Crucible of Command
Page 61
The opportunity to look back on his life given him by writing his memoir was one that he welcomed. Grant hosted many dinners at the White House. At one a guest suggested that each diner recall the period of his life he might most like to relive. Naturally, everyone chose the brightest moments to reprise. Then it was the president’s turn. “What part of your life would you like to live over again?” someone asked. Grant dropped his head to his chest in his usual thoughtful pose, then raised it and replied, “All of it. I should like to live all of my life over again. There isn’t any part of it I should want to leave out.” His answer stunned the others. “He was the only man in the room who was ready to take the bitter with the sweet in his life,” a senator recalled. Only Grant “had the courage to live his whole life over again.”23 More than thirty years earlier, when just in his late teens, Grant forthrightly told a cousin that “I am not one to show fals[e] colors [or] the brightest side of the picture.”24 He took dark and light with equanimity. The contrast gave his life texture.
Even in death Grant made a conciliatory gesture. His pallbearers were Sherman, Sheridan, Logan, and Porter, and Confederates Buckner and Joseph E. Johnston. The nation averted an even more eloquent, as well as potentially controversial, gesture when they laid him to rest in New York City, where a dozen years later he would be moved to a massive new mausoleum. Before his death Grant feared that the people would want him to rest in the national cemetery just across the Potomac from Washington, where lay thousands of other veterans of the war, soldiers and generals alike. He wanted to be buried with only Julia beside him. When she died in 1902 he got his wish. Otherwise, he might have suffered the irony of going to his rest in the sod of Lee’s Arlington.25
Both men lost speech in their last days and hours. Both died at age sixty-three, Lee long since weary of life, and Grant ready to live it again. Their war made them national icons, and their war reputations dictated the balance of their lives, careers, and posterity. Even before Lee’s death his former associates were crafting what would become known as the Lost Cause myth, its major tenets being that secession was lawful, the war was not over slavery, Yankees won by sheer force of overwhelming numbers, and Confederate generals were chivalric Christian knights pitted against mechanistic vandals. It enshrined Lee as a second Washington who embodied Southern manhood. “By the Christ-like spirit of self-sacrifice,” one of his officers later wrote, “the sign of the Cross was upon his life.”26 Lee’s supposed agony over the decision to resign his commission in April 1861 was likened to Christ’s temptation on the mountain, myth makers calling it Lee’s “crucifix moment.” Gettysburg transfigured him, they said, where “the Divinity in his bosom shone translucent through the man, and his spirit rose up into the God-like.”27
While Lee’s place in American memory only rose, Grant’s, clouded by the scandals of his presidency, never again matched what it had been in 1865 and the years immediately following, when he was easily the most popular man in the nation. Ironically, having been defeated by him in war, Confederates thoroughly defeated Grant for the verdict of popular history, reducing him to “the Butcher,” whose only redeeming feature was leniency at Appomattox when Lee decided to “allow” the conflict to end by “withdrawing” from the war. Grant’s place in American memory is further complicated by his seemingly inexplicable meteoric rise from obscurity. Even Sherman, who knew him as well as anyone, remained mystified by his friend. “Grants whole character was a mystery even to himself,” Sherman wrote after Grant’s death, “a combination of strength and weakness not paralleled by any of whom I have read in Ancient or Modern History.”28
Grant’s and Lee’s opinions of each other’s generalship are muddied by time and human nature, and rest chiefly in what they said about other generals. Typical of his reticence, Lee’s survive only in secondhand after-the-fact comments, and many may not be authentic. The only recorded expression during his lifetime came sometime prior to January 1870, when he reportedly told a cousin that the Federals’ finest commander was McClellan. “Oh yes!” Lee reportedly exclaimed, “he was the ablest soldier they had.”29 Eighteen years later a letter he supposedly wrote after the war circulated in Washington. In it he declared that the Yankee with “the greatest ability” was Meade, and that “he feared Meade more than any man that he ever met upon the field of battle.”30 In 1904 Lee’s nephew Cazanove Lee recalled a conversation at least thirty-five years earlier in which Lee supposedly said the greatest Union general was “McClellan by all odds.”31 Grant’s opinions survive in contemporary and more candid versions, though only after Lee’s death. Admitting that Lee was “a patriotic and gallant soldier, concerned alone for the welfare of his army and his State,” Grant declared that “I never ranked Lee as high as some others of the army.” He found Joseph E. Johnston more intimidating. “Lee was a good man, a fair commander, who had everything in his favor,” he went on. “Lee was of a slow, conservative, cautious nature, without imagination or humor, always the same, with grave dignity.” Unable to see that Lee’s achievements justified his reputation, Grant concluded that “he was a man who needed sunshine.”32
