Crucible of Command

by William C. Davis

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

  11REL to Mary Custis, September 11, 1830, DeButts, “Lee in Love,” p. 514.

  12Marietta Fauntleroy Turner Powell reminiscence, July 17, 1886, Marietta Minnegerode Andrews, comp., Scraps of Paper (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1929), p. 199. Lee, 1, p. 68 and n, states that at the Academy by this time Lee was so handsome and soldierly that he was being called the “Marble Model.” He gave his source as “General L. L. Lomax, quoted in Walter Watson’s Notes on Southside Virginia.” As Freeman often did, he took the printed word at face value and either ignored or dismissed fuller context that compromised the content. In fact Walter A. Watson, “Notes on Southside Virginia,” Bulletin of the Virginia State Library, 15 (No’s. 2–4, September 1925), pp. 244–45, repeats from notes taken in January 1914 the substance of recent interviews with John S. Mosby, who had just turned eighty. In them it is Mosby who states that Lunsford L. Lomax years before had told him that “he [Lomax] was at West Point with him [Lee],” and that “he [Lee] was then known as ‘The Marble Model.’” Lomax was not born until November 1835, more than six years after Lee left West Point, and thus obviously had no direct personal observation or knowledge of what anyone was calling Lee in 1827. Lomax was a cadet at West Point 1852–1856 during the period that Lee was superintendent, and in the Elizabeth Lindsay Lomax diary, December 20, 1854, Lindsay Lomax Wood, ed., Leaves from an Old Washington Diary, 1854–1863 (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1943), p. 29, the diarist writes that “Lindsay wrote me from West Point that Colonel Lee was the handsomest man he had ever known, just like a ‘marble model.’”

  13At Christmas 1824 they did something over cake in a store room at Arlington, but neither illuminated the event. REL to Mary Custis, December 28, 1830, DeButts, “Lee in Love,” p. 526.

  14REL to Mary Custis, May 13, 1831, ibid., p. 541.

  15Mary Custis to Edward G. W, Butler, n.d. (August 10, 1827?), Edward G. W. Butler Papers, Williams Research Center, Historic New Orleans Collection, New Orleans, LA.

  16Lee, 1, pp. 72–73. Freeman got a list of Lee’s books taken from the West Point library from the then assistant librarian M. L. Samson. Either the librarian in 1828 was careless, or Samson was careless, or Freeman, for the author names and titles of some of the books listed are corrupted. Warnery, for instance, appears as Wamery.

  17Register of the Officers and Cadets of the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, N.Y. June 1828 (New York: N.p., 1828), pp. 8, 19.

  18Register 600, Entry 544, Field Records of Hospitals. West Point Cadets’ Hospital, January 1, 1827–May 22, 1833, RG 94, NA.

  19Lee, 1, pp. 72–73, 80.

  20Ibid., pp. 81–82; Register of the Officers and Cadets of the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, N.Y. June 1829 (New York: N.p., 1829), pp. 6, 19. For that year twenty-six cadets from all classes combined showed no demerits.

  21Twenty-two of the forty-four monthly reports are extant in RG 94, and his name is on the “distinguished” list in each. Moreover, in the Academy register for conduct infractions, the page with Lee’s name on it has had his name crossed out so it could be used for another cadet who did receive demerits.

  22Unknown woman to “My dear Sally,” July 2, 1829, Raynors Historical Collectible Auctions catalog for November 17, 2005 sale, item #97, Burlington, NC.

  23Ann Hill Lee to Sydney Smith Lee, April 10, 1827, duPont Library, Stratford.

  24Some sources at the time and later claimed that Ann died in Georgetown, but her Alexandria obituary made it clear that her death came at Ravensworth. Alexandria, Phenix Gazette, July 28, 1829.

  25Long, Memoirs, p. 26; Lee, Recollections, p. 363; Edmund Jennings Lee, “The Character of General Lee,” Robert A. Brock, ed., Gen. Robert Edward Lee: Soldier, Citizen and Christian Patriot (Richmond: Johnson Publishing Co., 1897), p. 383.

