Lee was stunned. “I see no necessity for his death except to gratify the evil passions of those whom he offended by leaving Genl. Scott,” he wrote. He hoped the report might be a fiction “got up to gratify their revengeful feelings & to torture the feelings of his friends,” yet the article contained so much detail, and was “in such accordance with the spirit of our enemies,” that he feared it was true.34 Two months later he told Mary that he thought the young men had simply gone on an adventure, and “evil passions” led to their execution “from a spirit of malignant vindictiveness, common in a cowardly people,” a new language of invective when he spoke of the enemy.35 He never fully escaped Williams’s death. Three years later it yet haunted him with a memory still “as poignant now as on the day of its occurrence,” as he wrote Williams’s sister. “I cannot trust my pen or tongue to utter my feelings.” He still felt the anger, too. “My blood boils at the thought of the atrocious outrage, against every manly & christian sentiment.”36
Just three days after Gettysburg, Lee learned that Yankee raiders had visited the Williams home, Hickory Hill, near Ashland where Mary and his daughters stayed, and where Rooney had been taken to recuperate in company with his wife and children. They nearly captured Robert Jr. and put Rooney in a wagon and took him as hostage for captured Union officers. “We must bear this additional affliction with fortitude & resignation,” Lee wrote Mary. “I must bear this as I have to bear other things.”37 Later he learned that the Yankees looted Hickory Hill then went to the nearby home of his maternal uncle, eighty-year-old Williams Carter, whom they beat to get information.38 “We must expect to endure every injury that our enemies can inflict upon us & be resigned to it,” he told Mary sadly. “Their conduct is not dictated by kindness or love.”39
Had these things taken place a year or even two earlier, Lee’s outrage surely would have been as great. Had they not come until a year later, or even not at all, there seems no reason to doubt that his gradually hardening attitude toward the North would have continued its ossification. Coming as they did now, and especially after months of ill health and the strains of Gettysburg, they suddenly and sharply accelerated his growing conviction that Yankees were a different and hateful people. Whatever his public demeanor toward the United States thereafter, Lee never forgot nor forgave. Mary Lee may have suggested that he retaliate for the capture of his son and the beating of his uncle, but he forbore. “I do not think we should follow their example,” he told her. “The consequences of war is horrid enough at best,” he said on July 12. “Why should we aggravate them?” To do so only risked even greater retaliation from the North. They could not help it, “& must endure it.”40 He also realized what Mary did not. Two Confederate officers had been executed as spies in east Tennessee, and Confederate authorities immediately selected two Union officer prisoners to be executed on August 14 in retaliation. That is why the Federals came for Rooney Lee, to exact potential retaliation on Lee’s son and the son of another general then a prisoner. Rumors in Richmond soon said that Lee asked Davis to suspend the sentences of the doomed Yankees, even threatening that if the enemy hanged Rooney, he would resign his position and “leave the confederacy in disgust.”41 That was nonsense, of course, but still the danger to his son made the war intensely personal to Lee. “Our only course is to be patient & pray,” Lee told Mary in August. “I grieve much at his position,” he told her, but he could do nothing. “Any expression on my part would injure matters.”42
In fact, Lee consistently opposed retaliation “except in very extreme cases.” He thought it “better for us to suffer, and be right in our own eyes and in the eyes of the world.”43 That may have been a moral sentiment, or his practical realization that whatever Confederates did to retaliate, the enemy could respond in greater measure. To date he had only embraced one form of retaliation, and that had at least a shadow of lawful sanction. From the day they entered Maryland back in June, and especially after crossing into Pennsylvania, Ewell’s soldiers and following units began seizing runaway slaves as well as some free blacks. They sent the runaways south to be sold or jailed until claimed by their presumed owners, while the freedmen went to military prisons in Richmond. The number taken is elusive, but could have been in the hundreds. This had been official policy since March, when the adjutant general’s office issued a general order to that effect, and Lee reinforced it with an order to his generals. Since runaways were still Confederates’ property, this did not violate his standing order against plundering.44 Unspoken was the policy’s retaliation for the Emancipation Proclamation and the arming of black soldiers to fight their former masters.
