Crucible of Command

by William C. Davis

  53Last will and Testament of R. E. Lee, August 2, 1846, Rockingham County Courthouse, Lexington, VA. Nancy Ruffin here disappears from the documentary record. If she remained at the White House plantation after 1846, unfortunately registers of free blacks for that county are missing.

  54REL to GWCL and WHFL, February 27, 1847, Lee, Lee of Virginia, p. 432.

  55Winchester, VA, Times, June 3, 1896. McClellan told this story of their first meeting in 1878.

  56W. A. Croffut, ed., Fifty Years in Camp and Field: Diary of Major-General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, U.S.A. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1909), p. 243.

  57REL to Winfield Scott, August 11, 1857, Adams, Letters, p. 395.

  58USG to Julia, April 3, 1847, PUSG, 1, p. 129.

  59USG resignation, n.d. [April 1847], with endorsement, Emerson, “Grant’s Life in the West,” Midland Monthly, VII, no. 3 (March 1897), p. 219.

  60Thomas L. Hamer to?, August 1846, Emerson, “Grant’s Life in the West,” p. 34.

  61PUSG, 1, p. 130n.

  62USG to Julia, February 1, 1847, ibid., p. 124.

  63USG to Julia, February 5, 1847, ibid., p. 128.

  64REL to John Mackay, October 2, 1847, General Stephen Elliott Papers, United States Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, PA.

  65Lee, 1, pp. 247–48.

  66REL to Mackay, October 2, 1847, Elliott Papers, USAMHI.

  67REL to MCL, April 25, 1847, Lee, General Lee, pp. 40–41.

  68USG to Julia, April 3, 1847, PUSG, 1, p. 129, April 24, 1847, p. 131.

  69Emerson, “Grant’s Life in the West,” February, 1897, p. 221, has USG and REL doing reconnaissance together during the siege of Vera Cruz with P. G. T. Beauregard, George B. McClellan, and G. W. Smith. PMUSG, 1, 131–32 mentions these men doing reconnaissances but gives no indication that USG was with them. All were engineers; USG was not.

  70PMUSG, 1, p. 137.

  71Grant to?, n.d. [August 22, 1847], Emerson, “Grant’s Life in the West,” Midland Monthly, VII, 4 (April 1897), p. 324. Emerson describes this statement as coming from “a letter written by him during this armistice.”

  72Emerson, “Grant’s Life in the West,” January 1897, p. 33, says Grant’s map was so good and so well known throughout the army that Lee often consulted with him over it. The next page invents Grant tending Hamer during battle at Monterey, and on p. 40 Emerson quotes a letter in which Lieutenant Benjamin calls Hamer “Major,” whereas all would know he was a brigadier general by then, a big difference.

  73USG to?, n.d. [September 12, 1847], Emerson, “Grant’s Life in the West,” Midland Monthly, VII, 5 (May 1897), p. 433. Emerson gives no more information on this statement of Grant’s than to note that it was in “a private letter” in which Grant described the advance of the army on Mexico City. Interestingly, though, Emerson quotes none of that campaign narrative, or if he does he gives no indication of it coming from Grant. In PMUSG, Grant makes no allusion whatever to this map or to his own presumed contemporary assessment of Scott’s strategy. However, he did muse that “in later years” that he felt some of the battles Scott fought were unnecessary, and that the northern approach to Mexico City would have been better (PMUSG, 1, pp. 154–55, 165–66).

  74PMUSG, 1, pp. 138–39.

  75REL to Mary, November 8, 1856, Adams, Letters, p. 202.

  76Francis Lee to Roger Jones, January 16, 1849, PUSG, 1, p. 381.

  77PMUSG, 1, pp. 152–59.

  78USG to Julia, January 8, 1848, PUSG, 1, pp. 149–50, February 4, 1848, p. 151, March 22, 1848, pp. 153–54, May 7, 1848, pp. 155–56, June 4, 1848, p. 160.

