Crucible of Command

by William C. Davis

  Since there is no alternative but to make some assumptions, the figures here assume that the $20,000 trust was made up of $10,000 in shares at par value from both banks. The semiannual dividend percentage payments for both have been gleaned from the sources cited below for the years 1807–1829. Statements of dividend percentages for the Bank of Virginia have not been found for 1808, 1809, 1811, 1813, 1820, the last half of 1819, and the first halves of 1820, 1826, and 1827. However, from 1821 onward all other dividend statements are consistent at 3 percent so that assumption has been used for the missing periods. From 1820 to 1825 the Bank of Virginia shares consistently ran one-half of a percent higher than the Potomac Bank shares. Hence, if the Potomac Bank shares really made up more than half of the trust, then the income figures suggested for Ann Lee will be slightly elevated by an undue proportion of Bank of Virginia shares in the mix. Also in 1824 the actual dividend payment made a deduction per share for a “bonus” to the state before payment. On the other hand, all annual totals are understated to some degree by the fact that Ann had more Bank of Virginia shares remaining than needed to fill out the $20,000 trust, how many we cannot know, and more income from them. Allowing for both of these caveats, it seems reasonable to conclude that the figures arrived at for her annual income for these years is close to accurate or slightly understated.

  The dividend figures for the Potomac Bank are compiled from Alexandria, Daily Advertiser, November 28, 1807, May 16, 1808; Alexandria, Daily Gazette, Commercial and Political, November 7, 1808, November 6, 1809, May 18, November 1, 1810, May 28, 1811, May 1, 1812, May 10, October 30, 1813, November 17, 1814, May 11, 1815, May 18, 1816, May 5, 1817; Alexandria, Gazette, May 4, 1822; Alexandria, Gazette & Advertiser, November 2, 1822, November 1, 1823, May 1, October 30, 1824; Alexandria, Gazette & Daily Advertiser, May 4, 1818, November 19, 1818, May 18, 1819, November 5, 1821, May 11, 1822; Alexandria, Herald, November 11, 1811, November 4, 1812, May 6, 1814, November 10, 1815, November 15, 1816, November 17, 1817, May 4, 1818, May 8, November 1, 1820, May 7, 1823; Alexandria, Phenix Gazette, May 5, November 1, 1825, May 5, October 28, 1826, April 28, November 6, 1827, May 3, November 3, 1828, May 7, 1829. The dividend figures for the Bank of Virginia are compiled from Alexandria, Gazette, July 23, 1819, January 8, 1822; Alexandria, Phenix Gazette, January 13, 1829; Norfolk, American Beacon, July 17, 1817, January 14, 1818, January 16, 1819; Norfolk, Gazette and Publick Ledger, July 10, 1812, July 27, 1814, July 27, 1815, January 18, July 6, 1816; Richmond, Enquirer, July 11, 1823, January 8, July 13, 1824, January 12, 1825, January 14, 1826, January 12, 1827, January 11, July 11, 1828, January 17, 1829; Richmond, Virginia Argus, July 11, 1807, January 11, 1818; Richmond, Virginia Patriot, July 10, 1810, January 11, 1815, January 7, 1817, May 19, 1818.

  30The Montgomery County land was at Spring Camp in what is now Floyd County, part of a 19,000-acre grant from the state to Lee for his Revolutionary War services (Amos D. Wood, Floyd County, A History of the People and Places [Blacksburg, VA: Southern Printing Co., 1981], pp. 28–29). At Harpers Ferry Henry Lee sold the mineral rights under his property in 1800, while the surface ownership remained his (Warranty deed, Henry Lee et ux to the United States, May 8, 1800, Harpers Ferry Laminated Material, Public Buildings Service, RG 121, NA).

  31Ann H. Lee to Sydney Smith Lee, April 10, 1827, Jessie Ball duPont Library, Stratford Hall, Stratford, VA.

  32Ann H. Lee to Sydney Smith Lee, May 17, 1822, Gary L. Sisson, Montross, VA.

  33Ann H. Lee to Sydney Smith Lee, April 10, 1827, Jessie Ball duPont Library, Stratford Hall, Stratford, VA.

  34Richmond, Times-Dispatch, December 5, 1932; Charleston, State Gazette of South Carolina, March 20, 1786.

  35Alfred J. Morrison, The Beginnings of Public Education in Virginia, 1776–1860 (Richmond: Superintendent of Public Printing, 1917), p. 114n states that Leary took over as principal in 1807, which is manifestly incorrect in that Harrison was principal in 1818–1819.

  36Alexandria, Herald, July 28, 1820; Alexandria, Gazette & Daily Advertiser, September 5, 1820. A thorough search of the Alexandria papers for December 1820 has found no announcement of examinations, nor the usual publication of resulting awards. This is not conclusive that no term was held, but certainly is suggestive.

