NEWLYWEDS Mary and Robert Lee moved in August 1831 from the splendor of Arlington House into two rooms at Fort Monroe. These rooms formed a wing of the quarters occupied by Lieutenant Lee’s immediate superior, Captain Andrew Talcott. The Lees were not houseguests, of course; but they did live for a while communally with the Talcott household.1
In time Talcott became very close to Lee. This was fortunate, because besides Talcott, the captain’s household included his sister and brother-in-law, Abigail and Horace Hale, and their two daughters, Rebecca and Catherine (Kate). Actually Talcott and Horace Hale were not often at home, so the quarters were not as crowded as they might seem.2
The Lees contributed one of Mary’s slaves, Cassy, to the living arrangement. Talcott, at least, and perhaps Hale too, had slaves either owned or rented to perform household chores. Slaves also did the cooking in a kitchen probably separate from the living quarters and carried meals on covered trays to the house.3
Very soon after Mary and Robert arrived at Fort Monroe, slaveholders in Virginia and throughout the South suffered a shock to their presumptions of domestic tranquility. In Southampton County, across Hampton Roads about 60 miles as the crow flies from Fort Monroe, Nat Turner and a band of black followers carried out the largest sustained slave revolt in American history. The rising began in the very early morning hours of August 22, 1831, and concluded the following day. During this period Turner and his men killed more than fifty-five white people and spread terror far beyond the borders of Southampton County. Because Nat Turner remained at large in hiding until October 30, fear persisted locally as alarm spread over the entire slaveholding South.
Federal troops from Fort Monroe joined Virginia Militia companies from far and wide to suppress the revolt. However, local militia managed to quell the rising long before the masses of soldiers and armed men arrived. Reverberations grew, though, as stories of the revolt spread, and trials and executions of the participants continued nearly until Christmas.4
Lee assured the Custises in a letter written August 31 that the revolt was very much over. He decried overreaction on the part of some of the militia and hysteria within the white community generally. But he did repeat tales which spread the conspiracy as far as Norfolk and so betrayed the nervous mood in southeastern Virginia.5
In the aftermath of events in Southampton County, five more companies joined the “Artillery School of Practice” at Fort Monroe. This influx increased the garrison strength to 680 men, a very mixed blessing for the Engineer Corps officers stationed there. Engineer officers were accustomed to lonely construction sites with few if any other officers on hand as companions. The concentration of artillerymen much enhanced social life at Fort Monroe, and one of the new arrivals was Joe Johnston, who had been one of Lee’s closest friends at West Point.6
However, with the Artillery School and an enlarged garrison came the potential for friction between branches of the Army. In November, for example, Colonel Abram Eustis who commanded Fort Monroe responded to the continuing concerns over slave uprisings by banning all black people from the fort. “No negroes or persons of color of either sex, other than the servants of officers, and those employed in the Hospital and Quarter Masters Dept. are to be harboured or tolerated within the walls of the Fort.” Eustis’s order ignored the needs of the Engineers, whose work crews were black. Although most of the work that remained at Fort Monroe involved the moat and outworks, which were outside of the fort, the men needed access to the fort to secure water for themselves and the horses, and for the mortar used in construction. Too, Eustis had not considered the slaves belonging to the Engineer officers (Talcott and Lee) or to the clerks and draughtsman who were living within the fort. Or maybe he had considered these slaves and simply wanted to harass the Engineers and civilians who cluttered his post. At any rate, because Talcott was away, Lee protested the order to Eustis and to General Gratiot in Washington. Somehow, most likely by instructions to Eustis from his superiors, the situation got resolved and the construction continued at the fort. Tension between the artillery and Engineers persisted, however.7
His tour of duty at Fort Monroe also offered Lee an initiation into garrison life within a peacetime army. He became disillusioned by the behavior of many of his fellow officers. “I have seen minds formed for use and ornament,” he wrote Jack Mackay, “degenerate into sluggishness and inactivity, requiring the stimulus of brandy and cards to rouse them to action.” When a young lieutenant fresh from West Point was arrested for being too drunk to function on parade, Lee commented, “He is a fine looking young man. Graduated very well in 1832 and appears to be intelligent. But his propensity, it is impossible for me to understand.”8
The engineering tasks at Fort Monroe were not especially challenging but the job required constant attention. Lee had to be alert to ensure that nothing went awry. Talcott was often absent.
