This article was originally published by The Epoch Times: The Two Reputations of Robert E. Lee
In the preface to “Robert E. Lee: A Biography,” published in 1995, professor and Civil War historian Emory Thomas takes note of his subject’s ever-changing status in the eyes of others. When war between the North and South erupted in April 1861, Gen. Winfield Scott revealed his deep admiration for his former staff officer by offering Col. Lee command of the army being formed by Lincoln. Refusing to raise his sword against his beloved state of Virginia, Lee rejected this honor and the opportunity for fame. He resigned his commission.
For the rest of his life, and down to our present time, Lee’s deeds brought both garlands and brickbats. As Mr. Thomas says, “Lee has been the patron saint of the American South,” yet historical figures outside of that region—Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt, his cousin Franklin, and others—also lavished praise on Lee for his leadership skills and character.
Others condemned Lee. Northerners during the War considered him a traitor to the United States. More recently, as Mr. Emerson briefly mentions, late 20th-century revisionists assailed Lee’s stellar reputation. Here Mr. Emerson specifically mentions Tom Connelly’s “The Marble Man: Robert E. Lee and His Image in American Society,” writing that “Connelly argued that Lee’s image was contrived and that Lee himself endured a life replete with frustration, self doubt, and a feeling of failure. … He was actually a troubled man, convinced that he had failed as a prewar career officer, parent, and moral individual.’”
Current-day radicals have not only castigated Lee as a slaveholder and a traitor, but have also demanded that statues of him be removed from public places. In Charlottesville, Virginia, after rioting broke out over the fate of Lee’s monument, the statue was removed from a public park, and then secretly cut to pieces and melted into “a sludge of glowing bronze.”
A Quest for Balance
“I am well aware,” wrote Mr. Thomas in his Lee biography, “that the portrait of Lee in these pages may offend equally those who revere and those who revile the man. I can plead only effort and honesty in defense of my understanding.”
To paint that portrait, Mr. Thomas focuses more on Lee himself than on his military exploits during the War. We meet him as a boy struggling with the failures of his father, Light-Horse Harry Lee, a Revolutionary War hero who became a debtor and an outcast who rarely saw his son.
Mr. Thomas then describes Lee as a cadet at West Point—he would later serve as superintendent of the Academy—followed by his 17 years as an officer and gifted builder in the Corps of Engineers. While serving on Gen. Winfield Scott’s staff during the Mexican-American War, he demonstrated his bravery and devotion to duty. At Harper’s Ferry in 1859, he aptly commanded the forces that freed John Brown’s hostages and captured Brown alive. After his surrender of Confederate troops at Appomattox in 1865, Lee became known for his work of reconciliation between South and North, and for his brief but influential term as president of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia, now Washington and Lee University.
Mr. Thomas explains why Lee so often appears as a historical enigma. He was an Evangelical Christian and a stoic, with a fervent lifelong belief in the efficacy of duty and the practice of self-control. Unlike Ulysses Grant, he left no memoirs. He was a very private man, circumspect in his dealings with others and wary about sharing his innermost thoughts and emotions outside of his family circle.
Yet he was also an attentive father who found joy in the play and conversation of his children. Always faithful to his wife, he delighted in the company of and correspondence with attractive young women. Perhaps more than any other commander in American military history, his troops came to adore him almost to the point of idolatry. In short, he was a man much admired by nearly all who had contact with him.
The Conflicting Perspectives of Others
In Washington in 1866, Lee wrote to a friend, “I am considered now such a monster that I hesitate to darken with my shadow the doors of those I love lest I should bring upon them misfortune.”
Yet in October of 1865, Lee had signed his name to an Amnesty Oath, renewing his loyalty to the Constitution, and dispatched it to Washington. Secretary of State William Seward gave the signed oath to a friend as a souvenir, and the oath only reappeared in the national archives in 1970. As a result, unlike so many other Confederates who had received amnesty, Lee died without ever having been pardoned or regaining his rights as a citizen.
In 1975, a joint declaration of the U.S. Congress restored Lee’s full rights of citizenship. At the official ceremony, President Gerald Ford noted, “General Lee’s character has been an example to succeeding generations, making the restoration of his citizenship an event in which every American can take pride.”
Mr. Thomas also makes clear that Lee held typical 19th-century views on freed slaves. On that 1866 trek to Washington, he appeared before a Congressional committee to testify about enslaved people’s conditions in Virginia. When asked what he thought of the new freedmen, Lee answered, “I do not think that he is as capable of acquiring knowledge as the white man is.”
However, as Mr. Thomas tells us, soon after returning to Richmond, Virginia from Appomattox, Lee was at a Sunday service at St. Paul’s Episcopalian Church when the pastor, Charles Minnegerode, invited parishioners to come forward and receive communion. “A tall, well-dressed black man” rose, went to the front of the church, and knelt at the rail, shocking the congregation. The congregation sat immobile and stunned until another man walked down the aisle and knelt at the rail near the black man.
This was Robert E. Lee.
Rare Qualitie
Of all the figures in the American story, Robert E. Lee best embodies what happens when we are too ignorant or blind to recognize the nuances of history in which men and women in their own time have their own peculiar prejudices. Too many of us take a chainsaw to the past rather than a scalpel. When we read Mr. Thomas’s biography, we realize that Lee was neither a saint nor a sinner. He was a man of extreme self-discipline who was fair and merciful in his relationships and who judged himself much more harshly than he did others.
In a 1960 speech, Dwight Eisenhower mentioned that he kept a picture of Robert E. Lee in his office. A New York dentist, Leon Scott, wrote to ask the president why he emulated a man who devoted “his best efforts to the destruction of the United States Government.”
Eisenhower took time from his busy schedule to respond with a personal letter. He pointed out to Dr. Scott that the question of succession was very much in play in the first half of the 19th century, that Lee believed in the “Constitutional validity” of his cause, and that he was a magnificent leader who “remained selfless almost to a fault and unfailing in his faith in God.” Eisenhower concluded, “Indeed, to the degree that present-day American youth will strive to emulate his rare qualities, including his devotion to this land as revealed in his painstaking efforts to help heal the Nation’s wounds once the bitter struggle was over, we, in our own time of danger in a divided world, will be strengthened and our love of freedom sustained.”
Or as Mr. Thomas writes, “Lee was a great person, not so much because of what he did (although his accomplishments were extraordinary); he was great because of the way he lived, because of what he was.”
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