FAREWELL  MY LOVE - By Robert Wilson, Sr. This is a Signed, Limited Edition of only 1,000 Prints. Measures 29" X 22"  and in MINT Condition.  Unframed and un-matted. Published originally in 1984 and long ago sold out. Insured USPS Priority mail delivery in the continental US in a large diameter tube. Will ship worldwide.  

Robert Edward Lee (January 19, 1807 – October 12, 1870) was an American Confederate general best known as a commander of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. He commanded the Army of Northern Virginia from 1862 until its surrender in 1865 and earned a reputation as a skilled tactician.

A son of Revolutionary War officer Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee III, Lee was a top graduate of the United States Military Academy and an exceptional officer and military engineer in the United States Army for 32 years. During this time, he served throughout the United States, distinguished himself during the Mexican–American War, and served as Superintendent of the United States Military Academy. He was also the husband of Mary Anna Custis Lee, adopted great-granddaughter of George Washington. When Virginia's 1861 Richmond Convention declared secession from the Union, Lee chose to follow his home state, despite his desire for the country to remain intact and an offer of a senior Union command. During the first year of the Civil War, he served in minor combat operations and as a senior military adviser to Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

Lee took command of the Army of Northern Virginia in June 1862 during the Peninsula Campaign following the wounding of Joseph E. Johnston. He succeeded in driving the Union Army of the Potomac under George B. McClellan away from the Confederate capital of Richmond during the Seven Days Battles, although he was unable to destroy McClellan's army. Lee then overcame Union forces under John Pope at the Second Battle of Bull Run in August. His invasion of Maryland that September ended with the inconclusive Battle of Antietam, after which he retreated to Virginia. Lee then won two decisive victories at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville before launching a second invasion of the North in the summer of 1863, where he was decisively defeated at the Battle of Gettysburg by the Army of the Potomac under George Meade. He led his army in the minor and inconclusive Bristoe Campaign that fall before General Ulysses S. Grant took command of Union armies in the spring of 1864. Grant engaged Lee's army in bloody but inconclusive battles at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania before the lengthy Siege of Petersburg, which was followed in April 1865 by the capture of Richmond and the destruction of most of Lee's army, which he finally surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House.

In 1865, Lee became president of Washington College (later Washington and Lee University) in Lexington, Virginia; in that position, he supported reconciliation between North and South. Lee accepted "the extinction of slavery" provided for by the Thirteenth Amendment, but opposed racial equality for African Americans. After his death in 1870, Lee became a cultural icon in the South and is largely hailed as one of the Civil War's greatest generals. As commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, he fought most of his battles against armies of significantly larger size, and managed to win many of them. Lee built up a collection of talented subordinates, most notably James Longstreet, Stonewall Jackson, and J. E. B. Stuart, who along with Lee were critical to the Confederacy's battlefield success.[1][2] In spite of his success, his two major strategic offensives into Union territory both ended in failure. Lee's aggressive and risky tactics, especially at Gettysburg, which resulted in high casualties at a time when the Confederacy had a shortage of manpower, have come under criticism.[3] Almost 110 years after the conclusion of the Civil War and his denial for amnesty by Secretary of State William Seward, Lee was officially pardoned by President Gerald Ford, and given a posthumous restoration of his full rights of citizenship.

Contents

1 Early life and education

2 Military engineer career

3 Marriage and family

4 Mexican–American War

5 Early 1850s: West Point and Texas

6 Late 1850s: Arlington plantation and the Custis slaves

6.1 The Norris case

6.2 Lee's views on race and slavery

7 Harpers Ferry and return to Texas, 1859–1861

7.1 Harpers Ferry

7.2 Texas

8 Civil War

8.1 Resignation from United States Army

8.2 Early role

8.3 Commander, Army of Northern Virginia (June 1862 – June 1863)

8.4 Battle of Gettysburg

8.5 Ulysses S. Grant and the Union offensive

8.6 General in Chief

9 Summaries of Lee's Civil War battles

10 Postbellum life

10.1 President Johnson's amnesty pardons

10.2 Postwar politics

11 Illness and death

12 Legacy

12.1 Monuments, memorials and commemorations

13 Dates of rank

14 In popular culture

15 See also

16 References

17 Bibliography

17.1 Historiography

18 Further reading

19 External links

19.1 Primary sources

19.2 Monuments and memorials

Early life and education

Stratford Hall, Westmoreland County

the family seat, Lee's birthplace

Oronoco Street, Alexandria, Virginia

"Lee Corner" properties

Lee was born at Stratford Hall Plantation in Westmoreland County, Virginia, to Henry Lee III and Anne Hill Carter Lee on January 19, 1807.[4] His ancestor, Richard Lee I, emigrated from Shropshire, England to Virginia in 1639.[5]

Lee's father suffered severe financial reverses from failed investments[6] and was put in debtors' prison. Soon after his release the following year, the family moved to Alexandria, Virginia, both because there were then high quality local schools there, and because several members of Anne's extended family lived nearby.[7] In 1811, the family, including the newly born sixth child, Mildred, moved to a house on Oronoco Street.[8]

In 1812 Lee's father moved permanently to the West Indies.[9] Lee attended Eastern View, a school for young gentlemen, in Fauquier County, Virginia, and then at the Alexandria Academy, free for local boys, where he showed an aptitude for mathematics. Although brought up to be a practicing Christian, he was not confirmed in the Episcopal Church until age 46.[10]

Anne Lee's family was often supported by a relative, William Henry Fitzhugh, who owned the Oronoco Street house and allowed the Lees to stay at his country home Ravensworth. Fitzhugh wrote to United States Secretary of War, John C. Calhoun, urging that Robert be given an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. Fitzhugh had young Robert deliver the letter.[11] Lee entered West Point in the summer of 1825. At the time, the focus of the curriculum was engineering; the head of the United States Army Corps of Engineers supervised the school and the superintendent was an engineering officer. Cadets were not permitted leave until they had finished two years of study, and were rarely allowed off the Academy grounds. Lee graduated second in his class, behind only Charles Mason[12] (who resigned from the Army a year after graduation). Lee did not incur any demerits during his four-year course of study, a distinction shared by five of his 45 classmates. In June 1829, Lee was commissioned a brevet second lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers.[13] After graduation, while awaiting assignment, he returned to Virginia to find his mother on her deathbed; she died at Ravensworth on July 26, 1829.[14]

Ancestors of Robert E. Lee

Military engineer career

Lee at age 31 in 1838, as a Lieutenant of Engineers in the U.S. Army

On August 11, 1829, Brigadier General Charles Gratiot ordered Lee to Cockspur Island, Georgia. The plan was to build a fort on the marshy island which would command the outlet of the Savannah River. Lee was involved in the early stages of construction as the island was being drained and built up.[15] In 1831, it became apparent that the existing plan to build what became known as Fort Pulaski would have to be revamped, and Lee was transferred to Fort Monroe at the tip of the Virginia Peninsula (today in Hampton, Virginia).[16][citation not found]

While home in the summer of 1829, Lee had apparently courted Mary Custis whom he had known as a child. Lee obtained permission to write to her before leaving for Georgia, though Mary Custis warned Lee to be "discreet" in his writing, as her mother read her letters, especially from men.[17] Custis refused Lee the first time he asked to marry her; her father did not believe the son of the disgraced Light Horse Harry Lee was a suitable man for his daughter.[18] She accepted him with her father's consent in September 1830, while he was on summer leave,[19] and the two were wed on June 30, 1831.[20]

Lee's duties at Fort Monroe were varied, typical for a junior officer, and ranged from budgeting to designing buildings.[21][citation not found] Although Mary Lee accompanied her husband to Hampton Roads, she spent about a third of her time at Arlington, though the couple's first son, Custis Lee was born at Fort Monroe. Although the two were by all accounts devoted to each other, they were different in character: Robert Lee was tidy and punctual, qualities his wife lacked. Mary Lee also had trouble transitioning from being a rich man's daughter to having to manage a household with only one or two slaves.[22] Beginning in 1832, Robert Lee had a close but platonic relationship with Harriett Talcott, wife of his fellow officer Andrew Talcott.[23]

Fort Monroe, Hampton

Lee's early duty station

Fort Des Moines, Montrose

Lee's hand-drawn sketch

Life at Fort Monroe was marked by conflicts between artillery and engineering officers. Eventually the War Department transferred all engineering officers away from Fort Monroe, except Lee, who was ordered to take up residence on the artificial island of Rip Raps across the river from Fort Monroe, where Fort Wool would eventually rise, and continue work to improve the island. Lee duly moved there, then discharged all workers and informed the War Department he could not maintain laborers without the facilities of the fort.[24]

In 1834, Lee was transferred to Washington as General Gratiot's assistant.[25] Lee had hoped to rent a house in Washington for his family, but was not able to find one; the family lived at Arlington, though Lieutenant Lee rented a room at a Washington boarding house for when the roads were impassable.[26][citation not found] In mid-1835, Lee was assigned to assist Andrew Talcott in surveying the southern border of Michigan.[27] While on that expedition, he responded to a letter from an ill Mary Lee, which had requested he come to Arlington, "But why do you urge my immediate return, & tempt one in the strongest manner[?] ... I rather require to be strengthened & encouraged to the full performance of what I am called on to execute."[16] Lee completed the assignment and returned to his post in Washington, finding his wife ill at Ravensworth. Mary Lee, who had recently given birth to their second child, remained bedridden for several months. In October 1836, Lee was promoted to first lieutenant.[28]

Lee served as an assistant in the chief engineer's office in Washington, D.C. from 1834 to 1837, but spent the summer of 1835 helping to lay out the state line between Ohio and Michigan. As a first lieutenant of engineers in 1837, he supervised the engineering work for St. Louis harbor and for the upper Mississippi and Missouri rivers. Among his projects was the mapping of the Des Moines Rapids on the Mississippi above Keokuk, Iowa, where the Mississippi's mean depth of 2.4 feet (0.7 m) was the upper limit of steamboat traffic on the river. His work there earned him a promotion to captain. Around 1842, Captain Robert E. Lee arrived as Fort Hamilton's post engineer.[29]

Marriage and family

Robert E. Lee, around age 38, and his son William Henry Fitzhugh Lee, around age 8, c.1845

While Lee was stationed at Fort Monroe, he married Mary Anna Randolph Custis (1808–1873), great-granddaughter of Martha Washington by her first husband Daniel Parke Custis, and step-great-granddaughter of George Washington, the first president of the United States. Mary was the only surviving child of George Washington Parke Custis, George Washington's stepgrandson, and Mary Lee Fitzhugh Custis, daughter of William Fitzhugh[30] and Ann Bolling Randolph. Robert and Mary married on June 30, 1831, at Arlington House, her parents' house just across the Potomac from Washington. The 3rd U.S. Artillery served as honor guard at the marriage. They eventually had seven children, three boys and four girls:[citation needed]

George Washington Custis Lee (Custis, "Boo"); 1832–1913; served as major general in the Confederate Army and aide-de-camp to President Jefferson Davis, captured during the Battle of Sailor's Creek; unmarried

Mary Custis Lee (Mary, "Daughter"); 1835–1918; unmarried

William Henry Fitzhugh Lee ("Rooney"); 1837–1891; served as major general in the Confederate Army (cavalry); married twice; surviving children by second marriage

Anne Carter Lee (Annie); June 18, 1839 – October 20, 1862; died of typhoid fever, unmarried

Eleanor Agnes Lee (Agnes); 1841 – October 15, 1873; died of tuberculosis, unmarried

Robert Edward Lee, Jr. (Rob); 1843–1914; served as captain in the Confederate Army (Rockbridge Artillery); married twice; surviving children by second marriage

Mildred Childe Lee (Milly, "Precious Life"); 1846–1905; unmarried

All the children survived him except for Annie, who died in 1862. They are all buried with their parents in the crypt of the Lee Chapel at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.[citation needed]

Lee was a great-great-great-grandson of William Randolph and a great-great-grandson of Richard Bland.[31] He was also related to Helen Keller through Helen's mother, Kate, and was a distant relative of Admiral Willis Augustus Lee.[citation needed]

On May 1, 1864, General Lee was present at the baptism of General A.P. Hill's daughter, Lucy Lee Hill, to serve as her godfather. This is referenced in the painting Tender is the Heart by Mort Künstler.[32] He was also the godfather of actress and writer Odette Tyler, the daughter of brigadier general William Whedbee Kirkland.[33]

Mexican–American War

Robert E. Lee around age 43, when he was a brevet lieutenant-colonel of engineers, c. 1850

Lee distinguished himself in the Mexican–American War (1846–1848). He was one of Winfield Scott's chief aides in the march from Veracruz to Mexico City. He was instrumental in several American victories through his personal reconnaissance as a staff officer; he found routes of attack that the Mexicans had not defended because they thought the terrain was impassable.

