INVITATION,” said the five men who came to call; but the occasion was very much a command performance. The five were a committee of delegates from the convention which had voted Virginia out of the United States on April 17 and continued to sit and act like conservative radicals. They came to Robert E. Lee’s new office in the Virginia Mechanics Institute at Nineth and Franklin Streets to invite and escort the man they had made a major general and given command of Virginia armed forces to the Virginia capitol to appear before the convention.
Lee genuinely disliked crowds and public occasions; he avoided both whenever he could. On the evening he arrived in Richmond and accepted this command, a large crowd of local citizens gathered before the Spotswood House to cheer him. In place of Lee, the crowd got Richmond Mayor Joseph Mayo, who explained that Lee appreciated the display of support but had too much work to do to make an appearance. Lee had even more work to do now; yet he realized that an appearance before the convention was part of his work, and so he aquiesced with as much grace as he could muster.1
Speaking for the committee was Marmaduke Johnson, whom Richmond voters had elected to the convention as a staunch unionist. The stridently secessionist Richmond Examiner had characterized Johnson as “the sleek fat pony from Richmond, who neighed submission; one master for him was as good as another; what he went in for was good feeding; and he believed he could get that from Old Abe as well as anybody else.” Johnson responded to this slander by trying to shoot Examiner editor John M. Daniel on a Richmond street. Daniel returned the fire, but neither antagonist hit the other. Only the intervention of the Mayor’s Court and imposition of a $3,000 bond prevented further violence.2
Around noon Lee accepted the inevitable and followed his escort to the capitol to endure his public appearance. When they arrived, the first thing they did was stand and wait.
Lee stood in the rotunda near the statue of George Washington by Jean Antoine Houdon in the Classical Revival public temple designed by Thomas Jefferson where Governor Light Horse Harry Lee had confronted his rebellious legislature.3
After Lee became a legend, some of those who saw him during the spring and summer of 1861 remembered a noble specimen of manly grace and martial form. And in Lee’s case hindsight was nearly accurate. He was fifty-four years old; but he looked younger. Moreover, Lee could look like someone important without affectation. Walter H. Taylor, who served on Lee’s staff, recalled meeting Lee early in May 1861. “Admirably proportioned, of graceful and dignified carriage,” wrote Taylor, “with strikingly handsome features, bright and penetrating eyes, his iron-gray hair closely cut, his face cleanly shaved except for a mustache, he appeared every inch a soldier and a man born to command.” Almost everyone who saw Lee for the first time remarked upon his dignity; few people knew that his reserved manner was a facade surrounding a shy man who had trained himself to be proper instinctively when he encountered others.4
Lee certainly looked like a soldier, and that was important at this stage. He acted like a soldier, too; after all, he began learning how soldiers act at West Point almost thirty-six years ago. Lee’s first task was to mobilize an army and navy for Virginia. But what would he then do with these forces? Would he live up to his reputation in the field? Most people believed that Lee was a great commander, because Winfield Scott and others who should know said he was. But the substance on which to base any belief in Lee was quite slim.
Lee had devoted most of his career to building forts and other engineering projects. His record during the Mexican War was impressive, but Lee had been a staff officer then. He had never led troops in battle. In fact the only times Lee had ever commanded in anything remotely resembling combat were his two expeditions in Texas: one against Comanche marauders in the summer of 1856 and the other in search of Juan Cortinas and his band of Mexican bandits in the spring of 1860. On neither expedition did Lee even see anyone hostile, except for one Comanche woman captured by one of his detached cavalry squadrons. The largest force Lee had ever commanded in the field was four cavalry squadrons.
The only time Robert Lee actually commanded in person during combat occurred against John Brown at Harpers Ferry. Then he directed the assault upon the fire engine house—as many marines and militia as he wanted against Brown and four of his followers in a “battle” which lasted all of three minutes.
