CAPTAIN ROBERT E. LEE went off to war aboard a steamboat in the company of sixty-six mules and one pretty young white woman. He and the white woman occupied “Ladies Private Apartments” (beyond the notice, “Gentlemen are not admitted”) where a “sable chambermaid” attended them.
Bizarre symbols and circumstances these were for a would-be warrior. Lee could hardly have conjured less auspicious portents for his journey to combat. He did explain them to his family.
His “fair companion,” the young white woman, was traveling with her child in search of her spouse, who was a soldier. She was determined to follow him to the war. The black woman had become her “confidant[e] as well as guardian.”
Lee children often hopped into bed with their parents. So Robert wrote to his wife, “I was dreaming of you all last night & thought daughter [Mary] was in the bed with me & I was wondering how she should be so small when lo & behold when I awoke in the morg I found it was little Agnes.”
Also aboard the steamboat were some “laggard volunteers” in transit to the Army, more than $60,000 entrusted to Lee’s care as courier, and Lee’s new mare Creole hurriedly purchased in New Orleans. Lee’s Irish servant Jim Connally was ill and already sorry he had agreed to come along. This queer amalgam of people, animals, and property were all heading for San Antonio to join the army commanded by Brigadier General John E. Wool.1
Like most of the men and supplies gathered at San Antonio, Lee and his various companions traveled by ship from New Orleans to Port Lavaca, Texas, and then overland to San Antonio. From there Wool was supposed to lead an expedition to Chihuahua, a major commercial city in western Mexico about 200 miles due south of El Paso. For the sake of roads, water, and provisions, however, Wool would have to take a circuitous route south-southwest from San Antonio to Parras, considerably south of Chihuahua, and then march northwest for many miles in order to reach his objective.2
What Wool really wanted to do was join forces with Zachary Taylor in northeastern Mexico and fight the principal Mexican army commanded by General Santa Anna. The Chihuahua campaign was pretty clearly of subordinate importance in the emerging strategic plan for the war. While Taylor operated against Santa Anna in northern Mexico, another army commanded by Stephen W. Kearny marched to Santa Fe in what became New Mexico and then to California.
Still in the background at this point (September 1846) was the commanding general of the United States Army, Winfield Scott, and his insistence upon a campaign via Vera Cruz against Mexico City. Democratic President James Polk restrained Scott because he hoped for victory without the effort and expense of an expedition to Mexico City and because Scott was a prominent Whig and a known aspirant for the presidency. Unfortunately for Polk, Taylor, too, was a Whig whose political ambition developed in rough parallel with his reputation as a military hero. For the moment, though, the Polk administration believed that the thrusts of Kearny and Taylor would suffice to secure victory and territorial conquest required to fulfill the nation’s Manifest Destiny.3
To Lee, as he struggled to reach San Antonio before Wool and his army set out south, the strategic machinations in Washington seemed to portend a minor role as a staff officer in an ancillary campaign. Still he seemed pleased at the prospect of adventure and intrigued by new sights and experiences.
A Daguerreotype made before he left for the war shows Lee in the fullness of midlife manhood. Presumably taken when he was thirty-nine, the picture reveals Lee’s strength and energy. His hair is still long, covering the top of his ear in waves, but receding somewhat from his high forehead. The sideburns are gone now, and Lee has a neat mustache. The Daguerreotype displays a man of fashion who, as his later feats would demonstrate, was also a man fit for the rigors of battle.4
After one night at Port Lavaca, Lee, Jim, Creole, and two mules began the long slog through “Hog Wallow” prairie to San Antonio. They arrived shortly before Wool began his march on September 29, 1846.
