
{SSPL via Getty Images}
T. J. “Stonewall” Jackson
{The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY}
Richard S. Ewell
{© 2014 Stock Sales WGBH / Scala / Art Resource, NY}
Confederate dead at the “Bloody Lane,” Sharpsburg, 1862.
{Alexander Gardner, American (1821–1882), “Bloody Lane, Confederate Dead, Antietam,” September 19, 1862, Albumen Print, 3⅛ x 3¾ in. Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA, Gift of David L. Hack and by exchange Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. 98.32.137}
Sherman’s march to Atlanta, 1864.
{Alexander Hay Ritchie, Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-09326}
Lee on Traveller leaving the McLean house, Appomattox Court House, Virginia, after his surrender, followed by his aide, Colonel Marshall.
{Alfred R. Waud, Morgan collection of Civil War drawings, Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-21320}
Lee, photographed by Matthew Brady in Richmond, shortly after the surrender.
{Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-cwpbh-03115}
Lee’s mess kit and field glasses.
{Author’s collection}
Lee on Traveller—the iconic photograph.
{Oversize Collection, Special Collections, Leyburn Library, Washington and Lee University}
Mrs. Lee in old age.
{Christian F. Schwerdt, © Chicago History Museum/The Bridgeman Art Library}
Lee, shortly before his death.
{Time & Life Pictures / Getty Images}
Recumbent statue of Robert E. Lee by Edward Valentine, the Lee Chapel, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia.
{Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-highsm-11812}
Lee’s mother, Ann Carter Lee, wearing the brooch George Washington gave her as a wedding present, an enameled portrait of himself in an oval gold frame.
{Washington-Custis-Lee Collection, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA}
Lee’s father, Henry Lee III, “Light-Horse Harry” Lee.
{National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution / Art Resource, NY}
George Washington’s family with Lee’s father-in-law George Washington Parke Custis on Washington’s left.
{Christian Schussele, Colored mezzotint c.1864 after painting / Universal History Archive/ UIG / The Bridgeman Art Library}
Mrs. Robert E. Lee and her husband, Robert E. Lee, as a lieutenant.
{William Edward West, “Mary Anna Randolph Custis Lee (Mrs. Robert E. Lee), 1838,” Washington-Custis-Lee Collection, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA LC1959.10.1}
The Spring of the Confederacy, a mural by Charles Hoffbauer, showing Lee on Traveller at the center, flanked by some of the principal generals of the Confederacy. From left to right: John Bell Hood, Wade Hampton, R. S. Ewell, John Brown Gordon, T. J. Jackson, Fitzhugh Lee, A. P. Hill, R. E. Lee, James Longstreet, J. E. Johnston, George Pickett, P. G. T. Beauregard, and J. E. B. Stuart.
{Hoffbauer, Charles, “Four Seasons of the Confederacy,” Virginia Historical Society}
The Eve of the Storm by Don Troiani, depicting Lee the night before the Battle of Chancellorsville. On Lee’s right is the cartographer Major Jedediah Hotchkiss; seated to his left is Stonewall Jackson; seated in front of him on the log is his aide, Colonel Marshall, transcribing Lee’s orders.
{Painting by Don Troiani, Historical Art Prints}
The last meeting of Lee and Jackson.
{Everett D. B. Ju
lio (1843–79) (after), Brown University Library / The Bridgeman Art Library}
Decision at Dawn by Don Troiani, showing Lee standing before ordering the attack on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg. Seated on the log whittling are Generals Longstreet and A. P. Hill. In the tree is Lieutenant-Colonel Fremantle, wearing a gray top hat and pointing, and the Austro-Hungarian observer, with field glasses; in uniform at the bottom of the tree is the Prussian observer, talking to a journalist.
{Painting by Don Troiani, Historical Art Prints}
{Edwin Forbes, Morgan collection of Civil War drawings, Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-22565}
View of Little Round as the Confederate line advances toward it, July 2, 1862.
{Edwin Forbes, Morgan collection of Civil War drawings, Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-22564}
Winslow Homer’s painting of Confederate prisoners being addressed by a Union officer at Gettysburg.
