Crucible of Command

by William C. Davis

  Grant made a visit back to Galena in September to find that his old fellow townsmen had collected more than $16,000 to buy his family a large brick home well stocked with wine and cigars, with views from the top floor across the Mississippi to Iowa, and even an indoor bathroom. Grant liked it there when he was able to get away from Washington. He took morning walks into town to talk with old friends in his brother’s store just as he had before the war, only now he did not have to put up with cutting remarks from Orville. A custodian lived in the house when the Grants were in Washington, and though originally he thought he wanted to settle there for good, after a time Grant realized he could not stay. The visits to the store paled and he went less and less often. Friends saw “a far-away look” in his eyes, and he told one that “I like Galena, but there is nothing for me to do here. I must have something to do.”39 He thought for a time of indulging his love of travel by making a trip to Europe, but returned to Washington to embark instead on an inspection trip through some of the South late that fall.40

  He stopped first at Richmond then went on to Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah, Atlanta, and East Tennessee. What he saw encouraged him that former Confederates were anxious for peace and reconciliation. He produced a report, released to the press, in which he stated all this, arguing strongly that sentiment for reconciliation was strong in the South; though he included the caveat that whites who had remained loyal to the Union and freed blacks were going to need protection until all Southerners were willing to accept Federal authority. Reports of violence toward blacks were too frequent to ignore and he wanted them to stop. Grant was evolving toward a reconstruction policy of his own somewhat at variance both with that of the president and Johnson’s Radical Republican enemies in Congress. In January 1866 he issued orders to all commanders in the occupied South to protect blacks. Sending subordinates on a tour of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, he learned that resistance sentiment and antipathy toward freedmen was even greater there. It convinced him that civil authorities were as yet helpless, and that only the army could afford safety, thus weakening his belief that reconciliation might be quick and relatively painless. All of that put him between the president and Congress, both sides courting him for his prestige. He was discovering that political warfare could be far more subtle, complex, and messy than the battlefield.

  By the time Lee wrote the September letter to the man in Petersburg, he knew the direction his “daily duties” were to take. The trustees of Lexington’s Washington College had offered him its presidency. The institution traced its roots back more than a century, but was in poor straits like most higher education in the South immediately after the war. “If I believed I could be of advantage to the youth of the Country, I should not hesitate,” he wrote former governor John Letcher.41 He replied to the trustees that “I think it the duty of every citizen, in the present condition of the country, to do all in his power to aid in the restoration of peace and harmony, and in no way to oppose the policy of the State or general governments directed to that object.”42 On September 18 a gray horse carrying a gray man in an old military coat with neither buttons nor insignia rode into Lexington, and quickly word spread that General Lee had come to take over his school.43

  The trustees wanted him to expand course offerings to make it more attractive to a postwar generation, and at the same time raise the college’s endowment. Lee accepted the challenge, and began to spread the word to potential benefactors.44 By the next spring, at the end of his first term as president, Washington College graduated sixteen young men, and Lee endured his first commencement. Students and guests that day saw on the dais a man about five feet, ten inches tall standing on surprisingly small feet, with a heavy gray mustache and short cropped gray beard, the hair on his head thin and gray, and almost gone from the top and back. “His eye is fine, his walk military, and active, his general carriage superb,” wrote one who saw him shortly afterward. “If you did not note the glance of his eye and the military carriage you would take him for a well-to-do Va farmer.” That observer thought Lee possessed of “an active, acute mind, rather than a mind of great power.”45 Certainly his first graduates were impressed with him, and each had a speech prepared. Most of them repeatedly referred to their admiration for Lee. Sitting on the stand through one after another of these, Lee grew impatient, especially as the school band performed after each peroration. During one musical selection he asked Professor William Allan, “Colonel Allen, how many more of them are to speak?” Told that four remained, Lee leaned over and whispered, “Couldn’t you arrange it, Colonel, for all four to speak at once?”46

  Lee actively promoted the school, telling parents that any student with a desire to learn ought to do well, yet he did not tout it at the expense of other state institutions.47 He went to work on a new catalog and prepared synopses of course offerings, proudly announcing an expanded curriculum for the fall 1866 term and four new professors.48 Lee echoed his style at West Point. He knew every pupil, corresponded directly with parents when grades were in, and admonished them that “your influence & advice will prevail with them more than that of any one else.”49 To prospective students he stressed that “you should the more earnestly devote yourself to the acquisition of an education, by preparing yourself to fulfill well all the duties of life.”50