He was promoted to brevet major after the Battle of Cerro Gordo on April 18, 1847.[34] He also fought at Contreras, Churubusco, and Chapultepec and was wounded at the last. By the end of the war, he had received additional brevet promotions to lieutenant colonel and colonel, but his permanent rank was still captain of engineers, and he would remain a captain until his transfer to the cavalry in 1855.

For the first time, Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant met and worked with each other during the Mexican–American War. Close observations of their commanders constituted a learning process for both Lee and Grant.[35] The Mexican–American War concluded on February 2, 1848.

After the Mexican War, Lee spent three years at Fort Carroll in Baltimore harbor. During this time, his service was interrupted by other duties, among them surveying and updating maps in Florida. Cuban revolutionary Narciso López intended to forcibly liberate Cuba from Spanish rule. In 1849, searching for a leader for his filibuster expedition, he approached Jefferson Davis, then a United States senator. Davis declined and suggested Lee, who also declined. Both decided it was inconsistent with their duties.[36][37]

Early 1850s: West Point and Texas

The 1850s were a difficult time for Lee, with his long absences from home, the increasing disability of his wife, troubles in taking over the management of a large slave plantation, and his often morbid concern with his personal failures.[38]

In 1852, Lee was appointed Superintendent of the Military Academy at West Point.[39] He was reluctant to enter what he called a "snake pit", but the War Department insisted and he obeyed. His wife occasionally came to visit. During his three years at West Point, Brevet Colonel Robert E. Lee improved the buildings and courses and spent much time with the cadets. Lee's oldest son, George Washington Custis Lee, attended West Point during his tenure. Custis Lee graduated in 1854, first in his class.[40]

Lee was enormously relieved to receive a long-awaited promotion as second-in-command of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment in Texas in 1855. It meant leaving the Engineering Corps and its sequence of staff jobs for the combat command he truly wanted. He served under Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston at Camp Cooper, Texas; their mission was to protect settlers from attacks by the Apache and the Comanche.

Late 1850s: Arlington plantation and the Custis slaves

Arlington House, Arlington

Mary Custis's inheritance in 1857

Christ Church, Alexandria, where the Lees worshiped

In 1857, his father-in-law George Washington Parke Custis died, creating a serious crisis when Lee took on the burden of executing the will. Custis's will encompassed vast landholdings and hundreds of slaves balanced against massive debts, and required Custis's former slaves "to be emancipated by my executors in such manner as to my executors may seem most expedient and proper, the said emancipation to be accomplished in not exceeding five years from the time of my decease."[41] The estate was in disarray, and the plantations had been poorly managed and were losing money.[42] Lee tried to hire an overseer to handle the plantation in his absence, writing to his cousin, "I wish to get an energetic honest farmer, who while he will be considerate & kind to the negroes, will be firm & make them do their duty."[43] But Lee failed to find a man for the job, and had to take a two-year leave of absence from the army in order to run the plantation himself.

Lee's more strict expectations and harsher punishments of the slaves on Arlington plantation nearly led to a slave revolt, since many of the slaves had been given to understand that they were to be made free as soon as Custis died, and protested angrily at the delay.[44] In May 1858, Lee wrote to his son Rooney, "I have had some trouble with some of the people. Reuben, Parks & Edward, in the beginning of the previous week, rebelled against my authority—refused to obey my orders, & said they were as free as I was, etc., etc.—I succeeded in capturing them & lodging them in jail. They resisted till overpowered & called upon the other people to rescue them."[43] Less than two months after they were sent to the Alexandria jail, Lee decided to remove these three men and three female house slaves from Arlington, and sent them under lock and key to the slave-trader William Overton Winston in Richmond, who was instructed to keep them in jail until he could find "good & responsible" slaveholders to work them until the end of the five-year period.[43]

By 1860 only one slave family was left intact on the estate. Some of the families had been together since their time at Mount Vernon.[45]

The Norris case

In 1859, three of the Arlington slaves—Wesley Norris, his sister Mary, and a cousin of theirs—fled for the North, but were captured a few miles from the Pennsylvania border and forced to return to Arlington. On June 24, 1859, the anti-slavery newspaper New York Daily Tribune published two anonymous letters (dated June 19, 1859[46] and June 21, 1859[47]), each claiming to have heard that Lee had the Norrises whipped, and each going so far as to claim that the overseer refused to whip the woman but that Lee took the whip and flogged her personally. Lee privately wrote to his son Custis that "The N. Y. Tribune has attacked me for my treatment of your grandfather's slaves, but I shall not reply. He has left me an unpleasant legacy."[48]

Wesley Norris himself spoke out about the incident after the war, in an 1866 interview printed in an abolitionist newspaper, the National Anti-Slavery Standard. Norris stated that after they had been captured, and forced to return to Arlington, Lee told them that "he would teach us a lesson we would not soon forget." According to Norris, Lee then had the three of them firmly tied to posts by the overseer, and ordered them whipped with fifty lashes for the men and twenty for Mary Norris. Norris claimed that Lee encouraged the whipping, and that when the overseer refused to do it, called in the county constable to do it instead. Unlike the anonymous letter writers, he does not state that Lee himself whipped any of the slaves. According to Norris, Lee "frequently enjoined [Constable] Williams to 'lay it on well,' an injunction which he did not fail to heed; not satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, Gen. Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with brine, which was done."[44][49]

The Norris men were then sent by Lee's agent to work on the railroads in Virginia and Alabama. According to the interview, Norris was sent to Richmond in January 1863 "from which place I finally made my escape through the rebel lines to freedom." But Federal authorities reported that Norris came within their lines on September 5, 1863, and that he "left Richmond ... with a pass from General Custis Lee."[50][51] Lee freed the Custis slaves, including Wesley Norris, after the end of the five-year period in the winter of 1862, filing the deed of manumission on December 29, 1862.[52][53]

Biographers of Lee have differed over the credibility of the account of the punishment as described in the letters in the Tribune and in Norris's personal account. They broadly agree that Lee had a group of escaped slaves recaptured, and that after recapturing them he hired them out off of the Arlington plantation as a punishment; but they disagree over the likelihood that Lee flogged them, and over the charge that he personally whipped Mary Norris. In 1934, Douglas S. Freeman described them as "Lee's first experience with the extravagance of irresponsible antislavery agitators" and asserted that "There is no evidence, direct or indirect, that Lee ever had them or any other Negroes flogged. The usage at Arlington and elsewhere in Virginia among people of Lee's station forbade such a thing."[54]

In 2000, Michael Fellman, in The Making of Robert E. Lee, found the claims that Lee had personally whipped Mary Norris "extremely unlikely," but found it not at all unlikely that Lee had ordered the runaways whipped: "corporal punishment (for which Lee substituted the euphemism 'firmness') was (believed to be) an intrinsic and necessary part of slave discipline. Although it was supposed to be applied only in a calm and rational manner, overtly physical domination of slaves, unchecked by law, was always brutal and potentially savage."[55]

In 2003, Bernice-Marie Yates's The Perfect Gentleman, cited Freeman's denial and followed his account in holding that, because of Lee's family connections to George Washington, he "was a prime target for abolitionists who lacked all the facts of the situation."[56]

Lee biographer Elizabeth Brown Pryor concluded in 2008 that "the facts are verifiable," based on "the consistency of the five extant descriptions of the episode (the only element that is not repeatedly corroborated is the allegation that Lee gave the beatings himself), as well as the existence of an account book that indicates the constable received compensation from Lee on the date that this event occurred."[57][58]

In 2014, Michael Korda wrote that "Although these letters are dismissed by most of Lee's biographers as exaggerated, or simply as unfounded abolitionist propaganda, it is hard to ignore them. ... It seems incongruously out of character for Lee to have whipped a slave woman himself, particularly one stripped to the waist, and that charge may have been a flourish added by the two correspondents; it was not repeated by Wesley Norris when his account of the incident was published in 1866. ... [A]lthough it seems unlikely that he would have done any of the whipping himself, he may not have flinched from observing it to make sure his orders were carried out exactly."[59]

Lee's views on race and slavery

Several historians have noted the paradoxical nature of Lee's beliefs and actions concerning race and slavery. While Lee protested he had sympathetic feelings for blacks, they were subordinate to his own racial identity.[60] While Lee held slavery to be an evil institution, he also saw some benefit to blacks held in slavery.[61] While Lee helped assist individual slaves to freedom in Liberia, and provided for their emancipation in his own will,[62] he believed the enslaved should be eventually freed in a general way only at some unspecified future date as a part of God's purpose.[60][63] Slavery for Lee was a moral and religious issue, and not one that would yield to political solutions.[64] Emancipation would sooner come from Christian impulse among slave masters before "storms and tempests of fiery controversy" such as was occurring in "Bleeding Kansas".[60] Countering Southerners who argued for slavery as a positive good, Lee in his well-known analysis of slavery from an 1856 letter (see below) called it a moral and political evil. While both Robert and his wife Mary Lee were disgusted with slavery, they also defended it against abolitionist demands for immediate emancipation for all enslaved.[65]

Lee argued that slavery was bad for white people but good for black people,[66] claiming that he found slavery bothersome and time-consuming as an everyday institution to run. In an 1856 letter to his wife, he maintained that slavery was a great evil, but primarily due to adverse impact that it had on white people:[67]

In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence.[68]

Lee's father-in-law G. W. Parke Custis freed his slaves in his will.[69] In the same tradition, before leaving to serve in Mexico, Lee had written a will providing for the manumission of the only slaves he owned.[70] Parke Custis was a member of the American Colonization Society, which was formed to gradually end slavery by establishing a free republic in Liberia for African-Americans, and Lee assisted several ex-slaves to emigrate there. Also, according to historian Richard B. McCaslin, Lee was a gradual emancipationist, denouncing extremist proposals for immediate abolition of slavery. Lee rejected what he called evilly motivated political passion, fearing a civil and servile war from precipitous emancipation.[71]

Historian Elizabeth Brown Pryor offered an alternative interpretation of Lee's voluntary manumission of slaves in his will, and assisting slaves to a life of freedom in Liberia, seeing Lee as conforming to a "primacy of slave law". She wrote that Lee's private views on race and slavery,

"which today seem startling, were entirely unremarkable in Lee's world. No visionary, Lee nearly always tried to conform to accepted opinions. His assessment of black inferiority, of the necessity of racial stratification, the primacy of slave law, and even a divine sanction for it all, was in keeping with the prevailing views of other moderate slaveholders and a good many prominent Northerners."[72]

On taking on the role of administrator for the Parke Custis will, Lee used a provision to retain them in slavery to produce income for the estate to retire debt.[69] Lee did not welcome the role of planter while administering the Custis properties at Romancoke, another nearby the Pamunkey River and Arlington; he rented the estate's mill. While all the estates prospered under his administration, Lee was unhappy at direct participation in slavery as a hated institution.[70]

Even before what Michael Fellman called a "sorry involvement in actual slave management", Lee judged the experience of white mastery to be a greater moral evil to the white man than blacks suffering under the "painful discipline" of slavery which introduced Christianity, literacy and a work ethic to the "heathen African".[73] Columbia University historian Eric Foner notes that:

Lee "was not a pro-slavery ideologue. But I think equally important is that, unlike some white southerners, he never spoke out against slavery"[74]

By the time of Lee's career in the U.S. Army, the officers of West Point stood aloof from political-party and sectional strife on such issues as slavery, as a matter of principle, and Lee adhered to the principle.[75][76] He considered it his patriotic duty to be apolitical while in active Army service,[77][78][79] and Lee did not speak out publicly on the subject of slavery prior to the Civil War.[80][81] Before the outbreak of the War, in 1860, Lee voted for John C. Breckinridge, who was the extreme pro-slavery candidate in the 1860 presidential election, not John Bell, the more moderate Southerner who won Virginia.[82]

Lee himself owned a small number of slaves in his lifetime and considered himself a paternalistic master.[82] There are various historical and newspaper hearsay accounts of Lee personally whipping a slave, but they are not direct eyewitness accounts. He was definitely involved in administering the day-to-day operations of a plantation and was involved in the recapture of runaway slaves.[83] One historian noted that Lee separated slave families, something that prominent slave-holding families in Virginia such as Washington and Custis did not do.[66] In 1862, Lee freed the slaves that his wife inherited, but that was in accordance with his father-in-law's will.[84]

Foner writes that "Lee's code of gentlemanly conduct did not seem to apply to blacks" during the War, as he did not stop his soldiers from kidnapping free black farmers and selling them into slavery.[74] Princeton University historian James M. McPherson noted that Lee initially rejected a prisoner exchange between the Confederacy and the Union when the Union demanded that black Union soldiers be included.[66] Lee did not accept the swap until a few months before the Confederacy's surrender.[66]

After the War, Lee told a congressional committee that blacks were "not disposed to work" and did not possess the intellectual capacity to vote and participate in politics.[84] Lee also said to the committee that he hoped that Virginia could "get rid of them," referring to blacks.[84] While not politically active, Lee defended Lincoln's successor Andrew Johnson's approach to Reconstruction, which according to Foner, "abandoned the former slaves to the mercy of governments controlled by their former owners."[85] According to Foner, "A word from Lee might have encouraged white Southerners to accord blacks equal rights and inhibited the violence against the freed people that swept the region during Reconstruction, but he chose to remain silent."[84] Lee was also urged to condemn the white-supremacy[86] organization Ku Klux Klan, but opted to remain silent.[82]

In the generation following the war, Lee, though he died just a few years later, became a central figure in the Lost Cause interpretation of the war. The argument that Lee had always somehow opposed slavery, and freed his wife's slaves, helped maintain his stature as a symbol of Southern honor and national reconciliation.[82] Douglas Southall Freeman's Pulitzer prize-winning four-volume R. E. Lee: A Biography (1936), which was for a long period considered the definitive work on Lee, downplayed his involvement in slavery and emphasized Lee as a virtuous person. Eric Foner, who describes Freeman's volume as a "hagiography", notes that on the whole, Freeman "displayed little interest in Lee's relationship to slavery. The index to his four volumes contained 22 entries for 'devotion to duty', 19 for 'kindness', 53 for Lee's celebrated horse, Traveller. But 'slavery', 'slave emancipation' and 'slave insurrection' together received five. Freeman observed, without offering details, that slavery in Virginia represented the system 'at its best'. He ignored the postwar testimony of Lee's former slave Wesley Norris about the brutal treatment to which he had been subjected."[82]

Harpers Ferry and return to Texas, 1859–1861

Both Harpers Ferry and the secession of Texas were monumental events leading up to the Civil War. Robert E. Lee was at both events. Lee initially remained loyal to the Union after Texas seceded.

