Crucible of Command

by William C. Davis

  78Lee to [Calhoun], February 28, 1824, San Francisco, Post, February 18, 1886. This letter, and other sources here cited, have raised discussion on the possibility that Lee was really born in 1806 (see Pryor, Reading, p. 498n). For instance, the Lee family Bible in the Lee Family Papers at VHS originally had 1806 beside his birth, but it was later amended to 1807. Fitzhugh’s endorsement letter said Lee was eighteen “I believe,” and Garnett’s letter of the same month said he was “about 18.” Pryor speculates that “it seems that the family at least thought for a time that this (1806) was the correct date, and changed it for unknown reasons.” Lee’s own February 28, 1824, letter would seem to support that. The annual registers of officers and cadets at the Academy for the years 1826, 1827, 1828, and 1829, further confuse the issue by consistently giving his age at admission as nineteen years and four months, placing his birth in March 1806. Even more confusing is Record for Robt E. Lee, Cadet Records and Applications, 1805–1898, Register of Cadet Applications, 1819–1867, 1, 1819–1927, #101, RG 94, NA, in which Lee’s age at application in 1824 is noted as fourteen.

  Countering all this, it seems probable that the Bible entry was simply an example of the commonplace error of inadvertently writing the old year some days or even weeks into the new year. In their letters Fitzhugh and Garnett both freely admit uncertainty as to Lee’s age, and Lee himself in his 1824 letter had just given his day of birth wrong, so he could have been equally careless with his age. On September 25, 1828, when he signed his oath of allegiance after admission, Lee stated his age as “18 years and nine months,” which placed his birth squarely in January 1807 (Lee, 1, p. 51n). The family’s—and Lee’s—later consistency in using the 1807 date should be conclusive, as should be Ann H. Lee’s letter to Calhoun dated March 1824 (Robert E. Lee File L60, RG 94, NA) in which she gives her permission for her son to accept the appointment. If born in 1807, Lee would have been seventeen when she wrote that note. If born in 1806 he would have been eighteen, making her permission unnecessary.

  79Record for Robt E. Lee, Register of Cadet Applications, 1819–1867, 1, 1819–1927, #101, RG 94. The final remark after noting the date of the appointment are the words “sent to Genl Jackson.” As this notation does not appear attached to any other statements of appointment in this register, it seems to be best understood as additional confirmation that Jackson had interested himself personally in Lee’s case and Calhoun obliged him. Lee’s acceptance is in Lee to Calhoun, April 1, 1824, File 160, RG 94, NA.

  80Obituary Record of Graduates of Yale College Deceased from June, 1870, to June, 1880. Presented at the Annual Meetings of the Alumni, 1870–1880 (New Haven, CT: Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor, 1880), pp. 335–36; “James Watson Robbins,” Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 100 (January 30, 1879), p. 169; Rushton Dachwood Burr, ed., Address Delivered at the Unitarian Church, in Uxbridge, Mass., in 1864, . . . by Harry Chapin (Worcester, MA: Press of Charles Hamilton, 1881), p. 116. Mason’s reference to “Lee of Fauquier” might suggest that he associated Lee with Fauquier because of Robbins’s recommendation. Robbins collected specimens extensively in Fauquier, and around the Potomac and Pamunky Rivers in 1824–25 (James Watson Robbins Field Notes, 1824–1826, Field Book Project, 1855–2008, Acc. 12–339, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Capital Gallery, Washington, DC).

  81Alexandria, Gazette & Advertiser, October 5, 1824.

  82Hallowell, Autobiography, p. 100. Hallowell actually says that Lafayette called on the Lees on October 14, a forgivable lapse of memory after almost sixty years.

  83Alexandria, Gazette & Advertiser, December 4, 1824.

  84Hallowell, Autobiography, pp. 101, 103.

  85Ibid., pp. 96–97.

  86Washington, Daily National Intelligencer, November 4, 1829.

  87Alexandria, Phenix Gazette, February 24, 1826.

  88Alexandria, Gazette, November 24, 1851; Hallowell, Autobiography, p. 109.

  89Ibid., April 30, 1827.

  90REL to Mackay, June 26, 1834, Gilder Lehrman Collection, New-York Historical Society. Hallowell’s letters are so written and, presumably, his speech was the same. Hallowell to Robert W. Miller, November 14, 1873, Lee Family Papers, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA.

  91Long, Memoirs, p. 26; Mason, Popular Life, pp. 22–23. Long’s source is identified only as a cousin of Robert E. Lee writing to his widow sometime between 1870 and 1886. It is Sally Lee writing to Mary Custis Lee, October 27, 1870, DeButts-Ely Papers, LC. Mason’s account here cited sounds very much like it may have based on the same letter.