That fall, with still no sign of Rooney being released and exchanged, and his son’s wife Charlotte’s health declining, Lee felt even more helpless, though fears of execution were long past.45 Then on Christmas Day Mary informed him that Charlotte was dying, and a day later she was gone. Lee blamed it in part on worry over her imprisoned husband, another credit to the Yankees’ “spirit of vindictiveness” against his family. Their pleasure, he said, “seems to be to injure, harass, & annoy us.” At least Charlotte was now with her dead children and his beloved Annie. “Thus dear Mary is link by link of the strong chain broken that binds us to earth, & smooths our passage to another world,” he spoke in comfort. “Oh that we may at last unite in that haven of rest, where trouble & sorrow never enters, to join in the everlasting chorus of praise & glory to our Lord & Saviour!”46
In the face of that season of personal loss, it is no wonder Lee tried to find some gain in the recent campaign. He felt he had failed and became, if not defensive, then at least self-justifying. From talking of a battle of annihilation, he now implied that his goal had merely been to keep Meade’s army north of the Potomac, and he failed only in that he did not keep it there longer. His army had done all it could. “I fear I required of it impossibilities,” he told several people, yet “though it did not win a victory it conquered a success,” a fine distinction he repeated to Davis when he said the army won “a general success, though it did not win a victory.” It had the sound of a line oft used. Ordinarily Lee did not split hairs, nor did he fear responsibility for failure. He had badly bloodied Meade and once more shifted the war out of Virginia. His “general success” approach took away some of the sting for his officers and men, and afforded him a means to claim some benefit from the costly campaign, without facing the contradiction of calling a defeat a “success.”47
He also prayed to have this cup taken from him. On August 8 Lee wrote to the president suggesting that he be removed from command. He sensed an undercurrent of discontent in the public and feared its spread to the army. Moreover, he knew better than anyone that he was not the same man he had been in June 1862. The effects of his illness that spring were still with him, his energy flagged easily, and he could scarcely perform a reconnaissance anymore. “I cannot even accomplish what I myself desire,” he told Davis. “How can I fulfill the expectations of others?” He felt his powers of inductive reasoning failing as he took scouting reports and tried to forecast enemy movements and intentions. Davis should find a younger, healthier, more able man to take over.48 Insecure managers often offer to resign, in secret hope of being reassured of their capability. Lee was surely sincere, however. The request fit his whole mood that summer. Also, fatalism took advantage of his weakened health to make him consider the possibility of ultimate defeat in the war. His prayer now was that “He will ‘fight for us once again,’” suggesting that Lee faced the possibility that God was not with them at Gettysburg. A dramatic rise in desertions suggested that many of his men had the same epiphany. Feeling himself a failure as a father and husband, he may have hoped to avert one failure more should the Confederacy fall while he captained its premier army.