Harpers Ferry

John Brown led a band of 21 abolitionists who seized the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in October 1859, hoping to incite a slave rebellion. President James Buchanan gave Lee command of detachments of militia, soldiers, and United States Marines, to suppress the uprising and arrest its leaders.[87] By the time Lee arrived that night, the militia on the site had surrounded Brown and his hostages. At dawn, Brown refused the demand for surrender. Lee attacked, and Brown and his followers were captured after three minutes of fighting. Lee's summary report of the episode shows Lee believed it "was the attempt of a fanatic or madman". Lee said Brown achieved "temporary success" by creating panic and confusion and by "magnifying" the number of participants involved in the raid.[88]

Texas

In 1860, Lt. Col. Robert E. Lee relieved Major Heintzelman at Fort Brown, and the Mexican authorities offered to restrain "their citizens from making predatory descents upon the territory and people of Texas ... this was the last active operation of the Cortina War". Rip Ford, a Texas Ranger at the time, described Lee as "dignified without hauteur, grand without pride ... he evinced an imperturbable self-possession, and a complete control of his passions ... possessing the capacity to accomplish great ends and the gift of controlling and leading men."[89]

When Texas seceded from the Union in February 1861, General David E. Twiggs surrendered all the American forces (about 4,000 men, including Lee, and commander of the Department of Texas) to the Texans. Twiggs immediately resigned from the U.S. Army and was made a Confederate general. Lee went back to Washington and was appointed Colonel of the First Regiment of Cavalry in March 1861. Lee's colonelcy was signed by the new president, Abraham Lincoln. Three weeks after his promotion, Colonel Lee was offered a senior command (with the rank of Major General) in the expanding Army to fight the Southern States that had left the Union. Fort Mason, Texas was Lee's last command with the United States Army.[90]

Civil War

Resignation from United States Army

Unlike many Southerners who expected a glorious war, Lee correctly predicted it as protracted and devastating.[91] He privately opposed the new Confederate States of America in letters in early 1861, denouncing secession as "nothing but revolution" and an unconstitutional betrayal of the efforts of the Founding Fathers. Writing to George Washington Custis in January, Lee stated:

The South, in my opinion, has been aggrieved by the acts of the North, as you say. I feel the aggression, and am willing to take every proper step for redress. It is the principle I contend for, not individual or private benefit. As an American citizen, I take great pride in my country, her prosperity and institutions, and would defend any State if her rights were invaded. But I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union. It would be an accumulation of all the evils we complain of, and I am willing to sacrifice everything but honor for its preservation. I hope, therefore, that all constitutional means will be exhausted before there is a resort to force. Secession is nothing but revolution. The framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom, and forbearance in its formation, and surrounded it with so many guards and securities, if it was intended to be broken by every member of the Confederacy at will. It was intended for "perpetual union," so expressed in the preamble, and for the establishment of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolved by revolution, or the consent of all the people in convention assembled.[92]

Lee in uniform, 1863

Despite opposing secession, Lee said in January that "we can with a clear conscience separate" if all peaceful means failed. He agreed with secessionists in most areas, rejecting the Northern abolitionists' criticisms and their prevention the expansion of slavery to the new western territories, and fear of its[which?] larger population. Lee supported the Crittenden Compromise, which would have constitutionally protected slavery.[93]

Lee's objection to secession was ultimately outweighed by a sense of personal honor, reservations about the legitimacy of a strife-ridden "Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets", and his duty to defend his native Virginia if attacked.[92] He was asked while leaving Texas by a lieutenant if he intended to fight for the Confederacy or the Union, to which Lee replied, "I shall never bear arms against the Union, but it may be necessary for me to carry a musket in the defense of my native state, Virginia, in which case I shall not prove recreant to my duty".[94][93]

Although Virginia had the most slaves of any state, it was more similar to Maryland, which stayed in the Union, than to the Deep South; a convention voted against secession in early 1861. Scott, commanding general of the Union Army and Lee's mentor, told Lincoln he wanted him for a top command, telling Secretary of War Simon Cameron that he had "entire confidence" in Lee. He accepted a promotion to colonel of the 1st Cavalry Regiment on March 28, again swearing an oath to the United States.[95][93] Meanwhile, Lee ignored an offer of command from the Confederacy. After Lincoln's call for troops to put down the rebellion, a second Virginia convention in Richmond voted to secede[96] on April 17, and a May 23 referendum would likely ratify the decision. That night Lee dined with brother Smith and cousin Phillips, naval officers. Because of Lee's indecision, Phillips went to the War Department the next morning to warn that the Union might lose his cousin if the government did not act quickly.[93]

In Washington that day,[91] Lee was offered by presidential advisor Francis P. Blair a role as major general to command the defense of the national capital. He replied:

Mr. Blair, I look upon secession as anarchy. If I owned the four millions of slaves in the South I would sacrifice them all to the Union; but how can I draw my sword upon Virginia, my native state?[96]

Lee immediately went to Scott, who tried to persuade him that Union forces would be large enough to prevent the South from fighting, so he would not have to oppose his state; Lee disagreed. When Lee asked if he could go home and not fight, the fellow Virginian said that the army did not need equivocal soldiers and that if he wanted to resign, he should do so before receiving official orders. Scott told him that Lee had made "the greatest mistake of your life".[93]

Lee agreed that to avoid dishonor he had to resign before receiving unwanted orders. While historians have usually called his decision inevitable ("the answer he was born to make", wrote Douglas Southall Freeman; another called it a "no-brainer") given the ties to family and state, an 1871 letter from his eldest daughter, Mary Custis Lee, to a biographer described Lee as "worn and harassed" yet calm as he deliberated alone in his office. People on the street noticed Lee's grim face as he tried to decide over the next two days, and he later said that he kept the resignation letter for a day before sending it on April 20. Two days later the Richmond convention invited Lee to the city. It elected him as commander of Virginia state forces before his arrival on April 23, and almost immediately gave him George Washington's sword as symbol of his appointment; whether he was told of a decision he did not want without time to decide, or did want the excitement and opportunity of command, is unclear.[12][93][91]

A cousin on Scott's staff told the family that Lee's decision so upset Scott that he collapsed on a sofa and mourned as if he had lost a son, and asked to not hear Lee's name. When Lee told family his decision he said "I suppose you will all think I have done very wrong", as the others were mostly pro-Union; only Mary Custis was a secessionist, and her mother especially wanted to choose the Union but told her husband that she would support whatever he decided. Many younger men like nephew Fitzhugh wanted to support the Confederacy, but Lee's three sons joined the Confederate military only after their father's decision.[93][91]

Most family members,like brother Smith, also reluctantly chose the South, but Smith's wife and Anne, Lee's sister, still supported the Union; Anne's son joined the Union Army, and no one in his family ever spoke to Lee again. Many cousins fought for the Confederacy, but Phillips and John Fitzgerald told Lee in person that they would uphold their oaths; John H. Upshur stayed with the Union military despite much family pressure; Roger Jones stayed in the Union army after Lee refused to advise him on what to do; and two of Philip Fendall's sons fought for the Union. Forty percent of Virginian officers stayed with the North.[93][91]

Early role

At the outbreak of war, Lee was appointed to command all of Virginia's forces, but upon the formation of the Confederate States Army, he was named one of its first five full generals. Lee did not wear the insignia of a Confederate general, but only the three stars of a Confederate colonel, equivalent to his last U.S. Army rank.[97] He did not intend to wear a general's insignia until the Civil War had been won and he could be promoted, in peacetime, to general in the Confederate Army.

Lee's first field assignment was commanding Confederate forces in western Virginia, where he was defeated at the Battle of Cheat Mountain and was widely blamed for Confederate setbacks.[98] He was then sent to organize the coastal defenses along the Carolina and Georgia seaboard, appointed commander, "Department of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida" on November 5, 1861. Between then and the fall of Fort Pulaski, April 11, 1862, he put in place a defense of Savannah that proved successful in blocking Federal advance on Savannah. Confederate fort and naval gunnery dictated night time movement and construction by the besiegers. Federal preparations required four months. In those four months, Lee developed a defense in depth. Behind Fort Pulaski on the Savannah River, Fort Jackson was improved, and two additional batteries covered river approaches.[99] In the face of the Union superiority in naval, artillery and infantry deployment, Lee was able to block any Federal advance on Savannah, and at the same time, well-trained Georgia troops were released in time to meet McClellan's Peninsula Campaign. The city of Savannah would not fall until Sherman's approach from the interior at the end of 1864.

At first, the press spoke to the disappointment of losing Fort Pulaski. Surprised by the effectiveness of large caliber Parrott Rifles in their first deployment, it was widely speculated that only betrayal could have brought overnight surrender to a Third System Fort. Lee was said to have failed to get effective support in the Savannah River from the three sidewheeler gunboats of the Georgia Navy. Although again blamed by the press for Confederate reverses, he was appointed military adviser to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, the former U.S. Secretary of War. While in Richmond, Lee was ridiculed as the 'King of Spades' for his excessive digging of trenches around the capitol. These trenches would later play a pivotal role in battles near the end of the war.[100]

Commander, Army of Northern Virginia (June 1862 – June 1863)

In the spring of 1862, in the Peninsula Campaign, the Union Army of the Potomac under General George B. McClellan advanced on Richmond from Fort Monroe to the east. McClellan forced Gen. Joseph E. Johnston and the Army of Virginia to retreat to just north and east of the Confederate capital.

Then Johnston was wounded at the Battle of Seven Pines, on June 1, 1862. Lee now got his first opportunity to lead an army in the field – the force he renamed the Army of Northern Virginia, signalling his confidence that the Union army would be driven away from Richmond. Early in the war, Lee had been called "Granny Lee" for his allegedly timid style of command.[101] Confederate newspaper editorials objected to him replacing Johnston, opining that Lee would be passive, waiting for Union attack. And for the first three weeks of June, he did not attack, instead strengthening Richmond's defenses.

Lee mounted on Traveller (September 1866)

But then he launched a series of bold attacks against McClellan's forces, the Seven Days Battles. Despite superior Union numbers, and some clumsy tactical performances by his subordinates, Lee's attacks derailed McClellan's plans and drove back part of his forces. Confederate casualties were heavy, but McClellan was unnerved, retreated 25 miles (40 km) to the lower James River, and abandoned the Peninsula Campaign. This success completely changed Confederate morale, and the public's regard for Lee. After the Seven Days Battles, and until the end of the war, his men called him simply "Marse Robert", a term of respect and affection.

The setback, and the resulting drop in Union morale, impelled Lincoln to adopt a new policy of relentless, committed warfare.[102][103] After the Seven Days, Lincoln decided he would move to emancipate most Confederate slaves by executive order, as a military act, using his authority as commander-in-chief.[104] But he needed a Union victory first.

Meanwhile, Lee defeated another Union army under Gen. John Pope at the Second Battle of Bull Run. In less than 90 days after taking command, Lee had run McClellan off the Peninsula, defeated Pope, and moved the battle lines 82 miles (132 km) north, from just outside Richmond to 20 miles (32 km) south of Washington.

