Clouds of Glory
Page 96
War of 1812, 15, 22, 50, 113
Warren, Gouverneur Kemble, 619
Washington, D.C.: Lee unable to attack, 459; Lincoln’s fear of attack on, 405, 405n; Underground Railroad and, 205; vulnerability of, 244, 267–68
Washington, George, 245, 496; Alexandria Academy and, 23; allegiance to American Colonies vs. England, xlii; Arlington and, 6, 22–23, 47, 56–57; character and military genius of, 6; creation of a trained and professional army, 23; death of, 12, 56–57; defense of New York City, 307; descendent captured by John Brown, xix; fear of being buried alive, 19; Frederick the Great’s ceremonial sword and, xix, xxxi; funeral oration of, 5; George Curtis as adopted son, xxiii, 19, 38, 46, 52; headquarters at West Point, 29; Houdon’s statue of, 236; influence on Lee, xli–xlii, 6, 57, 217, 230; Kanawha Canal and, 679; Lafayette’s pistols and, xix; Lee family kinship with, 5, 6; “Light-Horse Harry Lee” and, 5, 6, 8–9, 10, 11, 12; miniature of given to Ann Hill Carter Lee, 11; Peale’s portrait, 22; removal of belongings from Arlington, 240, 240n; sword owned by Lee, 658n, 673; at Valley Forge, 506; Washington College and, 682, 683; White House plantation and, 212, 415, 675
Washington, John A., 272, 279
Washington, Lewis W., xix, xxx, xxxi, xxxiv, xxxv
Washington, Martha, 38, 46, 212, 217, 415, 675; slave belonging to, 56
Washington College, Lexington, VA, 39, 682; enrollment increase, 686, 686n; “Johnston affair,” 687; Lee as president, 39, 43, 682–88; provisions for Mary Lee’s life, 691; racial incidents as, 687–88
Webb, Anne Cipriani, 608n
Webster, Daniel, 462
Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of, 115, 130, 154, 246, 258, 359, 424, 549, 582, 623
Wert, Jeffry D., 337n
Wesley, John, 50
Western Virginia Campaign, 257–58, 272–80, 285
West Point (U. S. Military Academy), 172n, 686n; civil engineering and, 28; Civil War generals from, 184; conditions and curriculum during Lee’s school days, 29–33, 42–43, 59; creation of, 23, 28, 29; Custis Lee as cadet at, 169–70, 178, 184; difficulty of acceptance to, 24; first cadets at, 29; first superintendent (Thayer), 29, 174; Fitz Lee as cadet at, 178; French works read at, 35–36; future Civil War generals among the cadets, 33; growth of, 174; honor code, 29, 174, 176–77, 178; Jefferson Davis at, 33; Lee as cadet at, 29–38, 42–44; Lee as superintendent, xxiv, 172–85; Lee on board of examiners, 100; Lee’s admittance to, 23–26; Lee’s exemplary record at, xxiv, 31, 33–34, 43; library of, 35, 185; location of, 28–29; moral character and, 183–84, 185; Quarters 100 (Lee family home at), 175; riding school, 179, 179n; size of, 183, 183n; Stonewall Jackson at, 297; travel to, 27, 28; uniform of cadets, 29; values of graduates, 672; Whistler at, 177–78, 177n
West Point Atlas of the American Wars, The, 329, 446, 474
Whiskey Rebellion, 12
Whistler, James McNeill, 177–78, 177n
Whitehead, Margaret, 64
White House, VA, and plantation, 212, 217, 270n, 288, 294, 304, 313, 316–17, 415; destruction by Federal troops, 317, 414, 675; Grant and, 631; Lee’s sons’ return to, 675, 676; Lee’s visit to, 691; note left on door of plantation, 316; Washington and, 212, 415, 675
White House and West Point (McClellan bases), 321, 328, 337, 338, 346, 358, 374
Whiting, William, 351
Whittier, John Greenleaf, 471n
Who Is Markie? (Scott and Webb), 608n
Wickham, W. F., 604
Wilderness, 509–10, 516, 616–17