Nor was Lee quite as physically fit as he appeared. During his most recent tour of duty in Texas, he had suffered more colds, one of the worst of which afflicted him in June. He had begun to suffer too from “rheumatism” (which may have in fact been cardiovascular problems) to the point that his right arm “feels stationary.” And he had complained about his health, something he had rarely ever done before.
Nevertheless, in Richmond in the spring of 1861, Lee impressed people with “his erect and muscular frame, firm step, and the animated expression of his eye.” They believed that Lee was a skillful soldier because everyone said he was; and Lee gave them no cause to believe otherwise.5
So Lee stood at the rear of the hall of the Virginia House of Delegates and acknowledged the friendly eyes of convention delegates and governor. And while he stood, convention president John Janney read to him a prepared address.
Janney, a Whig from Loudon County sixty-one years old, had spoken and voted against secession. He was up to this occasion, however, and commenced by telling Lee and everyone present what they already knew—that amid searching of souls and gnashing of teeth delegates to this convention had stumbled into secession—that now Virginia confronted the armed might of the United States—and that Virginians were determined “that no spot of her [Virginia’s] soil shall be polluted by the foot of an invader.” Janney spoke of Westmoreland County, invoked the memory of George Washington and Lee’s “own gallant father,” and pronounced some contorted prose about “first in war,” “first in Peace,” “first in the hearts of your countrymen.” He closed with more references to Washington, swords, and scabbards, and commanded Lee to “fall with it [his sword] in your hand rather than the object for which it was placed there should fail.”
Then it was Lee’s turn; he was reserved and brief.
Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention: Profoundly impressed with the solemnity of the occasion, for which I must say I was not prepared, I accept the position assigned me by your partiality. I would have much preferred had your choice fallen on an abler man. Trusting in Almighty God, an approving conscience, and the aid of my fellow-citizens, I devote myself to the service of my native State, in whose behalf alone will I ever again draw my sword.
It was pretty much a pro forma speech; but it was just about the only speech Lee ever made. After more applause Janney abandoned the chair so that convention delegates might meet and greet Lee. Then everyone sat down and listened to a speech from Vice President Alexander Stephens. Eventually Lee was able to return to his new office and live up to all the rhetoric.6
Very soon he suffered another interruption; the Vice President wished to see him. So Lee hiked back toward Capitol Square to the Ballard House at Fourteenth and Franklin Streets to call upon Stephens. The Vice President was five years younger than Lee, but he seemed much older because of his chronic ill health and diminutive stature. Within a year he would become disillusioned with the administration and spend much of his time back home in Georgia. At this point, however, Stephens was concerned about his government’s relations with Virginia in general and with Lee in particular. He hoped that the convention would agree to act as though Virginia were a Confederate state, even though Virginian voters still had the final decision on the matter in a referendum to be held within a few weeks. Most especially did Stephens want to secure Lee’s loyalty to the larger cause of the Confederacy. Lee more than satisfied Stephens that he would not obstruct the formation of a national army and military posture. Nor would he quibble or quarrel about matters of rank and status in the new Southern army. He would mobilize Virginia and cooperate in any ways that he could with the administration. Stephens was pleased; Lee only wanted to get on with his task.7
During the next few weeks Lee mobilized 40,000 troops, 115 field artillery pieces, 15 coastal defense batteries, and one ship. When he had begun, the Virginia Militia units totaled 18,400, and this army existed only on paper. Many of these citizen-soldiers were unarmed; most of them were absolutely untrained; and almost all of these men until very recently had considered the militia an essentially social organization.8
On May 3, 1861, Governor Letcher issued a call to arms; by then Lee was more or less prepared to accept volunteers for his army. He had officers ready at designated points about the state to receive volunteer companies (about 100 men). He had plans for arming and equipping the men and some hopes regarding their training. He employed, for example, cadets from the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) to drill and instruct volunteers who reported to Camp Lee near Richmond. Elsewhere Lee relied upon experienced officers to conduct training so as to transform citizens into soldiers.
