Crucible of Command

by William C. Davis

  125REL to Mackay, June 27, 1838, November 7, 1839, Gilder Lehrman Collection.

  126Ibid.

  127Ibid.

  128Ibid.

  129REL to MCL, June 5, 1839, J. William Jones, Life and Letters of General Robert Edward Lee: Soldier and Man (New York: Neale, 1906), p. 369, October 16, 1837, pp. 368–69.

  130REL to Mackay, November 7, 1839, Gilder Lehrman Collection.

  131Ibid.

  132REL to Mary Custis, November 7, 1839, Lee Papers, Virginia Historical Society.

  133Ibid.; Lee, 1, p. 177.

  134Lee, 1, p. 177.

  135Ibid.

  136REL to Mackay, January 23, 1833, Fort Pulaski National Monument, Savannah, GA.

  137REL to Talcott, December 7, 1832, Talcott Family Papers, VHS; REL to Mackay, January 23, 1833, Fort Pulaski.

  138REL to CCL, February 1, 1833, Lee Papers, UVA; Cincinnati, Commercial, August 9, 1879. The Commercial’s account comes from an interview Lee gave to George Pepper, a Union chaplain, shortly after Appomattox. Since it was not committed to paper until fourteen years later, it is probable that Pepper’s memory embellished in places. Still, Lee’s correspondence does confirm that he did attend some of the debates involving Clay, Webster, and Calhoun; hence he was in a position in 1865 to speak from memory, though perhaps with his own embellishments more than thirty years after the fact.

  139REL to Mackay, June 26, 1834, Gilder Lehrman Collection.

  140REL to Hill Carter, January 25, 1840, Shirley Plantation Collection.

  141REL to Jack Mackay, June 27, 1838, March 18, 1841, February 6, 1843, Gilder Lehrman Collection.

  142REL to Louis Marshall, February 25, 1844, RWA Auction Catalog #39, June 1, 1996, p. 34, item 156.

  143REL to Henry Kayser, December 23, 1843, May 19, 1844, Robert E. Lee Collection, Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, MO.

  144REL to CCL, September 1, 1844, Lee Papers, UVA.

  145MacDonald, Mrs. Robert E. Lee, p. 52; REL to Hill Carter February 1, 21, 1842, REL to A. S. White, February 21, 1845, Lee Family Papers, VHS.

  146MCL and REL to Mary Fitzhugh Custis, Sunday, Lee Family Papers, VHS [Internal evidence establishes that REL’s portion of this letter was written August 29, 1831].

  147REL to Mary Custis, November 11, 1830, DeButts, “Lee in Love,” p. 519, April 3, 1831, p. 536.

  148REL to Mary Custis, January 10, 1831, ibid., p. 531, June 21, 1831, p. 548.

  149REL to Mary Custis, December 1, 1830, ibid., p. 525.

  150REL to Mary Custis, November 19, 1830, ibid., p. 522, May 24, 1831, p. 562 n.83.

  151Historians have never agreed on how many slaves Lee owned personally, or who they were. The most common mistake is to conflate his slaves with the Custis slaves at Arlington, White House, and Romancoke plantations, which never belonged to him or his wife. Lee’s letters often mention names such as Jane and Philip Meriday and others as servants with his family, but they were Arlington slaves. A subsequent chapter will deal with the Burke family, usually—and erroneously—accepted as having belonged to Lee.

  152Ann Carter Lee Will, July 24, 1829, Will Book P-1 1827–1830, Fairfax County Courthouse, Fairfax, VA. Pp. 277–28.