Wilderness, Battle of, 617–24; casualties, 622–23, 624; Grant’s ordnance and supply train, 618n; horror of, 620; Lee’s headquarters, 619; Lee’s “intoxication of battle,” 621–22; Longstreet’s role and controversy, 620–21; Longstreet wounded at, 623; size of forces, 617
Williams, Laurence “Lolo,” 606
Williams, Markie. See Carter, Martha Custis Williams
Williams, Orton, 224–25, 239, 240, 606–8, 608n; hanging of, 608, 677
Williams, Seth, 669
Williams, Sir Roger, 397, 397n
Williamsburg, 314
Winchester, First Battle of, 312, 332
Winchester, Second Battle of, 532
Wingate, Orde, 9
Wise, Henry A., xxx, xxxv, xxxvii, 246, 271, 275, 280, 281, 282, 289
Wolfe, James, 534
Wolseley, Sir Garnet, 628, 628n
Wool, John E., 106; advance on Mexico City, 118, 120, 121; Lee and, 108, 110–11, 113, 121; in Mexican War, 108, 109, 110, 112, 113; at Monclova, 110–11
Worth, William J., 113, 167; Lee and, 118; Mexican War and, 113, 118, 131, 135, 150; place names honoring, 113, 113n
Wyatt, Sir Francis, 3
Yale College, 686n
Yeats, W. B., 244, 569, 569n
York, PA, 546, 546n
Yorktown, VA, 306, 308, 313
About the Author
Photo by Lars Lonninge
MICHAEL KORDA is the author of Ulysses S. Grant, Ike, Hero, and Charmed Lives. Educated at Le Rosey in Switzerland and at Magdalen College, Oxford, he served in the Royal Air Force. He took part in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and on its fiftieth anniversary was awarded the Order of Merit of the People’s Republic of Hungary. He and his wife, Margaret, make their home in Dutchess County, New York.
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Also by Michael Korda
Hero
With Wings Like Eagles
Ike
Journey to a Revolution
Ulysses S. Grant
Marking Time
Horse People
Making the List
Country Matters
Another Life
Man to Man
The Immortals
Curtain
The Fortune
Queenie
Worldly Goods
Charmed Lives
Success
Power Male Chauvinism
BY MARGARET KORDA AND MICHAEL KORDA
Horse Housekeeping
Cat People
Credits
Cover design by Milan Bozic
Cover photographs: courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and
Photographs Division (Gen. Robert E. Lee) © Shutterstock (flags)
Copyright
CLOUDS OF GLORY. Copyright © 2014 by Success Research Corporation. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
From John Brown’s Body by Stephen Vincent Benét. Copyright renewed © 1927, 1928 by Stephen Vincent Benét. Copyright renewed © 1955 by Rosemary Carr Benét. Used by permission of Brandt & Hochman Literary Agents, Inc. All rights reserved.
Excerpt(s) from Requiem for a Nun by William Faulkner, copyright © 1950, 1951 by William Faulkner. Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Random House LLC. All right reserved.
Excerpt(s) from Intruder in the Dust by William Faulkner, copyright © 1929 and renewed 1957 by William Faulkner. Copyright © 1973 by Random House. Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Reprinted with the permission of Scribner Publishing Group from Robert E. Lee, Volumes 1, 2, and 3 by Douglas Southall Freeman. Copyright © 1934, 1935 by Charles Scribner’s Sons, copyright renewed 1962, 1963 by Inez Godden Freeman. All right reserved.
From Gary R. Lucy’s essay accompanying “The Great Steamboat Race: The Robt. E. Lee and the Natchez Racing from New Orleans to St. Louis, 1870.” Courtesy of the Gary R. Lucy Gallery, Inc., W
ashington, MO—www.garylucy.com.
Frontis photograph courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (Gen. Robert E. Lee); © Shutterstock (flags).