Lee had the good fortune to miss much of the friction between Wool, the strict regular disciplinarian, and his army, composed for the most part of volunteers. Tension persisted, however, and whenever the men stopped moving for any length of time, trouble ensued. Indeed, throughout the war and within each American army, volunteers and regulars tended to resent each other only slightly less than they did the enemy. Because he was a staff officer and not in direct command of troops (line officer), Lee remained more or less insulated from these quarrels.5
At San Antonio, Lee’s comrade Engineer Captain William D. Frazer had constructed pontoons from which to build bridges over Mexican rivers. When Lee arrived, he and Frazer attempted with limited success to acquire tools (picks, shovels, and such) with which to improve roads and build bridges.6
Lee and the Engineer Company, as it came to be called, did perform some construction during Wool’s advance into Mexico and afterward. But the most important assignments for Lee and his fellow Engineer officers were not construction projects. For the first time in American history, United States armies marched on foreign soil and fought battles in an alien land. Maps were few and often unreliable, and Mexican guides for obvious reasons were even fewer and even less reliable. What Wool and Lee’s subsequent commanders required of the Engineers was reconnaissance, accurate information about roads, rivers, terrain, and the enemy. Consequently Engineer officers very quickly made themselves indispensable and found themselves not only recommending routes and evaluating enemy positions but also offering informed advice about strategy and tactics.7
Wool’s army on the march consisted of 1,400 men and 188 wagons; because he could transport no provisions for them, Wool left behind two regiments of Illinois Volunteers with instructions to follow the main force later. The army covered the 164 miles between San Antonio and the Rio Grande in two weeks. At the river (near Eagle Pass) was a small body of Mexican troops, who withdrew as Frazer and Lee fashioned a “flying bridge” (i.e., a platform drawn across the river on ropes). On October 12, Wool’s army crossed into enemy country. Lee wrote home, “There has been a great whetting of knives, grinding of swords, and sharpening of bayonets ever since we reached the river.”8
After a respite and some reorganization, Wool set out south once more on October 16 and marched 105 miles to Santa Rosa, paused for a week there, and then pressed on to Monclova. The army arrived before Monclova on October 30, and soon afterward Wool received orders from Zachary Taylor to halt. On September 23, while Wool was preparing to leave San Antonio, Taylor and his army had won a major victory at Monterrey, and in the aftermath of the battle had agreed to an armistice of eight weeks. Wool was about to cross the armistice line, and the agreement was supposed to remain in effect for another four weeks.
So the army encamped outside Monclova and waited. During this halt the two Illinois regiments arrived, boosting Wool’s force above 2,000. But many people then and most historians since have considered Taylor’s armistice a mistake. Within Wool’s army enmity between volunteers and regulars flared as the volunteers chafed at more drill and training. Even Lee, sounding like a volunteer, wrote with some presumption and little patience, “I am one of those silly persons when I have any thing to do I can’t rest satisfied till it has been accomplished.”9
Lee also expressed broader vision. “If then they [the Mexicans] were so crippled by the battle of Monterey [sic], by all means advantage should have been taken of our success, & perhaps the whole Mexican Army would have fallen into our hands,” he wrote Mary Lee. “Whereas I now fear,” he continued, “time has been given them to recover at least partially from that blow and that when hostilities are resumed, they will be found stronger & we weaker from the respite. At least such will be the case with Genl Wool’s Army, for we consume our provisions faster than we can collect them….”10
Near the end of November Wool finally received orders to leave Monclova and march to Parras. Also among Wool’s instructions was permission to forget the expedition to Chihuahua. On November 23, the army began a grueling trek over deserts and mountains which ended on December 5 at Parras. Now Wool and his men were at last within the war zone after a journey from Port Lavaca, San Antonio, the Rio Grande, Santa Rosa, Monclova, to Parras of more than 700 miles. Taylor’s army was at Saltillo and Monterrey to the east. Santa Anna with a Mexican army of 25,000 men was plotting a major offensive at San Luis Potosí, 200 miles to the south. Throughout December 1846 and January 1847 rumors provoked alarms and frantic preparations among the U.S. forces in northern Mexico.11
Still Lee had yet to experience combat. He had ridden those 700 miles with Wool’s army and spent months in enemy country without hearing a serious shot fired. He had worked hard, though. His scouting duties required Lee sometimes to be in his saddle by 3:00 A.M. and often to ride 50 to 60 miles per day.
During his service with Wool, Lee rode three horses. The small but wiry dun mare Creole he had brought with him to San Antonio from New Orleans. He acquired another mare in Mexico, a sorrel that remained unnamed. “I like mares for riding horses,” he wrote his sons. “They are more docile & intelligent than horses….” Lee’s other mount was a sturdy bay male he purchased in San Antonio. Lee’s servant Jim Connally usually rode the horse and christened him “Jim.”12
Lee’s letters home from Wool’s army contained vivid descriptions of the places, pastimes, customs, and people he encountered on the march. At times he seemed as much a tourist as a soldier. Here are some samples.