During the three construction “seasons” of 1832, 1833, and 1834, workers completed most of the crude masonry work on the ditch (moat) and on the outworks beyond. Lee designed some buildings, wharves, and fortifications, prepared reports, kept the accounts, and contracted for labor and materials. He confronted an outbreak of cholera which interrupted work during the late summer and fall of 1832, and he endured the storms which periodically swept into Hampton Roads from the Atlantic to threaten work in progress.9
Also Lee’s responsibility, indeed his alone, was the artificial island offshore in Hampton Roads. Eventually the rocks and sand there were supposed to support Fort Calhoun. But an attempt at building atop the stone already in place had proven premature. So Lee’s task was to organize the dumping of more rock and sand until the “island” stopped sinking and the site would support a fort. As Engineer Corps funds permitted, Lee contracted with the captains of vessels to transport and offload stone and sand. In time the site became Fort Wool (instead of Calhoun); in Lee’s time it was known simply “Rip Raps,” because that was what it was—stone randomly placed in water as a foundation. The United States was still spending money on Fort Wool in 1861.10
Lee served at Fort Monroe/Rip Raps from August 1831 until November 1834. The assignment was a professional success of sorts; he proved that he could manage a quasi-independent project, and his superiors in the Engineer Corps appreciated his efficiency and dependability. Lee made professional and personal friends during his stay at Fort Monroe, and somehow he impressed people that he was destined for tasks more challenging than dumping stone and sand on top of previously dumped stone and sand in Hampton Roads. On May 17, 1832, the Army removed the “brevet” (temporary) from Lee’s rank; his initiation period was over. He became a bona fide second lieutenant as of July 1, 1829.11
Possibly because of the routine nature of the work, certainly because of strained relations with Eustis and the politics of the military at peace, Lee grew frustrated and restless at Fort Monroe. In June 1834, he wrote to Talcott, “As much as I like the location of Old Point & as fond as I am of the company of some of the officers and some persons in the neighborhood & notwithstanding the great partiality I have for my comda off (I mean no flattery) & my belief I shall not meet with such another—yet there are so many of the désagremens [vexations] connected with the duty that I should like to get another post.” Later that summer, Lee wrote Carter in serious jest, “I suppose I must continue to work out my youth for little profit and less credit & when old be laid on the shelf.”12
Far more important than Lee’s professional life at Fort Monroe was his personal life. He had pursued the duties of an engineer before; before Fort Monroe he had never been married.
Mary Custis Lee seems to have adjusted rather well to reduced circumstances as the wife of a very junior officer. Yet a letter she wrote to her mother after about three or four weeks at Fort Monroe is quite revealing. She began with the assumption that her mother would “feel most anxious to know how my soul prospers” and launched a discussion of her religious life. She felt, she wrote, “an anxious desire to do something to show forth my gratitude to that all merciful Saviour who has done all for me but it is hard to find out what I can do.” Having proclaimed herself anxious “to do something,” Mary Lee then began a recitation of many things she had not done:
The only actively pious family here have not visited me … & the rest of the ladies seem not to be exerting themselves to improve the condition of the people here….
There is a Sunday School … but I have not seen it nor do I know how it is conducted….
I am much obliged to you for the books though I must confess I have not read the others yet….
Mrs. Hale & I commenced the life of Luther, but like you she is so much interrupted between children & servants that we have not progressed far….
There is a Mrs. Haliburton at the tavern who says she is a relation of mine but I have not seen her yet….
I do not know how it is, but we do not seem to find a great deal of time for reading….
Of course the Lees were still very much newlywed and doubtless spent intimate time together. But, as Mary wrote to her mother, “Robert has but little [time] for going about as his duties require his presence daily & keep him pretty well employed but this this you know is no misfortune.” By the time she wrote, she had been at Fort Monroe at least three weeks, likely more. Robert Lee had assured Talcott that he could arrange the household items he had shipped “in five minutes after my arrival.” Mary Lee assured her mother, “We are very well fixed up & have got about as much in our little room as it will hold.” So the question remains about Mary Lee: how did she spend her time? She seems, in this letter at least, devoted to doing very little.13
Even when she lived in only two rooms, Mary was probably a poor housekeeper. Later, after the Lees had secured more spacious quarters at Fort Monroe, Robert Lee wrote of himself, “I don’t know that I shall ever overcome my propensity for order & method but I will try.” Despite his efforts, though, Robert Lee persisted in his insistence upon “order & method.”14 His best statement about the issue occurs in a letter he wrote from St. Louis a few years later.
