Thomas - Robert E. Lee: a biography

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Frontispiece:Alfred Waud sketch of Robert E. Lee riding away from the McLean House at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, following his surrender. Behind Lee is his aide Charles Marshall, who drafted General Orders #9, the Generals farewell to his army.Library of Congress/Museum of the Confederacy.

Copyright 1995 by Emory M. Thomas. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.

First published as a Norton paperback 1997

Cartography by James D. Ingram and Xueling Hu, Cartographic Services Laboratory, University of Georgia. Book design by Marjorie J. Flock.

ISBN 978-0-393-31631-5 (e-book)

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For

Laura Leonardy Thomas

Janice Marie Thomas

Marshall Emory Thomas

Emily Anne Thomas

And two who have gone before

Thomas Lawrence Connelly

James Robert Crumrine

Pax Nunc

I GREW UP IN RICHMOND, VIRGINIA. That explains a lot about this book.

Every weekday morning my family (and I then assumed everyone elses family in Richmond) sat at the breakfast table and listened to fifteen minutes of commentary on the news of the day by Douglas Southall Freeman. Only when Dr. Freeman had concluded his remarks at 8:15 A.M. did I leave the house for Ginter Park Elementary School or Chandler Junior High School. I never met Freeman; but later in life I did meet Inez Freeman, and she was kind enough to inscribe and give me a copy of The Last Parade, her late husbands paean to the final reunion of the Army of Northern Virginia. During our initial meeting, some of the first words my graduate mentor Frank E. Vandiver said to me were, Douglas Freeman is god.

Soon after meeting Vandiver, I met a fellow graduate student at Rice University named Thomas Lawrence Connelly and began a dialogue that lasted almost thirty years. Connelly devoted a large measure of his considerable brilliance to an assault upon Freemans R. E. Lee: A Biography and Freemans image of Robert E. Lee as noble soul and military genius. Yet I once heard Connelly say in public, R. E. Lee is the finest biography in the English language.

Freemans four-volume study won a Pulitzer Prize in 1934 and has been the definitive Lee ever since. In the final chapter of the final volume Freeman wrote, Robert Lee was one of the small company of great men in whom there is no inconsistency to be explained, no enigma to be solved. What he seemed, he wasa wholly human gentleman, the essential elements of whose positive character were two and only two, simplicity and spirituality. So Freeman concluded his work: There is no mystery in the coffin there in front of the windows that look to the sunrise. For a long, long time Lee, essentially Freemans Lee, has been an American hero. This same Lee has been the patron saint of the American South.

But always a few unbelievers doubted Lees sanctityAllen Tate, T. Harry Williams, and more. At last in 1977 Tom Connelly published The Marble Man: Robert E. Lee and His Image in American Society. Connelly argued that Lees 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.

So the revisionist critique of Lee began in earnest and continues even now. Allen T. Nolan in 1991 flattered Connelly with imitation (albeit pale) in Lee Considered: General Robert E. Lee and Civil War History. In 1993 Ted Turner released Gettysburg, the motion picture based upon Michael Shaaras Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Killer Angels (1975). In film and fiction, as in more formal history, revision of Lee persists. The principal exception that proves the rule is a first novel by M. A. Harper, For the Love of Robert E. Lee, which I consider the finest portrait of Lee that now exists in American fiction.

The biography that follows this preface is neither classical in the Freeman sense nor revisionist after the Connelly model. I can best describe my work as post-revisionistinformed by the extensive corpus of secondary writings about Lee, but resting for the most part upon my research in primary materials by or about Lee. The Lee that emerges here is sui generis.

One constant remains, however. Lee continues to be a consequential human being for me as he was for Freeman, Connelly, Shaara, and the rest. Lee performed important acts; he was a person of substance. Lee was also significant as a person; his experience offers ample lessons about the human condition. And Lee has been influential as symbol; he is still an American icon and the ultimate icon in the American South.

Because of the enduring potence of Lees deeds, person, and persona, I am well aware 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.

I conclude that Lee was a great human being, perhaps as great as Freeman believed, but not great in the ways that Freeman described. Afflicted with many, though surely not all, of the frustrations and frailties that Connelly and others discerned, Lee was great in his response to his tribulations and to his life in general. He redeemed many moments and brought grace to otherwise grim circumstances. 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.

DURING THE LONG PERIOD DEVOTED to research and writing this biography, I have had help from many people and institutions. My confederates, accomplices, and friends were in no way co-conspirators in my interpretations or analyses.

Michael P. Musick of the Military Reference Branch of the National Archives was enormously helpful. I only regret not having enough lives to spend several of them following Michaels many suggestions. At the Virginia Historical Society, Charles F. Bryan, Jr., Frances S. Pollard, Howson Cole, and Nelson D. Lankford were ever helpful, and the Society was kind enough to grant me an Andrew W. Mellon Research Fellowship to aid my work. Elizabeth Lux, Guy Swanson, Robin Reed, and Cory Hudgins were gracious and generous at The Museum of the Confederacy. At the Valentine Museum nearby, Jane Webb Smith assisted my work in manuscripts and photographs the Valentine holds. C. Vaughn Stanley was twice helpfulonce at Stratford Hall with manuscript materials and later in his current position as Special Collections/Reference Librarian at Washington and Lee University. Virginia Smyers presided over the rich Lee Collections at Washington and Lee during my earlier sojourn there. Judy Hynson opened to me the fine photograph collection at Stratford Hall most recently. Robert K. Krick, chief historian at the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, allowed me to rummage through his files and collections, once more demonstrating the way research materials should be shared in that best of all possible worlds. At the Special Collections Division/Academy Archives of the United States Military Academy, West Point, Alan Aimone allowed me to work after hours and sent me copies of materials from this fine resource. Wilbur E. Meneray at Special Collections, Howard Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University was a delightful host and also sent me copies of manuscript items.