  153REL to MCL, March 28, 1832, DeButts-Ely Papers, LC. Emory M. Thomas, Robert E. Lee. A Biography (New York: Norton, 1995), p. 108, says that Ann Lee left thirty slaves to her three sons, citing REL to CCL, February 24, 1835, Lee Family Papers, UVA. That letter, however, makes no mention of this, and there seems to be no source suggesting thirty slaves, whereas Charles Carter’s will, cited previously, makes it clear that he left no slaves to his daughter Ann Hill Lee, but did bequeath thirty slaves to be divided between daughters Mildred and Lucy. Mildred’s fifteen—and any others she may have had—passed at her death to Ann in 1817. Since R. E. Lee received apparently four adult females and one adult male from his mother’s estate, that would suggest that his brothers Carter and Smith each received five as well, adding up to the fifteen that Mildred left Ann (not counting minor children born to any of Mildred’s fifteen, as with Nancy Ruffin’s three offspring). As Robert had no farm to work, his brother Carter probably kept most of the males. In 1833 Carter Lee traded Gardner for R. E. Lee’s Sam (REL to CCL, October 12, 1830, April 6, 1833, February 14, 1843, Lee Papers, UVA). Hill Carter managed Gardner’s hire since at least 1824 on behalf of Ann Hill Lee. In 1830 and 1831 Hill Carter paid the proceeds to executor William Carter, then there is a gap in the records until 1836 when he paid the Gardner hire to Lee to cover the years 1833–1835, and thereafter paid it annually until 1845. Gardner is not mentioned in R. E. Lee’s will in 1846, as were Nancy Ruffin and her three children, suggesting that Lee no longer owned him. A slave male named Gardner appears in the first entry of Hill Carter’s Memorandum Book for Hirelings, dated September 15, 1850, and almost every entry thereafter through the final entry on August 20, 1853, suggesting that between 1845 and 1850 Lee gave or sold Gardner to Hill. CCL to Hill Carter, March 10, 1824, receipt to CCL, March 20, 1827, receipts from William Carter, January 1, 1830, REL to Hill Carter, February 10, 1836, April 24, 1837, January 31, 1838, February 1, 1840, May 8, 1841, January 22, 1842, January 21, 1843, February 19, 1844, February 1, 1845, Hill Carter Memorandum Book for Hirelings, 1850–1853, Shirley Plantation Collection, John D. Rockefeller Library Jr., Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, VA.

  154REL to Mary Custis, April 17, 1831, Cuthbert, “Letters,” p. 262. This letter’s reference to Catty (which could be a misreading of the old style “double “f” that Lee occasionally used, hence Cassy), Jane, and Letitia is usually read to suggest that these women were also Lee’s property, and they probably were since he gave Mary permission to deal with them, but there was also a Cassy and a Jane Meriday among the Custis slaves at Arlington. By the 1840s Cassy was married to a man named Louis and both were free and living in New York. MacDonald, Mrs. Robert E. Lee, pp. 38, 52, 54, 56, 91–93. In 1850 the Custises at Arlington had an infant slave Cassy Branham, suggesting the name may have been common among their slaves. 1850 census, Alexandria County. Cassy was the daughter of “Old Nurse,” who had helped raise Mary Custis Lee. Both names were common among slaves.

  155REL to CCL, February 24, 1835, Lee Papers, UVA. For “plagues” see, for instance, this same letter and also REL to MCL, May 24, 1831, DeButts, “Lee in Love,” p. 562 n.83.

  156Receipt, February 10, 1836, Shirley Plantation Collection, covers Gardner’s hire for the years 1833, 1834, and 1835. Lee’s notes on receipt of rent payments are in REL to Hill Carter, January 22, 1842, January 21, 1843, February 1, 1845, Lee Family Papers, VHS. Hill Carter paid Gardner’s hire to Ann Lee from 1822 until 1829, then to her executors for 1830, then directly to Carter Lee for 1831 and 1832. Thereafter his hire went to REL. Hill Carter Hireling Book, 1822–1848, Shirley Plantation Collection. In 1834, writing from Arlington, Lee made reference to sending something by “my man Dick.” This is clearly not Gardner, who was then hired out in Charles City County, yet there is no other known reference by Lee to owning any other male slave. This Dick is probably one of the Arlington slaves loaned to Lee for his use by father-in-law Custis. REL to Eben Eveleth, November 13, 1834, Signature House Sale catalog Sale January 7, 2000, p. 46, item #233.

  157Nancy and her three children were still owned by Lee and still at White House as of August 1, 1846, when he wrote his will (Last Will and Testament of Robert E. Lee, Rockingham County Courthouse, Lexington, VA). The 1847 Alexandria County Property Tax Book shows “Col. Lee” owning four slaves over the age of sixteen, which are presumably Nancy and her three children, though that could just be the slaves that he owned in that county, while Nancy and children might still be at White House in New Kent County. (Joseph C. Robert, “Lee the Farmer.” Journal of Southern History, 4 [November 1937], p. 429.)

  158REL to Hill Carter, January 25, 1840, Shirley Plantation Collection.

  159REL to Mary Custis, December 28, 1830, DeButts, “Lee in Love,” p. 527; REL to CCL, January 4, 1831, Lee Papers, UVA
.

  160REL to Mary Custis, April 3, 1831, DeButts, “Lee in Love,” p. 537–38, December 28, 1830, p. 527.