  37Ann H. Lee to Sydney Smith Lee, May 17, 1822, states that “Robert continues to go to school to Mr. Leary.” This is a letter that brings Sydney up to date on what has happened in the past year, and her use of the word “continues” would imply that Robert was at the Academy when she saw Sydney last, or in the spring of 1821. Gary L. Sisson, Montross, VA.

  38As with fall 1820, no announcements of examinations or results can be found in the city’s press for this period. Ann Lee to Sydney Smith Lee, cited above, definitely establishes that the academy was open for spring 1822.

  39This conclusion is admittedly an interpolation from his statement on January 7, 1823, in announcing the move of his school out of the academy premises, that now he would have an opportunity “of devoting his exclusive attention to the duties of his profession.” Alexandria, Gazette & Advertiser, January 7, 1823, March 2, 1822.

  40Ibid., January 7, 1823. Harold W. Hurst, Alexandria on the Potomac: The Portrait of an Ante-Bellum Community (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1991), p. 64, says the academy closed in 1821 due to economic depression in Alexandria, but manifestly it held terms in 1822 and then closed.

  41Alexandria, Gazette & Advertiser, October 28, 1823, May 1, 1824.

  42If Leary commenced a spring 1824 term he did not finish it. He still lived in Alexandria in February when he wrote his recommendation for Lee to the Military Academy, but by late April his uncollected letters accumulated in the city post office. He soon went on to St. John’s College at Annapolis, where he earned a master’s degree and became a professor of grammar. In April 1829 the state legislature incorporated the Academy and elected trustees still included Edmund J. Lee. By 1830 the Academy was back in operation, though moved to Prince Street, and still with a revolving door of principals. Alexandria, Gazette & Advertiser, May 1, 1824, and subsequent issues through August; Register of the Graduates and Alumni of St. John’s College at Annapolis, Maryland (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1908), p. 26; Alexandria, Phenix Gazette, April 25, 1829, May 24, 1831.

  43R. E. Lee to [John C. Calhoun], February 28, 1824, San Francisco, Post, February 18, 1886. This document, the earliest known Lee letter to date, was clearly stolen sometime prior to 1886 from the War Department in Washington, where it would have been in Lee’s application file for the Military Academy.

  44William Maynadier spent four years at the academy, from 1818 to 1822, first under Harrison and then Leary, and describes virtually this same series of studies except that he did not progress beyond the fifth book of Euclid. William Maynadier to John C. Calhoun, March 15, 1822, William Maynadier File 060-991/2, U.S. Military Academy, Cadet Application Papers, 1805–1866, Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, RG 94, NA.

  45The only directly contemporaneous confirmation of Lee’s attendance at the academy is Ann Lee’s statement that “Robert continues to go to school to Mr. Leary” in Ann H. Lee to Sydney Smith Lee, May 17, 1822, Gary L. Sisson, Montross, VA. In February 1824 Leary himself said nothing more than that “Robert Lee was formerly a pupil of mine,” but he did not state where or when (William B. Leary to John C. Calhoun, n.d. [February 1824], Robert E. Lee File, Cadet Applications, etc., RG 94). As for Lee, in December 1866 he recalled to Leary the days “when I was under your tuition,” but nothing more, and in 1904 Lee’s son Robert E. Lee Jr. wrote that “Mr. Leary . . . was my father’s teacher when a boy in Alexandria,” but again said neither where nor when (Robert E. Lee, Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee by His Son [New York: Doubleday, 1904], p. 417). Writing prior to June 1871, Mason, Popular Life, pp. 23–24, said “his first teacher was an Irish gentleman, Mr. William B. Leary,” but that is all.

  46Since Leary taught both at the academy and on St. Asaph and Cameron Streets, Lee migh
t have studied at any or all venues. The common assumption has taken hold that it had to be at the Alexandria Academy, and probably it was, but all we have to that effect is a secondhand recollection by Lee’s cousin Cazenove Lee recounting his father Cassius F. Lee’s conversation with Robert E. Lee in July 1870. As Cassius related it, the two old men recalled their days with Leary, whom Cazanove identified as “their old teacher at the Alexandria Academy” (Lee, Recollections, pp. 415, 417). Lee’s time with Leary at the academy could have been anytime between the spring 1820 term and the spring or fall 1822 terms, but he certainly did not study under him there for a full four years. Still, Lee completed virtually the same work as his contemporary William Maynadier, just a few weeks Lee’s junior, who entered the academy in the fall of 1818 under Harrison. Indeed, Lee mastered one more book of Euclid than did Maynadier. William Maynadier entered the academy at age eleven and finished aged fifteen after four years (Maynadier to Calhoun, March 15, 1822, Maynadier File 060-991/2, Cadet Application Papers, 1805–1866, RG 94, NA).

