Crucible of Command

by William C. Davis

  Lee’s views came before the public even more in the spring of 1867 when Congress divided the South into military districts to be garrisoned. It further mandated the election of delegates to constitutional conventions to revise state constitutions. Blacks were to have the vote in selecting delegates, but former Confederates who had not applied for pardons or taken the oath of allegiance would not. Once a new constitution was approved, and once a sitting state legislature ratified the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing rights of citizenship and equal protection, then that state might apply for readmission. The exclusion of former Confederates virtually guaranteed Republican control of the conventions.

  Saying he could “suffer nothing more than Appomattox,” he reportedly counseled Virginians to accept the situation and make the best of it. “General Lee can now be placed among the advocates of reconstruction,” a Boston paper alleged, and men in Richmond argued that Virginia could hardly degrade herself if he supported a convention.90 To see if the reports were true, the New York Herald sent a correspondent to Lexington, but Lee backed away from a direct answer. “I am a paroled prisoner, and have no right to speak upon political matters,” he protested. All he would say for publication was that he wanted his people to “take such measures as will most speedily restore to them their prosperity,” and that he was in favor of a convention. When Congress passed a second act requiring commanders of the military districts to supervise elections, Lee said he hoped every citizen eligible to vote would do so, “to secure the speedy restoration and welfare of the country.”91

  The press continued to garble Lee’s sentiments, and he felt the need to explain himself more fully.92 “My opinion would have no influence in correcting the misunderstanding which has existed between the North and South,” he wrote in April, “and which I fear is still destined to involve the country in greater calamities.”93 Still, to a few friends he reiterated that there was “no doubt” the conventions must be held. “The people are placed in a position where no choice in the matter is left them,” and everyone able to vote had a duty to do so “to elect the best available men.” He deplored seeing Southerners dividing into parties on the issue, and urged all to yield on all minor points to unite in what was best for the general welfare. Moreover, when the states’ conventions revised their constitutions, the people ought to approve and carry out their decrees “in good faith and kind feeling.”94

  “It is difficult to see what may eventually be the best,” he wrote a friend in May 1867. “I think it is the duty of all citizens not disfranchised to qualify themselves to vote, attend the polls, and elect the best men in their power.” He feared that conservatives might boycott the elections, leaving the convention to be dominated by wartime Unionists “and the negroes.” He did not regard a new constitution with enthusiasm, but he was a pragmatist. “I look upon the southern people as acting under compulsion, not of their free choice,” he said, “and that it is their duty to consult the best interests of their States, as far as may be in their power to do.” They could not control national politics, “but by united efforts, harmony, prudence and wisdom, we may shape and regulate our domestic policy.” In time, he thought their political disabilities ought to be relieved and business and economy in the South rebuilt.95 Yet he had no illusions about the shift in American public life. “Notwithstanding our boastful assertions to the world, for nearly a century, that our government was based on the consent of the people,” he declared, “it rests upon force; as much as any government that ever existed.” The bitterness lingered.

  Meanwhile, Lee looked on with dismay as military reconstruction commenced, and Virginia became subject to Major General John Schofield, of whose administration he did not approve. Of the five military commanders overseeing districts in the South, Lee thought Major General Winfield Scott Hancock, in charge of Texas and Louisiana, was “the only one of the District Commanders who seems to have taken a right conception of his duties, & to understand the necessities of the country.” He watched in grief the impositions on the rights of Southerners, trusting that an end to their duress would come one day, “for time, at last, sets all things even.”96 When subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury attempting to try Jefferson Davis for treason, Lee resolutely refused to lay responsibility for his acts as a general at the former president’s feet, taking full responsibility onto himself. In these postwar years Lee never spoke of himself again as an American, but only as a Virginian or a Southerner. His comments on public affairs rarely touched on national events or issues, but only on those affecting the South. He might acquiesce, but he would never assimilate.

  Like Lee, Grant had hoped to see civil government restored quickly, for otherwise the army would have to maintain order, which invited confrontation and irritated the already sore feelings of ex-Confederates, especially with black regiments among the occupiers. To forestall race-based clashes, he transferred many black units to the North, and ordered the predominantly black XXV Corps to Texas to guard the border with Mexico. In 1862 the French invaded and occupied Mexico, and by 1863 controlled most of the country. The following year they installed their puppet Maximilian as emperor. Grant felt from the first that the French invasion was almost part of the Southern rebellion, for what he believed to be French aid to the Confederacy was “little less than open war.” The defiance of the Monroe Doctrine in taking by the bayonet a “friendly but downtroden Nation” was “an act of hostility to the United States.” He would have been happy to send an army to Mexico immediately after the surrenders to help the legitimate government of Benito Juarez expel the invaders. When he learned that after surrendering, but before handing over their arms, Kirby Smith and several thousand of his men and officers expatriated themselves to Mexico to support Maximilian, he recommended sending a force into Mexico to capture and return them.97

