RETURNING TO SAVANNAH from Florida, Lee spent a few more . days there, allowing time for two of the city’s doctors to examine him. Then he and Agnes proceeded up the Atlantic coast. At Charleston, where the war had started with the attack on Fort Sumter, the city’s fire companies staged a colorful parade, marching behind a brass band to the house where they stayed. Lee avoided reporters on most occasions, but he was so amazed by the contrast between what he saw and what he knew Charleston had endured that he spontaneously told a journalist, “I am astonished to see Charleston so wondrously recuperated after all her disasters.”
The nation’s press was chronicling Lee’s inadvertent triumphal tour, and invitations poured in on him to come to places hundreds of miles from his route. Writing to Colonel Johnston in Lexington, Lee referred to a letter from the proprietor of the Galt House, in Louisville, Kentucky, and said, “Our kind people seem to think that I am running loose or have a roving commission to travel the country.”
On the morning of April 30, the Lees left Wilmington, North Carolina, on their way to Portsmouth, Virginia, where they would take the ferry across the Elizabeth River to Norfolk. When Lee got off the train at Portsmouth, he was greeted with shattering blasts from a cannon—the one form of noise he had not previously experienced on this trip. Amidst a storm of Rebel Yells, a small, slender man came toward him, as composed as he had been when cannon were firing to kill. This was Lieutenant Colonel Walter H. Taylor, even now only thirty-one years old, who had been Lee’s all-purpose aide, controller of headquarters paperwork, appointments secretary, and official greeter, and had sometimes dashed into battle when he could get ahead of his desk duties. The last time that Lee had seen his splendid adjutant was in Richmond, when they parted after the trip home from Appomattox. Escorted by Taylor, the Lees boarded the ferry that would take them across to Norfolk. Roman candles and rockets filled the sky as the ferry left its slip, and on the far shore the United Fire Company of Norfolk began a series of salutes from its cannon.
Lee’s first morning in Norfolk was a Sunday. He wanted to go to church, and invited Miss Caroline Selden, one of his host’s daughters, to accompany him. She wrote that, as they neared the church, “the street was lined with adoring crowds. For one block before reaching Christ Church we had almost to force our way through a narrow pathway that they seemed to have left for him.” Because it was a Sunday, the crowd refrained from cheering, but Miss Selden summed up his Southern tour in six words: “Every hat was in the air.”
As suddenly as it began, the public part of Lee’s trip was over. By taking a steamer that went up the James River from Norfolk, he and Agnes left the coastal cities behind and entered upon leisurely days, visiting relatives who lived quietly on their riverside farms. One young female cousin who had never met him before remarked on how charming he was, and added, “We regarded him with the greatest veneration. We had heard of God, but here was General Lee!”
Going by way of Richmond, father and daughter took the opportunity to go to Rooney’s farm on the Pamunkey River, where Mary was visiting. The morning after this reunion, Mary wrote Mildred, who was back in Lexington after her own extended visits to friends. She spoke of “your papa, who arrived last evening with Agnes. He looks fatter, but I do not like his complexion, and he still seems stiff.” As for Agnes, she “looks thin, but I think it was partly owing to the immense chignon which seems to weigh her down and absorb everything.”
Mary closed with this picture of grandfather and grandson. “The General has just come in. Robbie is riding on his knee, sitting grave as a judge.”