Meanwhile Lee remained cognizant of the threat of invasion by the United States. So he attempted to assemble troops at several sites he deemed crucial to the defense of the state: Harpers Ferry, Manassas, Culpeper Court House, Gloucester Point, Norfolk, Alexandria, and Yorktown. Lee also knew that invasion via water was likely. So he planted guns along Virginia’s rivers, and in this endeavor he had the able assistance of his old friend and once commanding officer Andrew Talcott.9
Experience was the common denominator of the officers Lee placed in command; he wanted professional soldiers who could transform enthusiastic civilians into some approximation of soldiers. Accordingly Benjamin Huger, a Charlestonian with thirty-six years of service in the United States Army, now commanded at Norfolk; Thomas J. Jackson, a West Point graduate most recently on the faculty at VMI, was in charge at Harpers Ferry; John Bankhead Magruder, a veteran of the Seminole and Mexican Wars, commanded on the peninsula between the James and York Rivers; and so on down the roll of Lee’s principal subordinates.
When Joseph E. Johnston reported for duty, Lee assigned him to Harpers Ferry over Jackson, and for the moment Johnston seemed satisfied. He had outranked Lee and every other Confederate officer in the United States Army, and he did not suffer slights, real or imagined, with much grace at all. But Johnston and Lee had been West Point classmates and friends, and for the time being at least that friendship overrode the politics of command.I0
Lee established his headquarters in the Virginia Mechanics Institute at Ninth and Franklin, only two blocks from the Spotswood Hotel where he continued to reside. Eventually the Confederate War and Navy Departments would occupy the entire building. For now Lee and his staff only used the top floor.
To assist him in this frenzy of mobilization, Lee had his former Commandant of Cadets at West Point, Robert S. Garnett, who acted as chief of staff. John A. Washington, nephew of George Washington and known to Lee in northern Virginia, joined Lee’s staff in early May. Pennsylvania–born but South Carolina–connected, George Allen Deas resigned from the United States Army, drifted south, and also joined Lee’s staff. “The New York clubs were so unpleasant now for Southern men,” Deas explained to an audience of socialites in Charleston. Walter Herren Taylor, a young (not quite twenty-three) militia officer with VMI training and connections with friends of Governor Letcher, became the fourth and final member of Lee’s first staff. Others assisted in specific tasks or for short periods; Garnett, Washington, Deas, and Taylor served throughout the mobilization, and Taylor would remain with Lee throughout the war.11
During his administration of Virginia’s mobilization Lee remained mostly in Richmond. He did manage brief visits to Norfolk, Manassas, and the lower peninsula between the James and York Rivers. His family members were significantly more mobile. Both older sons and his brother Smith joined Lee’s armed force: Custis as an engineer; Rooney as a cavalry officer; and Smith as a captain in the Virginia navy. His daughter Mary moved about but settled at Kinloch for a time. Agnes came to Richmond, visited Rooney’s in-laws and Chass at Hickory Hill (just a few miles north, near Hanover Court House and also near Rooney’s camp), and visited White House. Annie usually stayed with Chass at White House or Hickory Hill. Rob continued at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Mildred remained with her mother, and Mary Lee had to move about a lot.12
Arlington became very soon unsafe for rebels, so by mid-May Mary Lee and Mildred retired to Ravensworth and then with daughter Mary to Kinloch. All the while Robert Lee advised moving sooner and farther than Mary Lee and her daughters did move. Mary Lee then became anxious about Arlington and “her people” she had left there. She discovered that Federal troops had occupied the place, that she would have to obtain a pass to visit her home, and that most likely she would be denied that pass. In a rage Mary Lee wrote a scathing letter to the officer in charge: “It never occurred to me … that I could be forced to sue for permission to enter my own home….” She railed about the “outrage” of “military occupation” and Federal troops “committing such enormities there upon every defenseless person they meet,” and described herself as “homeless,” unable to gain access to funds deposited in Alexandria banks and thus deprived of “means for my support.” She asked for dispensations for a few of the elderly slaves at Arlington and permission for some of her slaves to bring themselves and some of her belongings to her, and she concluded with a prayer “that God may ever spare you & yours the agony and inconvenience I am now enduring.”
