Robert E. Lee : A Reference Guide to His Life and Works 9781538113493, 9781538113486

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Robert E. Lee

Significant Figures in World History Charles Darwin: A Reference Guide to His Life and Works, by J. David Archibald, 2019. Leonardo da Vinci: A Reference Guide to His Life and Works, by Allison Lee Palmer, 2019. Robert E. Lee: A Reference Guide to His Life and Works, by James I. Robertson Jr., 2019.

Robert E. Lee A Reference Guide to His Life and Works

James I. Robertson Jr.

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Rowman & Littlefield An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB Copyright © 2019 by James I. Robertson Jr. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Name: Robertson, James I., author. Title: Robert E. Lee : a reference guide to his life and works / by James I. Robertson Jr. Description: Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, 2019. | Series: Significant figures in world history | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2018033575 (print) | LCCN 2018033873 (ebook) | ISBN 9781538113493 (electronic) | ISBN 9781538113486 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Lee, Robert E. (Robert Edward), 1807–1870—Encyclopedias. Classification: LCC E467.1.L4 (ebook) | LCC E467.1.L4 R6247 2019 (print) | DDC 973.7/3092 [B]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018033575

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/ NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Editor's Foreword Jon Woronoff vii Preface ix Maps xi Chronology xiii Introduction xvii ENTRIES A–Z 1 Bibliography 161 About the Author

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v

Editor’s Foreword

This is the first of three volumes in the new series Significant Figures in World History, and fortuitously it examines a famous person who engenders varied and divergent views. Some— including Southerners—regard him as the only man who could have held the South together and an outstanding military leader by any standards. Others—including Northerners and African Americans—are very negative, due to Lee’s efforts in the name of the Confederacy. Successive books will deal with famous people who are regarded as wholly good or inexcusably evil, so beginning with a mixed character will be helpful for the series as a whole. The standard format of these encyclopedias is similar to that of historical dictionaries, starting with a chronology and introduction. The main and by far largest section is the encyclopedia, which contains several hundred entries on Lee himself, other members of his family, those in his political and military circles, opponents, crucial military engagements,

and important issues of the time. These entries are written from the perspective of the time rather than as we see them today with a century of interpretation and, yes, misinterpretation. Finally, a bibliography lists both sources the author has referred to while compiling the book and further works on the topic. The author, James I. Robertson Jr., taught the history of the Civil War for 44 years at Virginia Tech, where he is now an alumni distinguished professor emeritus. During this period, a veritable army of 22,000 students took his upper-level elective course. He has written more than 40 books and numerous articles and is best known for Stonewall Jackson: The Man, The Soldier, The Legend, which won eight national awards. His most recent books are The Untold Civil War and After the Civil War. Dr. Robertson continues to lecture extensively. —Jon Woronoff Series Editor

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Preface

Times change, but history never does. Man is the only one of God’s creatures with the ability to remember a multitude of past events and to learn from them. History cannot be altered, nor can it be erased. Carefully studied, it is the greatest teacher one can have. Those who read history with regularity tend to prefer biographies. They present yesteryear from a wholly personal perspective. We associate easier with an individual than getting caught in a swirling tide of imperfect subjects passing by the eyes. Biographies of heroic leaders, however, seem now in short demand. This is both surprising and sad. The second decade of the 21st century will be remembered as an age of negativism and polarization, with accompanying shortsightedness. Too many people rush to judgment without understanding or a desire to know the truth. No one is perfect; yet searching for what appears to be a flaw in a person easily leads today to damning the individual for having lived. This brings us to Robert Edward Lee, who has become the personification of all of the evils of the South in a race to tear down his name and fame. (Incredibly, among his most active assailers is the hierarchy of the Episcopal Church, which hypocritically attacks one of the most faithful Anglicans ever to kneel at the altar. Episcopal leaders persecute Lee for allegedly supporting slavery and secession— which he did not—while the Episcopal Church in the Civil War was itself flagrantly guilty of both offenses.)

Robert E. Lee was a man of flawless honor in his time and a legend to succeeding generations. Next to Abraham Lincoln, Lee is the most enduring figure in the Civil War. His faith is most embodied in the popular story of a Virginia lad who came home from Sunday school and moaned, “Mama. I am still confused. Is General Lee in the Old or New Testament?” His staunchest defenders are not confined to native Virginians. For a century and a half, countless sons have been baptized “Robert Lee.” He will always stand in the American pantheon of demigods. Historian Charles Roland gave an accurate summation of Lee. “He was a marvelously gifted soldier and an ardently devoted patriot, yet he defended the most unacceptable of American causes, secession and slavery, and he suffered the most un-American of experiences: defeat.” Throughout history, leaders of failed revolutions have been forced to endure public shame. Honorable men sometimes are summoned to serve bad causes. Neither Lee nor Ulysses S. Grant supported the 1846 war with Mexico, but both fully performed their duties. President Dwight D. Eisenhower recognized this when he described Lee as “an inspiring leader of selfless dedication to duty.” Sir Winston Churchill went further. Lee, he said simply, was “one of the noblest Americans who ever lived.” This book attempts to identify and summarize every event, person, and place that had prominence in Lee’s life. Two overlooked but fundamental particularities receive close attention. First, Lee’s cardinal principle

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

of honor was familial loyalty. To wage war against one’s own people was not merely illegal; it was immoral. Lee’s “family” was his birthright: Virginia. In 1861 he relinquished a brilliant U.S. Army career, not to fight for the Confederate States of America, but to defend his native state. Second, most writers pay little attention to Lee’s greatest achievement. It came in the five years after the Civil War. Lee worked to the grave to bind up the wounds of North and South. He was the restored nation’s most indefatigable crusader for reconciliation. No one toiled harder and sacrificed more in the quest for peace. The bronze monuments of Lee today would be far more ­accurate— and appropriate—if Lee were shown in civilian dress. It is time to look again at this leader. With a better understanding of what he accomplished in an unsettled age, Lee can become anew an inspiration for nobility and human goodness. No efforts to forget the past are going to change that. In order to facilitate the rapid and efficient location of information and to make this book as useful a reference tool as possible, extensive cross-references have been provided in the encyclopedia section. Within individual entries, terms that have their own entries are in bold the first time they appear. Related terms that do not appear in the text are indicated by see also references. See refers to other entries that deal with the topic.

The most enjoyable point in writing a book comes when thanking friends, associates, and professionals for their individual contributions to the project. To the following go everlasting gratitude: John and Ruth Ann Coski, William C. Davis, Guy Di Carlo, Edwin L. Dooley Jr., Graham Dozier, Dr. Peter Fahrney, Joseph T. Glatthaar, Dr. Stephen Hudgins, Judy Hynson, Terry L. Jones, Christian B. Keller, Lisa McCown, John E. Purcell, and Brian Steel Wills. Jon Woronoff honored me with the invitation to write one of the first volumes of the Significant Figures in World History series, and April Snider and Kellie Hagan at Rowman & Littlefield demonstrated anew why they are such excellent editors. Of course, without the understanding, constant assistance, and genuine love of my wife, Betty, this volume would still be only an idea. I am grateful for permission by the Texas A & M University Press to use two maps from the paperback edition of Frank E. Vandiver’s Their Tattered Flags. Ten images came from the archives of Stratford Hall, Lee’s birthplace, and two others are from the Library of Congress. The Virginia Museum of History and Culture contributed two pre–Civil War photographs, and Washington and Lee University made available a copy of the portrait of Lee following his graduation from West Point. To my dear friend and collaborator, artist Mort Künstler, I express thanks for the use of his painting of Lee at Appomattox.

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Maps

Courtesy Frank. E. Vandiver, Their Tattered Flags (New York: Harper, 1970), 78.

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Courtesy Frank. E. Vandiver, Their Tattered Flags (New York: Harper, 1970), 78.

Chronology

1807  19 January: Robert E. Lee born at Stratford Hall plantation, Westmoreland County, Virginia.

1846  19 August: Ordered to San Antonio, Texas, for duty in the field. 1847  16 January: Joined staff of General Winfield Scott and in time became a member of his “little cabinet.” 19 April: Lee found a route to flank the Mexican army and win victory at Cerro Gordo. 19 August: Thanks to Lee’s reconnaissance and placement of artillery, Americans were triumphant at Contreras and Churubusco. 12–33 September: Lee seemed everywhere in the climactic fight at Chapultepec and received special praise from General Scott.

1810 Autumn: Mother and her children moved to Alexandria, Virginia. 1824  24 March: Secretary of War John C. Calhoun appointed Lee to the U.S. Military Academy, effective the following year. 1825  1 July: Lee admitted to the Military Academy with 86 other plebes. 1829  1 June: Lee graduated second in a class of 46 cadets. 10 July: Death of his mother. 28 August: Ordered to duty at Cockspur Island, Georgia.

1848  3 July: Assigned to special duty in Washington, D.C., with the chief of engineers. 24 August: Named brevet lieutenant colonel for gallantry in the Mexican War. 13 September: Assigned to oversee construction of Fort Carroll, Maryland.

1831  7 May: Transferred to duty at Fort Monroe, Virginia. 30 June: Married Mary Custis at Arlington House.

1851  1 September: Assumed duties as superintendent of U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York.

1834  1 November: Ordered to Washington, D.C., as assistant to chief of engineers. 1836  21 November: Lee promoted to first lieutenant.

1855  3 March: Appointed lieutenant colonel and second-in-command of newly formed 2nd U.S. Cavalry.

1837  6 April: Ordered to engineering duty on the Mississippi River at St. Louis, Missouri. 1838  7 August: Lee promoted to captain.

1857  24 October: Granted leave of absence to attend to family inheritance problems at Arlington House.

1841  2 April: Assigned for five years to construction work at Fort Hamilton, New York.

1859  17 October: Ordered to take detachment of 24 marines to quell unlawful raid on

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Harpers Ferry arsenal by a group under John Brown. 2 December: In attendance at the hanging of John Brown in Charlestown, Virginia.

Campaign. 29–30 August: Lee’s strategic skill enabled Confederates to inflict sound defeat on Federals at Second Manassas. 31 August: Lee suffered an accidental fall that broke one hand and sprained the other. 5 September: Lee led his army across the Potomac River to take the war into the North. 9 September: A copy of Lee’s marching orders fell into Union hands. 14 September: Battle of South Mountain, Maryland, bought Lee a day’s time to consolidate his army. 17 September: Bloodiest one-day battle in American history ended in a draw at Antietam Creek, near Sharpsburg, Maryland. 13 December: Lee won his easiest victory of the war in shattering Union attacks at Fredericksburg, Virginia.

1860  6 February: Appointed to command of the Department of Texas, headquartered at San Antonio. 1861  4 February: Assigned to duty with General-in-Chief Scott in Washington, D.C. 20 March: Promoted to colonel and command of the 1st U.S. Cavalry. April 18: Declined offer to command Union army then being raised in Washington, D.C. 20 April: Resigned from the U.S. Army. 23 April: Appointed by Governor John Letcher a brigadier general and commander of all Virginia forces being raised in defense of the state. 14 May: Promoted to major general (highest rank then existing). 20 May: Lee family abandoned Arlington House and would never again inhabit the home. 8 June: Lee placed in command of all Confederate units assembling in Virginia. 28 July: Ordered to western Virginia theater of operations—his first field assignment. 31 August: Promoted to Confederate full general rank and named President Jefferson Davis’s confidential military adviser. 11–12 September: Lee failed to drive Federals from Cheat Mountain, in western Virginia. 5 November: Assigned command of newly created Military Department of South Carolina, with headquarters in Charleston.

1863  29 March: Lee fell seriously ill with a heart problem. 1–6 May: Lee’s most spectacular success came at Chancellorsville, but at terrible cost. 10 May: Death of General “Stonewall” Jackson. 1–3 July: Lee soundly defeated at Gettysburg. 8 August: Lee offered to resign army command, but it was refused. 14 October: Part of Lee’s army marched into an ambush and was routed at Bristoe Station, Virginia. 1864  4–6 May: Lee attacked and defeated Union army marching southward through the Virginia Wilderness. 6 May: First of the “Lee to the Rear” incidents. 10–19 May: Lee managed to hold his own against Grant’s assaults in the Spotsylvania Campaign. 11 May: General “Jeb” Stuart mortally wounded. 23–26 May: Lee sought in vain at the North Anna River to check Ulysses S. Grant’s advance toward Richmond. 3 June: Lee’s well-entrenched army gave Grant his worst defeat of the war at Cold Harbor. 16 June: Lee crossed the James River to confront Grant threatening Petersburg. 17 June: Richmond-Petersburg Campaign began. 30 July: The Battle of the Crater was a disorganized and futile attempt to blow a hole in the Confederate line.

1862  6 March: Davis recalled Lee to Richmond. 17 March: Assigned to work “under the direction of the president” and entrusted with “the conduct of military operation of the Confederacy.” 31 May: Appointed by Davis to command the South’s premier force, the Army of Northern Virginia. 26 June: Lee initiated what became the Seven Days’ Campaign. A premature attack at Mechanicsville was a sharp failure. 27 June: Lee renewed the assaults and at day’s end gained success at Gaines’ Mill. 29 June: Weak attack at Savage Station repulsed by Federals. 30 June: Lee’s hope of seizing important crossroads at Glendale failed. 1 July: Although Confederate assaults were shredded, the Union army had retired to the James, and Lee had won the Seven Days’

1865  11 January: Lee first endorsed the idea of using slaves as soldiers. 31 January: Lee appointed general-in-chief of all Confederate military forces. 5–7 February: Federal probes

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at Hatcher’s Run were beaten back in freezing weather. 25 March: A desperate attempt at Fort Stedman to puncture Grant’s defenses failed. 1 April: Federals overran Lee’s flank at Five Forks, largely through poor leadership by Lee’s subalterns. 2 April: Grant launched fullscale attack that broke the Confederate lines. 6 April: Federals overtook and captured 15 percent of Lee’s army at Sailor’s Creek. 9 April: Lee surrendered his army to Union forces at Appomattox Court House. 13 April: Lee arrived at his rented home in Richmond. 7 June: A grand jury in Norfolk, Virginia, indicted Lee for treason. 20 June: Grant assured Lee that no such charges would be made. 24 August: Lee accepted offer to become president of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia. 2 October: Submitted amnesty oath to U.S. government; assumed college presidency.

1870  2 March: Lee began a two-month vacation tour of the South. 28 September: Suffered a stroke while attempting to say grace at the evening meal. 12 October: At 9:15 a.m., Lee died at his home. 15 October: Funeral and entombment occurred in the college chapel. Name of Washington College changed to Washington and Lee University. 1883  28 June: Edward Valentine marble statue, “Recumbent Lee,” depicting the general asleep in the field, dedicated at the Washington and Lee University chapel. 1890  29 May: First and largest equestrian statue of Lee unveiled in Richmond, Virginia. 1972  30 June: Congress enacted Public Law 92-333, which designated the Custis mansion as “Arlington House: The Robert E. Lee Memorial.”

1866  17 February: Lee testified before a congressional committee in Washington, D.C.

1975 5 August: President Gerald Ford signed Lee’s 1865 amnesty oath, thus restoring his American citizenship.

1868  28 June: New York Herald endorsed Lee for president of the United States.

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Introduction

This is not another biography of Robert E. Lee in the traditional sense. As the huge bibliography at the end of the book clearly shows, another life study is unnecessary. Lee has been acclaimed an icon for more than 150 years. Next to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, Lee is widely regarded as America’s most respected historical figure—not merely as a brilliant military commander, but also for his inspiring achievements on behalf of the new nation in the five years after the Civil War. What this work provides is a historical encyclopedia of Lee and his times. Some 200 sketches summarize family members and associates that Lee had, events of which he was a part, places he visited or lived, and subjects that played important roles in his life. Topics include individuals; battle sites in two wars; family histories; engineering duties; army composition; national locales; the value of rivers, earthworks, and railroads; overviews of the governments and capitals of the two opposing sides in the war, plus postwar education. Focus here is always on Lee’s relationship with the entry under discussion. Feelings Lee expressed on the subject are included. The major intent is to keep Lee in his time and avoid the easy-to-make mistake of looking at the past through the lense of the present. (For example, slavery in Lee’s early life was so prevalent that emancipation seemed dangerous and equality of races impossible. Similarly, Richmond, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., are immensely different from the two capitals existent today.)

The real Lee is to most people a mystery. He fought for a new nation breaking away from the United States, just as his father had fought for a new nation breaking away from Mother England. However, the key to understanding Lee are three words on which his entire life rested: devotion to duty. A series of dichotomies are present through­ ­out his 63 years. He was born into a highly aristocratic Virginia family, but one so heavily in debt that it had to abandon its ancestral home place when Lee was a child. The family was close-knit, but gaps in age meant Robert became close to only one of his siblings, Sidney Smith Lee. His half brother Henry was 20 years older. Thus, Robert had little direct connection with the disgraces of “Black Horse Harry.” Possessing the dark brown eyes and hair of his mother’s family, the youth got along well with all members of his family. He learned early about being a houseguest with some relative. Lee was a rather reserved lad, never comfortable in crowds or with strangers. By the age of 13, he was the oldest male in the immediate family. He learned the Episcopal catechism before he learned to read. Lee sacrificed much of his energetic youth to care for a mother who was both widowed and plagued by illness. Education consisted of a classical curriculum at all-free Alexandria Academy. Lee excelled at mathematics, which would be of good fortune when he entered the U.S. Military Academy and faced a degree in engineering.

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The young officer opposed the Mexican War as crass imperialism. After the contest, General-in-Chief Winfield Scott praised Lee as “the bravest soldier” he had ever seen. Lee regarded slavery as “a moral evil” and secession as “revolution.” He did not choose the Confederate States of America as his country. “A union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets,” he declared, “has no charm for me.” He entered the Civil War because his beloved Virginia left the Union. Had the “Mother State” remained with the Northern states, Lee would have fought for the North. Again, one must view the past as it existed and not succumb to modern-day misinterpretations. Americans now live in an age when the federal government is the nation’s largest employer and controls the bulk of our being. In 1860 the United States was only 70 years old. It was too young to have wisdom or broad power. Indeed, in that age the Washington government directly touched most citizens only in one way: it delivered mail to local post offices. Taxes and court cases were settled at state and local levels. The influence of the states was embodied in the 1790 oath of allegiance for army officers. The oath required that a man promise to “bear true allegiance to the United States and . . . serve them honestly and faithfully.” By 1860, Lees had inhabited Virginia for 225 years. State affiliation was three times deeper than that for a federal system. Lee believed in the first weeks of secession that Virginia—and he—could remain out of the conflict. Geography, prestige, and leadership rendered moot such thoughts. Lee was the only man in history to have been offered command of the principal opposing armies on each side. He was one of the greatest soldiers in history, yet his most lasting contribution was as a pursuer of peace. His fame notwithstanding, the Virginian was a private man who never bared his soul to anyone. Lee shunned advertisement and a host of friendships. His iron self-control revealed little of his inner thoughts.