  Lee always stressed duty. The college was a member of the Educational Association of Virginia, which in the spring of 1867 invited him to coauthor an address to parents. The finished piece came almost entirely from Lee, and he could have been writing his own personal credo.51 He stressed obedience, self-control, consistency, and setting a good example for their children. Parents must be truthful, sincere Christians, and demand hard work. “If habits of self-control and self-denial have been acquired during the season of education,” he wrote, “the great object has been accomplished.”52 With 410 students in the school, Lee knew each by name, and his standing in his studies. If he decided to discipline a student, he called him to his office where, instead of scolding or a lecture, he shamed the boy with kindness.53 At the same time, exemplary performance earned Lee’s compliments, and a laudatory letter to parents.54 He did impose summary discipline when necessary, expelling three who verbally abused a Northern-born storekeeper who had threatened a boy with a pistol after being insulted.55 Unfortunately, that incident was grossly exaggerated in the Northern press after a meeting in New York saw Horace Greeley, Garrett Smith, Henry Ward Beecher, and others make and call for donations for the college’s endowment, while speaking respectfully of Lee as a man.56 Outraged anonymous writers soon said the storekeeper had been attacked by seventy-five students and driven from town in fear of his life, that the faculty and students were all “thoroughly rebel in sentiment,” and the school itself “a hot-bed of proscription and embryo treason.”57

  That and similar incidents soon led to an investigation by the military authorities running the state, which absolved Lee and the school, but not before more letters hit the press charging abuse and intimidation of blacks and teachers of the local freedmen’s school.58 Soon sensationalist accounts appeared of nightly rioting in Lexington’s streets, blacks being murdered indiscriminately, and Lee “a perfect nonentity” doing nothing but running a school where classrooms were “a bed of rampant secession” and students were taught “to be ready at any time to turn against the General Government.”59 One of the professors supposedly said that if the Southern states should rise again, “I have General Lee to think for me, and when he acts, I will follow in his steps.”60 For a change, Lee wrote a public denial, but to little effect, and in any case the bad press did no lasting damage.61 After three years Washington College appeared to be flourishing, and even some in the Northern press acknowledged that it was due to “the admirable qualifications of its President.”62 By 1869 Lee had commenced schools of law, business, and journalism, meanwhile promoting agricultural and mechanical studies. 63

  Everyone wanted to capitalize on his fame, or so it seemed. Life insurance comp
anies offered him figurehead presidencies.64 Railroads approached him. Wilmer McLean, in whose parlor Lee agreed to surrender, asked to have a portrait of Lee made to sell along with a photo of his house, which Lee declined.65 Still, the manufacturers of a sewing machine took a private letter from Lee, saying how much his daughters liked their machine, and turned it into a product endorsement appearing all across the country in newspaper advertisements, probably to his embarrassment.66 Yet Lee did take one approach quite seriously. Informed of a proposed merger of the Virginia Central and Chesapeake & Ohio Railroads that would connect Richmond with the Ohio River, he predicted great benefits for Virginia in a letter that promoters used to raise capitalization.67 Rumor soon said that Lee had accepted the line’s presidency, which he had not, but three years later the company did offer him its top job and he agreed to accept when the construction was completed, so long as it allowed him to continue his work at the college.68

  He wanted to do something else as well. Just three months after Appomattox he decided to write a history of his army’s campaigns as “the only tribute I can pay to their valour & devotion.” Sadly, most of his war papers and reports were gone, and he felt real doubts that his book would be possible.69 He decided to collect papers and recollections from his senior officers, and sent a circular to many asking for what they could send, saying his object was “to transmit, if possible, the truth to posterity and to do justice to our brave soldiers.” Reflecting his continuing anger at the destruction of property, he also wanted statistics on Yankee damage, and accurate numbers so he could “get the world to understand the odds against which we fought,” a special fixation for the rest of his life.70 Besides defending himself and his army, he wanted to defend his cause, shifting his loyalty as a Confederate to the preservation of Confederate memory.

  By early 1866 material enough came in to encourage him that he might be able “to do justice to those who fell,” especially since he could rely on the documents “better than my own memory.”71 Generals like Breckinridge who were compiling their own narratives happily shared copies, but after a year Lee had yet to write a line, especially on learning that almost all of the official papers of Longstreet’s corps had been lost.72 Soon publishers hovered, sensing a big seller. One was rumored to have offered a $10,000 gift to the college in return for a series of weekly articles, which Lee declined. He first spoke of the book with Charles B. Richardson of New York, who specialized in works by Confederates about the war, and met with him more than once in 1865 and 1866. Richardson wanted to publish in August 1866, but Lee thought that too soon, as the public mind was “not yet ready to receive the truth.” When the publisher told him that the work would sell better sooner rather than later, Lee agreed, but sales were “not altogether my object,” besides which he still had written nothing.73 By December 1866 Lee told a friend that “I progress slowly,” and kept collecting materials in a desultory fashion but never felt he had enough to begin the work.74 In March 1869 when a report appeared in the press that he had actually finished his book and it would appear that summer, he sent a correction that there was no present prospect for the book either to be written or published.75