During an expedition to purchase food, Lee discovered that “Several of the young women were quite pretty. Fine teeth & eyes Small feet & hands & in their simple dress of a chemise & petticoat looked quite interesting.” Mexican people in general Lee pronounced “an amiable but weak people, primitive in their habits & tastes.”13
Lee was less critical regarding Mexican food and announced that “their cooking on the whole is pretty good.” He ate some bread “as fine … as I have ever tasted.”
While Wool was in camp near Monclova, the general occupied the home of a wealthy Mexican landowner and included Lee in his officers’ mess. “The dinner,” Lee explained, “is El Mexicano”—rice or vermicelli “highly peppered & seasoned”; then boiled beef with cabbage, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, white beans, and corn; then another meat dish with bread and gravy; then still more meat (chicken, kid, or mutton) with pecans and raisins; next a pâté with more pecans and raisins; then black beans; and finally watermelon for dessert.14
“Recollect,” Lee wrote “that the everlasting pepper enters into all these….” Mexican red peppers were for him “as hot as a coal of fire.” In contrast was “the cup of chocolate, which winds up the feast.” “You know,” Lee wrote, “I never liked chocolate, in fact could never drink it until I came here, but I find it delightful.”
The Mexican wolves were impressive. “They surround our camp every night. Are aroused by the lights at Reveille & keep up a concert of howling till scattered by the gray approach of morg.”15
Youngest son Rob (now three) must have mailed his father some fishhooks. Lee asked Mary Lee to “Tell him the Mexicans are dreadfully alarmed at his fishhooks & are running away.”
Near Parras he observed, “There are some large estates here, on which there is a union of wealth, poverty, plenty, want, elegance & sloveness [sic] as with us.” Lee visited one such estate owned by brothers, one of whom had attended school in Bardstown, Kentucky, and welcomed the invading officers. “The parlour, dining room & drawing room, the only rooms I was in, must have been each 40 ft. long & 20 high. All handsomely furnished, Scarlett & muslin curtains to the windows & doors, sofas, mirrors (small) some paintings etc.” On the estate lived 1,200 peons who toiled in extensive vineyards to produce wines and brandies and an income per year of $50,000. “Pretty good,” thought Lee, “for a country of this sort.”
The master of the estate treated some of the officers, including Lee, to a dinner at which “There was a profusion of wines & liquors, & the preserved peaches (whole) & Charlotte Russe was perfectly delicious.”16
To Custis and Rooney (William), Lee wrote on Christmas Eve 1846 from Saltillo. Among other things he told them of a recent alarm, the rumored advance of Santa Anna’s army. He was with the “pioneers” (engineers) working on a road through the mountains when a courier rode into his camp at midnight with a summons for Wool to march immediately from Parras to Saltillo to meet an anticipated attack from Santa Anna. The next morning Lee dispatched his pioneers and cavalry escort and set out himself for Parras and Wool. He rode fifty miles and reached Parras at dark, only to learn that Wool and his staff had already started for Saltillo. Lee paused only long enough to feed his horse (the sorrel mare) and then rode into the dark after Wool. He found the general and his party encamped eight or ten miles along the road. Next morning Wool sent Lee (on Creole, this time) after the troops he had sent toward Saltillo to redirect them to a new rendezvous. “The Evg [evening] after this … I had ridden Jim all day & at night news reached Genl Wool that Santa Anna would reach Aqua Nueva [17 miles south of Saltillo] that night, 9 miles from him, I mounted Jim again, who had had a few hours rest & his supper, & started off to see if Santa Anna was there.” Lee took a road different from his cavalry escort and so rode alone in search of the enemy: “… I trotted on keeping a sharp lookout … & reached Aqua Nueva without seeing anyone.” On his way back to camp Lee encountered his escort, sent one rider to Wool with news of his solitary scout, and led the rest beyond Aqua Nueva to make sure Santa Anna was not advancing. “This I did & did not get back to camp till 10 o’clock next day, having ridden some 50 miles that night.”