We have not yet got fixed, and are but poorly accommodated at what is called the best Hotel in the City. The House is very crowded, and a dark dirty room is the only one we could procure. The dinner was very good indeed, well cooked and well served, but the table is too large and full, and contains too many guests both for the viands and servants. This part could be borne with, but the room is intolerable, and so soon as I close this letter I shall sally out in quest of another. I may be perhaps over scrupulous in this respect, but I can readily bear the clean dirt of the earth, and drink without a strain the mud of the Missouri, and if necessary could live in it and lie in it, though this domestic filth is revolting to my taste.15
From Fort Monroe, Robert Lee wrote about impending houseguests, “Tell the ladies that they are aware that Mrs. L. is somewhat addicted to laziness & forgetfulness in her housekeeping. But they may be certain she does her best. Or in her mother’s words, ‘The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.’ ”16
Lee periodically chided his wife about other issues as well. During the spring of 1832 Horace Hale died. At the time Mary Lee was away from Fort Monroe on a protracted visit to Arlington. “I am sorry,” Robert Lee wrote, “it has so happened that you have not been with Mrs. Hale, when in the one case she needed your assistance & in the other your sympathy. I am sure you would have been delighted both to have nursed and relieved one so kind and good as she is….” In the fall of 1833 Mary Lee was again at Arlington and in need of clothes. Robert Lee responded, “If you have need of any funds let me know it & get such frocks as will suit yourself, since my taste is so difficult, I will conform to yours.” Lee was not a demanding husband; however mild these words may seem, from Robert Lee they were fairly stern rebukes.17
In that early letter to her mother, Mary interrupted a train of her thought to interject, “What … would I give for one stroll on the hills at Arlington this bright day.” She did miss Arlington and thought of it as home no matter where she lived. And during her first few years of marriage, Mary Lee spent a lot of time at her childhood home.18
The Lees lived together at Fort Monroe from early August 1831 until about Christmas. They paid a visit to Shirley and then went to Arlington for the holidays. In January 1832, Robert Lee had to return to duty at Fort Monroe. Mary Lee, however, lingered at Arlington; she lingered for at least five more months and only returned to Fort Monroe some time after June 6, 1832. And when she returned, she brought her mother with her.
Mary Lee was pregnant that summer of 1832, and on September 16, 1832, gave birth to her first child, a boy, George Washington Custis Lee. There is no reason to believe that Mary Lee had too much difficulty with her pregnancy, or with childbirth. Both new parents seem to have been delighted with their healthy child.
But mother and son left Fort Monroe a month earlier than Robert Lee to go to Arlington for the Christmas season. During the first eighteen months they were married, the Lees spent at least a third of the time living apart from each other. And for various reasons this pattern persisted throughout their married life.19
While Mary Lee remained at Arlington during the first half of 1832, circumstances changed considerably at “The Tuileries” (Quarters No. 17) where the Lees and the Talcotts’ extended family lived. Horace Hale, Talcott’s brother-in-law, died; Talcott’s sister Abigail and her two daughters moved out. Then on April 11 Talcott married Harriet Randolph Hackley of Norfolk and subsequently moved his bride into his quarters at Fort Monroe. Of course the Lee family expected to expand by one that fall, so in the summer of 1832 Mary and Robert Lee took over the top floor in the Engineer Corps half of The Tuileries, and the Talcotts lived on the floor beneath them.20
Lee explained his thoughts about their living arrangements to “Molly,” his pet nickname for Mary. “You seem to think Molly you would prefer living as we are, but are you right in this. We ought not to give others the trouble of providing for us always, and besides as I can see how we might inconvenience & be a restraint upon them, I can also see how we can be more pleasantly situated by ourselves.” He amplified the latter point, adding, “We may escape company that might not be agreeable (and I have had some examples this spring) & always have our friends when we choose….”21
For the Lees, the move to more spacious space and independent living entailed the employment of more slaves. Robert Lee still owned at least four women, part of his mother’s bequest to him, but did not think well enough of three of the women to have them serve in his household. “Letitia,” he wrote Mary, “will have to be your Femme de Chambre & in the meantime you may do with all of them as you please if opportunity offers. But do not trouble yourself about them, as they are not worth it.” Lee estimated, “Two good servants are as much as we should require….” However, he seemed resigned to keeping more slaves, because “What they want in quality we must make up in quantity.” If Mary were not able to settle upon suitable servants from among those people owned within the family, Robert Lee suggested that she hire someone “for 6 or 8 dollars a month.”22
Then and later in his life, Lee may not have felt comfortable as a slaveholder. Some years later he wrote to his wife that “Slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country.” But he also wrote about African Americans: “The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence.” He himself continued to own black people at least as late as 1846.23