For three years, at the head of the Army of Northern Virginia, Lee constantly faced overwhelming numbers of enemy soldiers. He took risks, planned unpredictable strategies, waged battles with cool calculation. Once asked how he prepared for combat, Lee replied simply, “I plan and work with all my might to bring the troops to the right place at the right time. With that I have done my duty. As soon as I order the troops forward into battle, I lay the fate of the army in the hands of God.” The Seven Days’ Campaign was his first victory. It began the process of Lee and his army becoming what one author has called “an inseparable organism of heart and mind.” Other successes followed: Second Manassas, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor. His two offensives in the North ended in a draw (Antietam) and a defeat (Gettysburg). Casualties, food shortages, lack of adequate clothing and equipment—all took a toll while Lee’s forces were pinned down in the trenches of Petersburg and Richmond. Yet in January a Georgian wrote in his diary that Lee “is the only man living in whom [Confederates] would unreservedly entrust all power for the preservation of their independence.” The general remained steadfast to the end. In February 1865, with the odds stacked heavily against him, Lee declared, “I shall endeavor . . . to do my duty and fight to the last.” Three months later, General Ulysses S. Grant’s army finally surrounded Lee’s broken columns at Appomattox. Lee could easily have ordered his men to disperse, take to the hills and byways, conduct ambushes, looting, burning—violence begetting violence everywhere until the North finally stopped fighting. That is the course most civil wars follow. Lee refused to take that route. Such guerrilla warfare would only increase the killing and the destruction, he said. Worst of all, it would eliminate any chance of the nation ever coming back together again. After Lee humbly surrendered himself and his army at Appomattox, he embarked on a five-year pilgrimage to implant unity among states battered in matter and mind. Lee, more than any other American in 1865–1870,

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labored for reconciliation, compromise, cooperation, unity. In doing so, he won the lasting admiration of North as well as South. At his death in October 1870, an entire nation mourned. General Grant had won the Civil War; General Lee had saved the peace. In the end, two soldiers served their country well. Lee won an international reputation in the Civil War for his mastery of the art of warfare. Military analysts considered him the greatest field commander since Napoleon Bonaparte. British Field Marshal Viscount Garnet Wolseley met Lee and wrote, “I never felt my own insignificance more keenly than I did in his presence.” The secrets of his success were many: installing high morale in his army, the ability to discern the intentions of his opponent, predictable for his unpredictability, willing to take great risks in the face of overwhelming numbers, hard-hitting and relentless in battle, so audacious in both strategy and tactics that he was labeled a general “born to make the attack.” A great commander in war is often defined less by the battles he wins than by the defeats he suffers. In spite of his spectacular victories in the field, Lee for three years faced the heaviest odds any American commander has ever known. One writer has concluded that Lee’s true strength lay in “his remarkable ability to rescue his army from seemingly irremediable predicaments. . . . He was a master at improvising. . . .” Lee was always painfully aware that he was not commanding an army of professional soldiers. “They are citizens defending their country,” he told General Powell Hill. “I have to make the most of what I have. . . . When a man makes a mistake, I call him to my tent, talk to him, and use the authority of my position to make him do the right thing the next time.” No individual is perfect, certainly in war. Current revisionists accuse Lee of “a compulsion to attack or die,” making questionable attacks, incurring losses repeatedly, and having a preoccupation only with the war in Virginia. Other interpreters have traveled the psychological highway and declared Lee to be stoical, “a man of constant sorrow,” and one who never escaped his feeling of white supremacy. His tendency to give verbal and imprecise orders was a weakness he never overcame.

His dislike of face-to-face confrontations, and failure to levy criticism when it was warranted, showed a “lack of thunder” whose presence was sometimes needed. Certainly Lee would have profited from a larger staff. Although 32 officers are listed as serving on the general’s staff, headquarters for the Army of Northern Virginia consisted of five men: Robert Chilton, Armistead Long, Charles Marshall, Walter Taylor, and Charles Venable. They struggled faithfully to maintain the framework of an army that grew to as many as 80,000 soldiers. Lee’s aggressiveness led to much risk taking, and in the battles of Malvern Hill and Gettysburg the result was defeat. A valid criticism of the general was his reluctance to interfere with his lieutenants once a battle had begun. Lee consistently displayed a trust in lieutenants undeserving of such confidence. After the Seven Days’ Campaign, only “Stonewall” Jackson regularly lived up to Lee’s expectations. Historians tend to ignore what may have been Lee’s greatest weakness: ill health. He entered the Civil War with full vigor. Then problems began. On the eve of his 1862 invasion of Maryland, Lee suffered a fall that broke one hand and badly sprained the other. For weeks he was unable to dress himself or write. He rode Traveller at the battle of Antietam, but an aide had to lead the horse because Lee could not grip the reins. In March 1863, the commander suffered a major heart attack. Because no medical treatment was known for such an ailment, Lee would battle the condition for the remainder of his life. (During the 1864 North Anna River campaign, Lee directed operations from a carriage until forced to go to bed.) He was among the tens of thousands of Civil War soldiers who had frequent attacks of diarrhea. One such disability struck Lee at Gettysburg only four months after the heart problem appeared. The mental strain of leading a small army that was the only hope of the Southern Confederacy aggravated the physical infirmities Lee bore. That his hair turned from dark brown to snow white in the four years of war is clear indication of health problems.

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More enduring than Lee’s feats on the battlefield were his manner and deportment. Those who most criticize Lee the man are those who know the man least. He was taller than usual and strongly built. His voice was deep and authoritative. Because of a solemn, ingrained nature, Lee smiled little and laughed less. He lived in an age of dazzling uniforms. Yet, his adjutant general observed, Lee was “always dressed in gray sack-coat of Confederate cloth, matching trousers tucked into well-fitting riding boots,” and with the stars of a colonel on his collar (a habit he adopted from George Washington). Lee seldom wore a sword, but binoculars were usually in his hand or hanging from his neck. The one unassailable feature of his life was his faith. The Lee family helped plant Anglicanism in the New World, and they were among the strongest supporters in the establishment of the American Episcopal Church. Lee followed the tenets of the then-conservative denomination. Around 1850 he developed a religious intensity that permanently marked his life. Devotion to duty became his earthly display of Christian faith. Only God could purge the world of evil, he believed. The outcome of slavery, secession, and civil war all lay in the hands of his Heavenly Father. Armed with a sublime sense of fatalism, Lee sought to be a servant of God in everything he did. On Christmas Day 1862, barely 10 days after his victory at Fredericksburg, he wrote his wife, ”My heart is full with gratitude to Almighty God for his unspeakable mercies with which he has blessed us. . . . In him alone is our trust and safety.” The Confederate people found strength through righteousness in Lee’s religion. Writings of the time praised him as “Christian hero and patriot . . . a man of prayer . . . a servant of God.” Many observers commented on Lee’s straitlaced countenance. He did not use tobacco, utter profanities, or gamble. Except for an occasional glass of wine, he did not drink. Lee addressed officers by their rank, never by first name. To everyone except his soldiers (who referred to him with his familial nickname, Marse Robert), he was General Lee or The General—in

part because he belonged to an older generation than most of his lieutenants. Lee had an aura that is difficult to put into words. Francis Lawley, chief field correspondent of the London Times, came close. He found Lee’s manner “calm and stately, his presence impressive and imposing.” Lawley thought Lee so courteous that “a child thrown upon a knot of strangers would inevitably be drawn to him . . . and would rush to claim his protection.” Lee had normal human biases, in spite of those who have pronounced him faultless. A persistent myth is that he always spoke kindly of the enemy. In no way could Lee watch Union destruction of his beloved state and refer to Federals as “our friends across the way.” Northerners, he once asserted, have planted “darkness and despair where flourished love and happiness before.” Union atrocities caused the general to term the enemy “cowardly persecutors.” Lee never accepted the escalation of the struggle to total war. On Christmas Day 1863, he observed local residents around his Orange County, Virginia, headquarters. “I feel sorry for the poor creatures I see here, starved and driven from their homes for no reason whatsoever.” Once asked why he did not respond in kind north of the Potomac River, Lee replied contemptuously, “I do not think we should follow their example.” The political world, Lee stated, “is a subject I carefully avoid.” He regarded politicians as “too selfish to become martyrs.” Summoned to Richmond early in 1865 to testify at a congressional meeting, the general told his son later, “Well, I have been up to see the Congress, and they do not seem to be able to do anything except to eat peanuts and chew tobacco, while my army is starving. . . .” Similarly, Lee considered newspapermen not only untrustworthy but unpatriotic. He never granted interviews. When in 1863 he sought to shift General James Longstreet’s corps secretly from northern Virginia to duty in the southeastern section of the state, Richmond newspapers published day-by-day accounts of the movement. Lee confided to a friend late in the war, “We made a great mistake in the beginning of our struggle. . . . We

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INTRODUCTION

appointed all of our worst generals to command our armies, and all the best generals to edit the newspapers.” Only family members knew of Lee’s remarkable love for animals. Dogs and cats roamed through the halls of Arlington House in the antebellum years. The bond between Lee and his gray stallion, Traveller, was unbreakable. In August 1862, with battle pending at Manassas, a wagon train passed by the spot where Lee watched the procession. The general turned to an aide and said, “I observe that some of those mules are without shoes. I wish you to see to it that all of the animals are shod at once.” Lee had a hot temper but kept it incredibly under control. He displayed that anger only four times in the Civil War; two of the instances involved soldiers abusing horses. On a night years later, while Lee was living in Lexington, a forest fire erupted on a nearby hillside. Someone mentioned how beautifully illuminated the sky was. Lee remarked, “It is beautiful, but I have been thinking of the poor animals which must perish in the flames.” Readers with nominal knowledge of Lee overlook his first 54 years, concentrate on his three years at the head of an army, and ignore completely his last five years as the nation’s peacemaker. This is an injustice to both Lee and history. The general faced the end of the Civil War with uncertainty. He was jobless, homeless, and in poor health. The Union of 1865 was not the union of four years earlier. The old nation had been dominated by agriculture, white citizens, and interruptions by state rights. Now a different country was pursuing industrialization, humanitarian reforms, and widely expanding federal control. As the South’s foremost hero, Lee was the key to how former Confederates accepted defeat and readjustment. A bitter word from Lee, a clinched fist, a snarl of resentment could provoke a new outburst that would be a major impediment to reunion. Lee was aware of the situation. “I cannot desert my native state in the hour of her adversity,” he declared. “I must abide her future, and share her fate.” Retirement was the natural pursuit for an aging soldier with three decades of military

service. For a short time in the summer of 1865, Lee toyed with the idea of writing a history of the Army of Northern Virginia so that its “bravery and devotion” could be “transmitted to posterity.” He abandoned the project because he wanted to be active somehow in the postwar process. At summer’s end he confessed to his wife, “Life is indeed gliding away and I have nothing good to show for mine that is past. I pray that I may be spared to do something for the benefit of mankind and to the glory of God.” Something did materialize for Lee: an offer to become president of impoverished Washington College in Lexington, Virginia. The post contained little reward and less future. Yet it continued the devotion to duty that Lee had always pursued. “I have led the young men of the South into battle,” he stated. “I have seen many of them dead on the field. I shall devote my remaining years to training young men to do their duty in life.” On the day he assumed the college presidency, Lee submitted his application for amnesty to federal authorities. He never received a reply. The lifetime professional soldier became an amazingly farsighted educator. Lee scrapped the antiquated, lockstep college curriculum. In its place he installed courses applicable to the times: American history, mathematics, commerce, farming, and rudiments of engineering. Because Lee thought English “destined to spread over the civilized nations,” Washington College became the first higher-education school to have English as a branch of study. The new president introduced elective courses into the system of higher education; he made daily chapel services voluntary; he installed an honor code operated solely by students. The only rule of conduct, he told a freshman, is that a student “be a gentleman.” Repeatedly the president advised one and all, “Obedience to lawful authority is the foundation of manly character.” At the beginning of 1867 a groundswell began to have Lee run for governor of Virginia. He would not even consider it. The onset that year of Reconstruction and attendant military occupation of the South naturally upset Lee. For one thing, he regarded such policies

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infringement by the Union of the Appomattox peace terms by which ex-Confederates were not to be molested unless they broke the law. Lee quickly recognized the vengeful attitude of the ruling Republicans. To a nephew early in 1868 he wrote, “The Conservatives are too weak to resist successfully the radicals, who have every thing their own way, & I fear will destroy the Country. . . . We must arm ourselves with patience & endurance.” John Tyler Morgan, one of Alabama’s political spokesmen, noted several months later, “Eight million people turn their eyes to Lexington, seeking instruction and paternal advice in the severe trials. . . . They read in the example of their General . . . the lessons of patience, moderation, fortitude, and earnest devotion to the requirements of duty. . . . His present labor and calm confidence in the future kindles the flames of hope in the hearts of millions. . . .” Lee’s untiring efforts toward reconciliation in those bitter years brought national focus on Washington College. Inventor Cyrus McCormick made generous financial gifts. Outspoken abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher publicly recognized Lee as a fellow countryman. In the autumn of 1868 occurred the first national elections since the war. Incredibly, the New York Herald endorsed Lee for president of the United States. Had Lee been elected, he could not serve. His amnesty had never been granted. All but forgotten today, yet to Lee’s everlasting fame, he set himself completely apart from those who wanted to perpetuate the Civil War. Lee gave total attention to the future at the expense of the past. He was the only major wartime figure who would not write his memoirs. Lee refused to grant interviews, speak in public, or attend reunions and memorials. In declining an 1869 monument dedication, Lee stated, “I think it wise not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the example of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife and to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered.” Lee put it more simply in answering an angry mother whose two sons wanted to go north to school. “Madam,” he pleaded gently, “forget your animosities, and make your sons Americans.”

Under Lee’s five-year leadership, Washington College enrollment increased tenfold. In looking back at his wartime years, Lee could conclude, “We failed, but in the good province of God apparent failure often proves a blessing.” Even as the quality of the school increased with each passing year, the heart of the old soldier functioned with less effectiveness. Lee was “praying that a Merciful Providence may make all things for good,” but arteriosclerosis slowly took its toll. On 28 September 1870, following a protracted vestry meeting at his Episcopal Church, Lee suffered a stroke. He lingered in and out of consciousness during a weeklong rainstorm. At 9:15 a.m. on 12 October, his earthly pilgrimage ended. A nation mourned his passing. Ten thousand people stood in silence outside the Atlanta, Georgia, city hall. Businesses in dozens of towns closed out of respect. Three thousand miles away, in the Washington Territory of the Pacific Northwest, an editor asserted, “No liberal minded man will question the purity and sincerity of his motives. As a military man he had no peer; in his private character he had no superior.” After the 15 October funeral service in the college chapel whose construction he oversaw, Lee’s remains were placed in a crypt in the basement of the building. Trustees later that day renamed the school Washington and Lee University. Yet for many graduates ever since, it is “General Lee’s College.” Lee never sought adulation or applause because he never thought he deserved them. He was merely doing his duty to the best of his ability. With malice toward none, with respect for all, the former soldier toiled to the death to remake a union of states into the United States. Military historians may pick at him, those who view history through prejudice rather than knowledge will distort his beliefs, and the Episcopal Church hierarchy can persecute him for his righteousness, but they cannot erase Lee’s place in the American pantheon. The Virginian resurrected a rarely used adjective. In late winter 1865, the Union president for the first time saw a photograph of Lee. “It is a good face,” Abraham Lincoln stated. “It is the face of a noble, noble, brave man.”

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A gratefully have preferred your choice should have fallen on one more capable. “Trusting to Almighty God, an approving conscience and the aid of my fellow citizens, I will devote myself to the defence and service of my native State, in whose behalf alone would I have ever drawn my sword.”

ACCEPTANCE SPEECH TO VIRGINIA CONVENTION (23 APRIL 1861). Shortly after midnight on 20 April 1861, Robert E. Lee drafted a one-sentence letter to Secretary of War Simon Cameron: “I have the honor to tender the resignation of my commission as Colonel of the 1st Regt. of Cavalry.” Thus, Lee bade farewell to 32 years of service in the American army. Later that day, he received word that Governor John Letcher wished to see him in Richmond as soon as possible. Lee left Arlington, never again to see his home. Letcher offered Lee supreme command of all military forces being raised in Virginia. The appointment carried the rank of major general. Lee had felt frustrations in his slow rise in army rank, but he was not a lustful warrior seeking conquest. In February 1848, at the end of the fighting in Mexico, Lee wrote his daughter Agnes, “War is a great evil. It brings much individual as well as national suffering. The sight of every battle field had made my heart bleed.” On 23 April 1861, in civilian dress, Lee came to the Capitol building. He was officially going to accept the governor’s appointment before 150 members of the state’s secession convention. Lee had never given a speech in his life. This would be the only one he would deliver during the Civil War. “Deeply impressed with the solemnity of this occasion on which I appear before you, and profoundly grateful for the honour conferred upon me, I accept the position your partiality has assigned me, though I would

AFRICAN AMERICANS. See SLAVERY. ALEXANDER, EDWARD PORTER (1835– 1910). In the Civil War, Porter Alexander was among the most brilliant young officers on either side to rise up the military chain of command. His versatility was remarkable, and after the war he penned not one but two memoirs of service regularly quoted by historians. Born into a wealthy Georgia family, Alexander graduated third in his West Point class. Friends called him Aleck. He taught at the academy until the coming of civil war. His first service was as chief engineer and signal officer for General Gustave Beauregard at First Manassas. Alexander’s development of a flag-system communication was universally adopted. Robert E. Lee named him chief of ordnance for the June 1862 counterattack against General George B. McClellan’s huge force on the Virginia peninsula. The Georgian was soon training new artillery batteries, and he increasingly handled assignments that his less energetic chief, General William N. Pendleton, could not do. Lee came to look to him continually when the subject of cannon arose.

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ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA

At the 1862 battle of Fredericksburg, Alexander commanded the batteries atop Marye’s Heights that shredded repeated Union attacks. His converging fire at Chancellorsville on Union guns posted strategically at an elevation called Fairview brought the Confederate artillery control of the battle. It was Alexander who, at Gettysburg, directed the artillery barrage prior to General George Pickett’s climactic charge. In 1864 Alexander was one of only three Confederate officers promoted to brigadier general of artillery. He commanded the guns of General James Longstreet’s corps to the end at Appomattox. On Sunday morning, 9 April 1865, Alexander went to Lee’s headquarters to urge the commander not to surrender. Order the army to disperse, Alexander argued. Confederates could scatter and begin a guerrilla warfare that would last until the Yankees got tired of it and quit. Lee quietly vetoed the idea by pointing out the permanent damage such back-alley fighting would do both to the South and to any future that a reunion of states would have. The only honorable thing to do, Lee stated, was to lay down arms now. Alexander later confessed, “I had not a single word to say in reply. He had answered my suggestion from a place so far above it, that I was ashamed of having made it.” In the postwar years the ex-general taught engineering at the University of South Carolina and contributed his skills in the building of three separate railroads. Alexander was a widower for a short period but filled the gap by marrying his first wife’s niece.