Lee told this story of riding and scouting during several nights and days ostensibly in praise of his mounts: “Now you will know they are good horses.” But his story also reveals Lee’s stamina and energy. Although he had yet to see combat, Lee’s experience at war was not all Charlotte Russe and hot chocolate.17
On the morning after Lee wrote to his older sons about his adventures while investigating reports of Santa Anna’s advance—Christmas morning—another alarm came to Wool’s camp. But no army approached, and at one o’clock in the afternoon Wool dismissed his troops. Then the feasting commenced—eggnog, evergreens, oranges, chickens, turkeys, and many toasts.18
Still rumors persisted that the Mexican army was on the march about to attack the invaders from the United States. Zachary Taylor supposedly told a captain who said he had seen a force of 20,000 Mexican soldiers and 250 pieces of artillery en route, “Captain, if you say you saw it, of course I must believe you; but I would not have believed it if I had seen it myself.” Much later an acquaintance quoted Lee describing a scouting foray as having been convinced that he saw in the moonlight a vast hillside dotted with the tents of Santa Anna’s horde. For reasons he could not explain, Lee remained on the scene and discovered in daylight that the “tents” were in fact grazing sheep.19
Other rumors swept through Wool’s army as well. The most persistent involved Winfield Scott and his plan to land an army near Vera Cruz and march on Mexico City. These rumors proved to be grounded in fact. And in mid-January 1847 Lee received orders to join Scott’s headquarters at Brazos. So on his fortieth birthday (January 19) Lee rode Creole toward his first experience in combat. Jim Connally, purged of many of his creature comforts, but “fat, ruddy & corpulent, as when he first came from Ireland,” accompanied him. They rode 250 miles, arrived in fine condition, and Lee went to work on Scott’s staff.20
Colonel Joseph G. Totten, Chief of the Engineer Corps, was with Scott as senior Engineer officer. However, Lee joined Totten, Lieutenant Colonel Ethan Allen Hitchcock, and Captain Henry Lee Scott to form what Scott called his “little cabinet,” the inner circle of the general’s advisers. Scott was embroiled in preparations and frustrated by delays, and his staff doubtless shared the commander’s moods.
On February 15, Scott sailed with his staff to Tampico, and on February 20 they continued down the coast of eastern Mexico to the island of Lobos, rendezvous for the invasion force and fleet. Lee remained aboard the ship Massachusetts for over two weeks while men and ships made ready for the landing near Vera Cruz.21
While the Massachusetts rolled at sea, Lee spent some of his enforced confinement writing letters. He shared a stateroom with his good friend Joe Johnston; but, Lee wrote, “my poor Joe is so sick all the time I can do nothing with him.” So Lee wrote to relieve the tedium, and some of his letters are interesting indeed.22
To his mother-in-law, the pious Mary Custis, Lee poured forth evangelical agony. Reflecting upon his life thus far, he lamented, “I have done no good. I hope I have escaped any great crime.” He missed his children and bewailed his separation from them—“Nothing can compensate me for that.” Reconciled to his duty, Lee concluded, “Still here I must remain ready to perform what little service I can & hope for the best.” Then he protested, “But I did not sit down to impose upon you my troubles. Those I must keep to myself & will therefore speak of something else.”23
To his oldest sons, Custis (fourteen) and Rooney (nine), Lee delivered admonitions to grow “in goodness and knowledge, as well as stature.” When he returned home, he said, he would be happy or miserable in accord with their performance while he was away. “You must do all in your power to save me pain.”24
Somber thoughts these were, and less than healthy, too. “I have done no good.” “These [my troubles] I must keep to myself.” And then to lay responsibility for his happiness or misery upon his young sons—”save me pain”—imposed quite a burden upon the boys. In these letters Lee seems troubled indeed.