Lee now invaded Maryland and Pennsylvania, hoping to collect supplies in Union territory, and possibly win a victory that would sway the upcoming Union elections in favor of ending the war. But McClellan's men found a lost Confederate dispatch, Special Order 191, that revealed Lee's plans and movements. McClellan always exaggerated Lee's numerical strength, but now he knew the Confederate army was divided and could be destroyed in detail. However, McClellan moved slowly, not realizing a spy had informed Lee that McClellan had the plans. Lee quickly concentrated his forces west of Antietam Creek, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, where McClellan attacked on September 17. The Battle of Antietam was the single bloodiest day of the war, with both sides suffering enormous losses. Lee's army barely withstood the Union assaults, then retreated to Virginia the next day. This narrow Confederate defeat gave President Abraham Lincoln the opportunity to issue his Emancipation Proclamation,[105] which put the Confederacy on the diplomatic and moral defensive.[106]

Disappointed by McClellan's failure to destroy Lee's army, Lincoln named Ambrose Burnside as commander of the Army of the Potomac. Burnside ordered an attack across the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg, Virginia. Delays in bridging the river allowed Lee's army ample time to organize strong defenses, and the Union frontal assault on December 13, 1862, was a disaster. There were 12,600 Union casualties to 5,000 Confederate; one of the most one-sided battles in the Civil War.[107] After this victory, Lee reportedly said "It is well that war is so terrible, else we should grow too fond of it."[107] At Fredericksburg, according to historian Michael Fellman, Lee had completely entered into the "spirit of war, where destructiveness took on its own beauty."[107]

After the bitter Union defeat at Fredericksburg, President Lincoln named Joseph Hooker commander of the Army of the Potomac. In May 1863, Hooker maneuvered to attack Lee's army via Chancellorsville, Virginia. But Hooker was defeated by Lee's daring maneuver: dividing his army and sending Stonewall Jackson's corps to attack Hooker's flank. Lee won a decisive victory over a larger force, but with heavy casualties, including Jackson, his finest corps commander, who was accidentally killed by his own troops.[108]

Battle of Gettysburg

The critical decisions came in May–June 1863, after Lee's smashing victory at the Battle of Chancellorsville. The western front was crumbling, as multiple uncoordinated Confederate armies were unable to handle General Ulysses S. Grant's campaign against Vicksburg. The top military advisers wanted to save Vicksburg, but Lee persuaded Davis to overrule them and authorize yet another invasion of the North. The immediate goal was to acquire urgently needed supplies from the rich farming districts of Pennsylvania; a long-term goal was to stimulate peace activity in the North by demonstrating the power of the South to invade. Lee's decision proved a significant strategic blunder and cost the Confederacy control of its western regions, and nearly cost Lee his own army as Union forces cut him off from the South.[109]

Battle of Gettysburg, by Thure de Thulstrup

In the summer of 1863, Lee invaded the North again, marching through western Maryland and into south central Pennsylvania. He encountered Union forces under George G. Meade at the three-day Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania in July; the battle would produce the largest number of casualties in the American Civil War. With some of his subordinates being new and inexperienced in their commands, J.E.B. Stuart's cavalry being out of the area, and Lee being slightly ill, he was less than comfortable with how events were unfolding. While the first day of battle was controlled by the Confederates, key terrain that should have been taken by General Ewell was not. The second day ended with the Confederates unable to break the Union position, and the Union being more solidified. Lee's decision on the third day, against the judgment of his best corps commander General Longstreet, to launch a massive frontal assault on the center of the Union line turned out to be disastrous. The assault known as Pickett's Charge was repulsed and resulted in heavy Confederate losses. The general rode out to meet his retreating army and proclaimed, "All this has been my fault."[110] Lee was compelled to retreat. Despite flooded rivers that blocked his retreat, he escaped Meade's ineffective pursuit. Following his defeat at Gettysburg, Lee sent a letter of resignation to President Davis on August 8, 1863, but Davis refused Lee's request. That fall, Lee and Meade met again in two minor campaigns that did little to change the strategic standoff. The Confederate Army never fully recovered from the substantial losses incurred during the three-day battle in southern Pennsylvania. The historian Shelby Foote stated, "Gettysburg was the price the South paid for having Robert E. Lee as commander."

Ulysses S. Grant and the Union offensive

In 1864 the new Union general-in-chief, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, sought to use his large advantages in manpower and material resources to destroy Lee's army by attrition, pinning Lee against his capital of Richmond. Lee successfully stopped each attack, but Grant with his superior numbers kept pushing each time a bit farther to the southeast. These battles in the Overland Campaign included the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House and Cold Harbor.

Grant eventually was able to stealthily move his army across the James River. After stopping a Union attempt to capture Petersburg, Virginia, a vital railroad link supplying Richmond, Lee's men built elaborate trenches and were besieged in Petersburg, a development which presaged the trench warfare of World War I. Lee attempted to break the stalemate by sending Jubal A. Early on a raid through the Shenandoah Valley to Washington, D.C., but Early was defeated early on by the superior forces of Philip Sheridan. The Siege of Petersburg lasted from June 1864 until March 1865, with Lee's outnumbered and poorly supplied army shrinking daily because of desertions by disheartened Confederates.

General in Chief

Lee with son Custis (left) and aide Walter H. Taylor (right) by Brady, April 16, 1865

On February 6, 1865, Lee was appointed General in Chief of the Armies of the Confederate States.

As the South ran out of manpower the issue of arming the slaves became paramount. Lee explained, "We should employ them without delay ... [along with] gradual and general emancipation". The first units were in training as the war ended.[111][112] As the Confederate army was devastated by casualties, disease and desertion, the Union attack on Petersburg succeeded on April 2, 1865. Lee abandoned Richmond and retreated west. Lee then made an attempt to escape to the southwest and join up with Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee in North Carolina. However, his forces were soon surrounded and he surrendered them to Grant on April 9, 1865, at the Battle of Appomattox Court House.[113] Other Confederate armies followed suit and the war ended. The day after his surrender, Lee issued his Farewell Address to his army.

Lee resisted calls by some officers to reject surrender and allow small units to melt away into the mountains, setting up a lengthy guerrilla war. He insisted the war was over and energetically campaigned for inter-sectional reconciliation. "So far from engaging in a war to perpetuate slavery, I am rejoiced that slavery is abolished. I believe it will be greatly for the interests of the South."[114]

Summaries of Lee's Civil War battles

The following are summaries of Civil War campaigns and major battles where Robert E. Lee was the commanding officer:[115]

Battle Date Result Opponent Confederate troop strength Union troop strength Confederate casualties Union casualties Notes

Cheat Mountain September 11–13, 1861 Defeat Reynolds 5,000 3,000 ~90 88 Lee's first battle of the Civil War. Severely criticized, Lee was nicknamed "Granny Lee". Lee was sent to SC and GA to supervise fortifications.[116]

Seven Days June 25 – July 1, 1862 Victory

Oak Grove: Stalemate (Union withdrawal)

Beaver Dam Creek: Union victory

Gaine's Mill: Confederate victory

Savage's Station: Stalemate

Glendale: Stalemate (Union withdrawal)

Malvern Hill: Union victory

McClellan 95,000 91,000 20,614 15,849 Lee acquitted himself well, and remained in field command for the duration of the war under the direction of Jefferson Davis. Union troops remained on the Lower Peninsula and at Fortress Monroe, which became a terminus on the Underground Railroad, and the site terming escaped slaves as "contribands", no longer returned to their rebel owners.

Second Manassas August 28–30, 1862 Victory Pope 49,000 76,000 9,197 16,054 Union forces continued to occupy northern Virginia

South Mountain September 14, 1862 Defeat McClellan 18,000 28,000 2,685 1,813 Confederates lost control of westernmost Virginian congressional districts which would later be the core counties of West Virginia.

Antietam September 16–18, 1862 Stalemate McClellan 52,000 75,000 13,724 12,410 Tactical stalemate but strategic Union victory. The Confederates lost an opportunity to gain foreign recognition, Lincoln moved forward on his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.

Fredericksburg December 11, 1862 Victory Burnside 72,000 114,000 5,309 12,653 With Lee's troops and supplies depleted, Confederates remained in place south of the Rappahannock. Union forces did not withdraw from northern Virginia.

Chancellorsville May 1, 1863 Victory Hooker 57,000 105,000 12,764 16,792 Union forces withdrew to ring of defenses around Washington, DC.

Gettysburg July 1, 1863 Defeat Meade 75,000 83,000 23,231

–28,063 23,049 The Confederate army was physically and spiritually exhausted. Meade was criticized for not immediately pursuing Lee's army. This battle become known as the High Water Mark of the Confederacy.[117] Lee would never personally invade the North again after this battle. Rather he was determined to defend Richmond and eventually Petersburg at all costs.

Wilderness May 5, 1864 Inconclusive Grant 61,000 102,000 11,400 18,400 Lee's tactical victory, yet Grant continued his offensive, circling east and south advancing on Richmond and Petersburg

Spotsylvania May 12, 1864 Inconclusive[118] Grant 52,000 100,000 12,000 18,000 Although beaten and unable to take Lee's defenses, Grant continued the Union offensive, circling east and south advancing on Richmond and Petersburg

North Anna May 23–26, 1864 Inconclusive Grant 50,000–53,000 67,000–100,000 1,552 3,986 North Anna had proved to be a relatively minor affair when compared to other Civil War battles.

Totopotomoy Creek May 28–30, 1864 Inconclusive Grant N/A N/A 1,593 731 As Grant continued his attempts to maneuver around Lee's right flank and lure him into a general battle in the open.

Cold Harbor June 1, 1864 Inconclusive Grant 62,000 108,000 5,287 12,000 Although Grant was able to continue his offensive, Grant referred to the Cold Harbor assault as his "greatest regret" of the war in his memoirs.

Fussell's Mill August 14, 1864 Victory Hancock 20,000 28,000 1,700 2,901 Union attempt to break Confederate siege lines at Richmond, the Confederate capital

Appomattox Campaign March 29, 1865 Defeat Grant 50,000 113,000 N/A General Lee surrenders 10,780 General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant.[119] After the surrender Grant gave Lee's army much-needed food rations; they were paroled to return to their homes, never again to take up arms against the Union.

Postbellum life

Lee in 1869 (photo by Levin C. Handy)

External video

video icon Booknotes interview with Emory Thomas on Robert E. Lee: A Biography, September 10, 1995, C-SPAN

After the war, Lee was not arrested or punished (although he was indicted [120]), but he did lose the right to vote as well as some property. Lee's prewar family home, the Custis-Lee Mansion, was seized by Union forces during the war and turned into Arlington National Cemetery, and his family was not compensated until more than a decade after his death.[121]

In 1866 Lee counseled southerners not to resume fighting, of which Grant said Lee was "setting an example of forced acquiescence so grudging and pernicious in its effects as to be hardly realized".[122] Lee joined with Democrats in opposing the Radical Republicans who demanded punitive measures against the South, distrusted its commitment to the abolition of slavery and, indeed, distrusted the region's loyalty to the United States.[123][124] Lee supported a system of free public schools for blacks, but forthrightly opposed allowing blacks to vote. "My own opinion is that, at this time, they [black Southerners] cannot vote intelligently, and that giving them the [vote] would lead to a great deal of demagogism, and lead to embarrassments in various ways," Lee stated.[125] Emory Thomas says Lee had become a suffering Christ-like icon for ex-Confederates. President Grant invited him to the White House in 1869, and he went. Nationally he became an icon of reconciliation between the North and South, and the reintegration of former Confederates into the national fabric.[126]

General Lee and his Confederate officers in their first meeting since Appomattox, August 1869.