  26Mary Custis Lee to James Callaway, April 20, 1918, Montgomery, Advertiser, May 7, 1918.

  27Copy in files of U. S. Grant Association, Mississippi State University, Starkeville, MS. Mary King’s sister Hattie King owned the album in which he wrote the poem, but said he wrote it when he was on vacation, meaning his leave in the summer of 1841.

  28USG to cousin McKinstry Griffith September 22, 1839, PUSG, 1, p. 6; PMUSG, 1, pp. 35–38.

  29USG to Julia Dent, August 31, 1844, PUSG, 1, p. 36. USG shows as Ulysses S. Grant on U.S. Military Academy, Cadet Records and Applications, 1805–1898, Register of Cadet Applications, 1819–1867, 11, 1839–1840, RG 94, NA.

  30USG to McKinstry Griffith, September 22, 1839, PUSG, 1, pp. 5, 7.

  31Ibid.

  32U. S. Grant Class and Conduct Report, September 1839, copy at USGA.

  33PMUSG, 1, pp. 41–42. Here Grant says Scott and Van Buren came in succeeding years, but his 1839 letter makes it clear that they both came during the early months of his fourth class year.

  34USG to McKinstry Griffith, September 22, 1839, PUSG, 1, pp. 6–7.

  35Register 604, Entry 544, Field Records of Hospitals, West Point Cadets’ Hospital, January 1, 1838–July 31, 1840, RG 94, NA.

  36USG to R. McKinstry Griffith, July 18, 1840, PUSG, 32, pp. 3, 5. USG’s monthly conduct reports show a total of 51 and 5/6 demerits, but the published Official Register shows him with 59, an unexplained anomaly. Monthly Class Report and Conduct Roll, September 1839–June 1840, Entry 232, RG 94, NA; Official Register of the Officers and Cadets of the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York. June 1840 (New York: J. P. Wright, 1840), pp. 13, 18, 23.

  37Official Register of the Officers and Cadets of the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York. June 1840, pp. 23–24, USG to Charles F. Smith, July 13, 1840, PUSG, 1, pp. 9–10.

  38USG to Julia, August 31, 1844 1, PUSG, pp. 34–36.

  39PMUSG, 1, p. 39.

  40Monthly Class Report and Conduct Roll, January 1841, Entry 232, RG 94, Entry 232, NA.

  41Official Register of the Officers and Cadets of the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York. June 1841 (New York: J. P. Wright, 1841), pp. 13, 20. The Official Register shows USG with 67 demerits, while the monthly reports July 1840–June 1841 show him with a total of 62½. Monthly Class Reports and Conduct Rolls, July 1840–June 1841, Entry 232, RG 94, NA.

  42Melancthon T. Burke memoir, 1896, Hamlin Garland Papers, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

  43PMUSG, 1, p. 40.