  79Lowe arrived in Mexico City sometime between April 28 and May 5, 1848, and left by about May 10. On May 12 Lowe wrote: “I saw Lieut. Grant. He has altered very much: he is a short thick man with a beard reaching half way down his waist and I fear he drinks too much but don’t you say a word on that subject” (John Lowe to Manorah Lowe, May 12, 1848, Becker, “Was Grant Drinking in Mexico,” pp. 70–71). Lowe said “I fear he drinks too much,” which sounds as much like an apprehension as a statement of fact. What did Lowe regard as drinking “too much”? Did he actually see Grant drinking or drunk, or was he repeating hearsay? Was Grant just happily inebriated, or sloppy drunk? Lowe was not there long enough to tell if any such behavior was chronic or just an isolated incident. It seems unlikely that Lowe felt any animus against Grant, else why would Lowe bother to see him? If the stories were true of Grant having a pre-war involvement with a member of Lowe’s family—though certainly not his as yet unborn daughter Kate—Lowe might have been miffed on learning that Grant was engaged to Julia (see chapter 2, note 39). Yet Grant was certainly under the impression that he was still on good, even close, terms with Lowe in June 1846 when he said he would like to see Lowe in Mexico commanding a company of volunteers. Becker also notes (p. 68) that Hamlin Garland in 1898 said Grant “learned the use of liquor in Mexico,” but added that there was “little reliable evidence of excess in its use.” Garland’s statement nevertheless implies that there was still some evidence of heavy drinking that he thought reliable, but he failed to back that up with any specific attribution (Garland, Grant, p. 124). Since most of the recollections on which Garland based his book were taken down fifty years after the fact, all statements that Grant drank in Mexico, or had drinking problems later, were subject to heavy influence by the extensive and very public literature regarding Grant and liquor that emerged during and after the Civil War.

  Meanwhile, and significantly, in his letters to Julia written May 7 and May 22 immediately following Lowe’s visit, Grant made no mention of Lowe whatever. It is reasonable to suppose that he would have commented on seeing an old friend from Ohio, since it was hardly a common occurrence. After all, Grant mentioned seeing Julia’s brother Fred in every letter. (USG to Julia, May 7, 1848, PUSG, 1, pp. 155–57, May 22, 1848, pp. 158–59).

  80USG to?, [August 22, 1847], Emerson, “Grant’s Life in the West,” April 1897, p. 324.

  81Francis Lee to Roger Jones, January 16, 1849, PUSG, 1, p. 382.

  82Emerson, “Grant’s Early life in the West,” VII, 5 (May 1897), p. 430.

  83REL to Matilda Mason, November 1, 1847, Profiles in History Catalog, Calabasas Hills, CA, December 2007, p. 20, item #24.

  84REL to Mackay, October 2, 1847, Elliott Papers, USAMHI.

  85Ibid.

  86Ibid.

  87REL to CCL, February 13, 1848, Lee Papers, UVA.

  88REL to CCL, March 4, 1848, Lee Family Papers Digital Library, Washington and Lee.

  89REL to Matilda Mason, November 1, 1847, Profiles in History Catalog, Calabasas Hills, CA, December 2007, p. 20, item #24.

  90REL to CCL, March 18, May 15, 1848, Lee Papers, VHS.

  91REL to Sidney Smith Lee, May 21, 1848, Gilder Lehrman Collection.

  92Raphael Semmes, Service Afloat and Ashore During the Mexican War (Cincinnati: William H. Moore, 1851), p. 379.

  93Both officers became members of the Aztec Club, founded by Scott in October 1847. Lee appears to have been an original member, whereas Grant was elected to membership two years later (PUSG, 1, pp. 388–89).

  CHAPTER 4: TIMES OF TRIAL

  1John Livingston to USG, July 5, 1854, PUSG, 1, p. 425; REL to John Livingston, October 20, 1854, Charles R. Bowery and Brian D. Hankinson, eds., The Daily Correspondence of Brevet Colonel Robert E. Lee Superintendent, United States Military Academy September 1, 1852 to March 24, 1855 (West Point, NY: United States Military Academy Library Occasional Papers #5, 2003), p. 231.

  2REL to CCL, March 4, 1848, Lee Family Papers Digital Library, Washington and Lee.

  3Engineer Order 19, July 21, 1848, Order 32, Sept. 13, 1848, File L60, AG.

  4REL to GWCL, August 3, 1851, Gilder Lehrman Collection.

  5REL to Totten, November 23, 1852, Bowery and Hankinson, Correspondence, pp. 24–25; REL to Totten, September 1, 1853, REL to Totten, July 31, 1854, REL to Totten, September 12, 1854, File L60, RG 94, NA.

  6See for instance, REL to Solon
Borland, October 19, 1854, Bowery and Hankinson, Correspondence, p. 230, REL to William Terrell, September 3, 1852, p. 2, REL to Mrs. Hetzel, January 31, 1855, p. 274.