Lee hoped to retire to a farm of his own, but he was too much a regional symbol to live in obscurity. From April to June 1865, he and his family resided in Richmond at the Stewart-Lee House.[127] He accepted an offer to serve as the president of Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) in Lexington, Virginia, and served from October 1865 until his death. The Trustees used his famous name in large-scale fund-raising appeals and Lee transformed Washington College into a leading Southern college, expanding its offerings significantly, adding programs in commerce and journalism, and incorporating the Lexington Law School. Lee was well liked by the students, which enabled him to announce an "honor system" like that of West Point, explaining that "we have but one rule here, and it is that every student be a gentleman." To speed up national reconciliation Lee recruited students from the North and made certain they were well treated on campus and in town.[128]

Several glowing appraisals of Lee's tenure as college president have survived, depicting the dignity and respect he commanded among all. Previously, most students had been obliged to occupy the campus dormitories, while only the most mature were allowed to live off-campus. Lee quickly reversed this rule, requiring most students to board off-campus, and allowing only the most mature to live in the dorms as a mark of privilege; the results of this policy were considered a success. A typical account by a professor there states that "the students fairly worshipped him, and deeply dreaded his displeasure; yet so kind, affable, and gentle was he toward them that all loved to approach him. ... No student would have dared to violate General Lee's expressed wish or appeal."[129]

While at Washington College, Lee told a colleague that the greatest mistake of his life was taking a military education.[130]

During his time as president of Washington College, he defended his father in a biographical sketch.[131]

President Johnson's amnesty pardons

Oath of amnesty submitted by Robert E. Lee in 1865

On May 29, 1865, President Andrew Johnson issued a Proclamation of Amnesty and Pardon to persons who had participated in the rebellion against the United States. There were fourteen excepted classes, though, and members of those classes had to make special application to the President. Lee sent an application to Grant and wrote to President Johnson on June 13, 1865:

Being excluded from the provisions of amnesty & pardon contained in the proclamation of the 29th Ulto; I hereby apply for the benefits, & full restoration of all rights & privileges extended to those included in its terms. I graduated at the Mil. Academy at West Point in June 1829. Resigned from the U.S. Army April '61. Was a General in the Confederate Army, & included in the surrender of the Army of N. Virginia 9 April '65.[132]

On October 2, 1865, the same day that Lee was inaugurated as president of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia, he signed his Amnesty Oath, thereby complying fully with the provision of Johnson's proclamation. Lee was not pardoned, nor was his citizenship restored.[132]

Three years later, on December 25, 1868, Johnson proclaimed a second amnesty which removed previous exceptions, such as the one that affected Lee.[133]

Postwar politics

Lee, who had opposed secession and remained mostly indifferent to politics before the Civil War, supported President Andrew Johnson's plan of Presidential Reconstruction that took effect in 1865–66. However, he opposed the Congressional Republican program that took effect in 1867. In February 1866, he was called to testify before the Joint Congressional Committee on Reconstruction in Washington, where he expressed support for Johnson's plans for quick restoration of the former Confederate states, and argued that restoration should return, as far as possible, to the status quo ante in the Southern states' governments (with the exception of slavery).[134]

Robert E. Lee, oil on canvas, Edward Calledon Bruce, 1865. Virginia Historical Society

Lee told the committee that "every one with whom I associate expresses kind feelings towards the freedmen. They wish to see them get on in the world, and particularly to take up some occupation for a living, and to turn their hands to some work." Lee also expressed his "willingness that blacks should be educated, and ... that it would be better for the blacks and for the whites." Lee forthrightly opposed allowing blacks to vote: "My own opinion is that, at this time, they [black Southerners] cannot vote intelligently, and that giving them the [vote] would lead to a great deal of demagogism, and lead to embarrassments in various ways."[135][136]

In an interview in May 1866, Lee said: "The Radical party are likely to do a great deal of harm, for we wish now for good feeling to grow up between North and South, and the President, Mr. Johnson, has been doing much to strengthen the feeling in favor of the Union among us. The relations between the Negroes and the whites were friendly formerly, and would remain so if legislation be not passed in favor of the blacks, in a way that will only do them harm."[137]

In 1868, Lee's ally Alexander H. H. Stuart drafted a public letter of endorsement for the Democratic Party's presidential campaign, in which Horatio Seymour ran against Lee's old foe Republican Ulysses S. Grant. Lee signed it along with thirty-one other ex-Confederates. The Democratic campaign, eager to publicize the endorsement, published the statement widely in newspapers.[138] Their letter claimed paternalistic concern for the welfare of freed Southern blacks, stating that "The idea that the Southern people are hostile to the negroes and would oppress them, if it were in their power to do so, is entirely unfounded. They have grown up in our midst, and we have been accustomed from childhood to look upon them with kindness."[139] However, it also called for the restoration of white political rule, arguing that "It is true that the people of the South, in common with a large majority of the people of the North and West, are, for obvious reasons, inflexibly opposed to any system of laws that would place the political power of the country in the hands of the negro race. But this opposition springs from no feeling of enmity, but from a deep-seated conviction that, at present, the negroes have neither the intelligence nor the other qualifications which are necessary to make them safe depositories of political power."[140]

In his public statements and private correspondence, Lee argued that a tone of reconciliation and patience would further the interests of white Southerners better than hotheaded antagonism to federal authority or the use of violence. Lee repeatedly expelled white students from Washington College for violent attacks on local black men, and publicly urged obedience to the authorities and respect for law and order.[141] He privately chastised fellow ex-Confederates such as Jefferson Davis and Jubal Early for their frequent, angry responses to perceived Northern insults, writing in private to them as he had written to a magazine editor in 1865, that "It should be the object of all to avoid controversy, to allay passion, give full scope to reason and to every kindly feeling. By doing this and encouraging our citizens to engage in the duties of life with all their heart and mind, with a determination not to be turned aside by thoughts of the past and fears of the future, our country will not only be restored in material prosperity, but will be advanced in science, in virtue and in religion."[142]

Illness and death

Lee's death mask

"Recumbent Statue" of Robert E. Lee asleep on the battlefield, Lee Chapel, Lexington, Virginia.

On September 28, 1870, Lee suffered a stroke. He died two weeks later, shortly after 9 a.m. on October 12, 1870, in Lexington, Virginia, from the effects of pneumonia. According to one account, his last words on the day of his death, were "Tell Hill he must come up! Strike the tent",[143] but this is debatable because of conflicting accounts and because Lee's stroke had resulted in aphasia, possibly rendering him unable to speak.[144]

At first no suitable coffin for the body could be located. The muddy roads were too flooded for anyone to get in or out of the town of Lexington. An undertaker had ordered three from Richmond that had reached Lexington, but due to unprecedented flooding from long-continued heavy rains, the caskets were washed down the Maury River. Two neighborhood boys, C.G. Chittum and Robert E. Hillis, found one of the coffins that had been swept ashore. Undamaged, it was used for the General's body, though it was a bit short for him. As a result, Lee was buried without shoes.[145] He was buried underneath Lee Chapel at Washington and Lee University, where his body remains.

Robert Edward Lee in art at the Battle of Chancellorsville in a stained glass window of the Washington National Cathedral

Legacy

Among the supporters of the Confederacy, Lee came to be even more revered after his surrender than he had been during the war, when Stonewall Jackson had been the great Confederate hero. In an address before the Southern Historical Society in Atlanta, Georgia in 1874, Benjamin Harvey Hill described Lee in this way:

He was a foe without hate; a friend without treachery; a soldier without cruelty; a victor without oppression, and a victim without murmuring. He was a public officer without vices; a private citizen without wrong; a neighbour without reproach; a Christian without hypocrisy, and a man without guile. He was a Caesar, without his ambition; Frederick, without his tyranny; Napoleon, without his selfishness, and Washington, without his reward.[146]

By the end of the 19th century, Lee's popularity had spread to the North.[147] Lee's admirers have pointed to his character and devotion to duty, and his occasional tactical successes in battles against a stronger foe.

According to my notion of military history there is as much instruction both in strategy and in tactics to be gleaned from General Lee's operations of 1862 as there is to be found in Napoleon's campaigns of 1796.

— Field Marshal Garnet Wolseley[148]

Military historians continue to pay attention to his battlefield tactics and maneuvering, though many think he should have designed better strategic plans for the Confederacy. He was not given full direction of the Southern war effort until late in the conflict.

Historian Eric Foner writes that at the end of his life,

"Lee had become the embodiment of the Southern cause. A generation later, he was a national hero. The 1890s and early 20th century witnessed the consolidation of white supremacy in the post-Reconstruction South and widespread acceptance in the North of Southern racial attitudes."[149]

Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Stratford Hall, Army Issue of 1936

Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Stratford Hall, Army Issue of 1936

Robert E. Lee stamp, Liberty Issue of 1955

Robert E. Lee, Liberty Issue of 1955

Washington and Lee University Issue of 1948

Washington and Lee University Issue of 1948

R. E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson. Stone Mountain Issue of 1970

Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson. Stone Mountain Issue of 1970

Robert E. Lee has been commemorated on U.S. postage stamps at least five times, the first one being a commemorative stamp that also honored Stonewall Jackson, issued in 1936. A second "regular-issue" stamp was issued in 1955. He was commemorated with a 32-cent stamp issued in the American Civil War Issue of June 29, 1995. His horse Traveller is pictured in the background.[150]

Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia was commemorated on its 200th anniversary on November 23, 1948, with a 3-cent postage stamp. The central design is a view of the university, flanked by portraits of generals George Washington and Robert E. Lee.[151] Lee was again commemorated on a commemorative stamp in 1970, along with Jefferson Davis and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, depicted on horseback on the 6-cent Stone Mountain Memorial commemorative issue, modeled after the actual Stone Mountain Memorial carving in Georgia. The stamp was issued on September 19, 1970, in conjunction with the dedication of the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial in Georgia on May 9, 1970. The design of the stamp replicates the memorial, the largest high relief sculpture in the world. It is carved on the side of Stone Mountain 400 feet above the ground.[152]

Stone Mountain also led to Lee's appearance on a commemorative coin, the 1925 Stone Mountain Memorial half dollar. During the 1920s and '30s dozens of specially designed half dollars were struck to raise money for various events and causes. This issue had a particularly wide distribution, with 1,314,709 minted. Unlike some of the other issues it remains a very common coin.

In 1865, after the war, Lee was paroled and signed an oath of allegiance, asking to have his citizenship of the United States restored. However, his application was not processed by Secretary of State William Seward, a radical Republican and firm opponent of slavery, and as a result Lee did not receive a pardon and his citizenship was not restored.[153][154] On January 30, 1975, Senate Joint Resolution 23, A joint resolution to restore posthumously full rights of citizenship to General R. E. Lee was introduced into the Senate by Senator Harry F. Byrd Jr. (I-VA), the result of a five-year campaign to accomplish this. Proponents portrayed the lack of pardon as a mere clerical error. The resolution, which enacted Public Law 94–67, was passed, and the bill was signed by President Gerald Ford on September 5.[155][156][157]

Monuments, memorials and commemorations

See also: List of memorials to Robert E. Lee

Arlington House

Jefferson Davis, Lee, and Stonewall Jackson at Stone Mountain

Lee opposed the construction of public memorials to Confederate rebellion on the grounds that they would prevent the healing of wounds inflicted during the war.[158] Nevertheless, after his death, he became an icon used by promoters of "Lost Cause" mythology, who sought to romanticize the Confederate cause and strengthen white supremacy in the South.[158] Later in the 20th century, particularly following the civil rights movement, historians reassessed Lee; his reputation fell based on his failure to support rights for freedmen after the war, and even his strategic choices as a military leader fell under scrutiny.[149][159]

From its installation in 1884 until its removal in 2017, the most prominent monument in New Orleans was a 60-foot (18 m)-tall monument to General Lee. A 16.5-foot (5.0 m) statue of Lee stood tall upon a towering column of white marble in the middle of Lee Circle. The statue of Lee, which weighs more than 7,000 pounds (3,200 kg) faced the north. Lee Circle is situated along New Orleans's famous St. Charles Avenue. The New Orleans streetcars roll past Lee Circle and New Orleans's best Mardi Gras parades go around Lee Circle (the spot is so popular that bleachers are set up annually around the perimeter for Mardi Gras). Around the corner from Lee Circle is New Orleans's Confederate museum, which contains the second-largest collection of Confederate memorabilia in the world.[160] The statue of General Lee was removed on May 19, 2017, the last of four Confederate monuments in New Orleans to be taken down.[161]

In a tribute to Lee Circle (which had formerly been known as Tivoli Circle), former Confederate soldier George Washington Cable wrote:

In Tivoli Circle, New Orleans, from the centre and apex of its green flowery mound, an immense column of pure white marble rises in the ... majesty of Grecian proportions high up above the city's house-tops into the dazzling sunshine ... On its dizzy top stands the bronze figure of one of the world's greatest captains. He is alone. Not one of his mighty lieutenants stand behind, beside or below him. His arms are folded on that breast that never knew fear, and his calm, dauntless gaze meets the morning sun as it rises, like the new prosperity of the land he loved and served so masterly, above the far distant battle fields where so many thousands of his gray veterans lie in the sleep of fallen heroes. (Silent South, 1885, The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine)

Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial, also known as the Custis–Lee Mansion,[162] is a Greek revival mansion in Arlington, Virginia, that was once Lee's home. It overlooks the Potomac River and the National Mall in Washington, D.C. During the Civil War, the grounds of the mansion were selected as the site of Arlington National Cemetery, in part to ensure that Lee would never again be able to return to his home. The United States designated the mansion as a National Memorial to Lee in 1955, a mark of widespread respect for him in both the North and South.[163]

Unveiling of the Equestrian Statue of Robert E. Lee, May 29, 1890, Richmond, Virginia

In Richmond, Virginia, a large equestrian statue of Lee by French sculptor Jean Antonin Mercié is the centerpiece of Monument Avenue, which has four other statues of Confederates. This monument to Lee was unveiled on May 29, 1890; over 100,000 people attended this dedication. That has been described as "the day white Virginia stopped admiring Gen. Robert E. Lee and started worshiping him".[164] Lee is also shown mounted on Traveller in Gettysburg National Military Park on top of the Virginia Monument; he is facing roughly in the direction of Pickett's Charge. Lee's portrayal on a mural on Richmond's Flood Wall on the James River, considered offensive by some, was removed in the late 1990s, but currently is back on the flood wall.