Union General Irvin McDowell responded with tact and conciliation the same day. Mary Lee could indeed return to her home if she so chose; her wishes regarding her slaves he had already fulfilled; and would she please accept his sympathy. McDowell, however, might have spared his energy and ink. Mary Custis Lee had learned about civil war. The home at issue on the home front was her home; Yankees had defiled sacred soil; and so her wrath was mighty and destined only to grow.13
Robert Lee was powerless to mollify his wife. “Our private distresses,” he wrote, “we must bear with resignation like Christians & not aggravate them by repining….” But even as he wrote, he surely suspected that Mary Lee would repine. In contrast to Robert Lee’s stoic resolve to accept whatever was and make the best he could of it, Mary Lee bore her ample afflictions with less than good grace and raised repining to the level of art.14
In this instance Robert Lee had little time to reflect upon Arlington occupied and his wife uprooted. His circumstance in the spring of 1861 he pretty well summarized in a telegram to Jefferson Davis on May 7, clearly in response to a summons from the President to come to Montgomery to discuss defending Virginia and defining his role in the Confederate military:
GENERAL JOHNSTON SICK. I CANNOT BE SPARED. SENATOR [R. M. T.] HUNTER, ON THE WAY TO MONTGOMERY, IS FULLY INFORMED OF PLANS AND WATER DEFENCES AT NORFOLK. SUFFICIENT LAND DEFENCES IN PROGRESS. TROOPS SUFFICIENT, UNINSTRUCTED: OFFICERS NEW. MY COMMISSION IN VIRGINIA SATISFACTORY TO ME.
Lee not only had little time to ponder his personal problems or make public appearances; he had no time to promote himself with the President. So he remained in Richmond and continued the labors of mobilization.15
Walter Taylor much later recalled this period in Lee’s service: “His correspondence, necessarily heavy, was constantly a source of worry and annoyance to him. He did not enjoy writing; indeed he wrote with labor, and nothing seemed to tax his amiability so much as the necessity for writing a lengthy official communication; but he was not satisfied unless at the close of his office hours every matter requiring prompt attention had been disposed of.”16
Official correspondence was not Lee’s only vexation in Richmond. He had also to deal with an ample amount of pettiness regarding appointments and plans. On May 14, for example, the man who claimed credit for firing the first shot in this war came to Lee’s office on an urgent errand. Edmund Ruffin, planter-agronomist turned radical, came up to Richmond from his plantation Beechwood on the James River to protest the person and performance of Harrison H. Cocke, an aged naval officer who was constructing a river fort (Fort Powhatan) on the James below Richmond (“incompetent, worthless for command,” “the most abject of submissionists & sycophants to northern power”). Ruffin failed to secure an audience with Governor Letcher, and then with the Governor’s Advisory Council, so he came to see Lee. “After some conversation,” Ruffin recorded in his diary, Lee asked him to submit his complaint in writing, which Ruffin did immediately. Lee promised to investigate; Ruffin did note later that Cocke had lost his command.17
Two days after his interview with the man who commanded all Southern troops in Virginia, Ruffin dispatched a telegram to Jefferson Davis: “FOR SALVATION OF OUR CAUSE COME IMMEDIATELY AND ASSUME MILITARY COMMAND.” Nor was Ruffin the only person who asked the President to act out his constitutional role as commander in chief. “No one admires Gel. Lee more than I do,” wrote Albert Taylor Bledsoe, an old friend of Davis then on the faculty of the University of Virginia, “but I fear he is too despondent. His remarks are calculated to dispirit our people…. “Noble and glorious as he is,” Bledsoe continued, “I fear he does not know how good and how righteous our cause is and consequently lacks one quality the times demand.” Thus, Bledsoe told Davis, “All eyes and all hearts, turn to you.”18
When Lee made rare remarks about the prospects of the Confederacy in the impending war, he told people what they did not want to hear. His aide Walter Taylor claimed that Lee “alone, of all those then known to me … expressed his most serious apprehensions of a prolonged and bloody war….” Lee, Taylor recalled, “looked upon the vaporific declamations of those on each side who proposed to wipe their adversaries from the face of the earth in ninety days as bombastic and foolish.”19