Many historians have claimed that the Alexandria years were a sad period for Lee. His disgraced father and older brothers were away, and the family had dropped several notches on the aristocratic scale. Yet it was in Alexandria that Lee cultivated the devotion to duty so much a part of his life. The everpresent spirit of Washington invigorated him. He patiently cared for a mother in the throes of narcolepsy. Lee would race home from school to help with chores or take his mother on pleasurable carriage rides. Mrs. Henry Lee once stated that Robert “is a son, daughter, and everything to me.” In reality, a network of relatives, including three uncles and a dozen cousins, lived within blocks of the Lee home on Cameron Street. Associations were many and education plentiful. Just before his death in 1870, Lee declared, “There is no community to which my affections more strongly cling than Alexandria, composed of my earliest and oldest friends, my kind school-fellows, and faithful neighbors.” Civil war left the town in shambles. Some 13,000 residents were there when Federal soldiers occupied the city in May 1861. Alexandria slowly became a military complex of supply depots, military hospitals, and railroad facilities. Armies moving to and from battlefields passed through the town. Military presence bred saloons, bawdy houses, and other evils. One Federal stationed in Alexandria exclaimed, “I never saw such a mean, low, dirty place in my life. The streets were full of soldiers and whores.” Another concluded, “At Alexandria I believe the fiends of hell are let loose.” By 1865 occupational neglect and filth had ravaged the city and left its citizens with only hope for the future.

ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA. Robert E. Lee was only three years old when his family moved the 50-odd miles from Stratford Hall in Westmore­ land County to Alexandria. It was a thriving port eight miles down the Potomac River from a capital under construction at Washington, D.C. Alexandria had 7,000 residents and wore a Virginia gentility. It was a progressive town, surrounded by wealth. George Washington had died a decade earlier at nearby Mount Vernon plantation, but his presence lingered all over the city.

ALLAN, WILLIAM (1837–1889). An unfamiliar figure today, Allan in the postwar years was widely hailed as an intellectual, educator, writer, and close friend of college president Robert E. Lee. The Winchester native received a private education before teaching school himself to raise money for graduate studies. In 1860 he received an MA degree in applied mathematics

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from the University of Virginia. He enlisted in the Confederate army as a private and became clerk of General Thomas J. Jackson’s Stonewall Brigade. Allan applied for an ordnance officer’s commission in December 1862. He received the highest score ever recorded. Jackson quickly assigned him as captain and chief of ordnance for the Second Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia. Allan served successively on the staffs of Generals Richard Ewell, Jubal Early, and John B. Gordon. By war’s end he had risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel. Allan spent a year as a cashier at a Staun­ton bank. Then Lee offered him a professorship in mathematics at Washington College. Allan served on the faculty for almost seven years. He and Lee became close friends who frequently chatted. Fortunately, Allan transcribed from memory several conversations in which Lee reflected on wartime events, notably Gettysburg. Allan’s writings remain a fundamental source on Lee. In 1867 Allan collaborated with Jackson mapmaker Jedediah Hotchkiss on a study of the Chancellorsville campaign. He produced one of the first scholarly studies of Jackson’s Valley Campaign (1880), and a similar volume on the Army of Northern Virginia’s 1862 movements appeared posthumously three years after his death. Allan left Washington and Lee University in 1873 to become the first principal of McDonogh Institute, a private school for poor boys in Baltimore. He was ever in demand as a speaker. The slim, bearded Allan was a trustee of Washington and Lee and never ceased his fierce defense of Lee’s career. His active memberships in the Southern Historical Society and the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts are evidence of the national esteem in which he was held.

retreat route for Lee. Trainloads of army rations were to be waiting for the hungry soldiers at Amelia. For reasons still not known, no trains arrived. Lee had to dispatch wagons to forage the countryside. They collected little food. Worse, while Lee waited, General Ulysses S. Grant gained a day’s march in pursuit. “This delay was fatal,” Lee admitted, “and could not be relieved.” In late morning the next day, General Philip Sheridan’s Federals cut the rail line seven miles above Amelia at Jetersville. Lee’s most dependable artillery commander recalled, “I never saw Gen. Lee seem so anxious to bring on a battle in my life, as he seemed this afternoon.” Now Lee was fighting two enemies: the Union army and hunger. He veered west away from the R&D rail line and moved toward Farmville and the hope of gaining food there. AMNESTY OATH. President Andrew Johnson preferred the word restoration to reconstruction. The quicker the states could be cemented anew, the better it would be for the nation. One of Johnson’s first acts after succeeding the fallen Abraham Lincoln was a May 1865 proclamation offering amnesty and restitution of property (except for slaves) to Southerners who would take an oath of allegiance to the United States government. This blanket forgiveness would be handled through regular channels except in certain instances. Ex-Confederate officers above the rank of colonel had to apply directly to the president. Robert E. Lee on 13 June requested a pardon, but no action was taken on the matter. Hence, on 2 October, the day Lee began a new career as a college president, he sent the following to Washington, D.C.: “I, Robert Edward Lee of Lexington, Virginia, do solemnly swear in the presence of Almighty God, that I will henceforth faithfully support, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the Union of the States thereunder, and that I will in like manner, abide by and faithfully support all laws and proclamations which have been made during the existing rebellion with reference to the emancipation of slaves, so help me God.”

AMELIA, VIRGINIA. General Robert E. Lee abandoned Petersburg on the night of 2 April and ordered the two wings of his army to converge at Amelia. It was 35 miles west of Petersburg and 36 miles southwest of Richmond. The village was also on the Richmond & Danville Railroad, the principal supply line and

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Political turmoil in Washington may have interfered; personal animosities may have come into play. Whatever the case, Lee’s petition reached the desk of Secretary of State William H. Seward. He apparently sidetracked the document, which disappeared for 105 years. An employee of the National Archives discovered Lee’s request in a batch of unrelated papers. Upon act of Congress, President Gerald Ford on 5 August 1975 signed into law a restoration of Lee’s civil rights. A supreme irony occurred early in the story. Lee’s efforts toward reconciliation so impressed a Northern editor that in the 1868 presidential election the New York Herald endorsed Lee for president of the United States. If by some measure Lee had been elected, he could not have served. He was not an American citizen.

of Sailor’s Creek. With Anderson thereafter having no troops to lead, Lee allowed him to start home. Anderson’s postwar years in Beaufort, South Carolina, were largely a battle with poverty. ANTIETAM, MARYLAND, CAMPAIGN OF (2–17 SEPTEMBER 1862). A number of reasons lay behind Lee’s decision to invade Maryland. Union forces in the East were demoralized. Richmond was no longer in danger. Not only would an offensive action keep enemy presence from the Old Dominion. Food and other supplies lay in untarnished country on the northern side of the Potomac River. A successful campaign might have political benefits. Off-year elections in the North were two months away and could slow further enthusiasm for war. Additionally, with a Confederate victory, one or more European nations might be impressed sufficiently to give recognition— and aid—to the Southern cause. The advantages seemed to outweigh the risks. Lee was fully aware that his ragged and exhausted army could invade, but it could not occupy enemy territory for any length of time. Yet, Lee told President Jefferson Davis, “we cannot afford to be idle.” The commander in chief agreed. Just before leading his army across the Potomac River, Lee was holding the reins of his horse when a noise caused the animal to jerk. Lee was thrown to the ground. He broke one hand and badly sprained the other. Surgeons fitted him with splints and a sling. For two weeks or more, Lee was unable to ride, write, or even dress himself. He led the army into the first incursion of the North while riding in a hospital wagon. Pain would be constant for days. At Frederick, Maryland, Lee paused to take stock of the situation. General George B. McClellan’s army was in slow pursuit and posed no immediate threat. However, Lee found it necessary to divide his army. General Thomas Jackson’s divisions marched west to seize a heavy Union garrison posted at Harpers Ferry, the door to the Shenandoah Valley and the Confederate escape route. Lee would move over South Mountain, the easternmost ridge of

ANDERSON, RICHARD HERON (1821– 1879). South Carolinian “Dick” Anderson had followed graduation from West Point with steady service in the regular army. He volunteered in his state’s forces early in the secession crisis and was at the bombardment of Fort Sumter. In July 1861, Anderson became a brigadier general and commander of Charleston defenses. By spring 1862, he was leading a brigade in General James Longstreet’s division, and he was on the third level of command in Robert E. Lee’s army throughout the war. Anderson was one of those quiet, obedient officers who never sought fame nor gained any. Unimaginative but dedicated, he proved to be a solid division commander. One officer thought him indifferent, and another questioned his eagerness. Yet the real test of leadership comes from the men who serve under an officer. Anderson’s troops cheered him and consistently fought well. In Lee’s lengthy report of the battle of Chancellorsville, the commander stated that the bearded, gray-haired subordinate “was also distinguished for the promptness, courage, and skill with which he and his division executed every order.” What remained of Anderson’s command was routed at the 6 April 1865 engagement

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APPOMATTOX, VIRGINIA, CAMPAIGN OF

the first battle where Lee himself dictated the army’s movements. Heretofore, subordinates had commanded battle in their respective sectors. Now, at Antietam, it was Lee who shifted his undermanned divisions here and there to meet Federal attacks. Vicious combat raged through the morning and into afternoon. At places such as Dunker Church, East Wood, West Wood, the Cornfield, Bloody Lane, and Burnside’s Bridge dead bodies carpeted the landscape and turned it red. By late afternoon, Union attacks were on the verge of breaking Lee’s tattered right (southern) flank. Suddenly General Powell Hill’s division, which had been securing the Harpers Ferry outpost, arrived on the field. “Little Powell” had driven his men 17 miles at a double-time march. Yet they had enough stamina left to shatter the advancing flank of McClellan’s army and send it reeling across Antietam Creek as sundown brought an end to the slaughter. Soldiers fought for 13 hours that Wed­ nes­ day, 17 September. Nearly 6,000 men were killed, another 17,000 wounded or mis­ sing. Antietam remains the bloodiest one-day battle in American history. Lee lost a third of his army before limping back to Virginia. Yet repulsing enemy attempts to break the Confederate lines planted a seed of invincibility into an army only three months old. On the other hand, McClellan squandered everything in the campaign: not taking advantage of the “lost order,” a slow pursuit, sporadic attacks at South Mountain, not using his superior numbers to advantage, and failure to deliver a deathblow to the retreating South­ ­ern army. The Union victory seemed hollow. However, Antietam was Union President Abraham Lincoln’s springboard for the issuance of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. The war now became for the North a twin crusade: to preserve the Union and to end the presence of slavery.

the Appalachians, to Hagerstown, Maryland, to await Jackson’s return and to block any Federal threat from the north. Part of his army would remain on South Mountain to guard the passes. All of this was carefully spelled out in Special Orders No. 191. Copies were distributed to James Longstreet, Jackson, and their division commanders. Two days after the Confederate movements began, a Union soldier in the pursuing army chanced upon a discarded copy of Special Orders No. 191. McClellan was suddenly the beneficiary of one of the greatest security leaks in American military history. He virtually had a timetable for the Army of Northern Virginia. If the Union general took advantage of the good roads and balmy weather, he could destroy in turn each of the pieces of Lee’s army. The one thing McClellan did not like, however, was fighting. Self-doubt and uncertainty slowly engulfed him. McClellan began to see the “lost order” as a ruse to lure him into a trap. Hence, instead of a speedy advance against the enemy pieces with his superior forces, the general began a slow, methodical march over the mountain. A one-day fight along the ridges of South Mountain resulted in a Federal victory, but it bought time for Lee to gather his army at Sharpsburg, a sleepy village midway between Hagerstown and Harpers Ferry and nestled on a stream known as Antietam Creek. Some 65,000 Federals moved into position on one side of the creek while 28,000 Confederates hastily prepared a defensive line on the other side. Had McClellan delivered a massive attack at all points of Lee’s line, his three-to-one superiority would doubtless have gained a significant victory. Yet, if the general had any tactical sense, it never appeared at Antietam. In fact, McClellan determined on an opposite course of action. He opted for a series of assaults: first against Lee’s left, then in the center, and finally on the right. This enabled Lee to shift his weaker force from one danger point to another. Lee’s injured hands were still painful. He was on Traveller that day, but an aide led the horse where Lee wished to go. This was

APPOMATTOX, VIRGINIA, CAMPAIGN OF (2–9 APRIL 1865). Some writers have labeled it the “Confederate Death March.” Others regard it as the South’s “last full measure of

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APPOMATTOX, VIRGINIA, SURRENDER AT

devotion.” The 1865 Appomattox Campaign basically ended the Civil War. It was a contest between General Ulysses S. Grant’s strengthening persistence and General Robert E. Lee’s weakening perseverance. What restricted Lee’s withdrawal from the Richmond-Petersburg front was lack of access to a rail line. Wagons were too few, horses too worn out, supplies too far away for keeping the army even minimally equipped. Lee’s rather desperate strategy was to reunite the two pieces of his army at Amelia, 35 miles west of the capital on the Richmond & Danville Railroad. The army would follow the rail line to its western terminus. If General J ­oseph Johnston’s Confederate force, retiring in front of General William Sherman’s advance through North Carolina, could reach Danville, the combined Southern host could use the hilly country of Danville to take on first Grant and then Sherman. However, everything in Lee’s plan rested on speed and an uninterrupted retreat. He lost both foundations at the start. When Lee arrived at Amelia, no food trains were in sight. Confederates spent a day foraging in the countryside. Federals curled around Lee’s flank and cut the railroad seven miles southwest of Amelia. Lee could not continue toward Danville. He turned his march to the west and headed for Farmville. It was on the Southside Railroad, on which food could be shipped from the Lynchburg depot. Meanwhile, hunger, fatigue, wet weather, and no signs of hope for the future were sapping the life from the Confederate army. The thin ranks of the army trudged westward. Signs of defeat were everywhere: broken-down wagons and caissons, abandoned equipment, discarded weapons. Starving horses slowly sank to the ground, still hitched or being ridden. Some soldiers simply sat down on the roadside. Near the end of Lee’s column, a hungry North Carolinian was poking in the bushes in search of a rabbit or some other wild animal when he suddenly found himself surrounded by Federals. One shouted, “Surrender! We’ve got you!”

The Carolinian raised his hands. “Yes,” he replied, “you’ve got me. And a hell of a git you got!” In midafternoon on a drizzly 6 April, Federals attacked the rear of Lee’s columns at Sailor’s Creek. Only 15 percent of the Southern army was lost, but at least half of the remaining morale in the Southern ranks evaporated. The Confederate retreat resumed the next day. Human leakage continued. The Confederates reached Farmville and found food—as well as Union cavalry whose gunfire sent the men back on the march. When Lee began his advance on 9 April, he thought the gunfire in his front was coming from patrols. He discovered that the volleys were from Union infantry. He was surrounded. Lee told General John B. Gordon, “There is nothing left me to do but to go and see General Grant, and I would rather die a thousand deaths.” Lee mounted his horse. In a momentary lapse, he declared, “How easy I could be rid of this, and be at rest. I have only to ride along the line and it will be over.” Lee caught himself, then said, “But it is our duty to live. What will become of the women and children of the South if we are not here to protect them?” APPOMATTOX, VIRGINIA, SURRENDER AT (9 APRIL 1865). No civil war ever ended with greater promise, thanks to the two principals involved. Staff officers spent the morning of Palm Sunday 1865 in making arrangements for the conference between Generals Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. They selected the front parlor of Wilmer McLean’s home across the street from the county courthouse, with the generals to meet in early afternoon. Lee had only two miles to travel. He arrived at 12:30 p.m. in his best uniform and accompanied only by his military secretary, Colonel Charles Marshall. Grant had a longer distance to ride. It was 1 p.m. when he and an entourage of officers walked into the room. With no time for toiletries, Grant was in his usual m ­ ud-splattered boots and wrinkled uniform coat.

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ARLINGTON HOUSE, VIRGINIA

An atmosphere of tension and discomfort filled the front parlor. The Union general sought to ease into the matter at hand by recalling with Lee mutual experiences they had in the Mexican War. Lee then asked that they address the issue before them. The Confederate general had to wonder if “Unconditional Surrender” Grant might want to send some of his beaten opponents to the gallows and others to prison. Thousands of Northerners regarded Confederates as traitors. Now the South stood helpless before Grant. At that moment, Grant’s great fear was that Lee might reject overtones of peace, order his troops to scatter, and turn the present struggle into a guerrilla war of indeterminable length. Such would forever destroy any hope of reunion. President Abraham Lincoln wanted a good peace to follow a bad war. When you catch Lee, Lincoln reportedly told Grant, “Let him up easy. Let him up easy.” Lee also wanted an acceptable peace. Earlier that day, he had vetoed guerrilla tactics urged by one of his generals. We have honorably fought, Lee replied. Just as honorably must we stop fighting. Grant outlined the terms. Lee listened— and had to be startled—at Grant’s proposals. Officers could retain their side arms to help maintain the peace at home. Soldiers with horses could keep them for the spring plowing. All Confederates would sign paroles and go home. Thereafter, they would not be disturbed by Union authorities so long as they obeyed the laws. There would no reprisals, no hangings, no imprisonment, no paybacks. “This will have a happy effect on my army,” Lee quietly told Grant. The Virginian signed the copies of surrender. Learning of the starved condition of Lee’s army, Grant immediately sealed the end of the war by sending 25,000 rations into the Confederate lines. Many of those supplies had been taken from trains Lee did not reach at Farmville and Appomattox. That afternoon two American generals served their country well. See also GENERAL ORDER NO. 9.