Both were human. Lee’s strength at the outset of their campaign against each other was 65,000–70,000, but he argued that it was never more than 50,000. Grant asserted that it was 80,000 or above, and that Lee’s advantages of fighting on the defensive on home ground virtually evened the odds. Thus, each erred by an almost equal amount in his own favor. Lee routinely defeated McClellan, and believed he had to a degree beaten Meade in the drawn battle at Gettysburg. If McClellan was the Union’s best, and Lee consistently bested him, then what did that say about Lee? Intending a book to demonstrate that Grant only prevailed by numbers, Lee would hardly accord him surpassing skill. There was no conceit in him, but there was pride, and if he really entertained these opinions, they compensated forgivably for his far heavier burden of defeat. As for Grant, the years of being portrayed as a lucky bumbler too powerful not to win had an effect in the end. Nothing in Johnston’s wartime performance offered any justification for Grant claiming him as a feared adversary, but somehow in Grant’s mind that deflected the endless comparisons of himself to Lee in which he came out second best.
Experience forged their characters. Those characters defined the war they fought against others and each other. Each in his way helped shape the direction of a postwar nation that would take far longer than either imagined to escape the effects of their war.
The simple fact neither ever admitted is that, in each other, they faced their preeminent adversaries.
NOTES
Works frequently cited have been identified by the following abbreviations or shortened forms.
Adams, Letters
Francis Raymond Adams Jr., ed. An Annotated Edition of the Personal Letters of Robert E. Lee, April 1855–April 1861
AG
Adjutant General
CCL
Charles Carter Lee
CSR
Compiled Service Record
DeButts, “Lee in Love”
Robert E. L. DeButts Jr., “Lee in Love: Courtship and Correspondence in Antebellum Virginia”
GWCL
George Washington Custis Lee
JEJ
Joseph E. Johnston
Julia
Julia Dent Grant
LC
Library of Congress, Washington, DC
Lee
Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee
MCL
Mary Custis Lee
NA
National Archives, Washington, DC
OR
War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies
PMJDG
Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant
PMUSG
Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant
PUSG
Papers of Ulysses S. Grant
REL
Robert Edward Lee
RG
Record Group
SPC
Shirley Plantation Collection, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Library, Williamsburg
USAMHI
United States Army Military History Institute, Carlisle, PA
USG
Ulysses S. Grant
USGA
Ulysses S. Grant Association
UVA
University of Virginia, Charlottesville
VHS
Virginia Historical Society, Richmond
VSL
Virginia State Library
Wartime Papers
Clifford Dowdey and Louis H. Manarin, eds., The Wartime Papers of R. E. Lee
WHFL
William Henry Fitzhugh Lee
INTRODUCTION: ICONS
1Alexandria, Gazette, April 29, 1869; Boston, Post, May 6, 1869.
2This story has had a checkered history. It originated in a brief article by S. D. McCormick, “Robert E. Lee as College President, The Recollections of a Student,” in The Outlook 56 (July 17, 1897), p. 686. McCormick entered Washington College in 1866 and had the usual student’s exposure to Lee, but he certainly was not present at faculty and staff meetings, nor did he claim to have witnessed this episode. Rather, he described it as “another occurrence, which was currently reported among the students”; in other words a campus rumor, and one not set down by him until some thirty years later. McCormick used the episode as an example of Lee’s supposed complete unwillingness to discuss the war, whereas in fact he discussed it often and at length with friends and faculty, and of course wanted to write a book about his army’s experience. In 1912 Gamaliel Bradford used the anecdote in Lee the American (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin), p. 226, acknowledging that “Lee is said to have once spoken sharply” in defense of Grant, but then cited page 586 of The Outlook rather than 686. Most recently Charles Bracelin Flood, Lee: The Last Years (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1981), p. 188, took the story from Bradford, but misquoted Lee’s exclamation.