But Lee seemed much less than a charismatic leader at this time. D. G. Duncan, who appears to have been in Richmond to send reliable information to the President and Secretary of War Leroy Pope Walker (in effect to spy), had very few encouraging words to say about Lee. “Have conversed with General Robert E. Lee,” Duncan informed Walker very soon after Lee assumed command. “He wishes to repress enthusiasm of our people.” Several days later Duncan reported that “Chaos and confusion reign here … I learn General Lee is troubled about rank….” And two days after that, Duncan wrote to Walker about “treachery.” “Great dissatisfaction prevails here…. I doubt if there are 5,000 Virginians armed and equipped.”20
President Davis did of course come to Richmond. He came with his entire government and made Richmond his capital. Davis came to the probable seat of war to demonstrate his government’s commitment to Virginia. The Confederate Congress voted to move the capital from Montgomery on May 20; Davis signed the resolution on May 21 and arrived in Richmond with the vanguard of his administration early on the morning of May 29.21
Lee was at Manassas Junction inspecting troops when Davis reached Richmond. On his way by rail back to the city Lee’s train paused at Orange Court House, and a crowd formed to see and hear him. At first Lee did not respond to calls for him. Finally he stepped out of the car and according to the Richmond Whig, “said he had much more important matters on his mind than speech-making; advised all who were in service to be drilling, and those who, for good reasons, were not, to attend to their private affairs and avoid the excitement and rumors of crowds….” However valid were these views, Lee once more closed himself and offered his constituents no more than somber platitudes. He knew what the crowd at Orange did not—that war is somber business—and he would not pretend otherwise.22
When Lee returned to Richmond during the evening of May 29, he found the city agog over the arrival of Varina and Jefferson Davis. Lee realized that his command in Virginia (of all Confederate forces within the state) was temporary. In accord with Davis’s insistence, all state troops were to become members of the national army, and the Confederate government would appoint and assign principal officers within that army. Indeed, in little more than a week (June 8, 1861) Governor Letcher issued a proclamation transferring Virginia’s army and navy to the Confederate States. Then Lee became a general with neither an army nor an assignment. “I do not know what my position will be,” he wrote Mary Lee on the day after he relinquished his command; and he claimed that he preferred becoming a civilian.23
For the time being he remained in Richmond at the Spotswood House with his new neighbors the Davises, and he did whatever needed doing. Never did Lee receive orders for what he did during the next several weeks. He simply made himself more and more useful to President Davis. The two men were almost the same age. Lee was slightly older, but Davis had been a year ahead at West Point. Both had served with distinction in the Mexican War, albeit in different theaters. Davis had recommended Lee to leaders of a Cuban revolutionary junta as a possible military leader, then probably advised Lee against the adventure. Davis had been Secretary of War while Lee had been Superintendent of West Point (1852—55), and so they had corresponded frequently and worked closely together.24
Now Davis began to listen to Lee’s advice about defending Virginia. At first it was only natural for Davis to consult the architect of Confederate defensive positions in the state. So Lee’s information and opinion had been useful in assigning P. G. T. Beauregard to Manassas in May. But once Lee had no specific duties, Davis seemed to use him as a sort of household staff officer. Accordingly, when Beauregard hatched a grandiose scheme involving thousands of nonexistent troops, logistical sophistication far beyond Confederate capacity, and the complete cooperation of enemy armies, Lee was present to introduce some notion of reality and to dissuade serious consideration of Beauregard’s fantasy. Davis attended whatever seemed to be the most significant theater himself; the President considered his military experience and instincts the most important contributions he could offer his new nation.25