ARLINGTON HOUSE, VIRGINIA. George Washington Parke Custis grew up at Mount Vernon, home of George Washington. He literally worshipped his stepfather. His inheritance included 1,100 acres of land on high ground overlooking the Potomac River and the village of Washington, D.C. The son determined to create an estate that would be a virtual shrine to the “Father of Our Country.” He named it Arlington House after the Custis family’s original home on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Plans called for a Greek Revival portico balanced by extended wings. In 1803–1804 the two wings were constructed. The enormous center section was not completed until 15 years later. High ceilings and tall windows surrounded rooms that opened into one another. Washington family paraphernalia was everywhere inside the home. Outside were manicured lawns, trees, gardens, and walkways. Only three miles from the U.S. Capitol, Arlington House became one of the nation’s most imposing estates. As Parke Custis aged, so did his property. In 1857 Custis died, and Arlington House passed to Mary Custis Lee. The wedding of Robert E. Lee and Mary had occurred at Arlington House. Lee had come to regard it as the home “where my affection and attachments are more strongly placed than at any other place in the world.” Yet when Lee came home on extended leave, he was shocked by the utter neglect he saw. Parke Custis had been careless about the estate in his declining years. The main house was badly in need of repairs, the grounds overgrown with weeds, 196 lackadaisical slaves doing as little as possible, and $10,000 in outstanding debts awaiting attention. Custis had decreed that the slaves would be freed when all of the financial obligations had been settled. Lee was at that stage of carrying out the will when civil war began. Federal troops occupied Arlington House following the secession of Virginia. Then a once-close friend, Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs, ordered the grounds converted to a soldier-cemetery that would ­ forever render it useless for the Lees. Arlington House lost what remaining beauty it

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had. Thousands of unarranged graves dotted the land, while encamped soldiers and horses turned the English-style park that Parke Custis had built into an obstacle course of mud. The home became an empty shell of peeling paint and scuffed wood. In 1882, after years of litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court (by a 5–4 vote) ruled the 1861 seizure of Arlington House to be illegal. The Lee family accepted $150,000 in compensation. The estate was then divided: the land designated as Arlington National Cemetery and the mansion transferred to the National Park Service. In 1955 the Park Service announced the refurbished home as the Robert E. Lee Memorial.

mistakes. Yet Lee’s audacity drove McClellan away from Richmond and significantly raised morale throughout the South. Under Lee, the Army of Northern Virginia developed a threadbare jauntiness. The soldiers might be short of food and shoes, but they became tough as leather. Beginning in June 1862, a bonding occurred between the general and his soldiers. They literally worshipped him. He felt the same away about them. The army usually numbered about 65,000 men and was consistently outnumbered in battle. Internal command squabbles rarely erupted, in sharp contrast to the major western Confederate host, the Army of Tennessee. This was due partly to Lee’s diplomatic skills and partly to continuing success. The victories were many: Seven Days’, Second Manassas, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, the Wilderness, Cold Harbor. Raids into the North ended with setbacks at Antietam and Gettysburg. The Chancellorsville triumph cost Lee his most trustworthy subordinate, Stonewall Jackson. Gettysburg crippled the high command. The army never recovered the leadership qualities it had known up to that point. However, in the second and third winters of the war, religious revivals swept through the ranks and brought thousands to their knees. In both revivals, Lee became the Moses leading his children to the promised land. By 1864 Lee’s army was ragged, ill fed, but defiant. Ulysses S. Grant began an Overland Campaign designed to destroy Lee first, then to seize Richmond. Federals pounded the Army of Northern Virginia in the Wilderness, at Spotsylvania, along the North Anna River, and to the gates of both Richmond and its “soft underbelly,” Petersburg. Lee lost the mobility that had enabled his smaller force to compete against superior numbers. He entrenched in front of the two cities and watched helplessly as Union forces poured into the works opposite him. Nine months of besiegement took a severe toll on the Southerners. Hunger, exposure, deaths, sickness, declining morale—all whittled away spirit as well as strength. On 2 April 1865, the long-awaited, all-out Union

ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA. The Confederacy’s largest and premier fighting force, it was entrusted with the defense of Virginia in general and Richmond in particular. General Joseph Johnston commanded the original army that repulsed a July 1861 attack along Bull Run near Manassas. The following spring, while General Robert E. Lee was serving as military adviser to President Jefferson Davis, the same host confronted a huge Union army advancing on the lower peninsula toward the Confederate capital. Johnston fell seriously wounded in fighting at Seven Pines. As the mounted president and general were riding back to Richmond, Davis ordered Lee to take command of the Southern army. Lee officially designated all of his brigades as the Army of Northern Virginia. It was appropriately named. The premier Southern fighting force operated in the narrow confines between Washington, D.C., and Richmond. What Lee discovered when he took the leadership role, Colonel Robert Chilton stated, “was magnificent material, of undisciplined individuality, and as such correspondingly unreliable and disorganized.” Lee spent two busy weeks training what were called his “ragamuffins.” Then he surprised his critics—and the enemy—by delivering a counterattack on General George B. McClellan’s Union force. The ensuing Seven Days’ Campaign brought both success and failure. It was a costly shakedown for the Confederates, with a host of internal

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attack came from one end of the 40-mile line to the other. Federals broke Lee’s defenses in several places. By nightfall Confederates were moving westward in retreat. Stragglers stumbled from the ranks every mile of the way. Grant’s pursuit was relentless. On Palm Sunday, Lee found himself surrounded at Appomattox Court House. The two commanders met that afternoon in a private home. Grant’s courtesy and lenient terms, together with Lee’s dignified and appreciative demeanor, inserted a measure of decency at the end of a war of indescribable horror. Scarecrow veterans laid down their arms and battle standards three days later in a formal ceremony. Then they started home. Major General J. F. C. Fuller, an eminent British military historian, wrote a study of Lee that was not always kind. Yet of the soldiers who had fought so valiantly for Lee and country, Fuller stated, “What that bootless, ragged, half-starved army accomplished is one of the miracles of history. . . . To find a comparison we must go back to the days of the saints.”

capture Wilmington, the last Confederate port open on the Atlantic coast. Abraham Lincoln finally relieved Butler of command. Under General Edward Ord, the Army of the James returned to Virginia and became part of Grant’s pursuit of Lee to Appomattox. ARMY OF THE NORTHWEST. Created 8 June 1861, the Army of the Northwest had responsibility for guarding Virginia mountain passes and roadways in a sparsely populated region of people equally divided in their sentiments of North versus South. General Robert S. Garnett was the first commander; yet before he could begin the rudiments of training, he was killed in a 13 July action at Carrick’s Ford, Virginia. General William W. Loring succeeded Garnett in title but hardly in ability. When General Robert E. Lee first arrived in the mountains of western Virginia, he found Loring’s encampment filthy and disorganized. The volunteers in six small brigades were eager enough but totally lacking in every aspect of army life. Lee tactfully wrote his wife, “It is so difficult to get our untrained people to comprehend and promptly execute the measures required for the occasion.” An attempt to drive back Federals failed embarrassingly at Cheat Mountain. Yet Lee continued to call the force an army in order to curb Loring’s vanity. What remained of Loring’s forces was transferred to General Stonewall Jackson’s command in the Shenandoah Valley. On 9 February 1862, the Army of the Northwest was officially disbanded.

ARMY OF THE JAMES. In 1864 the U.S. War Department created the Army of the James to assist General Ulysses S. Grant in his offensive against Robert E. Lee. It was to advance on Richmond by a route parallel to the river for which it was named. Unfortunately, the general selected to command the force was Major General Benjamin F. Butler. He was never a soldier. New England politics was Butler’s niche. A bulbous man with sleepy eyes that did not mesh, Butler proved through the war to be unscrupulous and contriving. He regarded military action in the light of political gain. Obeying orders, Butler marched up the south bank of the James River as Grant was fighting his way through the Wilderness. Yet Butler managed to get himself and his army bottled up inside a 270-degree bend in the river, which proved of great convenience to General Gustave Beauregard, who commanded the meager Confederate forces in the area. His usefulness in Virginia now gone, Butler was sent with his army to Fort Fisher, North Carolina. There he botched an attempt to

ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. Its roots sprouted from the Union disaster in July 1861 at Manassas. President Abraham Lincoln realized that this struggle between North and South was to be long and drawn out. A real, well-trained army was needed at once. Lincoln’s selection for army maker was a promising, highly self-assured young general, George B. McClellan. His task was to organize and prepare a huge force. Its duties would be twofold and never change: to defend Washington, D.C., and to capture Richmond. On 15 August, the War Department announced

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the existence of the Army of the Potomac. This followed the Northern custom of naming armies after large rivers. The dazzling McClellan was a man who talked of action and proceeded forward with caution. For months he carved and polished the largest military force ever seen in the Western hemisphere. He displayed it often in parades and reviews. McClellan bragged about his army. Soldiers wrote of their admiration of him. The press began hailing him as “Young Napoleon.” What brought his downfall were two personal weaknesses: First, McClellan was always striving for perfection. The army needed a little of this, or had to advance one more step, in order to be ready for field service. Second was that field service. McClellan was never anxious to fight if he could avoid it. Literally ordered by Lincoln to take the field, McClellan made a naval advance east and south to the Virginia peninsula with hopes of advancing on Richmond unopposed and seizing the capital with minor injuries. His view of the Civil War as a neat chess game collapsed with defeat in the Seven Days’ Campaign. In September 1862, at Antietam, McClellan gained a hollow victory in spite of employing the worst tactics. Lincoln, convinced that McClellan would never show the aggressive mood needed for success, removed him from command a few weeks later. His successor, General Ambrose Burnside, admitted that he was not competent for the command. He demonstrated it quickly. Thoughtless assaults at Fredericksburg in December sent casualties spiraling and morale free falling. Inside the Union ranks was a feeling that the soldiers were better than the officers who led them. General Joseph Hooker schemed and plot­ted to have Burnside’s job. Lincoln granted his request. “Fighting Joe” spent weeks giving the soldiers all they needed as well as elevating morale to a positive level. Well-drilled and battle-tested, Billy Yanks felt a new pride after Hooker termed them “the finest army on the planet.” Inglorious defeat followed at Chancellorsville. Then the army had to give chase after

Robert E. Lee, who again was crossing the Potomac and taking the war into the North. General George Meade took command of the Army of the Potomac three days before battle exploded at Gettysburg. It was there that the army came of age. Union soldiers waged furious combat over a span of three days and sometimes in spite of mistakes their officers made. They won a clear-cut victory over the seemingly invincible Lee. They did it with the naked fury of fighting men, not from any sophisticated strategy or poorly executed tactics. “The men behaved splendidly,” new commander Meade wrote his wife. “I really think they are becoming soldiers.” Meade was the last general to command the Army of the Potomac. Although Ulysses S. Grant traveled with the army in the 1864– 1865 campaigns, Meade remained at its head. This was providential. Of the four men who led the North’s principal army, only Meade was content to play a subordinate role in the final engagements. Beginning in May 1864, the two opposing armies were locked in positions of combat for the next 11 months. The Federal army suffered horrendous losses as Lee fought desperately at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor, but the Army of the Potomac gained strategic successes in the losses it inflicted and into the defensive position it locked the Confederates. By the following spring, the Federal main army was fit, well armed, and eager to deliver the death blows. Grant launched the all-out attacks on Sunday, 2 April, and overwhelmed Lee’s 40mile defensive position. Lee started west in a retreat slowed by weariness of both soldiers and horses. Grant’s forces gave chase like a pack of wolves hunting down wounded game. High emotion reigned at the news of Lee’s surrender. Hardened veterans embraced and wept openly. Cheers swept through the Union lines. Bands played “The Battle Cry of Freedom” and other war songs (although several later in the afternoon caught the enormity of peace and sent the strains of “Auld Lang Syne” drifting across the fields). Following a grand review in Washington on 23 May 1865, the Army of the Potomac

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disbanded. The memories, however, became legends.

well beyond the limits of martial law. His Union army would live off the country. Bridges would be built from wood taken from nearby homes. Trees and fence rails disappeared for use as huts and campfires. Crops and livestock would be routinely confiscated. Any civilian caught giving aid to Confederates was subject to immediate execution. A growing dislike of Pope materialized on both sides. Robert E. Lee detached General Stonewall Jackson’s divisions from the Richmond defenses to halt Pope’s movement through the Virginia piedmont. “I want Pope to be suppressed,” Lee told Jackson. “Make up your mind what is best to be done under the circumstances . . . and let me hear the result at which you arrive.” Given such leniency, Jackson moved swiftly to the attack. By 8 August, most of Pope’s army was strung out for 20 miles along a single road. Jackson struck the lead elements in a surprise morning attack. The allday fight at Cedar Mountain cost Jackson large casualties, but it brought Pope’s advance to an abrupt halt. Lee and the rest of the Confederate army soon arrived on the scene. The result of Lee’s strategy and Jackson’s tactics shattered the Army of Virginia at Second Manassas. The Army of the Potomac, with McClellan back in full control, absorbed what was left of the Army of Virginia. Pope was virtually exiled to duty in Minnesota.

ARMY OF VIRGINIA. Following the late May 1862 battle of Seven Pines, General George B. McClellan showed no inclination to advance closer to Richmond. Commander in Chief Abraham Lincoln wanted another military arm that would carry the war forward. Three disjointed Union forces were in the northern Virginia area. Lincoln ordered them combined into one command to be called the Army of Virginia. This misnomer (Federal armies were usually named after rivers) was only the first mishap for this foredoomed host. In addition, and weary of McClellan’s inactivity, the president essentially demoted his commanding general by ordering the Army of the Potomac to abandon the Virginia position, return to Washington, D.C., and provide reinforcements for the independently operating new force. To command this army, and given the green light to advance on his own, Lincoln chose an acquaintance, General John Pope. He was a tall, burly man with a long beard and loud mouth. Earlier successes in frontier Missouri made Pope appear to have a zest for battle. Lincoln hoped so as the new army started south. Pope wasted no time in gaining a reputation as pompous and tactless. He first alienated his soldiers by telling them that their habit of retreating from Confederates was at an end. His headquarters would be in the saddle, which caused many troops to wonder if Pope knew his headquarters from his hindquarters. The general then infuriated Virginia citizens with an announcement that he planned to go

ARMY ORGANIZATION. See BATTALION, BRIGADE, COMPANY, CORPS, DIVISION, REGIMENT.

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B of West Point. He was dismissed five days later for his secessionist views. Beauregard made a spectacular entrance into the Civil War. He commanded the batteries that fired on Fort Sumter and announced the war. He and General Joseph Johnston shared command in the South’s first military victory at Manassas, Virginia. A soldier carefully watched the general and reported, “He is a small man with a sallow complexion, a heavy black mustache, and closely cut hair. With the left hand in his trousers pocket, a cigar in his mouth, a buttoned-up coat, and small cap, he is . . . jaunty in his gait, dashing in manner, and evidently takes delight in the circumstances of war.” His descent came after First Manassas. Beauregard sought to take Johnston’s share of the victory. Next he reported that he would have marched triumphantly to Washington, D.C., if President Jefferson Davis had not intervened. Davis angrily denied the statement. Beauregard was sent west. His command of the Army of Tennessee ended abruptly when he and Davis collided on another issue. Beauregard openly termed the president “a stupid fool.” Davis openly stated that when he found a showy officer with little sense, he automatically assigned him to Beauregard’s staff. “Old Bory” was exiled to command of the South Carolina and Georgia coastal defenses until spring 1864, when he was summoned to Virginia to take charge of the Petersburg defense line. Beauregard never served the Confederacy better. Almost alone in the high command, he gathered together a hodgepodge

BATTALION. Although the regiment was the basic unit in Civil War armies, instances sometimes existed when ten companies were not available for consolidation. The available companies were then formed into a battalion, usually commanded by a lieutenant colonel or major. These “mini-regiments” were often found in cavalry units, home guard forces, and isolated commands. Occasionally, however, some battalions gained a notoriety of their own. Colonel John S. Mosby’s 43rd Virginia Cavalry Battalion won fame as Mosby’s “Partisan Rangers.” BEAUREGARD, PIERRE GUSTAVE TOUTANT (1818–1893). His picturesque name is the thing for which he is most remembered. Lee had the good fortune to serve with P. G. T. Beauregard when that general struck the apex of a checkered career. The “Great Creole’s” flamboyant style, grandiose ideas of strategy, and inability to keep his mouth shut proved his military downfall. Gustave Beauregard (he preferred his second name, Gustave, because he thought his first name, Pierre, sounded too foreign) was born into Louisiana aristocracy. He entered West Point at the age of 16 and graduated second in his class. Engineering duties thereafter included improvements to the mouth of the Mississippi River. He met Robert E. Lee when the two were assigned to General Winfield Scott’s staff in the Mexican War. Beauregard was twice wounded and twice brevetted. In January 1861, he became superintendent

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BLAIR, FRANCIS PRESTON, SR.

force of old men, young boys, and convalescents to face Ulysses S. Grant’s approaching army while Lee was hastening to the scene. Initially, Beauregard’s 14,000 men confronted 48,000 enemy soldiers. A day later, reinforcements from Lee boosted Beauregard’s strength to 38,000 while facing 95,000 Federals now at hand. Bluffs, skill, and a fair share of good luck saved Beauregard—and the Confederacy. Lee’s arrival brought maneuvering to a halt. Davis ordered Beauregard to South Carolina in advance of General William T. Sherman’s march northward from Savannah. The Confederate general sought to defend both Augusta and Charleston by sending small bodies at possible points of attack. Beauregard, always the great advocate of concentration, did not concentrate. Sherman’s huge army rolled across South Carolina in triumph. Beauregard’s postwar years were highly rewarding. He became the only ex-Confederate general to become wealthy by Southern standards. He was a railroad president, builder of the New Orleans trolley system, and director of the Louisiana Lottery, the largest gambling organization in the 19th century. After Jefferson Davis and Joseph Johnston published their wartime memoirs, both highly critical of Beauregard, the “Great Creole” jumped into the fray. He produced a two-volume biography, supposedly written by a friend, but essentially the work of Beauregard himself. Chronic throat problems plagued him throughout his life. Beauregard died of a heart attack in 1893 and was buried in New Orleans’s Metairie Cemetery beneath a tomb honoring the Army of Tennessee.

James River and five miles downriver from the Union supply base at City Point. Reportedly only a light detachment of Union soldiers and civilians were guarding a sizable herd of cattle. On 15 September, Hampton and 4,000 cavalrymen rode south of Petersburg for a day and a half before turning northeast. The next morning, Hampton caught the Federals at Coggins Point totally unprepared. Horse­ ­men shouting the Rebel Yell galloped into the campsite. A short firefight ensued with companies from two Federal cavalry regiments. By 8 a.m. Hampton had possession of the herd. With the help of shepherd dogs brought along for the raid, Confederates started back to their lines. The troops held off Union pursuers and crossed the Nottoway River to safety. Hampton’s “cowboys” donated 2,468 steers to the commissary department—enough meat to feed the Army of Northern Virginia for two weeks. Hampton also brought back 11 wagons loaded with goods plus 304 prisoners. His losses were 10 killed and 47 wounded. The Beefsteak Raid was the largest cattle rustle in American history. It provided a momentary boost to Confederate morale. When opposing sides were exchanging musket fire at Petersburg, Johnny Rebs for once abandoned the Rebel Yell and instead bellowed like bulls. Even Union President Abraham Lincoln admitted “it was the slickest piece of cattle rustling I ever heard of.” BLAIR, FRANCIS PRESTON, SR. (1791– 1876). Preston Blair the elder was one of the most powerful Americans never elected president. Editorships of pro-Democratic newspapers established his reputation. Blair was a member of President Andrew Jackson’s inner circle (“kitchen cabinet”). During 1831–1843 he edited the Washington Globe, the national mouthpiece for the Democratic Party. Blair also wrote a number of Jackson’s presidential addresses. Always outspoken, he increasingly became contentious and self-righteous. He acquired the title “Death on a Pale Horse.” Autocracy dwelled in his small frame. Blair was ashen, bespectacled, and never weighed

BEAVER DAM, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF. See MECHANICSVILLE, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF. “BEEFSTEAK RAID” (14–17 SEPTEMBER 1864). A lull descended over the Petersburg front in late summer 1864. Lee thought it an opportune time to strike at one of Ulysses S. Grant’s supply depots. His chief of cavalry, General Wade Hampton, agreed wholeheartedly. The target chosen was Coggins Point, a small peninsula on the south bank of the

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more than 100 pounds. He married Eliza Gist over the objections of her father, who did not think that Blair could live six months. He did— for 50 more years. His strong antislavery views led Blair to be a leading spirit in the 1854 creation of the Republican Party. His deft manipulations resulted in his becoming one of Abraham Lincoln’s closest friends and confidants. That the Blair home was directly across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House was advantageous to both men. On 18 April 1861, at Lincoln’s request, Blair offered Colonel Robert E. Lee command of the 75,000-man army to be formed for operating against the seceded Southern states. Lee declined the general’s appointment. He stated “as candidly and as courteously as I could, that although opposed to secession and deprecating war, I could take no part in an invasion of the Southern states.” It should be noted that the subject of slavery never arose at the meeting. Two days later, Lee resigned from the U.S. Army to go to the aid of his native Virginia. One of Blair’s sons became postmaster general in the Lincoln administration. Another son was a field general. In the postwar period, disillusioned by Radical Republican actions, Blair returned to the Democratic Party and quietly lived out the remainder of his years.