  92REL to MCL, March 24, 1848, DeButts-Ely Papers, LC.

  93Mason, Popular Life, pp. 25–26.

  94Hallowell, Autobiography, p. 214.

  95REL to John B. Floyd, February 1, 1860, Adams, Letters, p. 561.

  96Mason, Popular Life, p. 23.

  97Mary Custis Lee to Louise H. Carter, November 9, 1870, Shirley Plantation Collection.

  98This is the version Jesse Grant gave to P. C. Headley in an undated letter, probably written in 1864 or early 1865, quoted in P. C. Headley, The Life and Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. U. S. Grant (New York: Derby and Miller, 1866), p. 19. Headley actually stated essentially the same thing before his book appeared, in a letter to the New York, Times, quoted in Lowell, MA, Daily Citizen and News, November 21, 1865. Jesse told substantially the same story in a letter dated January 21, 1868, addressed to Robert Bonner, proprietor of the New York Ledger, though it is probable that a reporter actually wrote this and other letters attributed to Jesse at the time, basing them on oral interviews (“Grant as Remembered by His Father,” Ulysses S. Grant Association Newsletter, 8 [October 1970], pp. 4–5). Eight months later Jesse had embellished the story, turning the choice of names into a lottery whereby several names were put in a hat and the name Ulysses was drawn out, while Hiram was added at the request of not Hannah’s father but Jesse’s, though at that point he had been dead for seventeen years (Providence, RI, Evening Press, September 25, 1868)! See also Hamlin Garland, “The Early Life of Ulysses Grant,” McClure’s Magazine, 8 (December 1896), p. 130.

  99PMUSG, 1, p. 20. Some biographers mention Jesse’s early association with John Brown and others do not. Jesse Grant made no mention of it in his January 17, 1868, sketch of himself in Jesse R. Grant, “Grant as Remembered by His Father,” Ulysses S. Grant Association Newsletter 8 (October, 1970), 6. Still, by the end of the nineteenth century the story had gained some currency, probably because of USG’s own account of the stories told him by his father in PMUSG, which is ultimately the earliest and most likely reliable source.

  100United States Census, Georgetown, Brown County, Ohio, 1830.

  101Daniel Ammen in Philadelphia, Inquirer, April 23, 1893; James A. Sanderson in New York, Times, July 30, 1885.

  102Daniel Ammen in Philadelphia, Inquirer, April 23, 1893.

  103James Sanderson in Cincinnati, Commercial Tribune, August 1, 1885. Sanderson differs from other and better sources in maintaining that Grant loved guns, especially pistols, and was rarely without one, being a crack shot. It sounds fanciful.

  104James A. Sanderson in New York, Times, July 30, 1885; Daniel Ammen in Philadelphia, Inquirer, April 23, 1893. Sanderson says that Grant loved guns and was a skilled marksman, but that fails to ring true, and is probably a false recollection fifty years after the fact.

  105Jesse Grant to Bonner, January 17, 1868, “Grant as Remembered by His Father,” p. 7.

  106PMUSG, 1, p. 212.

  107Garland, “Early life,” p. 127.

  108Ibid., p. 129.

  109Ibid., p. 127.

  110Daniel Ammen in Philadelphia, Inquirer, April 23, 1893.

  111“Grant as Remembered by His Father,” p. 9; Garland, “Early Life,” p. 138; USG note, 1864–1866, PUSG, 32, p. 187.

  112Garland, “Early Life,” p. 134.

  113In USG to McKinstry Griffith, September 22, 1839, PUSG, 1, pp. 6–7, Grant indicates some special fondness for his grandmother as he asks that all of his letters written from West Poi
nt be shown to her.

  114PMUSG, 1, pp. 30–31.

  115Ibid., pp. 30–31; Washington, Evening Star, April 4, 1885.

  116USG to Julia, December 19, 1852, PUSG, 1, p. 277.

  117Daniel Ammen in Philadelphia, Inquirer, April 23, 1893.

  118James A. Sanderson in New York, Times, July 30, 1885.

  119Daniel Ammen in Philadelphia, Inquirer, April 23, 1893.

  120James A. Sanderson in New York, Times, July 30, 1885. Sanderson’s claim that Grant did not like to read books is at odds with Grant’s own statements about his reading habits in his memoirs.

  121Garland, “Early Life,” p. 137.

  122James A. Sanderson in New York, Times, July 30, 1885.

  123Garland, “Early Life,” p. 137.

  124James A. Sanderson in New York, Times, July 30, 1885.

  125Ibid.