3A typical example of this line of argument can be found at http://www.rulen.com/myths/, which offers a fair diet of other blatant fictions about North, South, slavery, and the war.
CHAPTER 1: SONS AND FATHERS
1Robert E. Lee to John Eaton, August 21, 1829, Letters Received by the Adjutant General, 1861–1870, 1861, File L60, National Archives, Washington, DC.
2Henry Lee to Charles Carter Lee, February 9, 1817, Edmund Jennings Lee, Lee of Virginia, 1642–1892, Biographical and Genealogical Sketches of the Descendants of Col. Richard Lee (Philadelphia: Franklin Printing Co., 1895), p. 349.
3Ann Lee to Philip Fendall Jr., September 21, 1811, Lee Family Digital Archive, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA; Alexandria, Herald, December 27, 1822; Benjamin Hallowell, Autobiography of Benjamin Hallowell (Philadelphia: Friends Book Association, 1883), p. 104. Ann’s letter is headed “Eastern View” and she mentions expecting to be in Alexandria to look at the house in a few days.
4Anna Modigliani Lynch and Kelsey Ryan, comps., “Antebellum Reminiscences of Alexandria, Virginia.” Extracted from the Memoirs of Mary Louisa Slacum Benham. Unpublished paper, Alexandria, 2009, p. 3.
5Alexandria, Daily Advertiser, February 6, 1807.
6The story of Lee’s impecunious youth has been much overstated, starting with Freeman. Reconstructing Ann Carter Hill Lee’s finances for that period is very difficult, and no conclusion can ever be more than approximate, yet it is apparent that she did have an income, and not a bad one either, at least prior to 1819.
7Will of Charles Carter, May 10, 1803, Shirley Plantation Collection, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Library, Williamsburg, VA.
8Will of Mildred W. Carter, May 31, 1807, Legislative Petitions, Virginia State Archives, Richmond, in Loren Sweninger, ed., Race, Slavery, and Free Blacks. Series I: Petitions to Southern Legislatures, 1777–1867, reel 18 Virginia (1816–1826), Accession 11681612. Bethesda, MD: University Microfilms, 2003. frame 0063.
9Ann’s December 1816 petition said that the inheritance was “in part” slaves, not specifying the nature of the other property or money inherited. Ann Lee to Carter Lee, July 17, 1816, Charles Carter Lee Collection, Major Henry Lee Papers 1813–1841, VSL.
10Based on the sources cited below, Ann’s annual income from dividends in 1810 was $1,800. Figures for the Bank of Virginia shares cannot be found for the years 1811–1813, but given that those for the Potomac Bank remained virtually unchanged during those years, it seems reasonable to presume that the same was the case with the Bank of Virginia. Hence, it is estimated that her dividend income in these years was 1811, $1,800; 1812, $1,800; 1813, $1,800. Complete figures being available for subsequent years, her income can be put at 1814, $1,675; 1815, $1,675; 1816, $1,825; 1817, $2,050.
11Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee, A Biography (New York: Scribner’s, 1934–1935), 4 vols., 1, pp. 30–31, relates an extremely suspect brief episode suggesting Lee’s need to be disciplined in his preteens, based on an account told him verbally by a woman who got the story from her mother, who remembered a letter she claimed to have read prior to the Civil War. Thus it is second- or thirdhand, removed by at least seventy years from the time any such letter was seen.
12Emily V. Mason, Popular Life of General Robert Edward Lee (Baltimore: John Murphy & Co., 1871), p. 24.
13Henry Lee to Carter Lee, June 18, 1817, Lee, Lee of Virginia, p. 355 makes it clear that he did receive letters from his wife.