{© The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Image source: Art Resource, NY}
General Ulysses S. Grant and General Robert E. Lee in the parlor of the McLean house, Appomattox Court House, Virginia, shaking hands after Lee has signed the surrender of his army, April 9, 1865.
{Virginia Historical Society}
The sword Lee wore to meet Grant.
{The Museum of the Confederacy, Richmond, Virginia, Photography by Katherine Wetzel}
The uniform frock coat that Lee wore the day of the surrender.
{The Museum of the Confederacy, Richmond, Virginia, Photography by Katherine Wetzel}
The Virginia Memorial at Gettysburg, with Lee on Traveller gazing up toward Cemetery Ridge in the direction of Pickett’s Charge.
{Images Etc Ltd / Getty Images}
Lee on Traveller, Richmond, Virginia.
{© Buddy Mays / Corbis}
Stone Mountain, Georgia: Jefferson Davis, Lee, and Stonewall Jackson.
{© Walter Bibikow / JAI / Corbis}
Acknowledgments
I would like first of all to thank both my editors, Hugh Van Dusen at HarperCollins, and Phyllis Grann, my colleague for many years at Simon & Schuster, for their invaluable help, support, and Sitzfleisch. I also owe special thanks to my agent and dear friend for many decades Lynn Nesbit, without whose belief that I could write this book, it would never even have been begun.
Special thanks are owed to my dear friend Mike Hill, whose indefatigable research and optimism have been precious assets over the years, and whom I regard as a partner as much as a researcher. I am grateful too to Kevin Kwan, good friend and peerless art researcher, for his eagle eye and flawless taste. Working with both of them has been one of the major pleasures of writing this book.
I would also like to thank Victoria Wilson, friend and colleague—and author of an even longer biography than this one—for taking the time to read the manuscript of this book and for her unfailing support and enthusiasm throughout; my dear friend Gypsy DaSilva, whose advice has been enormously helpful and unfailingly available day or night; and my assistant Dawn Lafferty, who coped calmly and gently with all the many demands of a book this long with its innumerable details, and whose presence has helped in keeping my daily life in balance.
I am indebted to Robert Krick, the fount of all wisdom on the subject of the Civil War, for pointing out the errors in my chapter on Gettysburg—any that remain are, of course, my own—and for his willingness to answer even the dumbest of questions with patience and supreme common sense.
Finally, the most important thanks of all are due to my beloved wife Margaret, for her patience and understanding as we shared our life together with the constant presence of Robert E. Lee.
Notes
The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was made. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature on your ebook reader.
PREFACE The Portent
xvii “the apostle of the sword”: Oswald Garrison Villard, John Brown: 1800–1859: A Biography Fifty Years After (New York: Knopf, 1943), 111.
xviii When he redrafted the Declaration of Independence: Ibid., 334.
xviii When he struck: Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Life and Letters of John Brown: Liberator of Kansas and Martyr of Virginia (London: Sampson, Low, Marston, Searlef and Rivington, 1885), 40.
xxi “that an insurrection was in progress”: Villard, John Brown, 434.
xxii he had lived for fifteen years: Jean H. Baker, James Buchanan (New York: New York Times Books, 2004), 75.
xxiii The Arlington property alone: Douglas Southall Freeman, Robert E. Lee: A Biography (New York: Scribner, 1934), Vol. 1, 381.
xxiii Much as Lee: Ibid., 389.
xxiv “a foe without hate”: Benjamin Harvey Hill, Senator Benjamin Hill of Georgia: His Life, Speeches and Writings (Atlanta: T.H.P. Bloodworth, 1893), 406.
xxv “the sun was fiery hot”: Freeman, Robert E. Lee, Vol. 1, 367.
xxv Secretary of War Floyd: Note of J. B. Floyd, secretary of war, to Colonel Drinkard, October 17, 1859, National Archives.
xxvii By midnight, Lee, Stuart, Lieutenant Green: Select Committee of the U.S. Senate, 36th Congress, 1st Session, Rep. Com. No. 278, June 15, 1860, 41.
xxvii With exquisite politeness: Freeman, Robert E. Lee, Vol. 1, 397, 398.
xxviii Calmly, Lee surveyed the ground: Ibid., 397.