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* A “brevet” rank was honorary. Lee’s actual rank at the time was lieutenant colonel.
* This was a simple but useful innovation. Since the end of the eighteenth century cavalry in North America had fought more often as mounted light infantry than in the traditional cavalry charge of massed horsemen, and by the mid-nineteenth century Yankee ingenuity had provided mounted troops with fast-loading carbines like the Sharps, and even with repeating, cartridge-fed carbines like the Henry. For the dismounted cavalryman fighting as infantry his saber was a cumbersome nuisance that was all too easy to trip over, however effective it was in a mounted charge; Stuart’s invention allowed him to remove the saber with one hand and hang it from the pommel of his saddle as he dismounted, then reattach it to his belt as he remounted.
* Robert E. Lee may also have thus learned early on the wisdom of not retaliating against attacks on him in print, even when he was deeply pained by them. (See page 208.)
* The embalming of soldiers, particularly officers, and the return of their bodies for burial at home began the widespread use of embalming in the United States, during the Civil War. The railroads would not accept unembalmed bodies, and of course without embalming there was no chance that the body would arrive home in a condition to be “viewed” in an open casket, then a strong social convention.
* It was no coincidence that in May 1861, after Lee accepted a commission as a general in the Confederate Army, the Union Army occupied Arlington and chopped down the trees he was so fond of. In 1864 the Arlington estate was selected as the site for the new National Cemetery, of which the Lee mansion is still today the most prominent feature. The graves of Union soldiers were dug as close to the mansion as possible, so Lee could never return, and twenty-eight Union dead were buried in Mary Lee’s beloved rose garden.
* Although they fought on different sides in the Civil War (in which Meigs’s son John was killed), Meigs remained an admirer of Lee, and wrote that he was “the model of a soldier and the beau ideal of a Christian man.” This did not prevent Meigs from being the one to suggest that the Federal government take over the Lees’ Arlington estate as a burial ground for Union soldiers.
* Robert and Mary Lee had seven children: George Washington Custis Lee (known as Custis or “Boo”), born 1832; Mary Custis Lee, born 1835; William Fitzhugh Lee (“Rooney”), born 1837; Anne Carter Lee (Annie), born 1839; Eleanor Agnes Lee, born 1841; Robert E. Lee Jr. (Rob), born 1843; and Mildred Childe Lee (“Precious Life”), born 1846. None of Lee’s daughters married. All three of his sons served in the Confederate Army.
* Quote from Gary R. Lucy, Gary R. Lucy Gallery.
† “Waiting for the Robert E. Lee” was originally sung in blackface. The most famous recorded versions were those sung by Al Jolson (1912) and later by Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland (1935): “Watch them shufflin’ along . . . Hear that music and song! It’s simply great, mate, waitin’ on the levee, waitin’ for the Robert E. Lee.”
* In those days, it was usual to keep the edge of swords and bayonets dull in peacetime to reduce the possibility of accidents during drill and training. The armorer sharpened them for wartime use, then blunted the edge on weapons again for safety once a unit returned home.
* The “we” refers to the presence of James Connally, Lee’s orderly (see page 108).
* In literature Traveller is not only the subject of a poem by Stephen Vincent Benét but the narrator of Traveller, a novel by Richard Adams, the author of Watership Down.
* He is also commemorated by a large, elaborate, but seldom noticed monument in New York City, between Fifth Avenue and Broadway at Twenty-Fifth Street.
* Functionally the equivalent of today’s army chief of staff.
* This sounds like an exaggeration on Connally’s part, but I am assured by no less an authority than William Steinkraus, noted horseman and former captain and gold medalist of the U.S. Olympic equestrian team, that the Fédération Equestre Internationale record is over twenty-eight feet, so Connally was probably correct.
* General Scott disagreed with Taylor’s advance to Monterey.
* A virtual constellation of future Confederate generals was aboard the Petrita: Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, and Pierre G. T. Beauregard, as well as Lee’s opponent at Gettysburg, George G. Meade.