Bragg performed well in the Mexican War but left the army to manage his wife’s large sugar plantation in Louisiana. When war came, he promptly volunteered for Confederate service. Just as promptly did a fellow West Point cadet and old friend, Jefferson Davis, appoint him a general. A striking similarity existed between Generals George B. McClellan and Bragg. Both were superior organizers of troops, and both displayed hesitation for battle. Although McClellan cultivated high cheers and morale among his troops, Bragg never had the ability to generate enthusiasm. A lifetime of ill health contributed to Bragg’s lack of charisma. Migraine headaches, dyspepsia, boils, and dysentery added to severe rheumatism that left the tall, thin Bragg stooped. Soldiers found him demanding; officers viewed him as uncooperative. Bragg reinforced the criticisms by displaying a remarkable talent for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The 1862 campaign into Kentucky failed for lack of coordination. Stones River, Tennessee, was a stunning defeat after initial Confederate success. The same could be said of the two-day battle of Chickamauga, Georgia. In late November 1863, at Chattanooga, Bragg’s army was ingloriously routed. A Richmond newspaper snarled, “An army of asses led by a lion is better than an army of lions led by an ass.” Davis had kept Bragg in command for two reasons. He was a friend, and the only other full generals available to take his place were Joseph Johnston and Gustave Beauregard, both of whom the president detested. Davis then poured fuel on the fire by removing Bragg from the Army of Tennessee and placing him in command of all Southern forces. He who had failed with one army was placed in charge of every army. Bragg became little more than a spokes­man for Commander in Chief Davis. Lee held his temper and his tongue. In February 1865, demands by Congress became so intense that Davis named Lee to the new position as general-in-chief. Bragg was sent to strengthen the

BRAGG, BRAXTON (1817–1876). Robert E. Lee’s only direct association with Bragg came in the last year of the war. That was fortunate. The North Carolinian was the most hated field commander in the Confederacy. Bragg led the Army of Tennessee for 18 months. He failed in four consecutive campaigns. His defeats came from personality weaknesses, administrative indifference, ineptitude in battle, and unruly corps commanders who openly conspired to bring him down. An 1837 graduate of West Point, Bragg gained a pre–Civil War record as “the most cantankerous man in the Army.” He was stern in discipline, irascible in temperament. His closest friend in those years was Lieutenant William T. Sherman.

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defenses at Wilmington, North Carolina. He failed at that too. The hapless ex-general was walking down a street in Galveston, Texas, in September 1876, when he toppled to the ground dead. However, his name lives prominently today in a North Carolina army base that is headquarters for the 82nd Airborne Division.

feeling: “Altogether our cavalry is justifiable in claiming an advantage, though neither can be said to have made a great deal.” Stuart was sharply criticized by press, public, and some of his officers. He became anxious to redeem himself in the next engagement. On the other side, Union horsemen had demonstrated for the first time that they now could hold their own against Confederate cavalry.

BRANDY STATION, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF (9 JUNE 1863). In the aftermath of Chancellorsville, Jeb Stuart’s Confederate cavalry was at a full strength of 10,000 horsemen. They were encamped at Brandy Station, a village seven miles north of Culpeper on the Orange & Alexandria Railroad. The evercolorful, always-confident Stuart decided to stage a grand review of his troops. It would take place on 8 June, just before Stuart’s command departed to screen Lee’s planned northern offensive. Robert E. Lee was in attendance. However, he ordered that there be no fanfare. The review would be at a walk; no guns were to be fired. The horses needed their rest, and everyone would preserve gunpowder for more useful purpose. Lee pronounced the review “a splendid sight. . . . Stuart was in all his glory.” When Union General Joseph Hooker learned of the pageantry, he sent General Alfred Pleasonton with 11,000 cavalry and 3,000 infantry to “disrupt and destroy” Stuart’s command. Through overconfidence, no pickets were guarding the Rappahannock River crossings. Hence, the dawn Union attack on 9 June caught Stuart totally unprepared. What followed was the largest cavalry battle in the history of North America. The all-day fight centered on a commanding elevation called Fleetwood Hill and spread over five miles. Clouds of dust obscured the area and made it impossible at times to know who was where. Sabers clanging, pistols firing, men screaming, horses neighing and tramping all made a racket audible for miles. In late afternoon Federals abandoned the field. Stuart had held his ground. Combined casualties were 1,400 men. Lee made no mention of Brandy Station in reports, but his adjutant general probably expressed the general’s

BREASTWORKS. See EARTHWORKS. BREVET PROMOTION. It is comparable to today’s “battlefield commission.” Brevets are honorary, temporary, and generally awarded for meritorious service on the battlefield. Lee entered the Mexican War as a captain. A year later he was a brevet lieutenant colonel. He still received the pay of his permanent rank (captain), even though he was entitled to be addressed as “Colonel.” Normally with the end of a war and the downsizing of the army that follows, most brevet promotions are voided. A glaring example of this system was Union General George Custer. He was brevetted six times for bravery in the Civil War. In 1866, however, he went from major general to his permanent rank of captain. (Shortly thereafter, Custer became lieutenant colonel of the 7th U.S. Cavalry.) BRIGADE. This was the fighting component of an army. It had its own artillery and could operate independently if necessary. Usually composed of five regiments (on paper 5,000 soldiers), no brigade remained close to maximum number for any length of time. Having 40 percent on duty was average size. A brigade usually occupied a battlefront of about 1,500 yards. Occasionally, an influential politician received a brigadier’s commission on the theory that the war would be short and the political general thereafter would owe favors to the commander in chief. Authorities labored hard to have all regiments and the brigade commander from the same state. This system used states’ rights and local pride as morale builders.

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The two most famous Confederate units in Lee’s army were John Hood’s Texas Brigade and the Stonewall Brigade. In the case of the latter, a total of 3,600 soldiers saw service in General Stonewall Jackson’s first field command. At Appomattox, 210 men remained, none above the rank of captain.

unpardonable mismanagement . . .” To his credit, Hill took complete blame for the disaster. It was raining the next day when “Little Powell” rode over the body-strewn field with Lee and repeatedly apologized for what happened. “Well, well, General,” a disappointed Lee said, “bury these poor men and let us say no more about it.” Bristoe Station was the low point in Powell Hill’s military career. By 1865 he had become the most dependable of Lee’s corps commanders.

BRISTOE STATION, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF (14 OCTOBER 1863). This failed Confederate debacle at a depot on the Orange & Alexandria Railroad raised serious questions about General A. Powell Hill’s leadership. Early in October 1863, three months after Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee received information that two corps of the Union army had been detached for duty in Tennessee. This transfer presented Lee with an opportunity to mount an offensive. He marched his men from south of the Rapidan River toward General George Meade’s forces near Culpeper. Lee’s plan was reminiscent of the campaign he employed against John Pope at Second Manassas. Hill’s corps would sweep around the Federal force and attempt to get in its rear while General Richard Ewell’s corps moved forward for a two-pronged assault. Hill moved quickly and arrived on 14 October at Bristoe Station. He saw Federals crossing a small creek known as Brock Run near the railroad. The redheaded Virginian’s impetuosity got the better of his judgment. With no reconnaissance, sacrificing caution for speed, Hill sent two North Carolina brigades forward against what he thought was the rear of Meade’s army. In the meantime, Meade had posted an entire corps behind a railroad embankment as protection. Thousands of Federals were entrenched at an angle to the Confederate advance. Hill’s small brigades ran into a perfect trap. A murderous flank fire shredded the Southern columns in an action that lasted 40 minutes. The North Carolina units suffered 1,362 losses—three times the Union casualties. Under cover of darkness, Meade’s troops continued their retreat. Criticism of Hill’s action was widespread and harsh: “a fool and woeful blunderer . . . slaughter pen . . . bloody massacre . . .

BROCKENBROUGH, JOHN WHITE (1806– 1877). The tall, heavyset Brockenbrough was successively head of a law school in Lexington, Virginia; a federal judge; and member of the Confederate Congress. When civil war ended, he was also chairman of the Board of Trustees of impoverished Washington College. The trustees, desperate for leadership and with nothing to lose, selected Brockenbrough to visit Robert E. Lee in Richmond and offer him the presidency of the school. Brockenbrough’s clothing was threadbare from the cares of war. A friend loaned him a more respectable suit, and trustees scraped together $50 for the trip to Richmond. The judge, hesitant but hopeful, made a strong case on behalf of the college. To the surprise of all, General Lee agreed to embark on a pilgrimage in the field of higher education. BROWN, JOHN (1800–1859). He was a strange, unbalanced romanticist who failed in every business undertaking in his life. From those economic miscarriages he somehow developed a fanaticism for the abolition of slavery. Brown became ruthless as he sought to enforce the judgments of the implacable Jehovah of the Old Testament. He qualified as a terrorist. “Without the shedding of blood,” he thundered, “there is no remission of sins!” Brown murdered his way through the Kansas Territory in the late 1850s. In October 1859, he and a band of 18 men suddenly captured the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. His intent was to call on all slaves in the region to join him for a mighty exodus to freedom.

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The raid was amateurishly planned and pitifully executed. Four townspeople, including a black freedman, were killed. Colonel Robert E. Lee and a detachment of 24 U.S. Marines arrived on the scene. Lee, in civilian garb, watched as 12 Marines stormed the fireengine house where Brown was barricaded. The assault lasted three minutes. Five men were killed. Brown was wounded and taken prisoner. At first Lee downplayed the incident. The invaders were “rioters”; leading the raid was “a fanatic or a madman that could only end in failure.” Virginia officials felt much more strongly. Brown was tried and condemned for insurrection, treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia, and four counts of murder. A national uproar greeted Brown’s actions. Militia companies in Southern communities began mobilizing for other John Browns who might be heading south. Abolitionists hailed a new martyr. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow likened the 2 December 1859 hanging of Brown as “sowing the wind to reap the whirlwind, which will come soon.” Sixteen months later, civil war exploded.

had a trusting nature in an army known for backbiting. By September 1862, “Old Burn” had achieved enough success to be a corps commander. Even though he performed poorly at Antietam, Abraham Lincoln named him to succeed McClellan as commander of the Army of the Potomac. Burnside knew that Lincoln was impatient for a new offensive; so relying on secrecy and speed, he shifted the army eastward to the riverbank opposite Fredericksburg. There, Burnside planned to cross the Rappahannock River swiftly and attack Lee’s right flank. When the pontoons from Washington, D.C., were late in reaching Burnside’s army, the general sat down and waited for them—while Robert E. Lee methodically placed his forces on high ground overlooking the town. Even though speed and secrecy of movement no longer existed, Burnside would not alter his original battle plan. On 13 December 1862, against the protests of several officers, he hurled division after division against Lee’s impenetrable lines. The resultant slaughter led a senior Union general to state in his official report, “I can only account for [Burnside’s] numerous mistakes upon the hypothesis that he is crazy.” Burnside subsequently shuttled to various commands. Although he defeated James Longstreet’s corps in an 1863 East Tennessee campaign, Burnside’s ineptitude shone forth at the 1864 Battle of the Crater, which basically ended his military usefulness. As a general, Burnside elicits a bit of sympathy. He always recognized his own limitations even if he was never able to surmount them. The postwar years were a striking improvement. Burnside served three terms as governor of Rhode Island, two terms as a U.S. senator, commander in chief of the Grand Army of the Republic veterans’ group, and first president of the National Rifle Association. He died unexpectedly of a heart attack.

BULL RUN, VIRGINIA, BATTLES OF. See MANASSAS, VIRGINIA, FIRST AND SECOND BATTLES OF. BURIAL OF LEE. See FUNERAL OF LEE. BURNSIDE, AMBROSE EVERETT (1824– 1881). Burnside’s appearance always brought a second look. Tall and stout, he wore the most artistic, awe-inspiring whiskers of anyone in the Civil War. Indeed, they gave rise to a word that reversed the syllables of his name: sideburns. He was a West Point graduate who was working for the same railroad as George B. McClellan when civil war began. Burnside reentered the army and gained a reputation as friendly and likable but unimaginative. He also

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C Each side knew precisely where the other was. While Pope began thinking of survival, Lee developed a new plan to get at the boastful general. Meanwhile, Stuart sent through the lines a personal message to Pope. He would be happy to return Pope’s uniform in exchange for Stuart’s hat. Pope did not respond. His uniform went on display in the Virginia State Capitol, to the delight of both press and public.

CARTER, MARTHA WILLIAMS. See WILLIAMS, MARTHA CUSTIS. CATLETT’S STATION, VIRGINIA, RAID (23 AUGUST 1862). By mid-July 1862, General Robert E. Lee thought the middle peninsula of Virginia free of further threat from General George B. McClellan. Lee hastened north to link with Stonewall Jackson and give full attention to General John Pope’s Army of Virginia, advancing southward through the piedmont. Lee intended to take the offensive again. Plans were laid to attack the Federal left (eastern) flank, thereby cutting Pope away from his supply base at Manassas and any reinforcements that McClellan might send. This strategy had to be abandoned. In a brief skirmish with Federal cavalry, Confederate cavalry leader Jeb Stuart lost an officer who was carrying a copy of Lee’s battle plan. Also left on the field was Stuart’s plumed hat. Pope immediately fell back north of the Rappahannock River. To pinpoint the new Union concentration, Lee sent Stuart with 1,000 horsemen to search the area. Stuart skirted around Pope and galloped 18 miles to cut the Orange & Alexandria Railroad, Pope’s main artery. A thunderstorm was raging on 23 August when Stuart’s horsemen dashed into Catlett’s Station. The depot turned out to be Pope’s headquarters. Confederates bagged 300 prisoners, $500,000 in greenbacks, and $20,000 in gold. Also seized were Pope’s dress uniform and his dispatch book, which gave full details of Union strength and location.

CEDAR MOUNTAIN, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF (9 AUGUST 1862). While Robert E. Lee had George B. McClellan’s army in check along the James River, a new threat originated elsewhere in Virginia. General John Pope and 70,000 Federals started southward through the piedmont in a separate offensive on Richmond. Lee detached General Stonewall Jackson’s 24,000 Confederates to move to Gordonsville and confront the danger. In typical fashion, Jackson reached his destination and quickly moved to attack. Twothirds of his force marched to Cedar Mountain, eight miles south of Culpeper, before encountering Federals. Jackson wasted little time in reconnaissance. On 9 August, he sent his men forward against some 15,000 Federals who were the lead elements of Pope’s army. Fighting raged back and forth for several hours. A sudden, heavy assault on Jackson’s left flank created such confusion that Jackson himself rode into the action to rally his troops. The timely arrival on the field by Confederate General Powell Hill’s division knocked the momentum from the Federals, and they fled the field as darkness ended the day.

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Jackson had won a clear victory. Union losses were 2,600; Confederates suffered 1,400 casualties. Lee officially praised his “distinguished leader” whose success “was worthy of the skillful management and bold and vigorous prosecution of the whole enterprise.”

general ordered his cavalry chief, General Jeb Stuart, to lead a large force on an “expedition” into Pennsylvania. Lee wanted to know precisely where General George B. McClellan’s army was and what—if anything—it was doing. He hoped that Stuart could cut the main rail line the Union army was using, gather badly needed goods for the Army of Northern Virginia, and possibly return by a lower route downriver to deceive McClellan even further. At daybreak on 10 October 1862, Stuart headed north with 1,800 cavalry. The column, five miles long, crossed the Potomac River at Harpers Ferry and continued through Maryland into southern Pennsylvania. Stuart used 600 troopers as the lead element and 600 horsemen to guard the rear of the force. The center 600 roamed on either side of the road to collect usable goods. The Union army had a string of signal stations covering the whole area, but no one detected Stuart’s horsemen. Confederates easily occupied Chambersburg. Large numbers of sick Federals were paroled. Stuart’s men badly damaged the railroad. The war materiel that could not be carried away was destroyed. Stuart’s prize catch—1,200 well-broken draft horses—slowed the return march. However, rather than retrace his path back to Virginia, Stuart rode east to Cashtown, Pennsylvania, then turned south and made for White’s Ford, some 15 miles downriver from Harpers Ferry. While Federal regiments scoured the countryside in haphazard pursuit, Stuart returned to the Southern encampment. Lee called Stuart’s feat “eminently successful” and praised his “boldness, judgment and prudence.” Some critics dismissed the raid as merely “horse stealing” on a grand scale. However, for the second time in four months, Confederate cavalry had ridden around the North’s premier army. McClellan forgot any ideas he might have had for an offensive. The raid did much to elevate Southern spirits in the post-Antietam reorganization. Stuart’s feat was also an embarrassment to the Lincoln government on the eve of the fall elections. As for Chambersburg, the worst was yet to come. On 30 July 1864, Confederate cavalry

CERRO GORDO, MEXICO, BATTLE OF (18 APRIL 1847). The spring 1847 offensive in Mexico began when General Winfield Scott’s forces captured Veracruz and gained a toehold on enemy territory. Scott’s 9,000 troops advanced 50 miles inland across mosquitoinfested land and then started up into high country. At Cerro Gordo, a rocky defile, General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna had placed more than 10,000 Mexicans. If he could force Scott back into the lowlands, yellow fever would decimate the American army. Scott saw that a head-on attack at Cerro Gordo was out of the question. He dispatched Captain Robert E. Lee on a reconnaissance to determine if any route around the Mexican left (northern) flank could be made. Lee found a way and was returning through underbrush when he came upon a spring where Mexicans were filling canteens. Lee hid behind a fallen tree. Mexicans walked all around him, mosquitoes and ants chewed on him constantly, but Lee remained motionless throughout the day. Under cover of darkness he crept back to Scott’s position. On 18 April, Americans delivered a flank attack. Lee helped direct artillery fire that raked the Mexican line repeatedly. The threehour fight ended in midmorning when the Mexican line broke apart. Santa Anna lost half of his army and most of its morale. Scott’s casualties were fewer than 450 soldiers. Lee had performed brilliantly in his first battle. Scott praised him for “distinguished . . . daring . . . indefatigable . . . conspicuous” service. Promotion to major followed. CHAMBERSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA, RAID (10–12 OCTOBER 1862). Lee returned to Virginia after the tactical draw at Antietam, but he had no hesitation to taking the war again north of the Potomac River. Three weeks after the bloody fight in Maryland, the

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burned the town in retaliation for Union atrocities committed in the Shenandoah Valley.

72-square-mile expanse of thick woods and dense undergrowth locally called the Wilderness. Vision was limited to yards. Hooker established his headquarters at a road junction known as Chancellorsville. Then his battle plan began to unravel. Hooker believed that his cavalry raid would draw General Jeb Stuart’s Confederate cavalry away and thus deprive Lee of knowledge of the Union army’s whereabouts. Lee refused to take the bait. Union cavalry ended up militarily blind on a probe that achieved little beyond frightening civilians. It was Stuart who discovered the Federal shift, and he confirmed that Hooker in the Wilderness posed the real threat to Lee’s army. Simply because Lee was so badly outmanned, he was free to take preposterous gambles. Further, the one thing Hooker never considered was the possibility of being attacked. Lee promptly split his forces: 10,000 troops to remain in front of the 45,000 Union troops at Fredericksburg, Lee with the rest of his army to shift west to confront Hooker. The lead elements of the Union army emerged from the Wilderness into sunlight on the afternoon of 1 May and shockingly encountered General Stonewall Jackson’s men. Their intense fire stopped the Federal advance. Hooker abruptly recalled his troops back into the Wilderness. Federals hastily constructed a long, crescent-shaped line anchored on the left by the Rappahannock River. The tangled woodland prevented any major movements. Now Lee was ready to take the offensive away from Hooker. On the night of 1 May, around a little campfire in the woods, Lee and Jackson developed the next move. Stuart had informed them that the Union right flank was “up in the air”—extending a few miles from the Chancellorsville crossing and then ending with no territorial anchor. Lee thereupon divided his smaller army again. Jackson’s 28,000 men (two-thirds of Lee’s available force) would strike out on a 12-mile march around Hooker’s exposed flank and then attack. While the march was taking place, Lee and 14,000 men would be the only obstacle in the face of Hooker’s 70,000 soldiers. A mistake anywhere spelled disaster.