  44Years later several women emerged as claimants to romance with the young Grant, among them Hannah Richey. Fifty-five years after the fact Samuel Walker of Cincinnati claimed that Grant had courted her (the surname appears in several variants) from 1841 to 1843, but Walker won her favors instead. The two certainly did marry, and appear on the 1860 census as Samuel and Hannah Walker, with her brother Robert Ritchie living with them in Cincinnati. The story as told by Walker says that Grant was a classmate of Hannah’s brother John Alexander Richey and that Grant met her in 1841 when the two returned to Ohio on their furlough and Grant visited Richey’s home. However, John A. Richey did not actually enter West Point until the fall of 1841, so though they certainly would have been acquainted after that, and may even have become friends, he and Grant were not classmates, and the story of Grant meeting Hannah while visiting Richey is probably just the seventy-four-year-old Walker’s conflation with the genuine story of how Grant met Julia Dent when visiting his classmate Frederick Dent. Lieutenant John A. Richey was killed in Mexico in January 1847, but Grant makes no mention of it in his correspondence, which may suggest that the two were not close, though Walker in 1896 spun quite a story of intimate friendship, supposedly referring to Grant’s letters to Richey’s family after his death. The letters have not come to light if they ever existed (Omaha, World Herald, April 24, 27, 1896). Most of the claimants are certainly fictional, such as Eleanor Brandon Spaulding in 1882 (San Francisco, Bulletin, March 25, 1882), and most bizarrely the woman calling herself Queen Katherine who claimed to have been his lover in Washington during the Civil War (New York, Morning Te
legraph, September 5, 1875). For others see Jackson, MI, Citizen, June 4, 1897, Omaha, World Herald, April 27, 1896. The San Diego, Evening Tribune, September 6, 1901, says Lucinda Powers of Georgetown, Ohio, was a sweetheart of Grant’s, and that as president he made her postmistress at Georgetown. Then there is Mary King of Georgetown. In addition to the poem in her album, Grant sent her from Mexico a drawing of Tehuantepec. Grant supposedly liked her but lost interest when he finished at West Point due to some misunderstanding. As president he did appoint her postmistress of Thibodeaux when she was Mrs. John Fulford. Grant also supposedly got attached to Sarah Clarke, sister of Congressman R. W. Clarke. She married Charles Hunt and died in 1850. He also liked Carrie Tice, later Richards, and a widow Hubbell of Mt. Carmel in Clermont County (Washington, Critic-Record, January 4, 1886). A longer-standing claim has been accorded to Katherine “Kate” Lowe, who lived with her father John W. Lowe at Batavia. Grant supposedly sent her one of his watercolors when he was at West Point. The Melancthon T. Burke Memoir (Garland Papers), claims that Grant actually went to Batavia to visit “Miss Kate Lowe,” whom he had known as a cadet because she sometimes came to New York. Hamlin Garland, Ulysses S. Grant, His Life and Character (New York: Doubleday, 1898), p. 49, used this and other half-century-old recollections of Bethel residents to state that Grant visited the home of John W. Lowe “in whose home Miss Kate Lowe was staying,” without mentioning the precise relationship between these two Lowes. Carl Becker, “Was Grant Drinking in Mexico?” Bulletin of the Cincinnati Historical Society, 24, no. 1 (January 1966), p. 69, transmutes this into saying Grant was attracted to the Lowe home by “the presence of young Kate Lowe, one of Lowe’s relatives visiting from the East.” Those memories and local traditions more than half a century after the fact were seriously confused, for Kate Lowe was John W. Lowe’s daughter, born in 1850, nine years after Grant’s furlough home.

  45PMUSG, 1, p. 41.

  46Official Register of the Officers and Cadets of the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New-York. June 1842 (New York: J. P. Wright, 1842), p. 23.

  47Ibid., pp. 7–14.

  48Several of Grant’s drawings and watercolors appear in PUSG, 1, pp. 13–19.

  49Monthly Class Report and Conduct Roll, February, May, 1842, Entry 232, RG 94, NA.

  50Official Register of the Officers and Cadets of the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New-York, June 1842, pp. 19, 21, shows USG with 98 demerits. However, the tally from the actual monthly reports for September 1841 to June 1842 is 127⅓. Monthly Class Reports and Conduct Rolls, United States Military Academy, 1831–1866, RG 94, Entry 232 NA.

  51PUSG, 1, p. 41.

  52Official Register of the Officers and Cadets of the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York. June 1843 (New York: Burroughs & Co., 1843), p. 20.

  53Certificate, June 20, 1843, PUSG, 1, p. 21, USG to Carey and Hart, March 31, April 8, 1843, p. 11, USG to Julia, May 6, 1845, pp. 43–44.

  54Monthly Class Report and Conduct Roll, March 1843, Entry 232, RG 94, NA.