When Mary Lee and her mother arrived at Fort Monroe in June 1832, they brought with them more furnishings for the Lees’ expanded quarters and at least two slaves, owned or hired, to serve the household. The newlywed Talcotts moved into their quarters in The Tuileries about the same time, and Robert Lee began an extended mock love affair with Harriet Talcott.24
She was beautiful and apparently possessed a lively wit. Lee called her “my beautiful Talcott” and “Talcott, My Beauty,” and often included messages to her in his letters to Andrew Talcott. On the occasion of the birth of the Talcotts’ first child, a daughter, Lee proposed marriage on behalf of his son Custis and even claimed paternity of the new Talcott for himself: “The all accomplished & elegant Master Custis Lee begs to place in her hands, his happiness & life, being assured that as for her he was born, so for her will he live. His only misery can be her frown, his only delight, her smile. He hopes that her assent will not be withheld from his most ardent wishes, & that in their blissful union Fortune may be indemnified for her miscarriage of the Affaire du Coeur of the Father & Mother.”25
Mary and Robert Lee were much unlike in lots of ways, and living together surely accentuated their differences. But Robert Lee loved his wife and bore (in usually good humor) what seemed to him her eccentricities. His father’s negative example, if nothing else, must have fueled Lee’s resolve to be a dutiful spouse. To his old friend Jack Mackay, Lee wrote in 1834, “I would not be unmarried for all you could offer me.”26
But Mary and the satisfaction of self-control could not fulfill Robert Lee’s zest for life. So he flirted with many women and formed special friendships with some of them. He was scrupulous about informing his wife of his flirtations and friendships. And he seems to have been very careful to keep his relationships with women only verbal, never physical. No evidence exists that Lee acted out any of his many fantasies. But fantasies he certainly had.
In April 1832, while he waited impatiently for Mary Lee’s return to Fort Monroe, Robert Lee wrote his bride, “Let me tell you Mrs. Lee, no later than today, did I escort Miss G. to see Miss Kate! Think of that Mrs. Lee! … How I did strut-along…. Surely it was a sight for the Old Pointers to see. And I only wish you could have been of the number. How you would have triumphed in my happiness & Molly I would have been happy.”27
To Mackay he wrote in the summer of 1834, “As for the Daughters of Eve in this country, they are formed in the very poetry of nature, and would make your lips water and fingers tingle. They are beginning to assemble to put their beautiful limbs in this salt water….” And a few years later he confessed to Mackay to a preference “in favor of the pretty girls if there are any here, and I know there are, for I have met them in no place, in no garb, in no situation that I did not feel my heart open to them, like the flower to the sun.” To Talcott he described some of the festivities following the wedding of his brother Smith: “My spirits were so buoyant last night when relieved from the eyes of my dame that my Sister Nanie [Smith’s bride Nannie], was trying to pass me off as her spouse, but I was not going to have my sport spoiled in that way, undeceived the young ladies & they concluded I was single, & I have not had such soft looks & tender pressures of the [ha]nd for many years.” Lee also wrote Talcott in 1833, “Sally is as blythe as a lark& admitted me (an innocent man) into her bed-chamber a few days after the frolick.”28
Very early in his married life, Lee revealed the intimacy he still shared with Eliza Mackay, sister of his friend Jack and sometime companion in Savannah during his tour of duty on Cockspur Island. At Arlington in January 1832, the Lees received a late invitation to Eliza Mackay’s wedding. Robert Lee responded on the day of the wedding: “But Miss E. how do you feel about this time? Say 12 o’clock of the day, as you see the shadows commence to fall towards the East and know that at last the sun will set.” Interrupted then, Lee returned to his letter four days later; by this time Eliza Mackay was married. Lee inquired,” … And how did you disport yourself My Child? Did you go off well like a torpedo cracker on Christmas morning….” The metaphor is indeed graphic, and it requires no genius to relate the phrase to Eliza’s wedding night.
This letter speaks to a rich relationship Robert Lee shared with Eliza Mackay. But because the invitation included her, Mary Lee appended her stiff, correct congratulations to Eliza, whom she had never met, and she surely read her husband’s portion of the letter. Unless Mary Lee was incredibly naive, she surely understood the sexual reference in the “torpedo cracker” metaphor. So one letter may reveal the degree of intimate candor Robert Lee shared with not one but two women.29
At Fort Monroe, Mary and Robert Lee learned they could live together in general harmony. They also discovered that marriage had not quelled Robert Lee’s fondness for the company and companionship of women. So they began a pattern of compensating and accommodating that not only endured but also grew throughout their married life. Robert Lee retained his self-control and remained faithful to Mary. However, he revealed some of his feelings about her in a letter he wrote from Fort Monroe to Talcott in July 1833. “Mrs. Custis & Mary,” he said, “have gone up to Shirley which is as much to say that I am as happy as a clam in high water.”30
All the while Lee was establishing his relationship with his wife, he was also attempting to complete work on Fort Monroe and to prepare the foundation for a fort at Rip Raps. Eustis and his garrison were no help. From time to time the intra-army enmity flared into open warfare. The great Fort Monroe sand skirmish of 1833 is a good example of the possibilities for pettiness within an army at peace.