Of course Davis refused. If Lee was not a general, then he had none, a sentiment echoed in the Army of Northern Virginia. “My faith is in Providence, the troops, and Genl. Lee,” an artillery commander wrote home that fall. With no confidence
in corps commanders Hill and Ewell, he prayed that Lee would exert more personal control on the soldiers than previously, when he could depend on Jackson and Longstreet; “He should attend to the minutiae.”49 Disappointed—and perhaps reassured—Lee acquiesced, pleading that now his only goal in life was to care for his invalid wife, his three homeless daughters, and “the defense of our violated country’s rights.”50 To that last end, he spent several days closeted with Davis at the end of August proposing plans to draw Meade from his positions above the Rappahannock so that Lee could try another offensive.51 Instead, Davis gave in to Longstreet’s politicking and sent his corps west to Bragg’s army in Tennessee, hoping for a victory over Rosecrans to change the momentum of the war. He asked Lee to go in overall command, but Lee expressed a reluctance that came close to a refusal. He knew enough of the toxic, politicized command culture prevailing in the Army of Tennessee to doubt, wisely, that he could turn it around, and probably knew as well that powerful political influences—cosseted by an ambitious Longstreet—played a large role in Davis’s plan. Besides, a bad cold and arthritic pain in his back so troubled him that he tried riding in a wagon instead of on horseback, to no avail. Early in September he told Mary that “if I cannot get relief I do not see what is to become of me.”52
Longstreet’s departure left the Army of Northern Virginia too reduced to make an offensive, so Lee pleaded to Davis that Bragg attack Rosecrans immediately so Longstreet could return.53 His reduced strength was soon punctuated when Meade crossed the Rappahannock on September 13 to occupy Culpeper, and Lee had no choice but to withdraw below the Rapidan River. A day later he learned that the Federals knew of Longstreet’s departure. “I begin to fear that we have lost the use of troops here where they are much needed,” he chided Davis, “and that they have gone where they will do no good.” Diplomatically he said he expected nothing from Bragg, that Longstreet would arrive too late to be of help, that Bragg might already have more men than he could handle—a rare instance of Lee implying criticism of a fellow army commander—and that if Longstreet was detained too long “it will result in evil.”54 It was as close to criticizing Davis’s judgment to his face as Lee ever came. Once more he did not dare furlough “the ‘Israelites’ in his army to go to Richmond for their holy days, though he agreed to “allow them every indulgence consistent with safety and discipline.”55
Davis was soon vindicated when news came that on September 18–20 Bragg had achieved the most crushing Confederate victory of the war at Chickamauga in north Georgia. Lee was delighted, to the point that he offered advice on strategy in Tennessee, suggesting that Longstreet move on the Federal garrison at Knoxville, which would reclaim east Tennessee, and then come east to rejoin him. Once more Lee almost lectured the president, arguing that “no time ought now to be lost or wasted” to get Longstreet back to him.56 Despite the fact that it would be up to Bragg and Davis to decide when or if the I Corps returned, Lee understood enough of Longstreet’s powerful political connections to appeal directly to him to “finish the work before you, my dear general, and return to me.” Until the absent corps came back, he said, all he could do was try to delay Meade.57
In fact, Longstreet and Bragg had done that for him. Meade stopped his advance on learning of Chickamauga and sent two of his own corps to reinforce Rosecrans. That gave Lee an opportunity to take the initiative with something approaching acceptable odds. On October 9, still so sore from arthritis that he had to ride in a wagon, he crossed the Rapidan and, using Cedar Mountain to shield his movements, turned northeast to move around Meade’s right flank, hoping to force Meade to retire toward Washington. Given a chance, Lee might then strike a blow to advantage, but Meade quickly withdrew, denying Lee any chance of cutting his line of communications and retreat. By October 14 Lee could only get at Meade’s rear guard near Bristoe Station, when A. P. Hill’s corps came up with the Federals and Hill launched an immediate and ill-prepared attack that saw his command severely battered to no gain. In keeping with his mood now, Lee did not try to conceal his frustration that Meade had escaped and Hill had lost nearly 2,000 men. The day after the fight, as Meade safely occupied earthworks at Centreville, Lee and Hill rode over the battleground where the hundreds of dead still lay. Hill tried to explain that two of his brigades performed badly but Lee cut him off. “Your line of battle was too short, sir & too weak,” he said, in what amounted to a rare face-to-face reprimand. “Bury your poor dead; the less you say about that the better.”58 His staff heard him say of Bristoe that “We’ve grieved, we’ve mourned, we’ve wept, we never blushed before.”59