  161Mason, Popular Life, p. 23.

  162REL to Hill Carter, February 25, 1840, Shirley Plantation Collection.

  163REL to Hill Carter, January 25, 1840, ibid.

  164REL to Mackay, March 18, 1841, Gilder Lehrman Collection.

  165REL to CCL, February 14, 1843, Lee Papers, UVA.

  166REL to MCL, March 24, 1843, Ferdinand Dreer Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

  167REL to CCL, June 7, 1839, Lee Papers, UVA.

  CHAPTER 3: FIGHTING ON THE SAME SIDE

  1USG to Julia, February 5, 1846, PUSG, 1, p. 71, April 20, 1846, p. 80–81, March 3, 1846, p. 75.

  2USG to Julia, May 3, 1846, ibid., p. 83.

  3USG to Julia, May 11, 1846, ibid., p. 85.

  4USG to Julia, May 11, 1846, ibid., pp. 85–86.

  5USG to Julia, May 24, 1846, ibid., p. 88.

  6USG to John W. Lowe, June 26, 1846, ibid., p. 97.

  7USG to Julia, August 14, 1846, ibid., p. 105.

  8USG to Julia, September 6, 1846, ibid., p. 108–109, October 3, 1846, p. 113.

  9USG to John W. Lowe, May 3, 1847, ibid., p. 137.

  10Alexandria, Gazette, May 27, 1846, is one of dozens of papers that spread the Walker account across the United States.

  11USG to Julia, September 1847, PUSG, 1, pp. 147–48.

  12New York, Commercial Advertiser, August 31, 1846.

  13This letter has apparently not survived.

  14New York, Herald, November 22, 1878.

  15USG to Julia, November 7, 1846, PUSG, 1, 117.

  16USG protest, n.d. [August 1846], John W. Emerson, “Grant’s Life in the West and His Mississippi Valley Campaigns,” Midland Monthly, 6 (No. 1, January 1897), p. 36. This and other letters that appear in the Emerson article are to be found nowhere else, and present something of a problem; namely, how did Emerson come by them? Emerson said in a preface that he had lived most of his life near St. Louis, close to Grant and Grant’s friends, “in touch with Grant himself and with Grant’s associates and intimate friends.” (5 [No. 11, November 1896], p. 395n.) Frederick D. Grant addressed him as “My Dear Emerson” and applauded his 1889 article(s) on USG. So Emerson was acquainted with the family. In the segment in 6 (No. 6, June 1897), pp. 498, he reproduced a sketch by Lieutenant Calvin Benjamin of a cabin where he and Grant stayed between Austin and Corpus Christi, so Emerson apparently had access to Benjamin’s papers. In places, Emerson indicates that some of what he said came from conversations with Grant. Grant mentioned Benjamin only in passing in PMUSG and not as a bosom friend as Emerson has it. During the Civil War John Wesley Emerson was briefly a field officer of the 47th Missouri Volunteer Infantry from his hometown Ironton, Missouri. In August 1861, Grant chose Emerson’s home as his headquarters, and Emerson later claimed that Grant conceived his strategy for conquest of the Mississippi while there, which seems unlikely, though possible. Some of the letters like the one here cited ought to have been in official archives with others of their kind, while personal letters and some fragmentary lines attributed to Grant could have come from anywhere, possibly Grant himself. Emerson gives no clues in his lengthy work to indicate sources. Given that the editors of the USG Papers have accepted the letters Emerson published as genuine, this author will do likewise, though with a reservation or two where noted. See PUSG, 1, p. 107n.

  17USG to Julia, June 5, 1846, PUSG, 1, p. 90.

  18USG to Julia, June 10, 1846, ibid., pp. 92–93.

  19USG to Julia, September 6, 1846, ibid., pp. 108–109.

  20PMUSG, 1, pp. 110–11, 115–16.

  21USG to Julia, September 23, 1846, PUSG, 1, p. 111.

  22USG to Julia, October 3, 1846, ibid., p. 112.

  23USG to?, [December 1846], Emerson, “Grant’s Life in the West,” Midland Monthly, VII, 2 (February 1897), pp. 139–40. Emerson says only that Grant wrote this “as Christmas approached.”

  24USG to Julia, October 20, 1846, PUSG, 1, p. 114.

  25USG to James Hazlitt, November 23, 1846, PUSG, 32, pp. 6–7.

