January 2023
General Scott was surely disappointed, as Dowdey observes, “It was known that Scott was finagling to hold a number of Southern officers in the army, that Lee was his favorite soldier.”19
It is interesting that biographer James C. Young doesn’t mention Lee’s meeting with Scott of April 18, but in a chapter entitled “Lee Faces His Tragedy” he dwells on the letter Lee wrote on the night of April 20.
After dinner he asked to be alone, going to his room on the upper floor.
In a room below Mary waited as the man above faced his tragedy. The servants went on tiptoe, the white of their eyes showing large, in the way of the black man when his spirit troubles him. At intervals Mary heard Lee’s voice in the mutter of an invocation for higher guidance. Then his step sounded again, the pace of a soldier, back and forth across the floor.
When he paused, and there was no sound, she went into the hall, expecting him. A long hour passed, yet he failed to come. When had another captain of history undergone such trial? Caesar at the Rubicon, Napoleon debating whether he should save the Revolution, suffered little but the pangs of interest. Lee, the religious man, the patriot, the moralist in his wish “to do right,” suffered profoundly, sorrowing for his country and his honor.
When he did descend he came with resolute face, lighted by the inner fire of the man’s fine soul, burning in a white flame this night. And he said simply, almost cheerfully: “Well, Mary, the question is settled. Here is my letter of resignation, and a letter I have written to General Scott.”
Only the Fates, who looked on to see man and woman in close embrace, could know the import of those words. General Scott, in Washington, received the letter the next day, memorable for its concluding words, “Save in defense of my native State, I never desire again to draw my sword.”20
In his life-study of Lee (1934), Robert Winston summarizes Lee’s meeting with Frank Blair and Winfield Scott on April 18, but focuses more on the letter Lee wrote to the aged general on the 20th: “To no one, General,
have I been as much indebted as yourself, for uniform kindness and consideration, and it has always been my ardent desire to merit your approbation. I shall carry to the grave the most grateful recollections of your kind consideration, and your name and fame shall always be dear to me.”21 “Well, Mary,” Lee told his wife after having composed his letter to Scott, “the question is settled.”22
Lee explained his position in letters to relatives. To his sister Ann he affirmed, “I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home….Save in defence of my native State, with the sincere hope that my poor services may not be needed, I hope I may never be called on to draw the sword.”23
With his usual acerbity, Emory Thomas writes of Lee’s decision:
in the United States Army or had he resigned and only raised corn while other men fought and died, he would have elected infamy. He would have had to spend the rest of his life explaining his actions to deaf ears. And not the least of a legion of accusers would have been his own wife, who became a fiercely partisan Confederate. Robert Lee would have been most in danger in his own bed.24
Remarkably, Michael Korda, in his recent biography of Lee (2014) misses the drama of this event, writing merely that in his meeting with Scott, “Lee presumably made his position clear.”25
It may not be too much to say that in such breezy asides, modern historians are willfully overlooking the sterling qualities of, as Scott described him, “this remarkable creature.” But every time I travel to Lexington—my grandson is a junior at W & L— you can bet I’m not thinking of the Generals’ chances on the football field (sorry, Hunter!), but on General Lee and the vast and clenching hold he has on my consciousness, and my heart.
George C. Scott, Notes on a Visit to Robert E. Lee (Lexington: Washington and Lee University, 1980), 9-10.
John M. Taylor, Duty Faithfully Performed: Robert E. Lee and His Critics (Dulles VA: Brassey’s, 1999), 41.
Allen C. Guelzo, Robert E. Lee: A Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2021), 145.
10. Mary L. Williamson, The Life of
11. J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton and
12. Freeman, Lee, vol. 1, 437.
15. Walter H. Taylor, General Lee:
16. Thomas Nelson Page, Robert E.
17. Henry Alexander White, Robert E.
19. Clifford Dowdey, Lee (Boston
20. James C. Young, Marse Robert: Generals in Ezra J. Warner, Gray: Lives of the Confederate 21. Robert W. Winston, Robert E. Lee: Commanders (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 22. Burke Davis, Gray Fox: Robert E. 1959), 179. Michael A. Fellman, The Making of Robert E. Lee (New York: Random 23. Margaret Sanborn, Robert E. Lee: House, 2000), 87; Randolph H. McKim, The Soul of Lee (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1918), 25.