  55The 78 total comes from the monthly reports for July 1842–June 1843, and the September report shows 12 demerits removed, which agrees with the 68 shown in Official Register of the Officers and Cadets of the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York. June 1843, p. 18.

  56PMUSG, 1, pp. 42–43; Official Register of the Officers and Cadets of the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York. June 1843, p. 2, 3, 7, 17.

  57USG to Julia, July 13, 1851, PUSG, 1, p. 219.

  58Daniel Ammen in Philadelphia, Inquirer, April 23, 1893; W. W. Richeson in New York, Herald, December 13, 1879; PMUSG, 1, p. 42.

  59USG, Oath of Office July 28, 1843, PUSG, 1, pp. 21–22, USG to Adjutant General’s Office, July 31, 1843, p. 22.

  60Lee biographers, following the lead of Freeman, assume that he assisted in settling his mother’s estate, but there is no evidence for such an assumption. Her named executor William Carter likely handled all of that, perhaps assisted by lawyer Charles Carter Lee (Lee, 1, p. 92). REL to CCL, October 12, 1830, Lee Papers, UVA, makes it clear that he left the details to brothers Smith and Carter, even when he was himself at hand in Arlington. Other correspondence with CCL also suggests that Lee’s involvement was mainly if not exclusively division of slaves and other property among them after the estate was settled.

  61REL to Mary Custis, December 1, 1830, DeButts, “Lee in Love,” p. 523.

  62CCL to Henry Lee, August 6, 1829, quoted in Armes, Stratford, p. 394, states that Lee had left Georgetown that day.

  63DeButts, “Lee in Love,” p. 490.

  64File L60, AG.

  65REL to CCL, May 8, 1830, Lee Papers, UVA.

  66REL to CCL, September 22, 30, 1830, Lee Papers, UVA.

  67REL to Mary Custis, October 30, 1830, DeButts, “Lee in Love,” pp. 517–18.

  68REL to Mary Custis, November 19, 1830, ibid., p. 522. See also REL to John Mackay, June 26, 1834, Gilder Lehrman Collection, for his familiarity with Cervantes and Goethe.

  69Mary Custis to REL, September 20, 1830, DeButts, “Lee in Love,” p. 515.

  70REL to Mary Custis, November 11, 1830, ibid., p. 520.

  71REL to Mary Custis, November 19, 1830, ibid., p. 522.

  72REL to Mary Custis, November 19, 1830, ibid., p. 521.

  73REL to Mary Custis, December 1, 1830, ibid., p. 524.

  74REL to Mary Custis, November 19, 1830, ibid., p. 522, December 28, 1830, p. 526.

  75REL to Mary Lee Fitzhugh Custis, January 10, 1831, ibid., p. 531.

  76REL to Mary Custis, January 10, 1831, ibid., p. 529.

  77REL to Mary Custis, March 8, 1831, ibid., pp. 532, 534.

  78REL to Mary Custis, March 8, 1831, ibid., p. 533.

  79REL to Mary Custis, December 1, 1830, ibid., p. 523, April 3, 1831, p. 538, June 5, 1831, p. 543, June 12, 1831, p. 547, Mary Custis to REL, June 11, 1831, p. 545, REL to Mary Custis, June 21, 1831, p. 549.

  80REL to Mary Custis, December 28, 1830, ibid., p. 528.

  81Worcester, MA, National Aegis, January 26, 1831; Portland, ME, Advertiser, December 7, 1830; Bangor, ME, Weekly Register, April 6, 1830.

  82REL to Mary Custis, April 3, 1831, DeButts, “Lee in Love,” p. 535.

  83REL to Mary Custis, May 13, 1831, ibid., pp. 505, 540.

  84REL to Mary Custis, June 5, 1831, ibid., p. 542.

  85REL to Mary Lee Fitzhugh Custis, June 15, 1831, Profiles in History, Calabasas, CA, Auction July 11, 2014, “The Property of a Distinguished American Private Collector,” Auction Part IV-54D, page 110, item #61.