  Lee biographers have used the academy as a convenient way to fill the years 1818 to 1824 for which Lee left no trace. In 1928 Mary Gregory Powell, The History of Old Alexandria, Virginia: From July 13, 1749 to May 24, 1861 (Alexandria: William Byrd Press, 1928), p. 154, said without authority that Lee entered at age thirteen, or in 1820, and stayed until 1824. In December 1932 Douglas Southall Freeman’s own newspaper—and possibly Freeman himself writing in it—claimed that Lee spent six years at the school from 1818 to 1824 (Richmond, Times-Dispatch, December 5, 1932). Two years later Freeman, taking Powell as his source, put Lee there in 1820 and possibly a year before, and had him staying “approximately three years” until “the end of 1823, and perhaps earlier” (Lee, 1, pp. 36–37). Most biographers since have borrowed Freeman’s estimate, though Elizabeth Brown Pryor, Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters (New York: Viking, 2007), pp. 25–26, has Lee entering the academy when “he was about fourteen,” which would mean the spring term in 1821, and staying “three years,” or until early 1824. Like Freeman she appears to interpret Lee’s February 1824 application to West Point as signaling a terminus to his time at the academy, whereas that definitely could not have gone later than the fall term of 1822, after which Leary left the academy. If Lee had any formal schooling in 1823, it was either under Leary on St. Asaph Street, or at the academy under someone else, and quite possibly neither. What is certain, however, is that Lee was not a student at the academy itself anytime beyond the fall term of 1822, after which Leary moved to St. Asaph Street, and possibly not after spring 1822 if Leary did not hold a fall session.

  Thus it is possible that Lee attended the academy in the Harrison years, perhaps commencing in 1818 as did Maynadier. Since the academy admitted students at least as young as ten, an eleven-year-old Lee could have been admitted the same time as Maynadier in 1818. Meanwhile, the average age of the award-winning students at the academy was thirteen, with average birth dates in May 1807. Robert E. Lee, of course, was born in January of 1807, meaning his age fit him very close to that average for all of Leary’s terms. (These figures are based on thirteen of the students named for awards and premiums in 1819, 1820, and 1820, whose birth dates can be found, plus Cassius Lee, born in 1808, who is known to have attended at that time. No records of enrollments survive.)

  It has often been assumed that the prospect of free tuition at the academy would have been a strong inducement to send Robert there, beginning at least with Powell, Old Alexandria, p. 155, which says that the academy became free of charge to all Alexandria boys from January 1821. She gave no source for this claim, whereas the trustees’ 1822 complaint of recurring deficits and resorts to loans hardly sounds like the academy was an institution that could afford to ignore tuition as a source of revenue. In fact tuition was being charged at least as early as 1818. More conclusive is the fact that when Leary moved to St. Asaph Street in 1822 he announced he would be charging the same for tuition at his new venue as he had at the academy (Alexandria, Gazette & Daily Advertiser, October 20, 1821, January 7, 1823). Hence the assertion that the academy was free is erroneous, and likely a confusion with its original intent in 1786.

  It is improbable that Lee enrolled with others during those terms that Leary may not have held classes. Lee sent only Leary’s recommendation with his application to West Point. Had he studied under others it is reasonable to expect that he would have sent certificates from them as well. Moreover, Leary published lists of the outstanding students for the 1820 and 1821 spring terms, as his predecessor did for spring 1819, but no such lists were published for the fall terms. Overlooking one might be attributed to chance oversight, but to fail to do so three years in a row, after regularly doing it for each spring term in those same years, suggests that the school held no fall terms. However, on September 2, 1820, an announcement appeared in the local press that the fall term at the academy would commence three days later (Alexandria, Gazette and Daily Advertiser, September 5, 1820). There is no further record of the term’s actual commencement or conclusion. So we are left with more questions than answers about the possible extent of young Lee’s education at the academy.

  47Mason, Personal Life, p. 23; Henry Lee to Carter Lee, February 9, 1817, Lee, Lee of Virginia, p. 350.

  48REL to MCL, August 7, 1864, Wartime Papers, p. 829.

  49Henry Lee to Carter Lee, February 9, 1817, Lee, Lee of Virginia, p. 348.

  50REL to MCL, March 14, 1862, Wartime Papers, p. 128; Mason, Popular Life, p. 24. While there is no record of Lee’s baptism, it is inferred from his mother’s reference to a godfather (Lee, 1, p. 28).

  51Ann Hill Lee to Charles Carter Lee, July 17, 1816, Charles Carter Lee Collection, Major Henry Lee Papers 1813–1841, VSL.

  52Mason, Popular Life, p. 23. Mason says she was told this by one of Robert E. Lee’s family “who knew him best,” probably Cassius Lee.