14Henry Lee to Carter Lee, September 30, 1816, ibid., pp. 345–46, p. 348, February 9, 1817, p. 348, April 19, 1817, pp. 350–51, 353.
15Henry Lee to Carter Lee, June 26, 1818, ibid., pp. 343–44, August 8, 1816, pp. 344–45, September 30, 1816, p. 345.
16Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character, 1775–1783 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), p. 76–77.
17Henry Lee to Carter Lee, September 30, 1816, Lee, Lee of Virginia, p. 345, December 1, 1816, pp. 346–47, May 5, 1817, p. 353.
18Ibid.
19Henry Lee to Carter Lee, December 1, 1816, pp. 346–47, ibid., April 19, 1817, pp. 352–53.
20Henry Lee to Carter Lee, December 1, 1816, ibid., pp. 34–48; Robert E. Lee, “Biography of the Author,” in Henry Lee, Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department of the United States (New York: University Publishing Co., 1869), p. 78.
21Ann Hill Lee to Charles Carter Lee, May 8, 1816, Charles Carter Lee Collection, Major Henry Lee Papers 1813–1841, Virginia State Library.
22Richmond, Virginia Argus, August 14, 1816; Richmond, Whig, September 22, 1826.
23Ann Hill Lee to Charles Carter Lee, May 8, 1816, Charles Carter Lee Collection, Major Henry Lee Papers 1813–1841, VSL.
24Ann Hill Lee to Charles Carter Lee, July 17, 1816, ibid.
25Ann Hill Lee to Charles Carter Lee, May 8, 1816, VSL. It is evident that the Lees moved back to Oronoco Street on an unknown date, from Alexandria, Herald, December 27, 1822, which lists that house for auction and describes it as “now occupied by Mrs. Lee.” Benjamin Hallowell, Autobiography of Benjamin Hallowell (Philadelphia: Friends Book Association, 1883), pp. 96, 100, places the Lees at 607 Oronoco in November 1824.
26Bernard M. Carter & others Petition, December 12, 1816, Legislative Petitions, Virginia State Archives, Richmond, in Sweninger, Race, Slavery, and Free Blacks. I: reel 18, Virginia, Accession 11681612.
27Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia (Richmond: Thomas Ritchie, 1816), pp. 94, 138, 169, 186, 205, 209.
28Ann Hill Lee to Charles Carter Lee, July 17, 1816, Charles Carter Lee Collection, Major Henry Lee Papers 1813–1841, VSL; Alexandria, Gazette, December 31, 1817.
29According to her will, at her death she owned stock in the Potomac Bank and the Bank of Virginia totaling at least $20,000 by her estimate. This has sometimes carelessly been read to mean that $20,000 is all she had, but her will explicitly stated that a trust for her two younger daughters was to be made up of “all my Potomac bank stock, and so much of my Virginia bank stock, as (estimating
both at their par value) will make up the sum of twenty thousand dollars.” In other words, not all of her Bank of Virginia stock was to go into that trust, and the balance was to be liquidated along with other assets to settle her debts, the residue going to her sons (Will of Ann H. Lee, July 24, 1829, Will Book P-1 1827–1830, Fairfax County Court House, Fairfax, VA). Just how many shares of either stock she actually owned is unknown. In 1816 she wrote that prior to about 1812 her annual income had been running approximately $1,440 per year in dividends from the Bank of Virginia stock. Dividend figures gleaned from the contemporary press (see below) indicate that in the years preceding 1816 the annual dividends had been running an average of 9.75 percent, which would mean that her total par value of stock would have been about $14,400 (Ann H. Lee to Charles Carter Lee May 8, 1816, Charles Carter Lee Collection, Major Henry Lee Papers 1813–1841, VSL). Share prices were running about $130 per share. The fact that the Bank of Virginia stock was to fill out the amount to $20,000 could be read to suggest that most of the trust was covered by Potomac Bank stock, but that would only be supposition. Still, a rough minimum annual income from dividends can be approached. Except for the anomalous year 1819, the Bank of Virginia shares consistently paid higher dividends than the Potomac Bank stock, once as much as 3.5 percent, though usually more like 1–2 percent.