When the first major battle of this young war occurred at Manassas/Bull Run on July 21, Lee remained in Richmond and waited for news from the front. That news, of course, was wonderful indeed for the Confederacy. Near the end of a long day of fighting, a fresh brigade of Southern troops appeared on the Federal flank and provoked a withdrawal of Union units which soon became a chaotic rout. “Night has closed upon a hard fought field—Our forces have won a glorious victory,” began Davis’s telegram, which was the way Lee and others in Richmond learned the news.26
Many Southerners believed that the fighting on July 21 had won the war and established the independence of the Confederacy. Lee knew better. He continued to speak of the war as a long, destructive struggle. He realized better than most people the liabilities which the Confederacy brought to the conflict. And he was aware of the full measure of failure that afflicted Southern military fortunes in places other than Manassas/Bull Run.27
One such theater where Confederate efforts had foundered was western (later West) Virginia. There in mid-July Federal General George B. McClellan had led a successful assault upon the Southern defensive line, and sent Confederate forces reeling before him. In the fighting Lee’s friend and recent chief of staff Robert S. Garnett had lost his life at a place called Corrick’s (sometimes spelled Carrick’s) Ford in the Cheat River Valley on July 13. The situation was stable in late July primarily because the Federals had not taken advantage of their victories and pressed the campaign.
In effect the Confederates had several “armies” in western Virginia, separated by rugged terrain and the incredible egos of some of the men who commanded there. Lee’s next task, assigned to him verbally by President Davis, was to go to the scene and impose some military sense upon the situation. Did Lee possess the authority of command? Did Lee go only to consult and coordinate? No one seemed to know—least of all Lee himself.28
Once more Lee’s situation was enigmatic, much as it had been ever since he arrived in Richmond to accept command of the armed forces of Virginia. He had conducted the mobilization in Virginia with efficiency and energy; fully one fourth of the Southern troops involved in the victory of Manassas/Bull Run were Virginia troops organized, armed, equipped, and instructed by order of Robert Lee. But even as he directed the mobilization, Lee knew that he was working himself out of a place in this war. And after relinquishing his fledgling force to the Confederacy, Lee’s limbo compounded while he worked as an unassigned general for the President. Now Lee had a defined mission; but his role and authority continued in question.29
Walter Taylor remembered of this period with Lee in Richmond: “After a day’s work at his office he would enjoy above all things a ride on horseback. Accompanied by one or two of his military household, he would visit some point of interest around Richmond, making the ride one of duty as well as pleasure.”30
On one such occasion Lee encountered Mary Chesnut, wife of South Carolina Congressman and presidential aide James Chesnut. Mary Chesnut was riding in a carriage with Martha Stanard, a prominent and clever Richmond widow.
A man riding a beautiful horse joined us. He wore a hat with somehow a military look to it. He sat his horse gracefully, and he was so distinguished at all points that I very much regretted not catching the name as Mrs. Stanard gave it to us. He, however, heard ours and bowed as gracefully as he rode, and the few remarks he made to each of us showed he knew all about us.
Martha Stanard, “in ecstasies of pleasurable excitement,” chatted with the horseman as though he were a “big fish.” In the course of her banter, she suggested that he was ambitious.
He remonstrated—said his tastes were of the simplest. He only wanted a Virginia farm—no end of cream and fresh butter—and fried chicken. Not one fried chicken or two—but unlimited fried chicken.
To all this light chat did we seriously incline because the man and horse and every- thing about him was so fine looking. Perfection—no fault to be found if you hunted for one. As he left us, I said, “Who is it?” eagerly.
“You do not know! Why, it is Robert E. Lee, son of Light Horse Harry Lee, the first man in Virginia”—raising her voice as she enumerated his glories.
“All the same,” Mary Chesnut concluded thoughtfully, “I like Smith Lee better, and I like his looks, too. I know Smith Lee well. Can anybody say they know his brother? I doubt it. He looks so cold and quiet and grand.”31
At the same time Lee was trying to know and understand his role as a Confederate, many Confederates were trying to know and understand Lee. They were no more successful than he.