  7REL to Totten, October 9, 11, 1852, Correspondence, pp. 13–14, 16.

  8REL to Totten, November 30, 1852, ibid., pp. 25–26, December 9, 1852, ibid., pp. 27–29.

  9REL to C. M. Conrad, February 10, 1853, ibid., p. 52.

  10REL to Totten, January 7, 1853, ibid., p. 40.

  11REL to Louis Marshall, February 25, 1844, RWA Auction Catalog #39, June 1, 1996, p. 34, item 156.

  12Walter A. Watson, “Notes on Southside Virginia,” Bulletin of the Virginia State Library, 15 (Nos. 2–4, September 1925), pp. 244–45.

  13Thomas H. Ruger to Thomas J. Ruger, December 11, 1853, HCA Auction Sale, July 22, 2010.

  14Agnes Lee Journal, November 8, 1853, Mary Custis Lee deButts, Growing Up in the 1850s: The Journal of Agnes Lee (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), p. 27.

  15Peter W. Houck, ed., Duty, Honor, Country: The Diary and Biography of General William P. Craighill, Cadet at West Point 1849– 1853. Lynchburg, VA: Warwick House, 1993), p. 522.

  16REL to George Dutton, October 19, 1854, eBay listing April 10, 2012; REL to Totten, February 14, 1853, Bowery and Hankinson, Daily Correspondence, pp. 52–54.

  17See Bowery and Hankinson, Daily Correspondence, pp. 6, 8, 30.

  18REL to Totten, June 21, 1853, ibid., p. 99.

  19REL to J. R. Torbert, October 6, 1852, ibid., p. 12, REL to B. O’Connor, December 17, 1852, pp. 31–32.

  20REL to Alpheus Frank, June 29, 1853, ibid., p. 103.

  21REL to Samuel Cooper, March 15, 1855, File L60, AG.

  22REL to George W. Cullum, March 13, 1855, Swann Auction Galleries, Sale 2333, New York, November 16, 2013, item 14.

  23REL to Charlotte Wickham, October 10, 1857, Adams, Letters, p. 432, REL to Martha Custis Williams, March 14, 1855, p. 2.

  24REL to Totten, September 6, 1855, AG 1822–1860; REL to William Wickham, January 2, 1856, Adams, Letters, pp. 81–82.

  25REL to MCL, April 12, 1856, Adams, Letters, p. 114, July 28, 1856, p. 134, August 25, 1856, p. 162, January 24, 1857, p. 276, REL to Mary Ann Mackay Stiles, May 24, 1856, pp. 122–23.

  26REL to MCL, August 26, 1855, ibid., p. 56.

  27REL to MCL, July 19, 1855, ibid., pp. 29–30.

  28REL to MCL, August 26, 1855, ibid., p. 57, June 9, 1857, p. 362.

  29REL to Mary Anna Randolph Custis, February 14, 1831, Mary Custis Lee Papers, VHS.

  30REL to Mackay, October 2, 1847, Elliott Papers, USAMHI; Dr. May to Cassius F. Lee, April 22, 1861, Lee, Lee of Virginia, p. 418.

  31REL to Sidney Smith Lee, June 20, 1848, Gilder Lehrman Collection.

  32REL to MCL, July 8, 1849, Lee Family Papers, VHS.

  33Pryor, Reading the Man, pp. 231–32.

  34MacDonald, Mrs. Robert E. Lee, p. 111.

  35REL to MCL, July 1, 1855, Adams, Letters, p. 23, REL to MCL, April 19, 1857, p. 330.

  36REL to MCL, August 26, 1855, ibid., p. 56.

  37REL to MCL, April 12, 1856, ibid,, p. 113, REL to MCL, September 3, 1855, pp. 62–63.

  38See, for instance, REL to MCL, August 11, 1856, ibid., p. 144, to Mary Ann Mackay Stiles, August 14, 1856, p. 149.

  39REL to MCL, September 20, 1857, ibid., p. 429. See Harry S. Stout, Upon the Altar of the Nation (New York: Viking, 2006), p. 93 and passim.

  40REL to MCL, July 5, 1857, Adams, Letters, p. 379, November 15, 1856, pp. 206–207.

  41REL to MCL, December 5, 1856, ibid., p. 221.

  42REL to MCL, June 18, 1860, ibid., p. 654.