CHANCELLORSVILLE, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF (2–6 MAY 1863). On paper, it was a battle that Robert E. Lee could not win. Yet the Confederate chieftain was predictable for doing the unpredictable. Chancellorsville was Lee’s most brilliant victory. It also inflicted on Lee his greatest personal loss. The opposing armies spent the winter of 1862–1863 on opposite banks of the Rappahannock River. With General James Longstreet’s corps on detached service south of Richmond, Lee had only 60,000 veterans in the defensive works behind Fredericksburg. The new Union commander, General ­Joseph Hooker, his bombastic and unprincipled man­ner notwithstanding, spent three months rebuilding the Army of the Potomac into the largest fighting force the Western Hemisphere had ever seen: 115,000 men, with discipline honed and morale high. Hooker then devised a near-perfect plan of battle. Union cavalry would sweep around Lee’s right (eastern) flank, get in the rear of the Southern army, and cut rail and road lines that would leave Lee adrift from supplies. Next, Hooker would keep some 45,000 Federals in Lee’s front to hold his attention. Then Hooker, with roughly 70,000 soldiers, would march west, cross the Rappahannock and Rapidan Rivers, and curl in around Lee’s left flank. Such would leave Lee with two choices. He could abandon the Fredericksburg line, in which event Hooker’s main force could attack on ground of the Federal general’s own choosing. Or Lee could stand and fight it out at Fredericksburg, where the heavily outnumbered Confederates would be caught between two giant Federal pincers attacking from opposite directions. Meanwhile, Lee had fallen ill. In March he suffered some form of heart attack. Confined to bed for several days, he recovered sufficiently to resume duties. Yet he would never return to full strength. By 30 April, Hooker had skillfully moved his force some 30 miles and was on Lee’s flank. The huge Federal column was concealed in a

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Should Hooker regain a fighting spirit and advance, Lee—and the Confederacy—were doomed. Such did not occur. However, Jackson’s march was uncharacteristically slow by “Old Jack’s” standards. His brigades were confined to a single lane. Heat became a deterrent. At one point, Jackson’s column stretched for six miles. Still, Federals never saw the movement. At 5:15 p.m. on 2 May, the quiet of early evening blew up in an explosion of heavy musketry and Rebel Yells. Jackson’s attack front, two miles long, crashed through the thickets and slammed into camping soldiers. Confederates rolled up Hooker’s line for two miles. One Union corps fell apart, as did Hooker’s confidence. All he could think at the moment was to get his army in a better defensive position. For three hours in growing darkness, the Wilderness was filled with fighting, gun smoke, screams, and confusion. Nightfall came. The Union line was now L-shaped. Jackson was impatient for the kill. Ignoring the danger, he rode forward personally to pinpoint Union lines. As he galloped back to his men, Confederates mistook the riders for Union cavalry and opened fire. Jackson was shot three times. The next morning a bewildered Hooker allowed Lee to renew the assaults. Jackson’s corps attacked from the west, Lee’s thin lines drove forward from the south. The Union army reeled and began falling back. When the two Confederate wings united at the Chancellorsville road junction, Lee appeared. Men cheered wildly as he rode forward. A staff officer commented, “I thought it must have been from such a scene that men in ancient days rose to the dignity of gods.” Union brigades in Fredericksburg started westward to aid Hooker. By then, the Federal commander was so wedded to the defensive that Lee could ignore him for the moment. Lee calmly divided his army yet again. Two divisions sent the Federal reinforcements in retreat after bloody fighting at Salem Church. On 6 May, Hooker conceded defeat by pulling his army back across the Rappahannock. Both sides suffered horrible losses at Chancellorsville: 17,300 Federals, 12,800 Confederates. Hooker’s defeat was humiliating.

During the battle the Union army had no commander. With a two-to-one superiority in numbers, Hooker let his men fight at a numerical disadvantage at every important point on the field. Chancellorsville was a personal triumph for Lee. He had taken great risks, and everything had gone his way. Yet the victory was bittersweet. On 10 May, Jackson died of sepsis from his wounds. “I know not how to replace him,” Lee said as he wept openly. CHAPULTEPEC, MEXICO, BATTLE OF (12–13 SEPTEMBER 1847). Chapultepec was the climactic battle of the Mexican War because its capture gave Americans control of the enemy capital and left the Mexican army with no additional point of resistance. The most controversial episode of that war was a two-week armistice declared in August 1847. Peace negotiators wanted to end the struggle and avoid further bloodshed. General Winfield Scott’s outmanned army was deep in hostile country, cut off from its supplies, saddled with 1,000 sick and wounded soldiers, and on the brink of assaulting Mexico’s principal city. Scott obeyed the truce; Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna did not. The Mexican general used the time to bring up 14,000 soldiers for the showdown with Scott. When Scott heard of the violations, he declared the armistice at an end and implemented plans for an assault. His target was Chapultepec, a fortress 200 feet above two roads leading northeast to the capital. Brick walls surrounded stone buildings at ground level; a rocky incline rose sharply to the top and Chapultepec Castle. Robert E. Lee, then Scott’s chief of artillery, spent two days positioning big guns and bombarding the Mexican defenses. Scott’s attack on 13 September swept over shattered walls, up the stone ridges, and into the castle. Hand-to-hand fighting lasted but an hour before the Mexicans fled toward the capital. Scott rode triumphantly over the scene. He saw Lee groggily holding himself in the saddle. At some point in the contest, his colonel had received a flesh wound. Loss of blood plus two nights without sleep had taken their toll.

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Shortly thereafter, Lee fainted while American cheers of victory filled the air.

region. Lee abandoned all ideas of trying to defend every mile. Instead, he announced intentions to concentrate state forces at points of strategic priority: Charleston; Savannah; Brunswick, Georgia; and Cumberland Sound at the mouth of St. Mary’s River in Florida. Unfortunately, the barrier islands such as St. Simon and Jekyll would have to be abandoned. (The grave of Lee’s father was on one of them.) They were the sites of heavy production of sea island cotton. Powerful planters angrily were forced to leave homes and fields while searching for new quarters for family as well as for slaves. Lee explained that Confederates were “taking interior positions where we can meet [enemy gunboats and soldiers] on more equal terms.” No one listened. Unlike the case in western Virginia, Lee was in complete control at Charleston. He could give orders rather than mere advice. Using his engineering skills, he began constructing earthworks and redoubts at Charleston and Savannah. Slaves, plus young men who had been enjoying a life of leisure, found themselves digging trenches and other earthen defenses. This brought Lee a new derogatory nickname, “The King of Spades.” Meanwhile, Lee organized little commands scattered over three states into the semblance of a mini-army. Trained officers replaced men who had held rank because of political or social standing. Defenses did improve: neither Charleston nor Savannah was taken from a sea approach. Yet Lee’s limited success came in the face of widespread resistance. His seven-month assignment ended 5 March 1862, when President Davis recalled him to Richmond. Three days earlier, Lee wrote his daughter: “Our people have not been earnest enough, have thought too much of themselves & their ease, and instead of turning out to a man, have been content . . . to leave the protection of themselves & families to others. To satisfy their consciences, they have been clamorous in criticizing what others have done & endeavoured to prove that they ought to do nothing. This is not the way to accomplish our independence.” Soon the Civil War “came home” to Charleston. A huge Federal fleet anchored at

CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA. The largest port in the state, Charleston was where the shooting began. It had long been the gathering place for “fire-eaters,” men who loathed everything about the North and were outspoken champions of secession. A convention in Charleston passed the first ordinance of secession. On 12 April 1861, Confederate batteries began a 33-hour bombardment of Union-held Fort Sumter at the mouth of Charleston harbor. Its surrender was the signal of civil war. For several months, Georgia and South Carolina raised troops but retained a large proportion for local defense. Neither state gave serious thought to Federal gunboats moving from the Atlantic Ocean into the coastal rivers. Charleston’s 40,000 residents were enjoying war because they were not close to it. In early autumn, Union amphibious forces became active along the coast. These stabs increased in intensity and posed a threat to the 100-mile railroad between Charleston and Savannah. On 5 November, President Jefferson Davis ordered General Robert E. Lee to confront another emergency without troops (as his recent assignment to western Virginia had been). Lee was placed in command of the military department for the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia, and eastern Florida. Neither side was happy with this arrangement. Lee’s recent failure in Virginia, and Davis’s assurances to the governors that Lee was the perfect man for the job, did nothing to lighten the clamor of the leaders in the new department. Lee’s immediate subordinate at Charleston was General Roswell S. Ripley, described as “a big, fat, happy whiskey drinking loving man.” Ripley developed a deep hatred of Lee—one of the few people who ever did. On the other side, the military situation Lee discovered on his arrival made failure all but inevitable. Union gunboats were slowly pushing their way into the sounds, while ineffective little forts sprinkled over 300 miles of coastland and state troops under inept commanders were scattered haphazardly over the

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the mouth of the harbor in early August 1863. For 587 days it besieged and bombarded the city and its environs. Charleston was evacuated on 14 February 1865, when Union General William T. Sherman’s army left Savannah and advanced northward into South Carolina. In two ways, 14 April 1865 was a memorable date. Federal General Robert Anderson, who had commanded the tiny garrison forced to surrender Fort Sumter in 1861, returned to Charleston to raise anew the tattered flag lowered in surrender exactly four years earlier. That night Abraham Lincoln attended a play at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C.

an advance. Finally, at dawn on 12 September 1861, Confederates attempted an assault. Everything went awry. Terrain, mud, raw soldiers, and inept officers removed any chance of success. The attack never materialized, and at one point Lee himself was almost captured. Confederate withdrawal gave the Federals permanent control of the northwestern sector of Virginia. The situation could not be remedied, Lee informed Adjutant General Samuel Cooper. Floyd and Wise “do not seem near a junction, and [I] fear from their report, their command will not prove very effective after a junction is made.” Lee’s hair turned gray, and he grew a beard during the three agonizing months he spent in the mountains. Lee returned to Richmond with newspapers branding him “Evacuating Lee” and “Granny Lee,” merely a bookkeeper possessed of “extreme thinness of blood.” Lee made no public response. To his wife, however, he complained, “I am sorry that the movements of the army cannot keep pace with the expectations of the editors of papers. I know they can regulate matters satisfactorily to themselves on paper.”

CHEAT MOUNTAIN, WEST VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF (12 SEPTEMBER 1861). In July 1861, General Robert E. Lee still commanded all Confederate forces in Virginia, but he served more as a military adviser to President Jefferson Davis. Victory at Manassas enabled Davis to give attention to the situation in western Virginia. A small Union force was marching southward through the mountains. Three Confederate generals—John B. Floyd, Henry A. Wise, and William W. Loring—had forces there. Yet the generals were spending more time arguing among themselves than in presenting a united front. Davis dispatched Lee to try to straighten out the mess. Lee had no written orders. He was to coax and coordinate in an attempt to get the trio of generals to work closely together. Wise and Floyd, both ex-governors, loathed one another. Wise openly refused to obey Floyd’s orders and explained why in letters sent directly to Davis. Loring commanded the Army of the Northwest, which sounded greater than it was. He considered Lee his inferior in rank and experience. Even the elements played against Lee. Heavy rains fell almost incessantly for three weeks. The earth turned to bottomless mud. An epidemic of measles struck one camp. Wise and Floyd were too far away to help Lee. When he received word that Federals were entrenched atop Cheat Mountain, Lee strongly urged Loring to attack through the rough country. Dispositions were slow; it took awhile to find two roads in the mud usable for

CHILTON, ROBERT HALL (1815–1879). Of the five Virginians who formed the base of Robert E. Lee’s wartime staff, Chilton was the oldest and the only disappointment. He was 46 when he joined Lee. Their friendship stretched back to old army days. The War Department appointed Chilton to be inspector general. Lee quickly named him chief of staff. With sagging mustache and graying goatee, Colonel Chilton was a cheerful officer and attentive listener. He was never close to the other aides because he was not a good chief of staff. Prior to joining Lee, Chilton served in the Adjutant General’s Department in Richmond. There he grew accustomed to paperwork that required no decision on his part. Hence, Chilton brought neither initiative nor leadership to Lee’s staff. Members were left alone to attend to their perceived duties. Worse for Chilton, he lacked the ability to issue orders—verbally or in writing—in clear, understandable language. His confusing

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directives resulted in major mistakes at both Malvern Hill and Chancellorsville. Lee’s repeated recommendations for Chilton’s promotion to brigadier general took 18 months for Senate confirmation. Why Lee kept the colonel on his staff when his usefulness was in question remains unclear. Perhaps Lee was unaware of how limited Chilton’s abilities were, or it may have been Lee’s known aversion of face-to-face confrontations, especially when an old friend was involved. Chilton spent the remainder of the war in the Inspector General’s Department. In the postwar period he became president of a manufacturing firm in Columbus, Georgia. He died there of apoplexy.

ground, the rails snaked up and down natural barriers. A Union officer thought riding on the line was akin to “a fly crawling on a corrugated washboard.” On 5 August 1864, a Confederate espionage agent detonated “a horological torpedo” on an anchored barge loaded with ammunition. The blast killed 58 people and wounded 126 others. Repairs were quickly made. President Abraham Lincoln twice came to City Point to confer with Grant. The general’s headquarters were a planked, two-room cabin on the lawn of a once-prosperous plantation. Now a part of the City of Hopewell, City Point was the critical key to success in Grant’s long strangulation of Lee’s army.

CITY POINT, VIRGINIA. It was a sleepy little tobacco port eight miles from Petersburg and at the confluence of the James and Appomattox Rivers. City Point became almost overnight the second largest community in Virginia. This miraculous growth came when Ulysses S. Grant in June 1864 chose City Point to be the central supply depot for all Union forces operating against Petersburg and Richmond. By autumn, City Point was a major complex of 280 buildings. Some 15,000 personnel were stationed there. Foodstuffs, munitions, quartermaster stores, horses, medical supplies, troops in transit, and everything else an army needed were off-loaded onto eight large wharves. At any given time, 50 or more vessels were anchored and waiting their turn to deliver goods. Coal docks, blacksmith shops, wagonrepair facilities, civilian stores, barracks for soldiers, quarters for civilians created a beehive of activity. The one food not imported was bread. A huge on-site bakery turned out 100,000 rations daily. Depot Field Hospital sprawled over 200 acres and could accommodate 10,000 patients. The most amazing presence at City Point was a railroad constructed by soldiers, civilians, and ex-slaves. It stretched 21 miles from the piers to the front lines. Built on bare

CIVIL WAR (1861–1865), CAUSES OF THE. Nothing is more controversial about the Civil War than the question of why it happened. The country was new and promising, spreading tentacles of prosperity at an unbelievable pace. There was room for growth, room for settlement. Democracy implied freedom and promoted hope. America seemed almost ideal. Then it fell apart, and generations since have asked: Why? Slavery was the focal point of all the differences that developed between North and South. No other issue has ever dominated American political life so completely. Thomas Jefferson observed half a century before disunion, “we have a wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go.” The slave question proved too strong for the young nation’s democratic bargaining. It lacked all of the safety valves that a national machine should have. The first seven states to leave the Union cited slavery as the major reason for their departure. Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens asserted that the cornerstone of the new Southern nation was to “preserve the proper status of the negro in our civilization.” But that is not why fighting started. In 1861, following the surrender of bombarded Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, President Abraham Lincoln called for troops to preserve the Union. The sole issue was whether states had the right to

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leave the United States. The Union, Lincoln insisted, is perpetual. It cannot be broken. Nor can a minority of states dictate to the majority. No mention of slavery was in those spring 1861 arguments (even though slavery lay beneath the formation of the Confederate States of America). Other elements came to play in explaining why war came in that chain of events and at that particular time. The legality of secession started the Civil War. Thirteen states existed before there was a nation, the argument ran. Hence, sovereignty (ultimate power) belonged to the states. When the Constitution was ratified in the late 1780s, three states agreed to a union with the written proviso that they retained the power to withdraw from the pact if dissatisfied. The constitutional fathers accepted those terms. In 1860 Northerners were willing to go to war in defense of their belief in the permanence of the Union. Southerners were willing to go to war in defense of their belief in the constitutional protection of state rights—which included the right to own slaves and the right to secede without penalty. A major shift in the nation’s economy greased the rails to secession and war. For a half century, King Cotton supplied close to 75 percent of the nation’s income. Suddenly, in the early 1800s, the “Industrial Revolution” exploded in the North. Manufacturing replaced shipping; worse for cotton planters, those profits cut sharply into Southern agricultural output. The farmer soon found himself competing for the same dollar as the factory worker. Denied new lands on which to grow cotton, the South began to slip as northern machines shifted gears. One section was determined to exert its newfound power (political as well as economic). The other side was equally insistent on maintaining its long predominant status. Other factors paved the road to war. The weakness of the federal government was certainly in evidence. “United States” existed more in name than in fact. In the beginning, citizens did not expect much from authorities in Washington, D.C., because law and order were prerogatives of state control. The limited

central government did no harm in the country’s first half century. Two dozen years of mediocre presidents prior to 1860 offered no reassurances. Therefore, when both North and South looked to Washington as the secession crisis worsened, it was clear that the federal system was incapable of providing any help. The Congress was more interested in political parties than in peace through compromise. So the national legislature talked a lot, said little, and did nothing. A final factor, and in a sense the overriding one in the coming of civil war, was emotionalism. Democracy and compromise mean the same thing. One does not work without the other. The debate over slavery began in earnest with the 1846 Wilmot Proviso, which would have barred slavery from any territory acquired from Mexico. For the next 14 years, the slave question dominated American politics. First there was discussion, followed in turn by debate, heated argument, threats, and angry shouting. Verbal heat melted the spirit of give-and-take that was the foundation of the new nation and its constitution. In a stormy atmosphere, with a dysfunctional congress and weak presidents, soldiers had to step forward because the political process had failed. Robert E. Lee saw this. In a postwar statement, the general thought that had “forbearance and wisdom been practiced by both sides,” civil war might well have been averted. Lee made his own position clear in January 1861 when he told his son Rooney, “I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union. . . . I am willing to sacrifice everything but honor for its preservation. If the Union is dissolved, and the Government disrupted, I shall return to my native State and share the miseries of my people, and save in defense will draw my sword no more.” Seven years later, Lee offered his own explanation for the Civil War. “The war originated,” he wrote a nephew, “from a doubtful question of construction of the Constitution, about which our forefathers differed at the time of framing it. The South recognized its settlement by the arbitrament of arms; but the purpose for which the north went to war has been

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reverted by the radical [Republican] party. Had their present policy [in 1868] been then announced, I cannot believe that it would have been tolerated by the country.”

conflict; the destruction of Lee’s army was the death knell. Confederate Commander in Chief Jefferson Davis, a West Point graduate and Mexican War hero, was painfully aware of the North’s strong superiority in manpower and materiel. Davis announced at the outset of hostilities that the South would pursue an “offensive-defensive” strategy. The Confederacy would raise armies, then take a defensive position. This would force the Union to send troops into the South. When the moment was opportune, Southern armies would deliver heavy, successful counterblows. Several advantages lay behind such an approach. The defending side is more familiar with the terrain. Fighting defensively requires fewer soldiers. Inner lines of transportation and communication are shorter and more protected. Receiving attacks would give the international impression of a peace-loving nation under assault by Northern aggression. Most important, at least to President Davis, was the deduction that while the South could win by winning, it could also win by not losing. Disrupt Federal campaigns, hurl back Union armies, let the casualty lists grow, and ultimately the Northern people will lose the will to continue the war. All the South has to do for its independence is to play for time. Davis’s top commander, Robert E. Lee, saw some logic in the president’s offensivedefensive mode. Yet Lee also saw the futility of it. Playing for time by a prolonged war requires a steady stream of manpower and supplies. The South lacked such resources. Davis’s type of warfare was by nature opportunistic. It reacts to challenges, and it necessarily surrenders to the enemy the priceless advantage of having the initiative. Lee believed in delivery of a heavy blow whenever possible. He was always offensive minded: looking for the knockout blow that would end the fight quickly and convincingly. The South did not have the strength to maintain the bloody contest year after year. In the Civil War, each side was fighting for absolutes. The North wanted a preserved union and, beginning in 1863, an end to slavery as well. The South was seeking independence. To compromise was to lose.