  126Daniel Ammen in Philadelphia, Inquirer, April 23, 1893.

  127James A. Sanderson in New York, Times, July 30, 1885.

  128The actual date of this circus episode is conjectural. No performances of any circus can be found in southern Ohio during the 1830s except for two in 1837, both of them featuring equestrian acts that seem compatible with the pony and monkey attraction. Either could have stopped in Georgetown. Canton, Ohio, Repository, June 8, 1837; Cincinnati, Daily Gazette, March 30, 1837.

  129This story first appeared in the Chicago Home Visitor of unknown date in 1865. It hit the newspaper press as early as May 31, 1865, in the Sandusky, Ohio, Register, and soon spread across the country. The writer of the story is unidentified, but said that he spent part of his boyhood in Georgetown with Grant. Jesse Grant, or the reporter who wrote most of the January 18, 1868, letter attributed to Jesse that appeared in the March 7, 1868, issue of the New York, Ledger, included this episode, only enlarged on it to have the monkey jumping on the horse behind young Grant and eventually jumping onto his shoulders and grabbing Grant’s hair with its paws. Ulysses S. Grant Association Newsletter, VIII, 1 (October, 1970), pp. 8–9.

  130Portland, ME, Daily Eastern Argus, August 20, 1868. Somehow this story was omitted from those in the New York, Ledger letters.

  131Cleveland, Leader, October 3, 1865.

  132Garland, “Early Life,” pp. 133–34.

  133Jesse Grant to Robert Bonner, January 20, 1868, “Grant as Remembered by His Father,” pp. 8–10, 11–13.

  134Garland, “Early Life,” p. 127.

  135Albany, NY, Evening Journal, December 22, 1863. In the original newspaper article the teller of the story is identified only as a member of Congress who went to school with Grant in Georgetown. In 1863 White was the sitting member from Georgetown’s district. In 1885 in PMUSG, 1, pp. 29–30, Grant credited White with telling the story. In 1863 White said this incident took place when Grant was “about twelve,” or circa 1834, while Grant twenty years later wrote that “this story is nearly true,” but added that he “could not have been over eight” at the time, putting it at 1830. There were several Ralston families living together in Pleasant Township at the time, making it impossible to identify which one sold Grant the horse. 1830 United States Census, Pleasant Township, Brown County, Ohio.

  136PMUSG, 1, p. 30.

  137Ibid., pp. 26–27

  138Columbus, OH, Crisis, November 21, 1861; Cincinnati, Commercial Tribune, July 28, 1885.

  139Daniel Ammen in Philadelphia, Inquirer, April 23, 1893.

  140Thomas E. Pickett, “W. W. Richeson, The Kentuckian That ‘Taught’ Grant,” Register of the Kentucky State Historical Society, 9 (September 1911), p. 20.

  141New York, Herald, December 20, 1879.

  142Pickett, “W. W. Richeson,” pp. 16 and passim.

  143Ibid., pp. 14, 15, 17.

  144A. H. Markland and W. W. Richeson in Washington, Evening Star, April 4, 1885.

  145Garland, “Early Life,” p. 138.

  146W. W. Richeson in New York, Herald, December 13, 1879.

  147PMUSG, 1, pp. 30–31.

  148Ibid., 1, pp. 34–35.

  149Frankfort, KY, Argus, October 31, 1832.

  150New York, Times, April 28, 1897. Peyton placed Grant’s visit in 1840, not 1837, and said Grant brought Payne’s niece not his brother.

  151PMUSG, 1, pp. 27–29

  152Columbus, Ohio State Journal, November 17, 1832; Columbus, Ohio Monitor, January 28, 1833.

  153Michael Speer, ed., “Autobiography of Adam Lowry Rankin,” Ohio History, 79 (Winter 1970), pp. 27–28.

  154In his memoir Grant tersely dismissed his term there with a reference to it as a “school at Ripley” and “a private school.” PMUSG, 1, pp. 25, 32.

  155New York, Emancipator, October 3, 1839; Andrew Ritchie, The Soldier, the Battle, and the Victory: Being a Brief Account of the Work of Rev. John Rankin in the Anti-Slavery Cause (Cincinnati: Western Tract and Book Society, 1870), pp. 105–107; Ann Hagedorn, Beyond the River: The Untold Story of the Heroes of the Underground Railroad (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), pp. 135–139. The Rankin story of the escaping slave woman seems not to have hit the newspaper press until the 1890s, by which time it was already well established in Ohio lore. See, for instance, Aberdeen, SD, Daily News, March 30, 1890.

  156He does not mention Rankin or the story in his memoirs.

  157PMUSG, 1, p. 25.