* Numbers where the Mexican army is concerned are uncertain. Freeman puts Santa Anna’s forces at Cerro Gordo at 8,000; others put them a good deal higher. Whatever the truth, they outnumbered Scott’s forces.
* Connoisseurs of military irony will note that the terrain and Santa Anna’s use of it somewhat resemble Meade’s position on Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg in 1863 on the second day of the battle, including the two hills on his left.
* Scott released them all “on parole” not to take up arms again, since he could not feed them. The “small arms” were so obsolete that he destroyed them.
* To the north of the highway lay Lake Texcoco, the largest of the lakes; to its south were lakes Xochimilco and Chalco.
* In quoting from nineteenth-century letters and memoirs I have left spellings of Mexican place-names as they were then written. The modern spelling of Jochimilco is Xochimilco, for example.
* “Order, counterorder, disorder.”
* There is a certain degree of skepticism about this story north of the border, but like all patriotic myths it is firmly believed in the country of its origin (think of Barbara Fritchie, for example). There is a huge monument to the six cadets at the entrance to Chapultepec Park, and throughout Mexico there are numerous statues to them and streets named after them.
* The best and most concise analysis that I have read of Lee’s religious belief is in Elizabeth Brown Pryor’s Reading the Man, chap. 14.
* “I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who has fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there is the least excuse” (Ulysses S. Grant on Appomattox, Memoirs).
† “I have directed Colonel Mosby, through his adjutant, to hang an equal number of Custer’s men in retaliation for those executed by him” (Lee, quoted, in Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol. 27, 317).
* There is even a word for it in Russian, khalatnost, the ability to sit around all day in a dressing gown thinking vaguely about grand schemes while everything falls to wrack and ruin around one’s head—named after the lifestyle of the ineffectual, daydreaming hero of Ivan Goncharov’s novel Oblomov, who fritters away his life and fortune doing exactly that.
* Carroll died in 1832 at the age of ninety-five.
/> * This was an American expression of the time, meaning “to make a decision to do one thing or another, to stop dithering, to do one’s duty” (Jonathan Green, Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang). It also appears to have been a favorite of Davy Crockett’s (An Account of Col. Davy Crockett’s Tour of the North and Down East, 1835, 137).
* It was only ten years since Dickens’s first visit to the United States as a star of the lecture circuit, during which he caused a sensation by openly condemning slavery.
* In those days superintendents of the U.S. Military Academy were normally chosen from the Corps of Engineers, since so much of the curriculum was technical and scientific, and the highest-ranking cadets invariably chose to serve in the Corps of Engineers after being graduated.
* This is the traditional “heavy cavalry” seat, ridden with long stirrups and straight legs, which can still be observed when the British Household Cavalry (the Life Guards and the Blues & Royals) ride in ceremonies and parades.
* Painted in 1871. The actual title of Whistler’s portrait of his mother is Arrangement in Gray and Black No. 1, and even today it remains probably the best-known and most popularly admired American painting.
* It still functions today as France’s National Equestrian Academy, and it produces the famous Cadre Noir: uniformed dressage riders, similar to those of Vienna’s Spanish Riding School.
* The former was Lecompton, the latter Topeka.
* Almost 1,000 now.
* Emory M. Thomas lists Lee’s most important investments as “bonds from the states of Virginia and Missouri, the cities of Pittsburgh and St. Louis, the New York & Erie and the Hudson River Railroads.” These would seem to represent a cautious but sound financial strategy on Lee’s part.
* Although this town name honors the novelist Charlotte Brontë, author of Jane Eyre, it is pronounced “Brahnt.”
† Buffalo Hump is a major character in Larry McMurtry’s Dead Man’s Walk and Comanche Moon.
* An indication of how run-down the houses were is that twenty years earlier an English visitor had already commented that from a distance Arlington “had the appearance of a superior English country residence beyond any place I had seen in the states, but as I came close to it, I was woefully disappointed.” Things had not improved since then, and White House and Romancock were in an even more advanced state of dilapidation.