Also in Virginia, the Robert Edward Lee (sculpture) at Charlottesville was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.[165] Since there is no historical link between Lee and the city of Charlottesville, the City Council of Charlottesville voted in February 2017 to remove it, along with a statue of Stonewall Jackson, but this was temporarily stayed by court action. They did rename Lee Park, Emancipation Park. The prospect of the statues being removed and the parks being renamed brought many out-of-towners, described as white supremacist and alt-right, to Charlottesville in the Unite the Right rally of August 2017, in which 3 people died. For several months the monuments were shrouded in black. As of October 2018, the fate of the statue of Lee is unresolved. The name of the park it is located in was changed again by the City Council, to Market Street Park, in July 2018.[166]

In Baltimore's Wyman Park, a large double equestrian statue of Lee and Jackson is located directly across from the Baltimore Museum of Art. Designed by Laura Gardin Fraser and dedicated in 1948, Lee is depicted astride his horse Traveller next to Stonewall Jackson who is mounted on "Little Sorrel." Architect John Russell Pope created the base, which was dedicated on the anniversary of the eve of the Battle of Chancellorsville.[167] The Baltimore area of Maryland is also home to a large nature park called Robert E. Lee Memorial Park.

Stained glass of Lee's life in the National Cathedral, depicting his time at West Point, service in the Corps of Engineers, the Battle of Chancellorsville, and his death

In 1953, two stained-glass windows – one honoring Lee, the other Stonewall Jackson – were installed in the Washington National Cathedral.[168] The stained glass of Lee shows him on horseback at Chancellorsville; it was sponsored by the United Daughters of the Confederacy.[169] In 2017, these windows were removed by a vote of the cathedral's governing board. The cathedral plans to keep the windows and eventually display them in historical context.[168]

An equestrian statue of Lee was installed in Robert E. Lee Park, in Dallas, until 2017; and in Austin, a statue of Lee is on display at the main mall of the University of Texas at Austin. A statue of Robert E. Lee is one of two statues (the other is Washington) representing Virginia in Statuary Hall in the Capitol in Washington, D.C. Lee is one of the figures depicted in bas-relief carved into Stone Mountain near Atlanta. Accompanying him on horseback in the relief are Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis.[170]

The birthday of Robert E. Lee is celebrated or commemorated in several states. In Texas, he is celebrated as part of Confederate Heroes Day on January 19, Lee's birthday.[171] In Alabama and Mississippi, his birthday is celebrated on the same day as Martin Luther King, Jr. Day,[172][173] while in Georgia, this occurred on the day after Thanksgiving before 2016, when the state stopped officially recognizing the holiday.[174][175] In Virginia, Lee–Jackson Day was celebrated on the Friday preceding Martin Luther King, Jr. Day which is the third Monday in January,[176] until 2020, when the Virginia legislature eliminated the holiday, making Election Day a state holiday instead.[177]

Lee Chapel on the campus of Washington and Lee University

One United States college and one junior college are named for Lee: Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia; and Lee College in Baytown, Texas, respectively. Lee Chapel at Washington and Lee University marks Lee's final resting place. Throughout the South, many primary and secondary schools were also named for him as well as private schools such as Robert E. Lee Academy in Bishopville, South Carolina.

In 1900, Lee was one of the first 29 individuals selected for the Hall of Fame for Great Americans (the first Hall of Fame in the United States), designed by Stanford White, on the Bronx, New York, campus of New York University, now a part of Bronx Community College.[178][179] However, his bust was removed in August 2017 by order of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.[180]

Lee is featured on the 1925 Stone Mountain Memorial half dollar.

Robert E. Lee, National Statuary Hall, Washington, D.C. Edward Virginius Valentine, sculptor, 1909

Robert E Lee, Virginia Monument, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Frederick William Sievers, sculptor, 1917

Robert E. Lee Monument by Mercié, Monument Avenue, Richmond, Virginia, 1890

Statue of Lee at the Confederate War Memorial, Dallas, 1896

Statue of Lee in Murray, Kentucky

CSS Robert E. Lee

In 1862, the newly formed Confederate Navy purchased a 642-ton iron-hulled side-wheel gunboat, built in at Glasgow, Scotland, and gave her the name of CSS Robert E. Lee in honor of this Confederate General. During the next year, she became one of the South's most famous Confederate blockade runners, successfully making more than twenty runs through the Union blockade.[181]

The Mississippi River steamboat Robert E. Lee was named for Lee after the Civil War. It was the participant in an 1870 St. Louis – New Orleans race with the Natchez VI, which was featured in a Currier and Ives lithograph. The Robert E. Lee won the race.[182] The steamboat inspired the 1912 song Waiting for the Robert E. Lee by Lewis F. Muir and L. Wolfe Gilbert.[183] In more modern times, the USS Robert E. Lee, a George Washington-class submarine built in 1958, was named for Lee,[184] as was the M3 Lee tank, produced in 1941 and 1942.

The Commonwealth of Virginia issues an optional license plate honoring Lee, making reference to him as 'The Virginia Gentleman'.[185] In February 2014, a road on Fort Bliss previously named for Lee was renamed to honor Buffalo Soldiers.[186][187]

A recent biographer, Jonathan Horn, outlines the unsuccessful efforts in Washington to memorialize Lee in the naming of the Arlington Memorial Bridge after both Grant and Lee.[188]

Dates of rank

Rank Date Unit Component

Union army 2nd lt rank insignia.jpg Second Lieutenant July 1, 1829[189] Corps of Engineers United States Army

Union army 1st lt rank insignia.jpg First Lieutenant September 21, 1836[190] Corps of Engineers United States Army

Union army cpt rank insignia.jpg Captain August 7, 1838[190] Corps of Engineers United States Army

Union army maj rank insignia.jpg Brevet Major § April 18, 1847[190] Corps of Engineers United States Army

Union Army LTC rank insignia.png Brevet Lieutenant Colonel † August 20, 1847[190] Corps of Engineers United States Army

Union Army colonel rank insignia.png Brevet Colonel ‡ September 13, 1847[191] Corps of Engineers United States Army

Union Army LTC rank insignia.png Lieutenant Colonel March 3, 1855[191] 2nd Cavalry Regiment United States Army

Union Army colonel rank insignia.png Colonel March 16, 1861[191] 1st Cavalry Regiment United States Army

Major General April 22, 1861[192] Virginia Militia

Confederate States of America General-collar.svg Brigadier General May 14, 1861[193] Confederate States Army

Confederate States of America General-collar.svg General June 14, 1861[194] Confederate States Army

§ Breveted for conduct in the Battle of Cerro Gordo

† Breveted for conduct in Battles of Contreras and Churubusco

‡ Breveted for conduct in Battle of Chapultepec

In popular culture

Lee is a main character in the Shaara Family novels The Killer Angels (1974, Gettysburg), Gods and Generals (1996), and The Last Full Measure (2000), as well as the film adaptations of Gettysburg (1993) and Gods and Generals (2003). He is played by Martin Sheen in the former and by Lee's descendant Robert Duvall in the latter. Lee is portrayed as a hero in the historical children's novel Lee and Grant at Appomattox (1950) by MacKinlay Kantor. His part in the Civil War is told from the perspective of his horse in Richard Adams's book Traveller (1988).

Lee is an obvious subject for American Civil War alternate histories. Ward Moore's Bring the Jubilee (1953), MacKinlay Kantor's If the South Had Won the Civil War (1960), and Harry Turtledove's The Guns of the South (1992), all have Lee ending up as President of a victorious Confederacy and freeing the slaves (or laying the groundwork for the slaves to be freed in a later decade). Although Moore and Kantor's novels relegate him to a set of passing references, Lee is more of a main character in Turtledove's Guns. He is also the prime character of Turtledove's "Lee at the Alamo", which can be read online,[195] and sees the opening of the Civil War drastically altered so as to affect Lee's personal priorities considerably. Turtledove's "War Between the Provinces" series is an allegory of the Civil War told in the language of fairy tales, with Lee appearing as a knight named "Duke Edward of Arlington". Lee is also a knight in "The Charge of Lee's Brigade" in Alternate Generals volume 1, written by Turtledove's friend S. M. Stirling and featuring Lee, whose Virginia is still a loyal British colony, fighting for the Crown against the Russians in Crimea. In Lee Allred's "East of Appomattox" in Alternate Generals volume 3, Lee is the Confederate Minister to London circa 1868, desperately seeking help for a CSA which has turned out poorly suited to independence. Robert Skimin's Grey Victory features Lee as a supporting character preparing to run for the presidency in 1867.

In Connie Willis' 1987 novel Lincoln's Dreams, a research assistant meets a young woman who dreams about the Civil War from Robert E. Lee's point of view.

The Dodge Charger featured in the CBS television series The Dukes of Hazzard (1979–1985) was named The General Lee.[196][197] In the 2005 film based on this series, the car is driven past a statue of Lee, while the car's occupants salute him.

The Battle of Appomattox Court House, fought in Appomattox County, Virginia, on the morning of April 9, 1865, was one of the last battles of the American Civil War (1861–1865). It was the final engagement of Confederate General in Chief, Robert E. Lee, and his Army of Northern Virginia before it surrendered to the Union Army of the Potomac under the Commanding General of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant.

Lee, having abandoned the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, after the nine-and-a-half-month Siege of Petersburg and Richmond, retreated west, hoping to join his army with the remaining Confederate forces in North Carolina, the Army of Tennessee under Gen. Joseph E. Johnston. Union infantry and cavalry forces under Gen. Philip Sheridan pursued and cut off the Confederates' retreat at the central Virginia village of Appomattox Court House. Lee launched a last-ditch attack to break through the Union forces to his front, assuming the Union force consisted entirely of lightly armed cavalry. When he realized that the cavalry was now backed up by two corps of federal infantry, he had no choice but to surrender with his further avenue of retreat and escape now cut off.

The signing of the surrender documents occurred in the parlor of the house owned by Wilmer McLean on the afternoon of April 9. On April 12, a formal ceremony of parade and the stacking of arms led by Southern Maj. Gen. John B. Gordon to federal Brig. Gen. Joshua Chamberlain of Maine marked the disbandment of the Army of Northern Virginia with the parole of its nearly 28,000 remaining officers and men, free to return home without their major weapons but enabling men to take their horses and officers to retain their sidearms (swords and pistols), and effectively ending the war in Virginia.

This event triggered a series of subsequent surrenders across the South, in North Carolina, Alabama and finally Shreveport, Louisiana, for the Trans-Mississippi Theater in the West by June, signaling the end of the four-year-long war.

Contents

1 Background

1.1 Military situation

2 Opposing forces

2.1 Union

2.2 Confederate

3 April 9

3.1 Battle

3.2 Surrender

4 Aftermath

5 Civil War commemorative stamps

6 Battlefield preservation

7 See also

8 Notes

9 References

10 Further reading

11 External links

Background

Military situation

Main articles: Appomattox Campaign, Battle of Five Forks, and Third Battle of Petersburg

Further information: Richmond-Petersburg Campaign (Siege of Petersburg), Overland Campaign, Eastern Theater of the American Civil War, and American Civil War

The final campaign for Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederate States, began when the Union Army of the Potomac crossed the James River in June 1864. The armies under the command of Lieutenant General and General in Chief Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) laid siege to Petersburg, south of Richmond, intending to cut the two cities' supply lines and force the Confederates to evacuate. In the spring of 1865, Confederate States Army Gen. Robert E. Lee (1807–1870), waited for an opportunity to leave the Petersburg lines, aware that the position was untenable, but Union troops made the first move. On April 1, 1865, Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan's cavalry turned Lee's flank at the Battle of Five Forks. The next day Grant's army achieved a decisive breakthrough, effectively ending the Petersburg siege. With supply railroad lines cut, Lee's men abandoned the trenches they had held for ten months and evacuated on the night of April 2–3.[3]

Lee's first objective was to reassemble and supply his men at Amelia Courthouse. His plan was to link up with Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee in North Carolina and go on the offensive after establishing defenses on the Roanoke River in southwest Virginia. When the troops arrived at Amelia on April 4, however, they found no provisions. Lee sent wagons out to the surrounding country to forage, but as a result lost a day's worth of marching time.[3] The army then headed west to Appomattox Station, where another supply train awaited him. Lee's army was now composed of the cavalry corps and two small infantry corps.[citation needed]

En route to the station, on April 6 at Sailor's Creek, nearly one fourth of the retreating Confederate army was cut off by Sheridan's cavalry and elements of the II and VI Corps. Two Confederate divisions fought the VI Corps along the creek. The Confederates attacked but were driven back, and soon after the Union cavalry cut through the right of the Confederate lines. Most of the 7,700 Confederates were captured or surrendered, including Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell and eight other general officers.[4] The delay prevented Lee from reaching the Appomattox station until late afternoon on April 8, allowing Sheridan to reach the station ahead of the Southerners that evening, where he captured Lee's supplies and obstructed his path.[5]