  26Thomas L. Hamer to?, August 1846, Emerson, “Grant’s Life in the West,” p. 34. Emerson states that Hamer’s letter to a friend quoted here was written from Camargo, which dates it to August 1846. Hamer’s mention that he and Grant had been struggling to control several wagons and teamsters suggests that it would date from after August 14 or 16 when Grant became acting regimental quartermaster. While Emerson’s account of Grant in essence tutoring Hamer is not illogical given their acquaintance years before, Emerson’s claim that a father-son intimate relationship grew up between the two should not be taken at face value. In his own PMUSG almost forty years later, Grant wrote of Hamer joining the army but said nothing of any personal relations between them other than a comment Hamer made on his gaining his commission. Later in his memoir Grant wrote of Franklin Pierce that “I knew him more intimately than I did any other of the volunteer generals,” which certainly diminishes the degree of intimacy with Hamer claimed by Emerson. PMUSG, 1, pp. 103, 147.

  27Houston, Texas Telegraph, January 4, 1847.

  28USG to [Mrs. Thomas L. Hamer], n.d. [December 1846], Emerson, “Grant’s Life in the West,” p. 35. Again, while Emerson’s text for Grant’s presumed letter to Hamer’s widow is probably genuine, the background he spins of Grant ministering to the dying man is largely nonsense. In part it reads:

  Every moment Grant was free from imperative duties he was with his friend in his struggle with that enemy whose eventual triumph is always certain. No kindness was omitted. His own hands ministered to his dying comrade. Grant returned from a charge through shot and shell, black and besmeared with smoke and dust and blood, and hastened to the tent and cot of the dying Hamer. The earth was trembling, and the air reverberating with the thunder of artillery, and the shriek and explosion of shells; and the moans of the wounded were sounding on every ear as men limped, or crawled, or were carried to the rear. With this music, the dirge of woe and death about them, Grant stood bent over the cot of his dying friend, holding his hand, looking into his eyes as their light slowly faded away and the pallor of death touched the parted but speechless lips. Tears came into the eyes of the young soldier; the rays of the receding sun struggled at the tent door with the smoke of battle that covered the scene, and in the dull gloom of eventide, thus surrounded, Hamer died.

  In fact, on the day Hamer died, and for two months leading up to it, the garrison at Monterey had seen no action at all and Mexican forces were many miles away. There was no artillery fire to shake the ground, no fighting for Grant to slip away from to tend his friend, no blood or powder grime to smear Grant’s face. When he wrote the widow that Hamer died “within the sound of battle” he was simply inventing to console her. He could not lie and tell her Hamer died in action, but he could paint the scene of the conventionally accepted manner of the ideal death of the soldier.

  Emerson based his account on a letter from a Lieutenant Benjamin “to a friend at home,” dated “the next day after the surrender of Monterey,” which would make it September 25, 1846. In that letter Benjamin describes “my dear friend, Lieutenant Grant” tending to a dying Lieutenant Haskins, having “come up all the way from the death-bed of his friend, Major Hamer.” Again, on September 25 Hamer was in wonderful health, and temporarily commanding a division in the operations at Monterey. Benjamin was Lieutenant Calvin Benjamin, adjutant of an artillery battalion, and Haskins was Lieutenant Charles Hoskins, adjutant of the 4th Infantry, whom Grant replaced on his death (PMUSG, 1, pp. 111–12). This portion of the Benjamin letter is obviously a fabrication, either by Emerson or someone who furnished him documents, and inevitably it must raise questions about all documents that Emerson quotes, including those purportedly by Grant. The orthography in the alleged Grant items is somewhat better than in his holograph letters, though that could simply be editorial cleanup by Emerson. Otherwise there is nothing anac
hronistic in their texts.

  29PMUSG, 1, pp. 212–13.

  30Ibid., p. 147.

  31USG to John W. Lowe, June 26, 1846, PUSG, 1, p. 97–98.

  32USG to Julia, August 14, 1846, ibid., p. 105.

  33USG to Julia, February 1, 1847, ibid., p. 124.

  34USG to?, [December 1846], Emerson, “Grant’s Life in the West,” Midland Monthly, VII, 2 (February 1897), pp. 139–40. Emerson says only that Grant wrote this “as Christmas approached.”

  35PMUSG, 1, p. 119.

  36USG to Julia, April 3, 1847, PUSG, 1, p. 129, USG to John W. Lowe June 26, 1846, p. 97.