xxix His mutilated corpse: David S. Reynolds, John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights (New York: Knopf, 2005), 320.
xxx By mid-afternoon, men were falling: Ibid., 317–24; Villard, John Brown, 443.
xxx He sent an elderly civilian: Allan Keller, Thunder at Harper’s Ferry (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1958), 113.
xxx Brown took no umbrage: Villard, John Brown, 447.
xxxi “Oh, you will get over it”: Ibid., 448.
xxxiii “When Smith first came to the door”: Ibid., 451.
xxxiii “a ragged hole low down”: Ibid., 453.
xxxiii “With one son dead by his side”: Ibid.
xxxiv Colonel Washington cried out loudly: Keller, Thunder at Harper’s Ferry, 149.
xxxiv The rest “rushed in like tigers”: Villard, John Brown, 454.
xxxiv Lee “saw to it that the captured survivors”: Ibid.
xxxv “He is a man of clear head”: Ibid., 455.
xxxvii “No monument of quarried stone”: Susan Cheever, Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010), 129.
xxxvii “As it is a matter over which”: Robert E. Lee Jr., Recollections and Letters of Robert E. Lee (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1924), 21–22.
xxxvii In his majestic biography of Brown: Villard, John Brown, 555.
xxxviii In Philadelphia “a public prayer meeting”: Ibid., 559; Elizabeth Preston Allen, Life and Letters of Margaret Junkin Preston (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1903), 111–17.
xxxix “was draped in mourning”: Villard, John Brown, 559.
xl Southerners were dismayed: Ibid., 496.
xl “He has abolished slavery in Virginia”: Ibid., 562.
xl He was as little pleased: Freeman, Robert E. Lee, Vol. 1, 417.
xl He regarded secession: Ibid., 421.
xli “I hope,” he wrote: Ibid., 416.
xli “He had been taught to believe”: Ibid., 418.
xlii “Washington,” Everett wrote: Quoted ibid., 420.
xlii “Secession,” Lee wrote: Ibid., 421.
CHAPTER 1 “Not Heedless of the Future”
5 By the time of the American Revolution: Richard B. McCaslin, Lee in the Shadow of Washington (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001), 13.
7 The years between 1773 and 1776: Douglas Southall Freeman, Robert E. Lee: A Biography (New York: Scribner, 1934), Vol. 1, 2.
8 A year later: Ibid.
8 Washington, recognizing Lee’s special skills: Ibid., 3.
9 “much to the horror”:
Ibid., 66.
9 “sensitive, resentful”: Ibid., 4.
10 When Matilda died in 1790: McCaslin, Lee in the Shadow of Washington, 17.
11 “Why didn’t you come home?”: Paul Nagel, The Lees of Virginia: Seven Generations of an American Family (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 166.
11 In a half-baked scheme: Emory Thomas, Robert E. Lee (New York: Norton, 1995), 26.
11 On a visit to Shirley: Freeman, Robert E. Lee, Vol. 1, 8.
13 In these modest circumstances: Nagel, The Lees of Virginia, 175, 195–96.
15 Henry Lee helped to barricade: Freeman, Robert E. Lee, Vol. 1, 14.
15 “Death seemed so certain”: Ibid., 15.
15 This proposal was not taken up: Ibid.
16 “Broken in body and spirit”: Nagel, The Lees of Virginia, 182.
16 He didn’t even manage: Freeman, Robert E. Lee, Vol. 1, 31.
16 “My dear Sir”: Ibid.
16 When it was brought to: McCaslin, Lee in the Shadow of Washington, 18.
17 That had been tried before: Freeman, Robert E. Lee, Vol. 1, 37.
18 The contrast between her childhood: Thomas L. Connelly, The Marble Man: Robert E. Lee and His Image in American Society (New York: Knopf, 1977), 169.
19 For somebody whose health was as frail: Thomas, Robert E. Lee, 45.
20 She entrusted him with the keys: Ibid., 39.
20 He accompanied her on drives: Freeman, Robert E. Lee, Vol. 1, 34.
20 “Self-denial, self-control”: Ibid., 23.
21 When he first went away: Ibid., 30–31.
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