Following the minor battles of Cumberland Church and High Bridge, on April 7, General Grant sent a note to Lee suggesting that it was time to surrender the Army of Northern Virginia. In a return note, Lee refused the request, but asked Grant what terms he had in mind.[6] On April 8, Union cavalry under Brig. Gen. and Brevet Maj. Gen. George Armstrong Custer captured and burned three supply trains waiting for Lee's army at the Appomattox Station. Now both of the Federal forces, the Army of the Potomac and the Army of the James, were converging on Appomattox.[citation needed]

With his supplies at Appomattox destroyed, Lee now looked west, to the railway at Lynchburg, where more supplies awaited him. However, on the morning of April 8 a battalion of the 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry was detached from Stoneman's Raid into North Carolina and southwestern Virginia and had made a demonstration to within three miles of Lynchburg, giving the appearance of being the vanguard of a much larger force. Despite this new threat, Lee apparently decided to try for Lynchburg anyway.[citation needed]

While the Union Army was closing in on Lee, all that lay between Lee and Lynchburg was Union cavalry. Lee hoped to break through the cavalry before infantry arrived. He sent a note to Grant saying that he did not wish to surrender his army just yet but was willing to discuss how Grant's terms would affect the Confederacy. Grant, suffering from a throbbing headache, stated that "It looks as if Lee still means to fight."[7] The Union infantry was close, but the only unit near enough to support Sheridan's cavalry was Maj. Gen. John Gibbon's XXIV Corps of the Army of the James. This corps traveled 30 miles (48 km) in 21 hours to reach the cavalry. Maj. Gen. Edward O. C. Ord, commander of the Army of the James, arrived with the XXIV Corps around 4:00 a.m. while the V Corps of the Army of the Potomac was close behind. Sheridan deployed his three divisions of cavalry along a low ridge to the southwest of Appomattox Court House.[citation needed]

Lee's retreat and Grant's pursuit in the final Appomattox Campaign, April 2–9, 1865

Opposing forces

Union

Further information: Appomattox Campaign Union order of battle

Confederate

Further information: Appomattox campaign Confederate order of battle

April 9

Battle

Flag used by the Confederacy to surrender

At dawn on April 9, 1865, the Confederate Second Corps under Maj. Gen. John B. Gordon attacked Sheridan's cavalry and quickly forced back the first line under Brevet Brig. Gen. Charles H. Smith. The next line, held by Brig. Gens. Ranald S. Mackenzie and George Crook, slowed the Confederate advance.[8] Gordon's troops charged through the Union lines and took the ridge, but as they reached the crest they saw the entire Union XXIV Corps in line of battle with the Union V Corps to their right. Lee's cavalry saw these Union forces and immediately withdrew and rode off towards Lynchburg.[9] Ord's troops began advancing against Gordon's corps while the Union II Corps began moving against Lt. Gen. James Longstreet's corps to the northeast. Colonel Charles Venable of Lee's staff rode in at this time and asked for an assessment, and Gordon gave him a reply he knew Lee did not want to hear: "Tell General Lee I have fought my corps to a frazzle, and I fear I can do nothing unless I am heavily supported by Longstreet's corps." Upon hearing it Lee finally stated the inevitable: "Then there is nothing left for me to do but to go and see General Grant, and I would rather die a thousand deaths."[3]

Many of Lee's officers, including Longstreet, agreed that surrendering the army was the only option left. The only notable officer opposed to surrender was Longstreet's chief of artillery, Brig. Gen. Edward Porter Alexander, who predicted that if Lee surrendered then "every other Confederate army will follow suit".[citation needed]

Lee decided to request a suspension of fighting while he sought to learn the terms of surrender Grant was proposing to offer. A white linen dish towel was used as a Confederate flag of truce and was carried by one of Longstreet's staff officers into the lines of General Custer, who was part of Sheridan’s command.[10] After a truce was arranged Custer was escorted through the lines to meet Longstreet. According to Longstreet, Custer said “in the name of General Sheridan I demand the unconditional surrender of this army.” Longstreet replied that he was not in command of the army, but if he were he would not deal with messages from Sheridan. Custer responded it would be a pity to have more blood upon the field to which Longstreet suggested the truce be respected, and then added “General Lee has gone to meet General Grant, and it is for them to determine the future of the armies.”[11]

At 8:00 a.m., Lee rode out to meet Grant, accompanied by three of his aides. Grant received Lee's first letter on the morning of April 9 as he was traveling to meet Sheridan. Grant recalled his migraine seemed to disappear when he read Lee's letter,[12] and he handed it to his assistant Rawlins to read aloud before composing his reply:

General, Your note of this date is but this moment, 11:50 A.M. rec'd., in consequence of my having passed from the Richmond and Lynchburg road. I am at this writing about four miles West of Walker's Church and will push forward to the front for the purpose of meeting you. Notice sent to me on this road where you wish the interview to take place.[13]

Grant's response was remarkable in that it let the defeated Lee choose the place of his surrender.[13] Lee received the reply within an hour and dispatched an aide, Charles Marshall, to find a suitable location for the occasion. Marshall scrutinized Appomattox Court House, a small village of roughly twenty buildings that served as a waystation for travelers on the Richmond-Lynchburg Stage Road.[14] Marshall rejected the first house he saw as too dilapidated, instead settling on the 1848 brick home of Wilmer McLean. McLean had lived near Manassas Junction during the First Battle of Bull Run, and had retired to Appomattox to escape the war.[15]

With gunshots still being heard on Gordon's front and Union skirmishers still advancing on Longstreet's front, Lee received a message from Grant. After several hours of correspondence between Grant and Lee, a cease-fire was enacted and Grant received Lee's request to discuss surrender terms.

Surrender

Union soldiers at the courthouse in April 1865

Dressed in his ceremonious white uniform, Lee waited for Grant to arrive. Grant, whose headache had ended when he received Lee's note, arrived at the McLean house in a mud-spattered uniform—a government-issue sack coat with trousers tucked into muddy boots, no sidearms, and with only his tarnished shoulder straps showing his rank.[16] It was the first time the two men had seen each other face-to-face in almost two decades.[15] Suddenly overcome with sadness, Grant found it hard to get to the point of the meeting, and instead the two generals briefly discussed their only previous encounter, during the Mexican–American War. Lee brought the attention back to the issue at hand, and Grant offered the same terms he had before:

In accordance with the substance of my letter to you of the 8th inst., I propose to receive the surrender of the Army of N. Va. on the following terms, to wit: Rolls of all the officers and men to be made in duplicate. One copy to be given to an officer designated by me, the other to be retained by such officer or officers as you may designate. The officers to give their individual paroles not to take up arms against the Government of the United States until properly exchanged, and each company or regimental commander sign a like parole for the men of their commands. The arms, artillery and public property to be parked and stacked, and turned over to the officer appointed by me to receive them. This will not embrace the side-arms of the officers, nor their private horses or baggage. This done, each officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by United States authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside.[17]

Parlor of the (reconstructed) McLean House, the site of Confederate General Robert E. Lee's surrender. Lee sat at the marble-topped table on the left, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant at the table on the right

The reconstructed McLean House (brick house on right)

The terms were as generous as Lee could hope for; his men would not be imprisoned or prosecuted for treason. Officers were allowed to keep their sidearms, horses, and personal baggage.[18] In addition to his terms, Grant also allowed the defeated men to take home their horses and mules to carry out the spring planting, and provided Lee with a supply of food rations for his starving army; Lee said it would have a very happy effect among the men and do much toward reconciling the country.[19] The terms of the surrender were recorded in a document handwritten by Grant's adjutant Ely S. Parker, a Native American of the Seneca tribe, and completed around 4 p.m., April 9.[20] Lee, upon discovering Parker to be a Seneca, remarked "It is good to have one real American here." Parker replied, "Sir, we are all Americans." As Lee left the house and rode away, Grant's men began cheering in celebration, but Grant ordered an immediate stop. "I at once sent word, however, to have it stopped", he said. "The Confederates were now our countrymen, and we did not want to exult over their downfall", he said.[21] Custer and other Union officers purchased from McLean the furnishings of the room Lee and Grant met in as souvenirs, emptying it of furniture. Grant soon visited the Confederate army, and then he and Lee sat on the McLean home's porch and met with visitors such as Longstreet and George Pickett before the two men left for their capitals.[22]

On April 10, Lee gave his farewell address to his army.[23] The same day a six-man commission gathered to discuss a formal ceremony of surrender, even though no Confederate officer wished to go through with such an event. Brigadier General (brevet Major General) Joshua L. Chamberlain was the Union officer selected to lead the ceremony. In his memoirs entitled The Passing of the Armies, Chamberlain reflected on what he witnessed on April 12, 1865, as the Army of Northern Virginia marched in to surrender their arms and their colors:

The momentous meaning of this occasion impressed me deeply. I resolved to mark it by some token of recognition, which could be no other than a salute of arms. Well aware of the responsibility assumed, and of the criticisms that would follow, as the sequel proved, nothing of that kind could move me in the least. The act could be defended, if needful, by the suggestion that such a salute was not to the cause for which the flag of the Confederacy stood, but to its going down before the flag of the Union. My main reason, however, was one for which I sought no authority nor asked forgiveness. Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood: men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve; standing before us now, thin, worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond;—was not such manhood to be welcomed back into a Union so tested and assured? Instructions had been given; and when the head of each division column comes opposite our group, our bugle sounds the signal and instantly our whole line from right to left, regiment by regiment in succession, gives the soldier's salutation, from the "order arms" to the old "carry"—the marching salute. Gordon at the head of the column, riding with heavy spirit and downcast face, catches the sound of shifting arms, looks up, and, taking the meaning, wheels superbly, making with himself and his horse one uplifted figure, with profound salutation as he drops the point of his sword to the boot toe; then facing to his own command, gives word for his successive brigades to pass us with the same position of the manual,—honor answering honor. On our part not a sound of trumpet more, nor roll of drum; not a cheer, nor word nor whisper of vain-glorying, nor motion of man standing again at the order, but an awed stillness rather, and breath-holding, as if it were the passing of the dead!

— Joshua L. Chamberlain, The Passing of the Armies, pp. 260–61

Chamberlain's account has been questioned by historian William Marvel, who claims that "few promoted their own legends more actively and successfully than he did".[24] Marvel points out that Chamberlain in fact did not command the federal surrender detail (but only one of the brigades in General Joseph J. Bartlett's division) and that he did not mention any "salute" in his contemporary letters, but only in his memoirs written many decades later when most other eyewitnesses had already died.[25] Confederate General John Brown Gordon, in command of the Second Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia, did recall there was a salute and he cherished Chamberlain's act of saluting his surrendered army, calling Chamberlain "one of the knightliest soldiers of the Federal army." Gordon stated that Chamberlain "called his troops into line, and as my men marched in front of them, the veterans in blue gave a soldierly salute to the vanquished heroes."[26] This statement by Gordon contradicts Marvel's perception of the event.

At the surrender ceremonies, about 28,000 Confederate soldiers passed by and stacked their arms.[27] General Longstreet's account was 28,356 officers and men were “surrendered and paroled”.[28] The Appomattox Roster lists approximately 26,300 men who surrendered. This reference does not include the 7,700 who were captured at Sailor's Creek three days earlier, who were treated as prisoners of war.

Panoramic image of the reconstructed parlor of the McLean House. Ulysses S. Grant sat at the simple wooden table on the right, while Robert E. Lee sat at the more ornate marble-topped table on the left. The items in the room are exact reproductions, the original chairs and wooden table are in the collection of the Smithsonian and the marble table in the Chicago History Museum's collection.

Aftermath

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.

Find sources: "Battle of Appomattox Court House" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (April 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Further information: Conclusion of the American Civil War

Full Page of Albany Journal, 10 Apr 1865

While General George Meade (who was not present at the meeting) reportedly shouted that "it's all over" upon hearing the surrender was signed, roughly 175,000 Confederates remained in the field, but were mostly starving and disillusioned. Many of these were scattered throughout the South in garrisons or guerrilla bands while the rest were concentrated in three major Confederate commands.[21][29] Just as Porter Alexander had predicted, as news spread of Lee's surrender other Confederate commanders realized that the strength of the Confederacy was gone, and decided to lay down their own arms.