  37USG to Julia September 6, 1846, ibid., pp. 108–109, November 7, 1846, p. 118.

  38USG to Julia, February 5, 1847, ibid., p. 128. Interestingly, the play with words here is exactly the same as a Grant comment customarily regarded as apocryphal, in which he said he only knew two songs, one being “Yankee Doodle” and the other one not.

  39USG to Julia, July 6, 1845, ibid., p. 49, September 14, 1845, p. 54.

  40USG to Julia, April 3, 1847, ibid., p. 130.

  41PMUSG, 1, p. 118.

  42USG to Julia, May 24, 1846, PUSG, 1, p. 88.

  43USG to Julia, May 17, 1847, ibid., p. 138.

  44USG to Julia, January 9, 1848, ibid., p. 149.

  45USG to Julia, July 25, 1846, ibid., p. 102.

  46USG to Julia, February 25, 1847, ibid., p. 127.

  47USG to Julia, June 5, 1846, ibid., p. 91, February 1, 1847, p. 124, April 3, 1847, p. 129, May 17, 1847, pp. 138–39.

  48REL to MCL, May 12, 1846. February 13, 1848, DeButts-Ely Collection, LC. Freeman offers only a single paragraph about Lee’s feelings as the war started, and all of that is unsubstantiated invention about Lee fearing he would be left out of the war. Lee, 1, p. 202.

  49REL to CCL, March 4, 1848, Lee Family Papers Digital Library, Washington and Lee.

  50Joseph Totten to Lee, August 17, 1846, File L60, AG.

  51REL to A. S. White, February 21, 1845, Lee Family Papers, VHS.

  52Lee’s most recent payment for Gardner’s hire covered 1844. On February 1, 1845, he told his cousin Hill Carter to continue to hire the man, but Carter noted in Hill Carter Hireling Book, 1822–1848, that “Gardner could not be made to pay any hire this year [1845].” He further noted Gardner was not hired in 1846 or 1847. This is probably on account of age or infirmity. Assuming Gardner to have been one of the slaves Ann Lee inherited from her sister Mildred, the terms of Charles Carter’s 1806 will specified that the slaves given to Mildred had to be born between 1772 and 1795. Meanwhile, Gardner’s hire, as detailed in Hill Carter’s 1822–1848 book, ran $70 per annum 1821–1828, then $60 per annum 1829–1841, then $50 per annum 1842–1843, then $30 for 1844, and nothing thereafter. That suggests the declining value of his labor for which age would be the most logical explanation. In 1844 Gardner would have been aged forty-nine to seventy-two. Lee’s August 1846 will does not list Gardner among his assets, though it lists Nancy Ruffin and her three children, yet Hill Carter still carries Gardner in his hireling book, even though there is no mention of Lee and Gardner was not hired after 1844. However, the daily entries in Hill Carter Memorandum Book for Hirelings, 1850–1853, show sums paid by Carter to Gardner for various odd jobs, along with notes indicating that Gardner left work when he chose, and finally on August 20, 1853, Carter noted that he paid Gardner $9 “when he left off working here.” So Gardner was working for Carter and being paid directly, rather than his wages going to another owner. Thus by 1850 at least, Gardner must have been a free man. Lee may have freed him between February 1845, when he told Carter to hire him again, and August 1846, when Gardner was not an asset mentioned in Lee’s will. Lee could have freed him since he was no longer an income-producing asset, or he may have given him to Hill Carter, which would account for Carter still carrying Gardner on his hireling account for 1846 and 1847. Or Gardner may have earned enough to purchase his freedom from either Lee or Carter. Gardner was allowed to earn money for himself even while a slave, as witness Carter’s notation for December 30, 1837, that Gardner paid $25 for the hire of a slave named Jack George, with the notation that Jack George drowned January 25, 1838, and Gardner paid for his coffin “so as to square his hire.” REL to Hill Carter, February 1, 1845, Hill Carter Hireling Book 1822–1848, Hill Carter Memorandum Book for Hirelings, 1850–1853, Shirley Plantation Collection. Gardner does not appear in the List of Free Negroes and Mulattoes in the County of Charles City Over Twelve Years of Age for the Year 1859, or in the Charles City County Register of Free Negroes, 1835–1864 (Library of Virginia), which would suggest that he was deceased or moved prior to 1859, and that if he was freed, by whatever means, his freedom was not registered with the county. If he was sold, the transaction does not appear in Charles City County Deed Book 10, 1846–1856, Library of Virginia.