  He spoke publicly, though briefly, of his belief in Mexico’s “coming deliverance” from foreign oppression.98 Until the French were out, he favored boycotting international events hosted by France, leaving one visitor with the clear impression that “should the general ever be President, no European emperor in Mexico will be long without a war on his hands.”99 Lee’s view of Maximilian was exactly the opposite, evidence of his rather parochial view of world affairs, and continuing disdain for Mexico’s native people. When the Juaristas captured and executed Maximilian, Lee deplored the act. Dismissing the blatant French usurpation, he argued that the emperor “went to Mexico at the formal invitation of her people.”100

  Violence erupted in the South, as riots in Memphis and elsewhere gave evidence that white Southerners were not ready to accept the freedmen, and Grant concluded that military occupation was going to be needed awhile longer. He was not at all pleased at the state of affairs a year after Appomattox. Southerners seemed more resistant than immediately after the surrenders, and he complained in May 1866 that “now they regard themselves as masters of the situation.” Grant even mused that perhaps the war should have lasted a little longer so that places like Texas, largely untouched, could feel what he called the “blighting effects of war.” Worse, Lee frustrated him. “Lee is behaving badly,” he groused, “conducting himself very differently from what I had reason, from what he said at the time of the surrender, to suppose he would.” No other man in the South could exert a tenth of the influence for good that Lee might wield, but instead Grant saw him “setting an example of forced acquiescence so grudging and pernicious in its effects as to be hardly realized.” So long as former Confederate leaders acted as if the cause they lost in war could be won in peace, he feared that the military must remain in the South to prevent open resistance.101 Despite his disappointment, Grant said in private that personally he liked his old foe and that Lee was “a gentleman.”102

  In July 1866, largely in an effort to win Grant to his side, Johnson secured legislation creating the new rank of “general of the army,” giving Grant a fourth star. Meanwhile, as the nation wearied of the impasse between Johnson and the Radical Republican
s, and with the next election just two years distant, the dormant talk of Grant and the presidency reemerged. Still inclined to disclaim all ambition in that direction, Grant distanced himself from Johnson, especially after the president used some subtle maneuvers to put abroad the impression that Grant stood with him. Then that fall he was caught in the middle of a feud between Johnson and Stanton, and when Johnson tried to get him out of the way on a mission to Mexico, Grant refused.

  Johnson’s war with the Republican Congress backfired that fall when Republicans won sweeping victories in midterm elections. When Congress reconvened in January 1867 the Republicans had a virtually veto-proof majority and began passing legislation that Johnson could not stop. He fought back by demanding Stanton’s resignation, then suspended him when he refused to leave his office. Grant reluctantly agreed to sit as interim secretary of war, and his sense of duty left him no choice but to obey several commands from the president that he found ill advised. When Congress reconvened there was talk of arresting or forcibly removing Johnson from office, but Grant made it clear that as commanding general he would use force if necessary to prevent any such act. While he did not support impeachment, when the Senate ordered Stanton reinstated in January 1868, Grant handed over the office, which effectively broke all ties with Johnson. Ironically, being Johnson’s enemy now made Grant quite palatable to Johnson’s other enemies, the Radical Republicans, bedfellows for whom Grant had little more taste than he did the president. A few weeks later Congress impeached Johnson.

  “My feelings induce me to prefer private life,” Lee told Robert Ould in February 1867, “which I think more suitable to my condition and age, and where I believe I can better subserve the interests of my State.”103 In the fall of 1866 a bizarre rumor circulated that he had shown some interest in the governorship of Virginia before the war.104 He had not, but that did not stop Ould approaching him to say that leading men in the state wanted him to run. Lee could hardly fail to appreciate that it was an effort to capitalize on his status as easily the most popular man in the state, and at the same time a gesture of defiance. They should nominate men solely for their capability, he replied. “This is no time for the indulgence of personal or political considerations in selecting a person to fill that office,” he told Ould, “nor should it be regarded as a means of rewarding individuals for supposed former services.” Electing him would be used by the Republicans to incite more hostility to Virginia and the South than already existed and bring distress on his fellow Virginians rather than the full return of their civil liberties and rights. He specifically told Ould that his letter was not to be released to the press. Lee wanted no words of his to leak into the public arena, where their meaning could be twisted to suit others.105

  With or without his permission, some in the South determined to use his name all the same. The Mobile Register created a minor sensation in May 1866 when it placed Lee’s name at the head of a column as its choice for nominee of the States Rights Democrats for the presidency in 1868.106 No groundswell followed, and Lee ignored the defiant gesture, but then in January 1867 a Maryland newspaper suggested a reunification ticket for 1868 headed by Grant for president and Lee for vice president.107 The Macon, Georgia, Daily Telegraph immediately commented that the wrong name was on the top of the ticket but that “all creation would not whip it.” A Michigan editor sarcastically commented that a President Grant would likely not live long in office “with an ex-rebel General waiting for his shoes.”108

  It became more serious when James Gordon Bennett’s New York Herald proposed a Grant and Lee ticket to “unite the North and South in a solid bond of practical union.” While the Republicans recoiled in shock, Bennett argued that “the election of these two soldiers would insure to the country union and fraternity at home, respect and influence abroad.”109 In April he went on to suggest that the newly enfranchised black men of the South should begin their voting careers by nominating Grant and Lee in the most effective gesture they could make to demonstrate fitness for citizenship.110 One Northern journal in Evansville, Indiana, even placed Lee’s name on top, believing that he could get the Democratic nomination.111 Neither Grant nor Lee commented on this strange juxtaposition of their names.