But when he let go of pain and admonitions and did “speak of something else,” the tone of his letters changed radically. Lee told his mother-in-law of his travels and the sights he had seen. “The approach … to Tampico is very pretty, & the town presents its best appearance from the water.” He told his sons about Mexican boys playing and swimming, of donkeys and ponies, of a grand parade for General Scott, and about preparations for landing men and horses in the invasion. Clearly Lee was enjoying his new experience and the adventure of making war. “I shall have plenty to do … and am anxious for the time to come, and hope all may be successful.”25
Lee’s letters at this juncture revealed important themes in his life. He continued to be concerned about control—not only control of himself, but his capacity to control the lives of other people. He seemed obsessed with righteousness and redemption. He wrote the words he was supposed to write and sought beyond his words to redeem his deeds. By his actions and example, he strove to mold the lives of his children. When Lee told his sons that they possessed the power by their conduct to render him happy or miserable, he told the truth.
Juxtaposed with all this concern for control and his fervor to redeem the human condition, Lee also yearned for freedom. In Mexico, he was free from the complicated responsibilities of his various family roles (husband, parent, son-in-law, uncle, brother, et al.), and he was free to expand his experience and to assert his worth as soldier and person.
Lee’s desire for control and freedom at once was paradoxical, and this paradox was and is universal. The tension so associated was hardly unique to Lee. But within Lee’s life the tension between control and freedom was especially acute and all but constant, even though most of the time he kept his troubles to himself. In Mexico Lee fretted about his children and their education and development. But in Mexico the overriding fact of war offered Lee resolution for his tensions. Now he found freedom in doing his duty.
Meanwhile, back in northern Mexico Santa Anna’s army at last advanced upon Taylor’s and Wool’s forces, rendered fewer by the demands of Scott’s expedition. The Mexicans attacked near Buena Vista; Taylor responded; and the United States forces withstood the onslaught. Intense fighting took place on February 22 and 23, and on February 25 Santa Anna determined to retreat. Taylor’s victory at Buena Vista concluded major operations in the north and left Santa Anna (albeit with a beaten army) free to focus his attention upon Scott’s campaign against Mexico City.26
While their comrades were fighting for their lives at Buena Vista, the officers and men of Scott’s invasion force were saluting George Washington’s Birthday and toasting their own prospects for victory off Lobos. Finally on March 3, 1847, Scott’s small armada started south once more, and on March 9 initial landings began at Collado Beach, about two miles down the coast from Vera Cruz. Within a few hours, Scott’s entire army (8,600 men) were ashore, and to the surprise of everyone involved, the landings were absolutely unopposed.
Lee landed on the beach with Scott’s entourage on March 10 and soon thereafter joined a council of war to discuss the best way to assault the fortified city and its castle. Time was a factor. Scott knew that he had to take Vera Cruz and begin the march inland before the arrival of yellow fever (vomito) season on the coast. Scott also knew that an immediate, direct attack upon Vera Cruz by infantry would be extremely costly in lives for the attackers. Consequently Scott proposed to take Vera Cruz by “regular” approaches—to besiege instead of storm. The “little cabinet” agreed and plans for the investment began.
Already elements of Scott’s army occupied a perimeter around Vera Cruz on the land side of the city. Lee and other Engineer officers began a vigorous reconnaissance to select sites for batteries of big guns to shell the city. As they scouted, work gangs were wrestling artillery pieces—“heavy metal,” in the jargon of the day—through the surf and over the dunes. A succession of cold fronts, “northers,” blew through the region bringing rain and high winds to hamper the work. And Mexican cavalry patrols continued to probe the perimeter. Yet the greatest vexation for the invaders was the smallest—the myriad midges known as sand fleas that attacked the attackers. Lee had encountered such critters at Cockspur Island; but he had acquired no immunity whatsoever.27
One evening about a week after beginning the investment, Lee and First Lieutenant P. G. T. Beauregard were returning from a reconnaissance mission beyond friendly lines and came suddenly into a tiny clearing in the chaparral. Another man confronted them and spoke a challenge. Then, with the words barely out of his mouth and as Lee and Beauregard tried to reply, the man pointed a pistol at Lee. At a range of no more than twelve feet, he fired.
Flash, explosion, and smoke filled the clearing. Reacting to instinct, Lee and Beauregard lunged for the man, then held and disarmed him. He was a United States volunteer soldier, a member of an artillery unit that had had the outpost duty in the sector.
Lee examined himself and found that the ball had singed his uniform, but nothing else. The ball had passed between Lee’s body and his arm.