  86REL to Mary Custis, June 21, 1831, DeButts, “Lee in Love,” pp. 549–50.

  87CCL to Henry Lee, July 21, 1831, Lee-Jackson Collection, Washington and Lee.

  88Pryor, Reading the Man, p. 86.

  89REL to MCL, November 27, 1833, Norma B. Cuthbert, ed., “Five Early Letters from Robert E. Lee to his Wife, 1832–1835,” Huntington Library Quarterly, 15 (No 3, May 1951), p. 267.

  90REL to MCL (June 6, 1832), Cuthbert, “Letters,” p. 264, REL to MCL, November 27, 1833, p. 268.

  91MCL and REL to Mary Fitzhugh Custis, Sunday, Lee Family Papers, VHS. Internal evidence establishes that MCL’s portion of this letter was written August 28, 1831.

  92REL to MCL, November 27, 1833, Cuthbert, “Letters,” p. 269.

  93Document signed, n.d. [1833], Alexander Autographs catalog for sale June 24, 1997, p. 10, item #99.

  94REL to CCL, April 6, 1833, Lee Papers, UVA.

  95MacDonald, Mrs. Robert E. Lee, p. 42.

  96REL to MCL, August 21, 1835, Cuthbert, “Letters,” pp. 271–73.

  97MCL to Mary Custis, August 1832, MacDonald, Mrs. Robert E. Lee, p. 44.

  98PMUSG, 1, pp. 43–44. John Fishback, a young man in Bethel at the time, later related this story to the New York, Herald, November 22, 1878, but said it occurred during Grant’s 1841 visit home.

  99Burke Memoir, Garland Papers.

  100USG to Roger Jones, November 17, 1843, PUSG, 1, p. 23.

  101John Y. Simon, ed
., The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant (New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1975), p. 48.

  102Ibid., p. 50; PMUSG, 1, pp. 48–51.

  103USG to Mrs. G. B. Bailey, June 6, 1844, New Orleans, Daily Picayune, August 9, 1885.

  104USG to Julia, September 7, 1844, PUSG, 1, p. 37.

  105USG to Julia, January 12, 1845, ibid., pp. 40–41, July 6, 1845, p. 48.

  106USG to Julia Dent, June 4, 1844, ibid., 1, p. 23–24, July 28, 1844, pp. 30–31, 32–33.

  107USG to Mrs. G. B. Bailey, June 6, 1844, New Orleans, Daily Picayune, August 9, 1885.

  108USG to Julia, July 28, 1844, PUSG, 1, p. 30.

  109USG to Julia, August 31, 1844, ibid., pp. 34–36.

  110PMJDG, p. 49.

  111USG to Julia, May 6, 1845, PUSG, 1, p. 43.

  112PMJDG, p. 51.

  113USG to Julia, July 6, 1845 PUSG, 1, p. 48.

  114USG to Julia, July 11, 1845, ibid., p. 50, July 28, 1844, p. 30.

  115USG to Julia October 10, 1845, ibid., p. 56–57.

  116USG to Julia, October 1845, ibid., pp. 58–59; Columbus, Ohio State Journal, August 16, 1843.

  117USG to Julia, November 11, 1845, PUSG, 1, p. 63, January 12, 1846, p. 69.

  118USG to Julia, November–December 1845, ibid., p. 65, January 2, 1846, p. 68.

  119USG to Julia, October 1845, ibid., p. 60.

  120Charles Gratiot to Lewis Cass, March 7, 1832, Letters Received by the Office of the Adjutant General 1822–1860, RG 94, NA.

  121REL to CCL, February 24, 1835, Lee Papers, University of Virginia.

  122Lee, 1, pp. 135–36.

  123REL to John Mackay, June 27, 1837, Gilder Lehrman Collection.

  124MacDonald, Mrs. Robert E. Lee, p. 66.