Originally aired on January 13, 1995 - In part 20 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson profiles General Robert E. Lee.
#20 – General Robert E. Lee
For decades, much of the nation was paused in the third week of January to pay honor to one who epitomized both the consummate soldier and the complete gentleman. Robert Edward Lee would doubtless be uncomfortable in the face of such esteem. He certainly would be surprised by it. After all, Lee is the only American general ever to lose a war.
Lee’s Virginia birthright demanded much of him. Two of his uncles were signers of the Declaration of Independence. His father, “Light Horse Harry” Lee, fought beside George Washington. The son graduated number two in his West Point class.
As a member of the elite army engineers, Lee assisted in the construction of such coastal fortifications as Fort Sumter, S.C., and Fort Monroe, Va. In the Mexican War, Lee served on the staff of General-in-Chief Winfield Scott, who later asserted that American success in Mexico came largely from Lee’s skill and valor.
A decade later, the American experiment in democracy collapsed. Union officials tendered Lee command of all Federal forces. Lee had to grapple with the most momentous decision of his life. He had spent 30 years in the US Army; he was opposed to the institution of slavery and the principle of secession. But Virginia had mothered him, and now Virginia needed him.
Lee concluded: “I cannot raise my hand against my birthplace, my home, my children.” This was the same purity of patriotism that had inspired his father, uncles, and cousins in the American Revolution.
He was 54 when civil war began. Winfield Scott had called Lee the most handsome man ever to wear the uniform of a soldier. The Virginian stood 5 feet, 11 inches tall, weighed 175 pounds, and had brown eyes, brown hair, and broad shoulders. Near-perfect health had marked his life to that point.
For the first year of the Civil War, Lee acted as a military advisor to the Confederate President Jefferson Davis. A Union army was banging at the doors of Richmond when, on June 1, 1862, Lee took command of the South’s leading force, the Army of Northern Virginia. Within 90 days, Lee eliminated the threat on Richmond, cleared the state of all major Federal dangers, and began an invasion of the North. Never in warfare had so stunning a turnabout taken place in so short a time.
With Lee in command, the Southern army won smashing victories from the Seven Days of 1862 through the siege of Petersburg in 1864. He fought to a draw at Antietam and suffered defeat at Malvern Hill and Gettysburg. In April, 1865, Lee surrendered his army because his half-naked soldiers were starving. Yet Appomattox was one of those few moments in time when the victor stood in awe of the vanquished.
The Civil War took a heavy toll on Lee. His hair turned snow-white; serious heart problems sapped his energy. Yet Lee accomplished one more thing—and it may have been the greatest achievement of his life. He accepted the presidency of impoverished Washington College. Within five years, Lee turned it into a model of higher education in the nation. The college was Lee’s image, for it taught young men to build on the past as they worked toward the future.
Today that school is Washington and Lee University, but in many ways it will always be what its postwar alumni called it: “General Lee’s College.” Fittingly, Lee himself is buried in the campus chapel.
The words that Lee used - gentleman, duty, honor - have a quaint sound in these times because they are unfamiliar terms. We say no one like Lee could have existed. That is because no one like Lee exists now. The mountain is a mystery when one looks only at the lowlands. We have grown blind to the inspiration of Lee. That is sad, not for Lee, but for us.