Bristoe embarrassed more than Lee and Hill. “The army has lost prestige and confidence in its leaders,” an artillery battalion commander complained, fearing that Lee “is too amiable a man to exercise the proper discipline with his officers.”60 Meanwhile, Lee increasingly felt his own incapacity. He could ride again, but he had not felt well since that spring, and was uncomfortably chilled in a cold and rainy October.61 Even his uniforms shrank from exposure and added to his discomfort. Too weak to take on Centreville’s defenses, and seeing thousands of his men with neither blankets, overcoats, nor even shoes, Lee could not expose them to further combat or the coming winter and pulled back below the Rappahannock.62 He expected Meade to move south again, as indeed he did, but Lee could do little but wait for him, while the command morass in Tennessee worked against him. Longstreet wanted a campaign of his own, Bragg wanted to be rid of Longstreet, and many in that army wanted to be rid of Bragg. The result was that the I Corps would not be returning to Virginia after all, as Bragg sent Longstreet on a long and fruitless effort to take Knoxville, while at least one corps commander under Bragg appealed unsuccessfully to Lee to come take over.63
Meade made him more uncomfortable on November 7 when he began to cross the Rappahannock and captured most of two brigades in a surprise attack. Lee had no option but to withdraw again, back below the Rapidan where he believed the terrain worked more to his advantage. “I hope a kind Providence will prosper us & give us victory,” he wrote Mary on November 11. “Our only trust is in [Him].”64 Ten days later he was even more emphatic. “I am content to be poor, & to live on corn bread the rest of my life,” he told her, “if a gracious God will give us our independence.”65 The next day he attended church in Orange with President Davis. Another worshipper that day thought him “burly & ‘beefy’ & fat,” looking overall somehow “large & full & round.” Lee held his head high and seemed “the very impersonation of dignity & manly power,” thought the observer. “It makes one feel better to look at him.”66
Yet Lee hardly felt content. Inwardly he agreed with the complaint that he did not control his corps commanders sufficiently, and just as his outburst at Hill had been out of character, now for the first time he directly relieved a senior officer. Ewell disappointed Lee at Gettysburg, and since then was indecisive and wont to vacillate between depression and elation. Lee had some cause to believe that the loss of a leg in 1862 had impaired the general’s judgment and fighting spirit.67 Now the stump of the missing limb troubled Ewell sufficiently that Lee proposed that he turn his corps over to Major General Jubal A. Early until recuperated. When Ewell argued that he would be fit again in a few days, Lee made it clear that his “suggestion” was an order. On November 15 Lee relieved him, saying in the hearing of others that “Gen. Ewell was doing no good for himself or the country.”68
Then Meade moved again, crossing the Rapidan downstream from Lee and turning west in an effort to isolate him from Richmond. Lee reacted by laying out a line of works on the west bank of Mine Run Creek, and on November 29 was too occupied establishing positions to be patient when Ewell reappeared saying he felt well enough to resume his command. Lee refused, and scolded Ewell for even coming to the army in that busy hour.69 For some days he concentrated his forces, hoping to launch a typical wide movement around Meade’s left to cut his rail link to Washington, but when he was ready to go on December 2 he discovered that the Yankees were gon
e. “I am greatly disappointed at his getting off with so little damage,” Lee wrote Mary two days later, “but we do not know what is best for us, & I believe a kind God has ordered all things for our good.”70 That late in the season the army would have to go into winter quarters and try to recruit itself for the spring. That same day, relieved of the stress of imminent combat, Lee restored Ewell to his corps, though he was probably already on the lookout for an opportunity to reassign him elsewhere.
His own and his army’s performance had been unimpressive the past two months, and his future ability to meet the enemy effectively looked uncertain. Longstreet was still gone, but even when he returned, he had shown reluctance for Lee’s style of warfare at Gettysburg and might again. Hill had revealed himself as erratic and too impetuous, and Ewell could not be counted on for resolution in a decisive moment. Given his own indifferent health and stamina, Lee could not even depend on himself to make up the difference if it came to that. Yet he knew that they would all have to be at peak performance come spring.
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