  43REL to MCL, November 15, 1856, ibid., p. 206.

  44REL to MCL, December 13, 1856, ibid., p. 233, December 27, 1856, p. 247.

  45REL to MCL, June 18, 1860, ibid., p. 654.

  46REL to MCL, November 19, 1856, ibid., p. 214.

  47REL to MCL, December 13, 1856, ibid., p. 233, REL to MCL, February 7, 1857, p. 287.

  48Sibley, ed., “Robert E. Lee to Albert Sidney Johnston, 1857,” October 25, 1857, p. 104.

  49Sandusky, Register, January 19, 1858; REL to Custis Lee, January 17, 1858, Adams, Letters, p. 457

  50Karl Decker and Angus McSween, Historic Arlington: A History of the National Cemetery from Its Establishment to the Present Time (Washington: Decker and McSween, 1892), pp. 80–81.

  51REL to Anna Fitzhugh, November 22, 1857, Adams, Letters, p. 442.

  52REL to GWCL, January 17, 1858, ibid., p. 456.

  53REL to GWCL, February 15, 1858, ibid., p. 469.

  54REL to GWCL, January 17, 1858, ibid., p. 456; Boston, American Traveller, December 17, 1864.

  55REL to GWCL May 30, 1859, Adams, Letters, p. 529. A good study of Lee’s efforts at Arlington will be found in Joseph C. Robert, “Lee the Farmer,” Journal of Southern History, 3, no. 4 (November 1937), pp. 422–40.

  56July 16, 1854, deButts, Growing Up in the 1850s, p. 40. According to his son Robert Jr., at one time Lee owned several slave families that he inherited from his mother, but he freed them before the Civil War without registering manumission papers. That, claimed Robert Jr., was because Virginia statute required freed slaves to leave the state within a year or be returned to slavery. Pryor, Reading the Man, pp. 148–49, discusses slaves of Lee’s but confuses those he owned with the Custis slaves at Arlington, like Perry Parks, whom he managed both before and after Custis’s death.

  57REL to WHFL, July 9, 1860, George Bolling Lee Papers, VHS.

  58REL, Expense Account, December 31, 1858, Gary Hendershott catalog, December 1995, p. 55 item #129; REL to MCL September 25, 1849, Lee Family Papers, VHS.

  59Ibid. There has been much confusion over the years about this Burke family, and Lee is often mistakenly credited as having been their owner and emancipator; see The African Repository and Colonial Journal, 30, no. 1 (January 1854), p. 21. There is no question that they belonged to Custis and not Lee. More members of the family were still at Arlington when Custis died (Inventory of Custis slaves, September 11, 1858, Alexandria County Court, Alexandria, VA), and in 1867, writing from Liberia, William Burke referred to “my dear old mother” still at Arlington (William C. Burke to Ralph R. Gurley, February 9, 1867, VHS). The Burke family appear as free mulattoes in the 1850 census for Baltimore where the Lees were then living, and Burke himself was apparently enumerated twice, since he also appears living as a free mulatto with the Lees. Yet in the African Repository the Burke family appear as slaves, emancipated by Lee. Lee handled the arrangements for the Burkes’ departure from Baltimore on November 9, 1853, presumably at Custis’s request, as he sometimes handled other slave matters for his father-in-law. Applicants for Emigration to Liberia, 1826–1855, American Colonization Society Papers, Series VI, vol. 18, LC, shows “Col. R. E. Lee” of Arlington and West Point as the applicant for “Self wife 4 chil’n.” Of course, Lee was not applying for his family to emigrate. Most of the other applicants listed were the actual emigrants themselves or the masters who freed them. In deriving its published listings from this register, the African Repository quite logically concluded from this listing that Lee was the emancipator. The listing further shows that Lee actually called at the society’s office in Baltimore to make the arrangements.

  In 1885 John Leyburn claimed that during a conversation in Baltimore in 1869, Lee told him that “he had emancipated most of his slaves years before the war, and had sent to Liberia those who were willing to go; that the latter were writing back most affectionate letters to him, some of which he received through the lines during the war.” The conversation almost certainly took place, but Leyburn misunderstood, or misremembered, Lee’s obvious remarks about the Burkes as meaning he had emancipated them himself. John Leyburn, “An Interview with General Robert E. Lee,” Century Magazine, 30, no. 1 (May, 1885), p. 167.