  53Alexandria, Gazette, July 23, 1819; Richmond, Virginia Patriot, March 10, 1819; Richmond, Enquirer, August 27, 1819, December 14, 1822.

  54Ann Lee’s annual income for these years, as reconstructed from the dividend percentages in the sources previously cited, was roughly the following (the figures under “Other” represent the fact that in 1816 she stated that her income from other sources was less than half her dividend income, then running $1,210. The vector signs indicate < for less than and > for more than):

  55Alexandria, Gazette & Advertiser, December 11, 1823; Ann Hill Lee to Sydney Smith. Lee, April 10, 1827, duPont Library, Stratford.

  56Mason, Popular Life, p. 23. Pryor, Reading the Man, offers good general observations on Ann Carter Lee’s illness and personality.

  57Mason, Popular Life, p. 23; Robert E. L. DeButts Jr., “Lee in Love: Courtship and Correspondence in Antebellum Virginia,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 115, no. 4 (2007), pp. 488–89.

  58REL to Mary Custis Lee, June 15, 1857, Francis Raymond Adams Jr., ed., An Annotated Edition of the Personal Letters of Robert E. Lee, April 1855–April 1861 (Doctoral thesis: University of Maryland, 1955), p. 365.

  59A. L. Long, Memoirs of Robert E. Lee, His Military and Personal History (New York: J. M. Stoddart, 1887), p. 26.

  60REL to Mary Custis, October 30, 1830, DeButts, “Lee in Love,” pp. 517–18.

  61REL to Anna Fitzhugh, June 6, 1860, Adams, Letters, p. 638.

  62REL to Mary Custis, March 8, 1831, DeButts, “Lee in Love,” p. 534.

  63REL to Custis, April 16, 1860, Adams, Letters, p. 611.

  64REL to Charles Lee, May 10, 1855, ibid., p. 13; REL to Martha Custis Williams, January 2, 1854, Avery O. Craven, ed., “To Markie”: The Letters of Robert E. Lee to Martha Custis Williams (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1933), p. 39.

  65These are the only terms for which examination results and honors have been found in the Alexandria press.

  66William B. Leary Certificate, February 3, 1822, Maynadier File 060-991/2, Cadet Application Papers, 1805–1866, RG 94,
NA.

  67William B. Leary statement, n.d. [February 1824], Robert E. Lee File L60, RG 94, NA.

  68W. B. Leary statement, February 15, 1824, ibid.

  69Lee to [John C. Calhoun], February 28, 1824, San Francisco, Post, February 18, 1886.

  70Rose Mortimer Ellzey MacDonald, Mrs. Robert E. Lee (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1939), pp. 22–23.

  71Hallowell, Autobiography, p. 100.

  72Alexandria, Gazette & Advertiser, October 19, 1824.

  73REL to Albert Sydney Johnston, October 25, 1857, Marilyn McAdams Sibley, ed., “Robert E. Lee to Albert Sydney Johnston, 1857,” Journal of Southern History, 29 (February 1963), p. 104.

  74Lee to Mary Custis, May 13, 1831, DeButts, “Lee in Love,” p. 541.

  75Long, Memoirs, p. 28. Lee, p. 44n, cites a tradition that Jackson got involved in Lee’s appointment. The reference to a Jackson letter in Lee’s application papers below confirms this.

  76On June 14, 1861, Scott issued an order that Mary Fitzhugh was to have “the safeguard of the army” for her property, calling her “a lady of great excellence, connected with the family of the father of his country.” Springfield, MA, Republican, May 22, 1872.

  77William Fitzhugh to John C. Calhoun, February 7, 1824, Statement of William B. Leary, [February 1824], R. S. Garnett to Calhoun, February 16, 1824, C. F. Mercer et al to Calhoun, February 23, 1824, Charles Carter Lee to Calhoun, February 28, 1824, Henry Lee to Calhoun, March 6, 1824, Robert E. Lee File, U.S. Military Academy, Cadet Application Papers, 1805–1866, Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, RG 94, NA. The Jackson letter is not in this file, and Freeman was unaware of it in the 1920s and 1930s, which means he only looked at the Cadet Application File for Lee. Long, Memoirs, p. 28, states that Lee was taken to Washington by Nellie Custis Lewis and introduced to Jackson, “who was so much pleased with him that he got him the appointment.” In Record for Robt E. Lee, U.S. Military Academy, Cadet Records and Applications, 1805–1898, Register of Cadet Applications, 1819–1867, 1, 1819–1927, #101, RG 94, NA, the annotation lists the letters that Freeman found in the application file and also one from “Genl Jackson,” which confirms that Jackson took some interest in Lee’s application. The letters and statements supporting Lee’s application are numbered enclosures one through eight, but number three is missing. That may be the Jackson letter, which was probably subsequently lost or stolen from the file, as was Lee’s February 28, 1824 letter.