  158None of the essays and speeches he had composed later survived to attest to his literacy, but later this year he wrote his earliest surviving letter, and its display of vocabulary and ease and facility of expression are surety that it was not his first, and that he felt comfortable and confidant with a pen in his hand. PUSG, 1, p.

  159Columbus, Ohio State Journal, November 17, 1832. Grant may have boarded in the home of Marion Johnson or Johnston, who boarded several young males at the time. United States Census, Brown County, Ohio, 1840.

  160Cincinnati, Daily Gazette, January 19, 1837.

  161Jesse R. Grant to Thomas L. Hamer, February 19, 1839, Cincinnati, Commercial Tribune, September 7, 1885.

  162Thomas Hamer in Chicago, Daily Inter Ocean, April 30, 1887.

  163U.S. Military and Naval Academies, Cadet Records and Applications, 1805–1898, Register of Cadet Applicants, 1819–1867, volume 10, 1838–1839, Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, RG 94, NA.

  164Jesse Grant to Robert Bonner, January 21, 1868, “Grant as Remembered by His Father,” p. 13; Garland, “Early Life,” p. 138.

  165PMUSG, 1, p. 32.

  166James Sanderson in Cincinnati, Commercial Tribune, August 1, 1885.

  167PMUSG, 1, pp. 32–33.

  CHAPTER 2: SCHOOL OF THE SOLDIER

  1REL to Mary Custis, June 21, 1831, DeButts, “Lee in Love,” p. 549.

  2Register of the Officers and Cadets of the U.S. Military Academy, June 1826 (New York: N.p., 1826), pp. 3, 12.

  3As of the spring term in 1827 Lee told his mother, in her words, that he had “never . . . received a mark of demerit.” Receiving no demerits, and having none on his record, were two different things of course, and read literally—assuming he was being truthful—her comment seems weighted toward the former. Ann Hill Lee to Sydney Smith Lee, April 10, 1827, duPont Library, Stratford.

  Of the forty-four months Lee spent at the Academy, September 1825–June 1829 (he was home on leave July and August 1827), the reports for sixteen are missing from the files, presumably lost or destroyed as many are in fragile condition. Of the twenty-eight that are extant, Lee appears on every one with no demerits. Taking at face value his statement to his mother as of March–April 1827 that he had no demerits to date (fourteen extant reports for his nineteen months to date at the Academy confirm this), that leaves eleven of his remaining twenty-five months unaccounted for. Given the absolute consistency of his performance on the extant reports it is not unreasonable to conclude that his performance would have been the same in those months for which reports are missing, though it is always possible that he in fact did garner a demerit or two and remove them from his record.

  Nothing on these monthl
y reports indicates whether the demerits shown are total actually received or “net” after any being remitted. However, the January 1829 monthly report shows one demerit each for Jesse H. Leavenworth and Thomas Stockton, whereas Register of the Officers and Cadets of the U.S. Military Academy, June, 1829 (New York: United States Military Academy, 1884; reprint), p, 19, shows both Leavenworth and Stockton with no demerits for the academic year. Thus the single demerit against each on the January 1829 report has disappeared, meaning they must have been expunged. Hence, demerit figures on the monthly reports are actual, not net. (Monthly Class Reports and Conduct Rolls, United States Military Academy, 1820–1830, RG 94, Entry 231, NA).

  4Lee, 1, pp. 61–62.

  5Ibid., 1, p. 64n. Freeman erroneously gives the author of the last book as someone surnamed Light.

  6Sylvanus Thayer to Alexander McComb, December 13, 1827, AG 1822–1860, NA.

  7Ann Hill Lee to Sydney Smith Lee, April 10, 1827, duPont Library, Stratford.

  8Register of the Officers and Cadets of the U.S. Military Academy, June 1827 (New York: New York: N.p., 1827), pp. 10, 19; Lee, 1, pp. 67–68.

  9Just when Ann Lee moved to Georgetown is uncertain, but she was there at least as early as June 1826 when her daughter was married in the house (Philadelphia, National Gazette, July 4, 1826). Ethel Armes, Stratford Hall: the Great House of the Lees (Richmond: Garrett and Massie, 1936), p. 388, says she moved there in 1825 without citing a source, but that would make sense. With Smith gone and Robert leaving in the summer of 1825, she needed less space. On January 22, 1824, the Oronoco Street house was to be auctioned, but she could have stayed on as a tenant (Alexandria, Herald, December 27, 1822). She remained in the Georgetown house until her death, after which it was briefly a seminary for young women (Washington, Daily National Intelligencer, September 7, 1829). Today Second Street is O Street.