The soldier claimed he was lost, and Lee and Beauregard escorted him to his unit. Thereafter the two officers suspected their assailant had been a deserter. However, they never investigated the matter.28
If Lee reflected later upon his first genuine experience under fire, he probably chuckled. He was the soldier who had sailed to war, supposedly the ultimate masculine exercise, in the company of mules and sharing with a woman “Ladies Private Apartments.” Now he had had the great good fortune to survive a pistol ball fired at him pointblank. But Lee’s maiden experience as a target in a war zone had come at the hands of a member of his own army.
On the afternoon of March 22, after a pro forma surrender demand and a pro forma refusal, Scott’s guns opened fire on Vera Cruz. Ships of the United States Navy joined the bombardment soon after the opening rounds. Firing continued the following day and increased in intensity as the army prepared more batteries and guns for action. Guns from Vera Cruz responded; but they proved generally ineffective against the well-designed batteries of the attackers.
Lee, at this point, was hard at work upon another battery, only 700 yards from the city’s walls and stocked with the heaviest metal available. Scott had conferred with Commodores David Conner and Matthew Calbraith Perry on March 21, the day before the bombardment began, and secured the services of six naval guns (three 32-pounders and three 8-inch shell guns) and crews to serve the weapons.
Scott gave the orders to Lee to prepare the naval battery for action no later than March 24. So Lee had to order sailors who had just heaved their big guns ashore and through the sand to the site to dig trenches and plant sandbags around the battery. The seamen were not pleased and complained that they had come to fight Mexicans, not to burrow in the ground. Lee insisted and even appealed to the authority of his orders from Scott. The naval battery opened fire about ten o’clock on the morning of March 24.29
Gun crews from the fleet took turns serving the pieces; Lee directed the fire. The fire from these guns was devastating, and Mexican gun crews concentrated their fire upon this battery which most menaced their city.
By ironic coincidence one of the naval officers present with one of the gun crews was Smith Lee. So Robert Lee first saw combat in the company of his brother. Yet young Robert seemed to feel more the responsibility for the safety of his older brother. “No matter where I turned,” Robert recalled, “my eyes reverted to him, and I stood by his gun whenever I was not wanted elsewhere. Oh! I felt awfully, and am at a loss what I should have done had he been cut down before me. I thank God that he was saved. He preserved his usual cheerfulness, and I could see his white teeth through all the smoke and din of the fire.”30
By four o’clock in the afternoon (March 24) the naval battery had about spent the ammunition available, so the sailors stood down. Later, the officer who had most resisted the digging and sandbagging told Lee that he was right to insist upon fortifying the position. “I suppose the dirt did save some of my boys from being killed or wounded,” he admitted. But he protested that he had “no use for dirt banks on shipboard—that there what we want is clear decks and an open sea. And the fact is, Captain, I don’t like this land fighting, anyway. It ain’t clean!”31
Among the naval officers and men who arrived that evening to continue the bombardment the next day (March 25) was Raphael Semmes, destined later to command the C.S.S. Alabama. Firing resumed early on March 25 and once more took a terrible toll upon the coral walls of Vera Cruz and its forts. And within the city shells from the several batteries outside had wreaked havoc.
To hasten his victory at Vera Cruz, Scott planned a general infantry assault upon the city. However, soon after the bombardment resumed on March 26, the fifth day of the firing and the third day for Lee and the naval battery, the defenders of Vera Cruz signaled that they wished to talk about terms of surrender.
Wrangling ensued over saving of face. But on March 27 United States and Mexican negotiators agreed upon terms. Surrender ceremonies took place on the morning of March 29, 1847.32
While the negotiations were in progress, Lee prowled the perimeter of Vera Cruz to inspect the damage done by “his” guns. The naval battery in just over two days had fired 1,800 rounds, very roughly a fourth of the 6,700 projectiles launched by Scott’s artillery. In a note to Smith Lee, brother Robert assured him, “Your battery (naval) has smashed that side of the town.”