CIVIL WAR (1861–1865), OVERVIEW OF THE. It was the bloodiest war in national history. More Americans would die in the four years of civil war than perished in all the wars from the American Revolution through the Vietnam conflict. The North amassed two million men in military service; the Confederates put one million under arms. Fully a third of those soldiers were killed, died of sickness, or suffered permanent injuries such as amputation and mental disorders. For the first three years of the struggle, two major and unconnected military theaters existed. The great Appalachian Mountains, extending from New York State to northern Alabama, and possessing relative few passes, cut the Confederacy in half. Virginia was the major battleground in the East, Tennessee the center of military operations in the West. Not until the spring of 1864 did Union armies in the two sectors begin working in concert. Warfare for centuries was conducted on a “city strategy” principle. Every nation had a key city. Capturing or destroying that metropolis removed the heart from the national body, so the war ended. European wars, with Paris, London, Rome, and Berlin as prime targets, are classic examples. The American Civil War began with the same thinking. As soon as Washington, D.C., or Richmond succumbed, the fighting would end. However, that war became too expansive, too all engulfing, for one city to be the only stake. The North came to see that the Confederate States was not going to surrender until its will to resist had been eliminated. This required the tactics of total warfare: including communities as well as armies, civilians as well as soldiers. In short, prior to 1861, nations waged war as a chess game. Once the king was checked, the game was over. That was not the case with the Civil War. It became a game of checkers, in which all of one side’s players had to be removed. The fall of Richmond did not end the

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Of all the military innovations triggered by the war, the mass replacement of the musket with the rifle was by far the most important. The spinning bullet from a .59-caliber rifle had five times the range of the musket’s round ball. No longer could a charge begin 80 yards away. Now men had to start 400 yards distant and endure a continual, murderous fire with every step. In the Civil War, for the first time in military annals, the advantage shifted to the defensive side. Nomenclature also has relevance in Civil War history. The North named its armies after rivers (e.g., Army of the Potomac), while the South identified its armies by regions (e.g., Army of Northern Virginia). The Union designated battles by the closest stream (e.g., First Bull Run), but the South preferred calling a battle by the name of the closest community (e.g., First Manassas). Over the years, custom has settled on a single title for most major engagements, such as Antietam Creek (not Sharpsburg) and Gettysburg (no longer Spangler’s Spring). Debate lingers over the name of the American struggle. “Civil War” is the term overwhelmingly used. Yet a civil war suggests a struggle inside a country for control of the legitimate government. The Southern states were not trying to control the federal government; their desire was to depart from it. Nevertheless, both Abraham Lincoln and Lee used the term. Further, in many states (Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri) the characteristics of a civil war were much in evidence. “War of the Rebellion” is the official title decreed by the U.S. Congress in the postwar years. However, the conflict of the 1860s was not an uprising but a full-scale war between two organized governments respecting the rules of warfare. “War between the States” is a favorite title for Southerners but misleading. It implies a free-for-all, mob struggle between individual states. Other titles appearing over the years are “War of Secession,” “War for Southern Independence,” “Second American Revolution,” “The Confederate War,” and “The Late

Unpleasantness.” Many Americans, awed by its impact, have labeled the conflict “The War.” COCKSPUR ISLAND, GEORGIA. The successful defense of Fort McHenry, Maryland, in the War of 1812 convinced military officials that a system of forts should be constructed all along the Atlantic coast. With congressional approval, the Corps of Engineers began work on a chain of forts: some existing ones to be strengthened, others to be built from scratch. Lieutenant Robert E. Lee’s first military posting was to lay the groundwork for what became Fort Pulaski, Georgia. Cockspur Island was aptly named for a hawthorn plant having long, sharp needles. A mile long and two-thirds of a mile wide, it was at the mouth of the Savannah River and only 12 miles from the cultured port of Savannah. Yet location was the only thing the city and the island had in common. Cockspur was barely an island in marshlands. Mosquitoes were its natural inhabitants; the bottom of the island was depthless mud; heat and fever were so oppressive that construction was seasonal. Lee spent 16 months helping prepare the island for the huge brick fort to be built. He oversaw piling dirt and carving drainage pits. At times he labored in mud and with water up to his armpits. Two decades later, Fort Pulaski was in operation. It contained 25 million bricks and walls 11 feet thick. Yet in 1862 rifled naval guns of the U.S. Navy blasted the fort into rubble. COERCION. This expression of states’ rights was a major reason for the secession of Virginia. By 19th-century interpretation, a state possessed ultimate power (sovereignty). The federal government operated at the will of the states. Hence, a national army could not move into a state without that state’s permission. To do so was coercion—an invasion as well as a violation of law. When it was obvious that Union forces would have to pass through Virginia to “put down” the “insurrection” of Deep South states, the Old Dominion felt justified in leaving the Union and resisting the move. COLD HARBOR, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF (3 JUNE 1864). Throughout the month of May

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1864, the armies of Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant had been sidestepping in a semicircle through Virginia. Heavy fighting had occurred at Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and points to the south. Grant made an unusually wide sweep to gain an important road junction only 10 miles northwest of Richmond. Cold Harbor was neither chilly nor on water. Confederates spent the better part of a day and a half constructing a six-mile elevated network of trenches and gun emplacements. The defenses were as strong as any the Civil War produced. Grant apparently lost his patience on arrival at Cold Harbor. He ordered a headon attack for 4:30 the next morning. Showers during the night of 2–3 June made the darkness more uncomfortable. Legend has it that many Billy Yanks who were to make the assault were so certain of defeat that they wrote their names and units on pieces of paper and penned them to the backs of their shirts so that their bodies would be more easily identifiable. Battle began in the light of predawn. It lasted little more than an hour. “Repeated attacks,” Lee reported, “were met with great steadiness and repulsed in every instance.” That was an understatement. General Evander Law, one of Lee’s division commanders, watched the Federal assault. “Line followed line until the space enclosed by the old salient became a mass of writhing humanity, upon which our artillery and musketry played with cruel effect.” One after another, Federal units were blown apart before they got to within 50 yards of Lee’s lines. Grant lost 4,000 men in the morning battle. It was his worst defeat of the war—an attack, Grant conceded late in life, that he should never have made. Colonel Charles Venable of Lee’s staff was more pointed. He termed Cold Harbor “perhaps the easiest victory ever granted to the Confederate army by the folly of Federal commanders.”

company was supposed to have 100 men. Volunteers elected their captain and two lieutenants, in keeping with the American idea of a citizen-soldier. Many companies adopted nicknames such as “Grayson Dare Devils,” “Little Fork Rangers,” and “Wise Yankee Killers.” By tradition, a full company covered a battlefront of 25–30 yards. CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA. The Civil War was the final contest over the issue of sovereignty in the young American nation. Did ultimate power exist with the states that created the federal government, or did it exist with the national government and the laws granted to it by the Constitution? The argument began with the Founding Fathers who adjusted state rights to abide with federalism as much as they thought possible. Yet the issue flared occasionally in the half dozen decades of nationhood. Debates over slavery intensified in the 1850s. Taunts and threats came from Northern abolitionists and Southern “fire-eaters.” The breaking point came in November 1860, when Abraham Lincoln and the antislavery Republican Party won control of the federal government. Southern states saw their economic existence suddenly in peril. Abolitionists felt a new sense of entitlement. The culmination of all of the hysteria for the South was the expedient of secession. A conservative Virginia leader shook his head. “The desire of some for change, the desire of many for excitement,” he declared, “seems to have unthroned the reason of men, and left them at the mercy of passion.” A month after Lincoln’s presidential victory, South Carolina passed an ordinance of secession. The move was contagious. Six other Southern states—Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas—followed suit. On 4 February 1861, delegates from those now-independent governments met in Montgomery, Alabama, to discuss the next steps. That those 50 representatives were political moderates is not surprising. It takes two types of individuals to make a revolution: the

COMPANY. It was the “starting point” of an army. Enlistees left for war by joining units raised in their home communities. Officials encouraged this focus on locality because it strengthened already-made friendships and provided a local esprit de corps. The

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hotheaded, loud-talking activists to build the ship of state, and the more careful, thoughtful helmsmen to steer the ship through troubled waters. So the “fire-eaters” gave way to quieter voices. Members of the Montgomery convention wanted to preserve the best of the old union while creating a new nation of states. In the amazingly short span of five days (the Continental Congress debated 14 months before declaring American independence in 1776), Southern delegates adopted a provisional constitution for the Confederate States of America, elected a president (Jefferson Davis) and a vice president (Alexander H. Stephens), created a framework for a national government, and authorized an army. The Confederate constitution bore many similarities to the one under which Southerners had lived. Yet there were notable changes. The president served a single six-year term, so he wasted no time in campaigning for reelection. In place of 10 amendments, the original Bill of Rights was incorporated into the document. A line-item veto was permitted. Strict fugitive slave acts would be enforced, along with a prohibition of slave trade. No territorial ambitions existed in the new government. “All we ask,” President-elect Davis stated, “is to be left alone” with the institution of slavery intact. If such were not impossible, it certainly was unrealistic. Northern President Abraham Lincoln responded that secession was illegal because the union was perpetual. A Southern minority was seeking to overthrow two-thirds of the nation. Such a “rebellion” could not be tolerated. The April 1861 firing by Confederates on the Federal garrison at Fort Sumter brought war. Lincoln’s intentions to send armed forces to put down the Southern “uprising” triggered the secession of four more states: Tennessee, Virginia, Arkansas, and North Carolina. (Kentucky and Missouri officially remained neutral.) Eleven Southern states, with 5.5 million white citizens, now stood in defiance against 23 Northern states and their 22 million inhabitants. What the men at Montgomery created would last only as long as would Southern

armies in the field. The “magnolia-and-mintjulep” aura so often given to the Confederacy is a gross myth. Infighting beyond the magnitude of normal politics was the order of the day. Friction existed between rich and poor, secessionists and still-faithful unionists, state and governmental leaders, residents of the Eastern and Western military theaters. Davis soon found that his worst enemies were not Federal Generals Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman. They were Governors Zebulon Vance of North Carolina and Joseph Brown of Georgia. The president was a visionary who recognized the need for nationalistic binding to present the strongest front to the North. He needed a team, not eleven players. Yet his vice president, Alexander Stephens, was an archconservative who viewed any form of nationalism as the greatest threat to the blessed tenets of state rights. Hence, while war was exploding on the outside, lack of unity was imploding throughout the Confederacy. It made so little effort to keep the public informed that it appeared to be operating in secret session. Limited in resources, lacking in cohesion, never receiving foreign aid or recognition from Europe, the specter of defeat increased with time. That the Confederacy lasted four years is a testimonial to the endurance and sacrifice of the Johnny Rebs who filled the ranks of its armies. CONTRERAS AND CHURUBUSCO, MEXICO, BATTLES OF (18–19 AUGUST 1847). In the second week of August 1847, army commander Winfield Scott began his advance toward Mexico City. He abandoned his supply lines to Veracruz and planned to live off the country. Further, he lacked sufficient men to fight and guard the ever-lengthening connection with the Gulf of Mexico. The Americans were outnumbered two-to-one, but Scott knew that General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna’s forces were undisciplined and disorganized. Scott encountered rough country as his columns climbed into the highlands. He turned frequently to his aide, Captain Robert E. Lee, for reconnaissance not only of the enemy’s location but—more importantly—for paths he could use to flank the Mexican army. Lee rode

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through desolate regions, including the Pedregal, a five-mile lava bed uninhabitable by any living creatures. He exchanged fire with Mexican patrols at least once. After routes were ascertained, Lee directed construction of paths usable by men and artillery. Twin victories at Contreras and Churubusco on 18 August brought Scott to the outskirts of Mexico City. Santa Anna’s forces had retreated into the capital for a final stand. Lee’s daring and endurance over a three-day period had been extraordinary. Scott freely gave praise where praise was due. “The gallant, indefatigable Captain Lee” had demonstrated “the greatest feat of physical and moral courage performed by any individual in my knowledge.” Lee received brevet promotion to lieutenant colonel.

Cooper was the perfect second-in-command of the Confederacy’s military machine. The adjutant general was administrator of the largest organized bureaucracy in the Southern nation. Cooper’s job was to provide order and system, and he had to do it in an unsettled atmosphere of policies, personnel, jealousy, and general confusion. From Cooper’s department flowed orders, regulations, assignments, inspections, plus what many considered minutiae. The very nature of the job ran counter to making friends, and Cooper added nothing outstanding to the post. Critics regarded him as little more than a rubber stamp for the president. To others, he was noncommittal and indecisive. Cooper’s calm, friendly manner made both bureaucrats and clerks suspicious of his sincerity. And, of course, some native Southerners questioned how devoted a transplanted Yankee was in the hierarchy. Nevertheless, every indication points to a pleasant relationship with General Lee throughout the war years. Certainly Cooper deserves credit after Appomattox for voluntarily handing over to Federal officials all Confederate war records not consumed by fire in April 1865. This became a boon for research by future historians and surely capped Cooper’s wartime career. As adjutant general, he served as well as one could hope in the face of so many obstacles. He returned to the Mason estate penniless and destitute. Friends donated funds to keep the aging soldier above starvation. He died forgotten in December 1876.

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COOPER, SAMUEL (1798–1876). He was the senior ranking general in the Confederate army, but few people knew his name or exactly what he did. Samuel Cooper would be content with that. He was born in Hackensack, New Jersey, and displayed such extraordinary intelligence that he was admitted to West Point at the age of fourteen. Cooper graduated and spent 14 years in artillery service before switching to staff duty. His 1835 publication of a manual of arms became the standard work of its kind in the American military, and it ultimately led to Cooper’s promotion to colonel and adjutant general of the U.S. Army. This brought him into regular contact with Secretary of War Jefferson Davis. The two became close friends. Cooper’s 1827 marriage to the granddaughter of Founding Father George Mason led to his adoption of Southern rights. He resided at the Mason estate in northern Virginia and developed an ongoing relationship with neighbor Robert E. Lee. One of Confederate President Jefferson Davis’s first appointments in 1861 was to name Cooper adjutant general of Southern forces. Cooper was too old for field service, and he had never led troops in combat. However, the clean-shaven white-haired Cooper had appealing attributes. He was even tempered, closemouthed, obedient, and efficient.

CORPS. A corps was the basic subdivision of an army. It generally consisted of 2–4 infantry divisions plus its own artillery support. In the Confederacy, a lieutenant general commanded a corps. (The Union army used major generals for corps as well as for division leadership.) Robert E. Lee initially divided his Army of Northern Virginia into First and Second Corps led by James Longstreet and Thomas Jackson. Following the death of Jackson at Chancellorsville, Lee reorganized his army into three corps under the commands of Longstreet, Richard S. Ewell, and A. Powell Hill.

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By popular usage, a corps was known for its commander: Longstreet’s Corps and Jackson’s Corps. Federal army corps were designated by Roman numerals and called by such: III Corps, XVIII Corps, and so forth.

general was aware of the massacre at the end of the battle, he never mentioned it. CULPEPER, VIRGINIA. Culpeper was another of those small Virginia county seats, with geography being its major attraction in the Civil War. Located between the vital Rappahannock and Rapidan Rivers in the north-central piedmont, Culpeper was also a busy stop on the Orange & Alexandria Railroad. It was a natural community link for the area separating Washington, D.C., and Richmond. Culpeper was 40 miles from Manassas, 35 miles from Fredericksburg, and 20 miles from the Gordonsville rail crossing. Its most famous son in the Civil War was Lieutenant General A. Powell Hill, who, in 1864–1865, was Robert E. Lee’s senior corps commander in the field. Other soldiers from the area served notably in the 4th Virginia Cavalry and the 7th and 13th Virginia Infantries. Half of the county’s 12,000 residents were slaves. The town boasted of 60 merchants, 88 carpenters, 19 wheelwrights, and 18 blacksmiths. With the outset of war, it became a center for mobilization and training. Lee used Culpeper as jump-off point for two major offensives. The Gettysburg Campaign officially ended with Lee’s 23–24 July 1863 return to Culpeper. It changed hands often after nearby battles. The town served at various times as headquarters for three large commands: the Army of Northern Virginia, the Army of the Potomac, and the Army of Virginia. By 1864 devastation was widespread. Not a church was standing in the town. This prompted Lee to declare, “We must suffer patriotically to the end, when all things will be made right.”