At issue was sand from the beach near the wharf. Engineer workers used the sand for mixing mortar; Quartermaster crews used it for the surface of a road. Each of the work crews hauled sand in one-horse carts, and the drivers liked to position their carts in one way at one spot to load the sand.
On June 27, 1833, the Quartermaster drivers reported to their supervisor Captain Timothy Green that Ebenezer Shaw the overseer in the employ of the Engineers had forbidden them to load sand in the way to which they had become accustomed. Green told the men to return to the usual place and ignore Shaw. Shaw chased away the teamsters, who returned to Green. Then Green accompanied his men to the site and demanded access to the sand from Shaw.
Shaw refused and stood in the middle of the road blocking the way of the Quartermaster carts. Green ordered his drivers to run over Shaw if he did not move. Shaw then picked up a rock and said or implied that he intended to defend himself.
Cursing ensued. Finally Green and his men left the scene. But the captain soon thereafter filed formal charges against Shaw and demanded a trial by court-martial. Eustis as post commander prepared to assent to Green’s demand for a court-martial and so informed Lee as Shaw’s superior.
Lee took the position that as a civilian employed by the Engineer Department, Shaw was outside the bounds of military justice, and he sent copies of all the relevant correspondence to Chief of the Engineer Department General Charles Gratiot in Washington. Gratiot sustained Lee’s position and referred the squabble to his superior with a recommendation that he order Eustis to cease any court-martial proceedings and “prevent in future any interference with the operations of the Engineer Department.”31
So a major general in Washington who commanded the entire United States Army eventually brought peace in the great Fort Monroe sand skirmish of 1833. Lee informed Talcott, “If I had time I would make you laugh about this Green & Shaw affair, but must reserve that till you return….”32
Although the Engineers won some skirmishes with the Artillery at Fort Monroe, the Artillery eventually won the war. Lee sensed some bureaucratic perfidy afoot on July 18, 1834, when Alexander Macomb, the major general commanding the Army, and John Forsyth, acting Secretary of War, arrived at Fort Monroe to inspect the state of construction. Talcott and Lee had already had their annual inspection, so clearly this visit boded ill. Then on July 24, Army Inspector General Colonel John E. Wool appeared and inspected some more.
A week after Wool’s inspection the War Department ordered some alterations in assignments at Fort Monroe. The Artillery would henceforth complete the work on the fort. Only one Engineer officer would remain in the area; he would live at Rip Raps and continue the work there.”
Talcott and Lee were livid. Lee wrote Carter, “By this proceeding those in authority have thought proper to cast an insult upon the Engr. Dept & pointed censure upon the officers of Engrs charged with the work.” Talcott demanded a court of inquiry to exonerate him of any implied misconduct. Lee informed Carter that if the Army failed to grant “reparation,” then “I shall refuse to enter upon any other duty.”34
In time Lee’s anger cooled somewhat. The Army refused to grant Talcott’s demand for a court of inquiry, but did offer him credit and compliments for his work on the fort. Talcott resigned from the Army in June 1836 to apply his skills in the private sector.35
Lee was the Engineer officer initially left in charge of the work at Rip Raps, and he dutifully took up his exile upon the barren, artificial island. From Rip Raps he responded in kind to what he still considered pettiness. In accord with the order of the War Department, he transferred all the property associated with Fort Monroe to the post quartermaster by August 31, 1834. Then he informed the Engineer Department that he could no longer employ laborers for any purpose. Denied the facilities of Fort Monroe, Lee reported, “We are now destitute of the means of supplying the Laborers with Bread, or the Sick with a Hospital & are without the necessary Houses & Storerooms for the Accommodation of Persons employed & the protection of Boats & other property.” If the Army chose to expell the Engineers from Fort Monroe, the Army would have to reap the consequences of the choice. And Lee was more than willing to point out some of those consequences.36
Lieutenant Lee did not long languish at Rip Raps; General Gratiot shuffled some assignments and offered Lee a place in Washington as his assistant. Although Lee had reservations about “the duties of the office,” he agreed to the transfer and assumed his new duties in November 1834.37
So Robert Lee returned to Arlington; Mary Lee and Custis had been there since August. In one sense Lee was returning “home” to northern Virginia. But the house to which he returned was not his. Mary Lee was at home. Robert Lee was still very much a houseguest.