Emory M. Thomas, Robert E. Lee: A Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), 187-88.
Earl Schenck Miers, Robert E. 24. Thomas, Lee, 190. Lee: A Great Life in Brief (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956), 27; Charles R. Knight, From Arlington to Appomattox: Robert E. Lee’s Civil War Day by Day, 1861–1865 (El Dorado Hills CA: Savas Beatie, 2021), 2.
Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E Lee, 4 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934-35), vol. 1, 436-37.
John Esten Cooke, Robert E. Lee (New York: G. W. Dillingham, 1871), 28.
Gen. Robert E. Lee for Children, in Easy Words (Richmond: Johnson Publishing Co., 1895), 41.
Mary Thompson Hamilton, The Life of Robert E. Lee for Boys and Girls (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917), 95.
Personal William Jones, Reminiscences of General Robert E. Lee (Richmond: United States Historical Society Press, 1989 [1875]), 138-39.
General Lee Lee, (Wilmington: Broadfoot Publishing Company, 1989 [1894]), 88.
His Campaigns in Virginia 1861- 1865 with Personal Reminiscences (Dayton OH: Press of Morningside Bookshop, 1975 [1906]), 20.
Lee Man and Soldier (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911), 40. The mythic Hercules had to choose between pleasure and virtue. The strongman’s dilemma was dramatized by Handel in an oratorio (1750).
Lee and the Southern Confederacy 1807-1870 (New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1968 [1897]), 100; J. William Jones, Life and Letters of Robert Edward Lee Soldier and Man (Harrisonburg VA: Sprinkle Publications, 1986 [1906]), 131-32.
Lee the Bradford, American (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1912), 30-31.
Little, Brown and Company, 1965), 130, 133.
Knight of the Confederacy (New York: Rae D. Henkle Co., 1929), 84-85.
A Biography (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1934), 90.
Lee and the Civil War (New York: Fairfax Press, 1981 [1956]), 15.
A Portrait [1807-1861], 2 vols. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1966-67), vol. 1, 314; Frederick Maurice, Robert E. Lee the Soldier (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1925), 56-57.
In his Memoirs of Robert E. Lee (1887), Armistead L. Long, who had served on the General's staff, relates this story:
Long thought so much of this anecdote that he had William Ludwell Sheppard, one of the most noted ex- Confederate illustrators, render a drawing, “General Lee and the Sparrow,” for his Memoirs (1887).
I don't know if this incident actually occurred. But the important point, I think, is that Southerners believed it was in keeping with the soul and character of Robert E.
Lee that Sheppard's illustration was commissioned.
“I Thank
the Lord I
Am Not a
Yankee...”
General Lee and the Sparrow
At some point in the Petersburg Campaign, Lee was visiting a battery, drawing a crowd of soldiers near him. “Men,” he admonished, “you had better go farther to the rear; they are firing up here, and you are exposing yourselves to unnecessary danger.”
The men drew back, but General Lee, as if unconscious of danger to himself, walked across the yard, picked up some small object from the ground, and placed it upon the limb of a tree above his head. It was afterward perceived that the object for which he had thus risked his life was an unfledged sparrow that had fallen from its nest. It was a marked instance of the love for the lower animals and deep feeling for the helpless which he always displayed.
Eliza Frances Andrews (1840–1931) received a strong education and was
a successful writer and educator. Her War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl surely ranks among the most observant and intelligent wartime memoirs by a
Edited with commentary by Stephen Davis, I Thank the Lord I Am Not a Yankeeincludes selections of her wartime and postwar journals which are most expressive of her Confederate
patriotism and Southern pride.
Stephen Davisis author of ten books on the Civil War, most of which treat the Atlanta Campaign. His two recent volumes
on Confederate General John Bell Hood have won several prizes, including the Fletcher Pratt Award of the New York CWRT.
25. Michael Korda, Clouds of Glory: The Life and Legend of Robert E. Lee (New York: HarperCollins,
Stephen Davis of Cumming Ga., is a native Virginian who’s been reading about Robert E. Lee since the fourth grade. Now retired, he’s writing a faux autobiography of General Lee. In his Introduction, Steve writes how the priceless manuscript came into his possession.