General Joseph E. Johnston's army in North Carolina, the most threatening of the remaining Confederate armies, surrendered to Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman at Bennett Place in Durham, North Carolina on April 26, 1865. The 98,270 Confederate troops who laid down their weapons (the largest surrender of the war) marked the virtual end of the conflict. General Richard Taylor surrendered his army, the Departments of Alabama, Mississippi and East Louisiana, at Citronelle, Alabama on May 4, 1865. President Jefferson Davis met with his Confederate Cabinet for the last time on May 5, 1865 in Washington, Georgia, and officially dissolved the Confederate government.[30] Davis and his wife Varina, along with their escort, were captured by Union forces on May 10 at Irwinville, Georgia.[31]

Upon hearing about Lee's surrender, General Nathan Bedford Forrest, "The Wizard of the Saddle", also surrendered, reading his farewell address on May 9, 1865 at Gainesville, Alabama. General Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department on May 26, 1865, near New Orleans, Louisiana. Also on May 26, 1865, the Camp Napoleon Council of Native American tribes, including a number that had sided with the Confederacy, met in Oklahoma and decided to have commissioners offer peace with the United States. Cherokee Chief and General Stand Watie, in command of 1st Cherokee Mounted Rifles, surrendered the last sizeable organized Confederate force on June 23, 1865[32] in Choctaw County, Oklahoma.

There were several more small battles after Lee's surrender. The Battle of Palmito Ranch, east of Brownsville, Texas, on May 12–13, 1865, is commonly regarded as the final land battle of the war (ironically a Confederate victory which was followed soon after by the surrender of the Confederate forces). Commander James Iredell Waddell in command of the CSS Shenandoah, a commerce raider of the Confederate States Navy, was the last to surrender when he lowered the Confederate flag in Liverpool and surrendered his vessel to the British government on November 6, 1865 (Waddell was halfway around the world in the Pacific when he learned the war had ended).

Lee never forgot Grant's magnanimity during the surrender, and for the rest of his life would not tolerate an unkind word about Grant in his presence. Confederate General Longstreet spoke well of Grant, saying he was grateful to Grant for a cheerful greeting and providing him a cigar at Appomattox, as well as later efforts by Grant to get Longstreet a pardon and appointing him to a federal position in New Orleans after Grant became president.[33] Likewise, General John Brown Gordon cherished Chamberlain's simple act of saluting his surrendered army, calling Chamberlain "one of the knightliest soldiers of the Federal army."[34]

April 9th, 1865, was the end of the Civil War for General Robert E. Lee and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. For Lt. General Ulysses S. Grant and tens of thousands of Federal and Confederate troops fighting further south, the war stretched out for several more months. After Appomattox, however, only the most zealous and desperate could pretend the Union was not already victorious and the Confederacy was destined to end.

As the sun rose on April 9th in Appomattox, General Lee still clung to the belief his war was not over. 8,000 men from Maj. General John B. Gordon’s Second Corps, along with Lee’s nephew Fitzhugh Lee and what remained of the Confederate cavalry, were lined up for battle just west of the village of Appomattox Court House. Robert E. Lee hoped there was only a thin line of Union cavalry ahead of him that he could smash through, find supplies and rations, and then turn south to march to North Carolina to continue the fight. For a week Grant thwarted Lee’s plans to turn south. He actively blocked Lee’s movements and tried to surround his forces. As a result of these efforts, Grant’s forces had finally gotten ahead of Lee at Appomattox. Lee was in the middle of the fight, his headquarters was east of the village near the center of his army. Gordon’s Second Corps and the Cavalry were west of the village readying for a fight, and Longstreet’s command, the First Corps and Third Corps of the ANV, were in the east guarding the rear. Lee knew more Federal troops were approaching from the east and perhaps the south, and he hoped he could move his army before the Federal reinforcements arrived. Lee’s hopes were dashed by the arrival of thousands of Union infantry, including United States Colored Troops, who had marched most of the night to block the way. By 8:00a.m., Gordon’s men retreated toward the village, Fitzhugh Lee’s cavalry was fleeing toward the west, and Lee knew his war was over. Read more about the Battle of Appomattox Court House here.

Grant had ridden west all morning toward the fighting, knowing he was drawing near to the end of the Army of Northern Virginia. On April 7th, after the Confederates had suffered a catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Sailor’s Creek, Grant asked Lee to surrender and declared any “further effusion of blood” was solely Lee’s responsibility. Lee, still believing he could escape Grant, declined to surrender but did ask about the possibility of a peace agreement. Grant tactfully replied that he could not discuss a peace agreement, but he could consider a military surrender. As he realized his army was cornered, Lee asked to discuss terms of surrender on April 9.

After getting word of Gordon’s retreat and the arrival of Federal forces to his rear, Lee rode east, believing Grant would be there to meet him. When Lee arrived at his rear lines, Maj. General Gordon sent word to him that Grant was on the move and could not be reached immediately. Lee sent out two letters to Grant, one through Meade’s lines in the east and one through Sheridan’s lines to the southwest of the village. Grant had been riding all morning to reach Sheridan’s forces and was south of Lee’s army in the outskirts of Appomattox County when the message intercepted him. Grant wrote in his memoirs that the migraine, or “sick headache”, he had been suffering from all night, immediately disappeared when he received Lee’s letter agreeing to surrender. Grant sent a reply with one of his staff officers, Orville Babcock, agreeing to meet and telling Lee to select a meeting site.

After some difficulty and confusion, Babcock crossed into Confederate lines under a flag of truce, and he found Lee resting in an apple orchard near the village, by the Appomattox River. From a distance, Babcock bore a resemblance to Grant, so soon after news of the surrender started going around many thought Babcock’s visit to Lee was the surrender meeting. This confusion led to one of many myths surrounding the surrender at Appomattox, and it caused many soldiers to chop down many of the apple trees in the orchard and cut them into souvenirs of the “surrender.”

Lee read Grant’s letter and sent his aide, Charles Marshall, into the village to find a suitable home for the meeting. Marshall’s account, written years later, is sparse on details, but it seems likely the McLean House was picked simply because Wilmer McLean was the first property owner Marshall encountered. It may be that McLean was also the only property owner who had not fled the village to avoid the fighting from that morning and the evening before. McLean showed Marshall an abandoned, unfurnished building first, but Marshall rejected it as unsuitable. Only then did McLean offer the use of his home.

This painting by Tom Lovell was done for National Geographic for the 100th anniversary in 1965.

Painting by Tom Lovell of General Lee and Grant seated at separate tables during the "writing" portion of the meeting.  This painting was commissioned by National Geographic for their April 1965, "centennial" edition.

Tom Lovell

Lee arrived at the McLean House sometime after one o’clock and waited there with Marshall and Babcock. Grant and his staff arrived at McLean’s parlor half an hour later from the west after riding dozens of miles around the two armies that morning. Grant was uncertain how to bring up the subject of surrender, so after introducing his staff and the army commanders with him, he brought up the Mexican War and the brief meeting the two men had then. Eventually Lee said they should get to the business at hand. In his order book, Grant quickly wrote out the terms, which had already been outlined for Lee in the letters the two generals exchanged over the two previous days. Contrary to many visitor’s expectations, there is no formal surrender document. The surrender was conducted through an exchange of two short letters. Grant’s was a mere five sentences long and Lee’s reply was only three very short, terse sentences.

Aside from Grant and Lee, only Lt. Colonel Marshall and perhaps a half dozen of Grant’s staff officers were present for most of the meeting. Approximately a dozen other Union officers entered the room briefly, including Captain Robert Todd Lincoln. Few besides Grant left detailed accounts of what transpired and while some accounts disagree on the details, there are many key consistencies.

The heart of the terms was that Confederates would be paroled after surrendering their weapons and other military property. If surrendered soldiers did not take up arms again, the United States government would not prosecute them. Grant also allowed Confederate officers to keep their mounts and side arms. Some accounts mention that Grant glanced at Lee’s dress sword before including that line, and Grant indicated he included it to avoid any unnecessary humiliation for the Confederate officers. Stories soon circulated that Lee offered and Grant refused Lee’s ornate sword, but Grant dismissed them all as “pure romance”.

Lee appeared relieved by the terms. Grant said he could not tell what Lee was thinking, but some indication of his anxiety might be inferred. When Lee dressed in his finest uniform that morning, he indicated to his staff that he expected to be taken prisoner and wanted to be in proper form and “make his best appearance”.

Although Lee agreed to the terms, he asked if his men could keep their horses and mules in the cavalry and artillery. The Confederate army provided weapons and military property but the men provided their own mounts. Grant indicated he would not amend the terms but would issue a separate order allowing that to happen. Lee said he thought that would have a happy effect on his men. Lee and Grant also agreed to appoint three officers from each army to act as “commissioner” for the surrender who would work out the details of issuing parole passes, returning Union prisoners the Confederates had captured along the retreat, and sending rations from Union lines to Confederates. Over the next few weeks, additional Confederate forces surrendered using Grant’s terms for Lee as a template.

Marshall penned Lee’s formal letter of acceptance, and Grant’s longtime friend Lt. Colonel Ely S. Parker, a Seneca leader from the Tonawanda Reservation in New York, penned the formal copy of Grant’s letter. In one account of the meeting, General Lee is reported to have recognized Parker as a Native American, extended his hand and said, “I am glad to see one real American here,” to which Parker reportedly replied, “We are all Americans.” Another account reported that Lee appeared offended by Parker’s presence, presumably due to his dark skim. Grant doesn’t mention any interaction at all between Lee and Parker.

By 3:00p.m., the formal copies of the letters indicating the terms and acceptance of the surrender were signed and exchanged, and General Lee left the McLean House to return to his camp. Horace Porter, one of Grant’s staff officers recorded that Lee paused at the top of the stairs and energetically “smote” his hands together three times. Grant and his staff followed him and removed their hats as a respectful, farewell gesture which Lee returned in kind before riding down the stage road.

This Keith Rocco painting shows Gen. Lee exiting the yard of the McLean House after the meeting.

General Lee leaves the McLean House after the Surrender Meeting with Gen. Grant.

Keith Rocco

Grant met with his staff and commanders briefly before also leaving for his temporary headquarters a short distance down west of the village. Grant sent a message via the newly repaired telegraph lines at Appomattox Station to President Lincoln that Lee had surrendered. Within hours the news was being shouted in the streets in Washington, D.C. Coincidentally, Grant’s encampment was just a short walk away from the home of Dr. Samuel Coleman, where Hannah Reynolds, the only civilian casualty of the fighting in Appomattox lived. Reynolds, an enslaved woman, was mortally wounded a few hours early by a Confederate artillery shell. Union surgeons treated her wounds, but she died three days later as a free woman, officially emancipated when Lee surrendered.

The six commissioners for the surrender met that evening in the McLean House and had to bring a table with them, since the room had been largely stripped bare by Union officers purchasing or otherwise acquiring souvenirs from the McLean’s home. In this "commissioners' meeting," they worked out the details of supplying the Confederates, printing and signing paroles, and the format for the formal surrender of weapons, flags, and other military property. Under the supervision of Maj. General George Sharpe, around 30,000 parole passes were printed in the Clover Hill Tavern and 28,231 paroles were issued to the Confederates between April 10th and April 15th.

The next day, April 10th, Grant met briefly with Lee on the eastern edge of the village. Grant apparently hoped to persuade Lee to influence other Confederate forces to surrender, but Lee refused. Grant left Appomattox to continue the work of ending the war. Lee returned to his headquarters where he attempted to remain isolated, refusing to meet with most of the Union officers who wanted to speak with him.

Also, on April 10th, Lee directed Lt. Colonel Marshall to write a farewell address to the Army of Northern Virginia, what became General Order No. 9. In this final formal address to the Army of Northern Virginia, Lee took responsibility for making the decision to surrender to spare further suffering to his men, who he then praised for their “constancy and devotion” to the Confederacy. Lee attributes the Confederacy’s defeat to being “compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources.” Lee was unapologetic for fighting his war and he only seems to have regretted letting his men down. Lee stayed in Appomattox until April 12th, the day of the formal infantry surrender ceremony and the fourth anniversary of the first shot at Fort Sumter that started the conflict.

The war ended for Abraham Lincoln three days later when he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth on the evening of April 14th. For the rest of American, the war lingered through a series of surrenders and the capture of Jefferson Davis in the spring and summer, leading to many competing claims for the “true” end of the war. With each ending there was a new beginning into an uncertain peace and an even more uncertain movement for freedom and equality for the millions of African Americans who were finally free by law, though local practices ensured continued discrimination and slavery in other forms.

Contemporary historians like Dr. Elizabeth Varon in Appomattox: Victory, Defeat, and Freedom at the End of the Civil War and Dr. Heather Cox Richardson in West From Appomattox have explore changes resulting from Appomattox. Appomattox led to the collapse of the Confederate government and the beginning of systematic “Reconstruction” across the entire South. Lee’s General Order No. 9 may have been the beginning of the “Lost Cause” apologist movement that sought to erase the institution of slavery as a fundamental cause for secession and the war. Perhaps more than being an end or a beginning, the surrender at Appomattox should be viewed as an intersection of change. Most events in human history rarely have neat and tidy beginnings and endings, and the surrender at Appomattox is no exception.

Written by Joe Servis, Teacher at Appomattox County High School