  Still, Lee’s name was introduced into the 1868 presidential campaign, but in quite a different manner. That summer the Republican Party nominated Grant for the presidency and the Democrats put forward Horatio Seymour of New York. The Democrat Rosecrans, hoping to win support for Seymour and at the same time defeat his old foe Grant, approached Lee to ask for the viewpoint of men of the South on important campaign issues. Were Southerners willing to treat the freed slaves fairly and humanely, as opposed to Republican claims that blacks were being oppressed in the former Confederate states, and were Southerners reconciled to the result of the war and ready to work with the rest of the nation in moving forward? Lee did not presume to speak for the South, but he agreed to present a letter with Rosecrans’s questions to other leading Southern men. Lee turned his letter over to two friends who drafted a reply, and Lee took it to show to Generals John Echols and Beauregard and consult with them.

  With Echols acting as secretary, Lee dictated changes and cuts.112 The missive mirrored his oft-expressed sentiments, and in places used almost verbatim his testimony before the congressional committee in February 1866.113 The result of the war had settled the slavery and secession questions for good. Southerners wanted only to resume their old relations with the United States and to return to peace and harmony, nor were they hostile to blacks. Rather, the letter pointed out that Southern agriculture was just as dependent on black labor as those former slaves were dependent on white planters for employment. Lee opposed putting political power in the hands of the freedmen, not from enmity, but from “a deep-seated conviction that at present the negroes have neither the intelligence nor the qualifications which are necessary to make them safe depositories of political power.” He deprecated all disorder and violence. “The great want of the South is peace” and “relief from oppressive misrule.”114 Though they had no impact on the election of Grant that November, the sentiments attributed to Lee were not incompatible with the incoming president’s. Moreover, the impression remained that Lee was willing to speak out as the leading representative of the old Confederacy, and a possible molder of Southern opinion.

  When Virginia’s new constitution was ready to be submitted to Congress, some feared its rejection over several clauses, in particular the one covering suffrage and office holding for blacks. A committee of nine Virginians representing all regions of the state was self-appointed to go to Washington and make known to Congress that, despite the feeling that blacks were not yet ready to exercise the vote intelligently, Virginians would accept the clause rather than see their constitution rejected. The resolutions creating the committee were drafted by the same man who wrote the response to the Rosecrans letter, and the similarity of language quickly gave rise to rumors that Lee was himself a prime mover to get the committee in operation.

  In fact, he played no active role whatever, though he did have a conversation with one of the organizers of the committee about the voting clause.115 Lee told him that slaves were freed without any fault or agency of their own, that they were among whites now and could not be got rid of, so whites should do the best they could with them. To make them useful citizens, he thought qualified suffrage ought to be extended to those who were educated and owned property. That would be only about one-tenth of them, so hardly enough for them to do real harm at the polls, he thought. Lee did not envision universal suffrage, telling General Jubal Early in April, “I never thought that all the white men were qualified to vote.” A Whig patrician to the last, Lee doubted even Congress would give all blacks the vote. Anxious for something to be done to remove military rule, he admitted that he was “no politician,” and hoped others might put their heads together and agree on something to relieve the people.116

  18

  THE LAST MEETING

  A
LOOMING QUESTION during the first postwar years was whether Grant and Lee would meet again. There was no particular reason for them to do so, yet the two names had been so intertwined since 1864 that the public imagination was naturally primed to take a deep interest in the possibility. At first it seemed it might happen in December 1867, at the first postwar reunion of the old Aztec Club that both had joined in Mexico. The first announcement said the club would meet at the Astor House, and that both generals were expected to attend. When it was learned that McClellan was absent in Europe and could not come, both Grant and Lee suggested postponement until the fall of 1868, but by that time Grant was busy running for the presidency, and the reunion was postponed yet again until September 1870, and neither attended.1

  By that time they had met a fourth and last time. Shortly after Grant’s inauguration, knowing that he must make a business trip to Baltimore in the spring of 1869, and would necessarily pass through Washington, Lee decided to seek “a quiet social interview.” Not thinking it proper to write to or call on the president himself, and wary of publicity that would do neither any good, he asked an old friend to approach Grant on his behalf. Grant may not have received the request, for he did not respond, but Lee’s friend then called on Julia’s brother Frederick Dent, who immediately arranged everything. Lee was in Baltimore the last week of April when a letter conveyed to him “the kind sentiments of Pres: Grant” and a request to come to the White House when he reached Washington. Lee said he would send his calling card to Dent when he arrived, and wait to learn if Grant could see him, enjoining that there be no public notice given of his coming, to “divest my visit of all unnecessary publicity, which will I think be the more agreeable to Pres: Grant as well as myself.”2