  Even before that Lee told one of his professors that he was “hardly calculated for a historian,” and feared he was “too much interested and might be biassed.”76 He apparently intended a “history” rather than a memoir, with heavy reliance on official reports, and he made it clear that his real motive was defensive, to show that only overwhelming numbers and resources beat him. His abhorrence of controversy virtually guaranteed few candid opinions about subordinates. Hence, the consequent loss to Confederate literature is hard to assess, but it may not have been great. Meanwhile, in discussions with professors at Washington College, he dwelled on the same themes. He spoke of his resignation from the Army in 1861, still sensitive over charges of treason, and of his opposition to secession. Antietam would have been a victory but for the “lost dispatch,” and he implied some blame to D. H. Hill. The defeat at Gettysburg was due to the absence of Stuart, and the failure of Ewell, Longstreet, and A. P. Hill to launch coordinated attacks. He was even mildly critical of Stonewall, revealing a shadow of chagrin that Jackson got the credit for movements Lee had planned. All he said of the Confederate government was that Davis’s refusal to conciliate his opposition crippled his power, and that he lamented that Breckinridge, “a lofty, pure, strong man,” was not made secretary of war sooner.77

  If he did not write his history, at least he gave encouragement to others. He mildly, and reluctantly, critiqued a new biography of Jackson, concerned that it claimed too much for Stonewall’s command, and that men from the other corps of his army might feel slighted and respond in the press. He recoiled at the thought of former Confederates embarrassing themselves in print by fighting over credit.78 Apparently he was happy to encourage such feuds between Yankee generals. He corresponded with Fitz-John Porter, a Union general court-martialed and dismissed on charges by Pope after Second Manassas. Lee detested Pope, and gave Porter permission to use his letters in a campaign to regain his commission and reputation.79

  Lee sent small donations to several associations formed to care for orphans of slain soldiers and their fathers’ graves.80 When the Hollywood Memorial Association of Richmond wanted to bring the Confederate dead at Gettysburg home, he approved.81 “The graves of the Confederate dead will always be green in my memory, and their deeds be hallowed in my recollection.”82 Yet he opposed erecting monuments on the battlefields of the Confederacy. “I think it wiser,” he wrote, “not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered.”83 Unfortunately, some of Lee’s “sores” would not be allowed to heal, like the seemingly senseless hanging of Orton Williams. A cruel reminder of it came in November 1869 when a bizarre rumor circulated that he did not die in June 1863, but was smuggled from the country, and now lived in Cuba under the name Brigadier General Don Emanuel, commanding a regiment of black cavalry in a revolt against Spain.84

  Lee’s lasting anger toward the Yankees colored his view of the postwar political situation, which he thought precarious, and worsened by partisanship. “I yet believe that the maintenance of the rights and authority reserved to the States, and to the people, [are] not only assential [sic] to the adjustment and balance of the general system, but the safeguard of the continuance of a free government,” he wrote in December 1866. The consolidation of power into a central authority was sure to produce domestic despotism and foreign aggression. He accepted one of the myths enthusiastically embraced by secessionists in the 1850s that New England’s Hartford Convention of 1814 had endorsed secession as a last resort to fight centralization. Then in 1861 reason had been displaced by war waged for the “avowed” maintenance of the Union, while he suspected the real reason was to concentrate all power in Washington. Republicans now made conditions for the “readmission” of states, but Lee argued that if victory decided that secession was unlawful, then those states never really left the Union. All of the states must be perfectly equal now as before, meaning they still had the right to decide for themselves who should vote, and even the nature of their “domestic institutions.” He claimed that an end to slavery by different means had long been a goal, and especially for Virginians, which certainly would have been a surprise to a great many Southerners, but complained that requiring states to ratify emancipation as a condition of readmission was unconstitutional.

  The South was willing in 1861 to accept the Crittenden compromise but Republicans would not. “Who, then, is responsible for the war?” Lee asked. The South would have preferred any compromise to what followed, but now must accept its results and embrace the amendment without resistance.85 Ironically, in 1860 and 1861 Lee condemned the extremists who brought on the crisis, but the effects of the war shifted him toward their positions on the political and social issues driving them. Simply put, he could hardly rep
udiate the Southern position in 1860 without in effect saying that hundreds of thousands of Confederates died for nothing. They could have had peace. War came when it did only because the North refused to compromise.

  Lee found himself drawn into the public arena in February 1866, when called by a congressional committee to testify on current Southern sentiment and treatment of the freed slaves. He gave evasive answers to sometimes loaded questions. Virginians wanted peace, he said, and the best way to achieve that would be liberal treatment by Washington. Blacks were not ready for the vote. Give it to them now and they might easily be led astray. No one could say when or if they would be better qualified in the future. Lee hardly expected his testimony to reawaken the old whipping story, but in March a deposition by Wesley Norris appeared in the press, probably to counter Lee’s public stance as a moderate with no special dislike of blacks.86 “There is not a word of truth in it,” he complained privately, averring that “no servant, soldier, or citizen that was ever employed by me can with truth charge me with bad treatment.”87 A few weeks later the story hit the Baltimore press and spread across the country with the headline GEN. LEE A WOMAN-WHIPPER. Again he denied it privately, though he never said what was untrue.88 Even if he did order the whippings, they were punishment for insubordination, like the execution of deserters, which could hardly be unfair. Still, making no public response, he could remember Don Quixote, when Sancho Panza complained at being criticized and the don told him, “Let it alone Sancho I tell you, the more that you stir it, the more it will stink.”89