In the same note, Robert asked Smith to try to procure for him a “box or two of claret, one of brandy, and four colored shirts.” A postscript requested Smith to try to buy a telescope, as he (Robert) had lost his own. The younger brother repeated his relief that Smith had been “saved through that hot fire, I felt awful at the thought of your being shot down before me.”33
To the degree that he reflected upon his first experience at war, Lee seemed all but blasé about his own danger. To his immediate and extended family he wrote lots of proper prose about sympathy for noncombatant Mexicans in Vera Cruz. “My heart bled for the inhabitants … it was terrible to think of the women and children….”He lamented the loss of comrades—“I grieve for the fine fellows….” To Mary Lee he did remark, “The labour of the whole Corps was very arduous in the trenches … I am thankful that I have so far stood it.”34
Such sentiments contrasted sharply with the response of Ulysses S. Grant to the same war when he first heard firing from hostile guns. Long after the event, in his Memoirs, Grant recalled, “I felt sorry that I had enlisted.”35
Lee sent some pretty pretentious pronouncements to his wife—material well suited for publication, or at least circulation within circles of powerful people.
No one at their comfortable homes, can realize the exertions, pains & hardships of an Army in the field, under a scorching sun & in an enervating atmosphere. Still we must press on. The crack of the whip & prick of the Spur stimulates the animals & man’s untiring Ardour drives on the whole. It is a great comfort to me to know that you are removed from the whole & I hope well and happy with our dear children & parents around you, I pray that nothing may disturb that repose & that I may in time return to you. As much as I long for that time & as many calls as I have to carry me back, if my life & strength are spared, I must see this contest to an end & endeavor to perform what little service I can to my country.
In the same letter Lee noted that some of his fellow officers had found themselves unfit for the physical strains of the campaign. He also called Mary Lee’s attention to the list of brevets, temporary promotions which in most circumstances would become permanent, bestowed upon friends and acquaintances in the aftermath of the success at Vera Cruz. Lee’s friend Joe Johnston was now a lieutenant colonel—ironic, since Lee and the rest of Johnston’s friends had nicknamed Johnston “The Colonel” ever since their days at West Point.
Lee knew that Scott had noticed his competence and hard work. But Lee as yet had no brevet to show for his service. “It is a fine thing to have strong friends in Our Govt.,” Lee observed, “& I am glad that some of our friends have felt the benefit of it.”36
From the beginning of the campaign, Scott had planned to press the invasion inland as soon as possible after securing Vera Cruz as the base of his supply line. However, lack of wagons compelled the general to remain at Vera Cruz for two weeks. While Scott chaffed at the delay, he had to confront some of the issues endemic to an army of occupation—such as the resumption of services in the Roman Catholic churches of Vera Cruz. In the process of encouraging religious services, Scott found himself seated on a bench in a large Roman Catholic church on Sunday, April 4, about to celebrate mass. For Scott the conquering general the situation made some sense; for Scott the candidate for President of the United States the circumstance seemed politically suicidal. The overwhelming majority of Scott’s potential constituents were militantly Protestant. Yet there he sat at mass with his staff, which included Captain Lee.
Lee’s friend from Fort Hamilton Lieutenant Henry J. Hunt happened into the rear of the church, caught Lee’s eye, and in response to Lee’s nod took a seat beside him on Scott’s bench. No one else in the church had the benefit of a bench; the other worshippers either stood or knelt. From the altar came an acolyte with a candle for Scott, who had no notion of what to do with it. Eventually it became clear to Scott and the rest of the officers that they were supposed to participate in a procession around the church with the priests. And this they did.
As Scott and staff awkwardly shuffled into line, Hunt attracted the attention of Lee who walked beside him. Hunt laid a hand on Lee’s elbow, endured “a rebuking look,” and touched Lee once more.
“What is it?” asked Lee sotto voce.
“Captain Lee?” Hunt asked.
“Well?” whispered Lee.
“I really hope there is no Pussyism in all this?”
Hunt, of course, was the young officer at Fort Hamilton to whom Lee had delivered his double entendre about the High Church doctrines of Edward Pusey. Now in the ultimate “High Church” circumstance, Hunt returned Lee’s favor and reminded Lee of his ribald pun.
“I glanced at him,” Hunt recounted. “His face retained its quiet appearance, but the corners of his eyes and mouth were twitching in the struggle to preserve his gravity.”37