CRATER, BATTLE OF THE, VIRGINIA (30 JULY 1864). A week after reaching Petersburg, Federal General Ulysses S. Grant received an odd suggestion. One of his Pennsylvania regiments consisted of coal miners. Its position was barely 500 feet from the enemy lines. The miners wanted to dig a tunnel beneath the Confederate earthworks and set off an explosion that would make a hole through which Federals could deliver an attack. Grant, ever a man of action, liked the idea. For a month miners toiled underground. Confederates could hear picks at work, but countershafts failed to pinpoint the Federal digging. At the end of the 511-foot tunnel were two 75-foot lateral galleries, into which were placed 320 kegs of black gunpowder. Two Union divisions stood poised to attack. At 4:45 a.m. on 30 July, a huge explosion shook the earth. Hundreds of tons of dirt, along with cannon, accoutrements, and companies from two South Carolina regiments, were hurled into the sky. At least 300 Confederates were killed by the blast, which created a smoking cavity 170 feet long, 70 feet wide, and 30 feet deep. Then things went awry for the Federals, owing largely to inadequate preparation and incompetent leadership. The two divisions charged straight into the crater rather than around it. Union soldiers slowly fought their way through two of three Southern lines before momentum ended. With Lee on the field and directing the action, Confederates delivered a solid counterattack. Southern troops were angered by such an unorthodox ambush, and seeing former slaves wearing blue uniforms in the action turned anger into fury. Many wounded and surrounded Federals were murdered. Grant lost 1,708 men in what he termed “the saddest affair I ever witnessed.” Robert E. Lee’s casualties were 1,500 soldiers. If the

CUSTIS, GEORGE WASHINGTON PARKE (1781–1857). He spent his life languishing as “the child of Mount Vernon.” In capital society, he was known as a delightful character. Parke Custis seemed an unlikely figure to be Robert E. Lee’s father-in-law. “Wash,” as his friends called him, spent his first months on the family estate where

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Reagan National Airport now stands. His father, a soldier in George Washington’s army, died of “camp fever” six months after the birth of the child. The mother entrusted the baby and his sister to its grandmother, Martha Dandridge Custis Washington, wife of the soldierpresident. The husband willingly adopted the children. Now Washington’s stepson and ward, young Custis grew up at Mount Vernon plantation on the Potomac River. He adored his new father. Such feeling was not reciprocated. The youth lacked motivation and ambition. He briefly attended three schools, but he was expelled from one and charged with larceny at another. When his grandmother died in 1802, part of Custis’s inheritance was four properties. One was a 1,100-acre tract of land on Arlington Heights overlooking the village recently selected as the national capital. For the only time in his life, Custis became energetic. He embarked on building a mansion to serve as a living monument to George Washington. Construction took 13 years. Custis’s marriage to Mary Randolph Fitzhugh increased the family fortune. The couple had four children in five years. Only one survived infancy: a daughter, Mary. The short, round man was never happier than when showing Arlington to admirers. Although Custis was lavish in hospitality, he was lazy in everything else. He never became a planter. He basically allowed Arlington to run itself. Custis’s favorite pastimes were breeding sheep, painting enormous but inaccurate historical canvases, and writing dull poetry. Easily distracted, he appeared to become increasingly fat and bald. In 1831, Lieutenant Robert E. Lee asked for his daughter Mary’s hand in marriage. Initially Custis opposed the union because of scandals in the Lee family, the meager pay of an army lieutenant, and a father’s desire to hold on to his only daughter. After the marriage, fatherin-law and son would seem to have little to discuss. Custis was physically unappealing, listless in behavior—one who enjoyed the

good life with little heed to life’s demands. Lee was handsome, self-disciplined, and organized to a fault. Yet two things bound them together: love of George Washington and Mary Custis. That Lee named his first son for his father-inlaw shows the presence of admiration. Custis died in 1857 of pneumonia—coincidentally the disease that killed his namesake. Lee took a two-month furlough to straighten out affairs at Arlington House. The leave of absence became two years because of Custis’s gross mismanagement over a long period. However, the Custis will did have one redeeming grace: it directed that the 90 slaves at Arlington House all be emancipated within five years of his passing. CUSTIS, MARY FITZHUGH (1788–1853). George Washington Parke Custis called his wife “Mother” perhaps for more reason than affection. Her quiet grace stabilized much of his continued exuberance. Mary Fitzhugh Custis was a third cousin of Robert E. Lee. She brought Rappahannock River aristocracy and wealth to her 1806 marriage to George Washington’s stepson. While small in stature, with brown curls and oval face, “Molly” was always warm and gracious. She took pride in manicuring the numerous gardens at the Custis estate. She was also a devout Episcopalian who saw life through the lense of faith. The “Mistress of Arlington” had four children in five years. The only one to survive infancy was a daughter, Mary. In 1831 the daughter married Robert E. Lee. He came to regard Mrs. Custis as a surrogate parent, and in the 20-odd years they had together, he called her “Mother.” Lee was superintendent at West Point when he received word of her death. He confessed, “The blow was so sudden & crushing that I got shudders at the shock & feel as if I had been arrested in the course of life, & I had no power for my onward march.” Mary Custis was buried at Arlington House. Months later, when Lee first visited the grave, he gave way to sobs.

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D One acquaintance described him as “a boyish looking young man, of middle height, thin, and with light hair, mustache, and goatee.” His advance to Richmond had been slowed by terrible weather, straggling, and possibly too leisurely. When Kilpatrick turned around and started home, Dahlgren attempted to do the same. He and his men made a desperate northeast ride through driving sleet with Confederate cavalry in pursuit. Late in the day the Union band galloped into an ambush. Dahlgren was killed; at least 100 of his depleted force were captured. Southern anger replaced anxiety. On Dahlgren’s body were allegedly found orders that once Richmond was burned, Jefferson Davis and his cabinet were to be captured and murdered. Union General George Meade, commander of the Army of the Potomac, immediately labeled such instructions “improper and unauthorized.” However, Richmond newspapers became hysterical. Lee termed the Federal directive “unchristian & atrocious acts they plot & perpetuate.” Yet he strongly opposed the public outcry that Dahlgren’s captured soldiers be executed. We would be acting as lowly as the Federals, Lee stated, and our retaliation would only lead to the same by the enemy. Southerners washed and dressed Dahlgren’s remains, which were placed in a wooden coffin and sent into the Union lines. The body lay in state in Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia prior to burial.

DAHLGREN, ULRIC (1842–1864). On 28 February 1864, some 3,500 Union cavalry departed the winter encampments in northern Virginia and started toward Richmond. The purpose of the expedition was to penetrate the lightly guarded capital, liberate many of the 15,000 Union prisoners housed there, and do any other damage possible before returning to Federal lines. In charge of the raid was General Judson Kilpatrick, a restless, undersized brigadier prone to snap judgments. At Spotsylvania, Kilpatrick split his command. He and 3,000 cavalrymen would continue due south toward Richmond; 500 horsemen under Colonel Ulric Dahlgren would veer away to the west, then turn east and strike Richmond from a second direction simultaneous with Kilpatrick’s attack from the north. Sleet and bitingly cold wind hampered movements. Authorities in Richmond were aware of the Union movement and were manning heavily constructed earthworks with everything from regular units and home guard to convalescents and old men. Kilpatrick arrived on the outskirts of the city. No word came relative to Dahlgren’s whereabouts. Kilpatrick tested the defenses and encountered unexpectedly heavy fire, whereupon he abandoned the raid and started back to Union lines. Ulric Dahlgren was the second son of Union Admiral John Dahlgren. Young Dahlgren was not a professional soldier. He had dabbled in surveying and law before joining the army in 1862. Proficiency in artillery won him a captain’s commission, and his bravery in combat climaxed with the loss of a leg at Gettysburg. He returned to duty as a colonel and was leading horsemen for the first time.

DANVILLE, VIRGINIA. When the Richmond & Danville Railroad began operations in 1856, the little town on the fall line of the Dan River was already the tobacco center for the

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south-central region of the state. The completion of the rail line gave Danville a direct link with Virginia’s manufacturing center. On the eve of war, the town had 3,500 residents. The shops and cars of the railroad were moved there in 1861 because Danville was deemed a safer place for wartime operations. The 140-mile line always catered to freight. It had 18 passenger cars and 328 boxcars. Danville citizens originally opposed secession, which they viewed as dangerous to the economy. Once Virginia left the Union, residents became among the most ardent of Confederates. The city was an active and then vital point for military operations. Population swelled to more than 6,000 during the war. Not only was Danville the western terminus of a railroad; it developed into a large supply depot for Lee’s army and contained a major soldier-hospital complex. In 1864, six tobacco warehouses were converted into prisons for captured Union soldiers. On 3 April 1865, President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet arrived in Danville on the last train from Richmond. For a week, the town was rather a confused center for Confederate affairs. Expectation was that Robert E. Lee would bring his army to Danville, join with what was left of Joseph Johnston’s Army of Tennessee, and make a last stand on the hills surrounding the town. However, with the news of Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Davis and government officials on 10 April fled south. Danville was thus “The Last Capital of the Confederacy.”

three years, and then resigned from the army to pursue a planter’s life. In June 1835, he eloped with Knox Taylor, daughter of Zachary Taylor. The couple had just settled into their new home when both contracted malaria. She died; her husband barely survived. Davis was so heartbroken that he spent the next seven years in reclusion on his brother’s plantation near Vicksburg, Mississippi. He read everything from novels to the Congressional Globe and obtained an extraordinarily wide range of knowledge. The widower returned to society and entered Mississippi politics. Davis then gained a second wife. Varina Howell was 18 years his junior, yet she was active, independent, and always there to share in her husband’s career. Mrs. Davis bore him four sons and two daughters. The last son was born when she was First Lady of the Confederacy. Davis served a term in the Congress, gained a hero’s status in the Mexican War, and then entered the U.S. Senate. There he inherited the mantle of John C. Calhoun as the South’s leading spokesman. In 1853 Davis interrupted Senate duties to serve as Franklin Pierce’s secretary of war. Among his achievements were increasing the army by 50 percent, upgrading standards at West Point, testing several brands of rifles to replace muskets, and experiments with using camels in the desert country of the Southwest. The secretary knew and respected Lee. When Davis created an elite unit, the 2nd U.S. Cavalry Regiment, he chose Lee to be second-in-command. After his cabinet term, the tall courtly Davis returned to the Senate. War clouds gathered. Davis held firmly to his belief in the “compact theory” of the Union. States were sovereign (possessing ultimate power). They had yielded enough sovereignty to join the Union, but they could reclaim their share of national sovereignty by request. Secession was legal because it was a peaceful exercise by people with unassailable liberty. In February 1861, Davis was chosen president of the newly formed Confederate States of America. He was thrust into an almost impossible job: leader of a confederation in which

DAVIS, JEFFERSON (1808–1889). Whether the Southern Confederacy survived depended on what its armies did in the field. Therefore, the most important relationship in the Civil War was between President Jefferson Davis and his best army commander, Robert E. Lee. Davis walks through history as a lonely patriot: a man never quite able to inspire others with the devotion to the South that coursed through his veins. Born in Kentucky (the 10th child of parents advanced in age), Davis became a Mississippian by adoption. He attended Transylvania University, graduated from West Point, fought Indian tribes for

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the parts far exceeded the whole in power. This reduced Davis to a lonely nationalist confronted by a human wall of states’ righters. “All we ask is to be left alone,” Davis announced as 11 Southern states attempted to forge a new nation. Union President Abraham Lincoln refused to stand idly and watch it happen. The Union is unbreakable, Lincoln declared, and he added that a minority does not have the right to overthrow the majority. And so war came. As a wartime president, Davis paled badly in comparison to his Union counterpart. Davis had physical handicaps: blindness in one eye, migraine headaches, neuralgia, boils, nervous indigestion, and insomnia. However, the character weaknesses were greater. Davis could not get along with people. Aloof in his excessive dignity, he lacked tact and diplomacy. He had a zealot’s intolerance and a patriot’s haste. Worse for the Confederacy, Davis disliked the political office of president—where his services were critically needed—and spent too much time as commander in chief—where his services seemed too often to border on intrusive. Davis regarded himself as a great strategist. This is where he and his 1861–1862 military adviser came face-to-face, because the two men had opposite ideas of how the Civil War should be fought. Davis wanted to wage what he called an “offensive/defensive” struggle. The South would build armies but remain in defensive position. Inevitably, Federal forces would come. Southern force would draw them more and more into the web, then counterattack at the best opportunity. Then, the South would fall back again into a solid defensive posture. We do not have to win the war, Davis asserted, we simply must not lose. Maintain endurance until the North wearies of it all. Lee was lukewarm to such a policy. The Confederacy was outnumbered and outgunned, he knew. To achieve a crushing victory, we must take risks. The South should assume the offensive while it has the strength. It cannot carry out Davis’s idea of a prolonged contest because we do not have the resources to maintain a long war. Time is not on our side.

The army commander was able to conduct the war his way not merely because most of his battles were victories, but also because of the partnership he developed with his commander in chief. The two men were the same age; they had attended West Point together and become better acquainted in the 1850s when Davis was secretary of war. During the Civil War, Davis openly lavished praise on Lee. The general backed away from any intimacy— as he did with everyone. Lee did two things to gain the testy president’s confidence. The general always avoided politicians and newspapermen, which the president appreciated. Second was Lee’s simple expediency of keeping Davis informed of his military ideas and actions with the Army of Northern Virginia. Actually, Lee was deferential. In writing Davis, he used such phrases as “I propose to submit to the consideration of Your Excellency” or “I hope you will give me your conclusion at your earliest consideration.” This made Davis feel that he was “a member of the team” from first to last. It was in sharp contrast to generals such as Gustave Beauregard and Joseph Johnston, who both disliked Davis and who both felt that political players should stay away from armies and battlefields. Lee used simple communication, and Davis gave encouragement. Virginia was where the war started and where it would be decided. The close cooperation between president and general turned what many thought would be a small-term contest into a four-year struggle. Davis failed to show a capacity for growth as chief executive. He was an isolated figure during the last half of the war. The fall of Richmond sent him fleeing south in search of a new capital and a continuation of the fight. Federals captured him in May 1865. Davis spent two years’ harsh imprisonment at Fort Monroe, Virginia. He gained release on bail and was never brought to trial for treason. Yet he found himself a man without a country. Disappointment and tragedy stalked him for a decade. All four of his sons preceded him in death. Failed business ventures kept him in financial ruin. At Lee’s passing in 1870, Davis genuinely grieved. “He was my friend,” Davis

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wrote in anguish, “and in that word is included all that I could say of a man.” Then a widow who owned a 600-acre plantation near Biloxi, Mississippi, offered Davis and his family a place to live. Beauvoir became his permanent home, thanks to the widow’s generosity. His final years brought serenity and a regional love he had never known. The South, which had so bitterly criticized him in war, now treated him as a living martyr of the “Lost Cause.” Davis was approaching his eightieth birthday when he visited Macon, Georgia. Thousands of people cheered his presence. Confederate veterans broke ranks and swarmed around their former commander in chief. When a faded battle flag was draped over the frail statesman’s shoulders, Davis buried his face in the folds and wept. He died at 82 of bronchial pneumonia. His remains were buried first in New Orleans, then reinterred in Richmond’s Hollywood Cemetery.

DESERTION. It was a major problem for Lee, and it became increasingly acute as the war years passed and victory slipped from view. A number of reasons explain the high incidence of “absent without leave.” Johnny Rebs (and Billy Yanks as well) were not professional soldiers. They were civilians on loan to the military. Accepting—sometimes understanding— discipline was unnatural to Americans who prided themselves on their independence. Peer or community pressure had led some men into service. The unexpected hardships of military service, particularly in the case of ill-equipped Confederates, overcame feelings of patriotism. Sickness and disease were so rampant in situations as to drive men out of the ranks in hopes of survival. The 1862 passage by Congress of a conscription act (which Robert E. Lee strongly supported) mandated national military service for white Confederate males between the ages of 18 and 45. It proved a failure and created an atmosphere for desertion. Most wars are fought between nations. In the Civil War, many regiments were stationed within a short distance of home. It was comparatively easy to walk away from camp or straggle from a march. However, at least a third of those who deserted did so because of anguished cries for help from loved ones at home. Fighting for country paled in the face of a wife and children desperately needing their provider. The number of desertions was low in the first stages of the war. Culprits apprehended usually received jail time at hard labor, or they might be branded with a “D” on their forehead or hand. By summer 1863, however, the desertion rate was climbing sharply. Lee informed President Jefferson Davis, “The number of desertions from this army is so great and still continues to such an extent, that . . . I fear success in the field will be seriously endangered.” Desertion was a capital crime, punishable by death. Firing squads and the gallows appeared outside camps. Still, by summer 1864, a third of the Confederate army was illegally absent. In February 1865, Lee confessed that hundreds of soldiers had left the ranks. A new directive ordering death to any soldier who

DERWENT. In late April 1865, a friend of Mrs. Mary Lee, Elizabeth Randolph Cocke, offered the family a vacant home on their estate Oakland, midway between Richmond and Charlottes­ ville. The site was on the James River and Kanawha Canal, which offered the crippled Mrs. Mary Lee a ride much smoother than a carriage over muddy roads. The Lees arrived on 30 April and awaited their small amount of furniture to be delivered. Two miles from the Cocke mansion was Derwent. It was a wooden frame home, with two rooms over two rooms, a detached kitchen, and another outbuilding the general could use as an office. Mrs. Lee did not like anything about Derwent. The place was too remote and shabby for her standards. Her husband, on the other hand, enjoyed his three months there. It was quiet, with only natural game breaking the silence. Lee and Traveller took daily outings along empty country roads. Among Lee’s thoughts was a growing desire to buy a farm somewhere and settle down peaceably in his remaining years. In August, Lee had an unexpected visitor: Judge John Brockenbrough of Lexington. He came with a job offer for the old soldier.

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sought to persuade another to desert had little effect. An estimated 100,000 Confederates deserted. More than 500 executions took place in the Civil War. Two of every three men put to death were guilty of desertion.

seizure of the tip of Virginia’s lower peninsula led General Joseph Johnston to retire westward toward Richmond. With Norfolk in Federal hands, a new and major defense for the James River had to be found. Engineers chose Drewry’s Bluff, eight miles below Richmond on the south bank of the James. A vessel proceeding up the James passes through a series of twists and turns, at the last of which was a bluff 90 feet high. From there it is smooth sailing into the capital. Major work got under way: felling trees for uninhibited firing, digging gun emplacements and earthworks, dragging heavy cannon up rough terrain into position. Boats were sunk in the river to provide additional obstacles. Lee took an unusually high interest in the construction. His son Custis was one of the supervising engineers. Soon the bluff was crowned with thick earthen works defending against both land and river approaches. With the river barely 100 yards wide at that point, the place resembled what an officer called “a perfect Gibraltar.” Officially, it was known as Fort Darling. Two battles of note occurred there: 15 May 1862 and 12 May 1864. In both engagements, Federals were repulsed. Not until the fall of Richmond did the Drewry’s Bluff garrison abandon the earthen fortification.

DIMMOCK LINE, VIRGINIA. See PETERSBURG, VIRGINIA. DIVISION. Armies up to 1860 consisted of brigades. Yet Civil War armies became so large and brigades so numerous that the employment of divisions consisting of two to four brigades provided a stronger link in the chain of command. A major general commanded a division. It varied in size from 8,000 to 20,000 soldiers. In Robert E. Lee’s army, the most noteworthy of these units was General Powell Hill’s “Light Division.” Some sources assert that the nickname stemmed from the rapidity of its marches. Others claim that the title arose because it was the largest division (six brigades) in the Army of Northern Virginia. DREWRY’S BLUFF, VIRGINIA. General Robert E. Lee had great concern for this site when he was military adviser to Jefferson Davis. In 1862 Union General George B. McClellan’s

39

E remarked that if Early “had a tender feeling, he endeavored to conceal it and acted as though he would be ashamed to be detected in doing a kindness.” Early was the only man who dared to curse in Lee’s presence. The commander termed Early “my bad old man” and tolerated his eccentricities because of his dependability in battle. Old Jube’s military high and low came in 1864 in rapid succession. His promotion to lieutenant general and corps command proved to be a step above his abilities. In June, with a part of Stonewall Jackson’s old corps, Early routed a Federal force at Lynchburg, Virginia. Then he swept northward down the Shenandoah Valley, won a victory at Monocacy, Maryland, and marched to the outskirts of Washington, D.C. The capital was too well defended to be taken by Early’s small force. On the return to the Valley, the general sent a detachment to burn Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, as retaliation for earlier Federal depredations in the Shenandoah Valley. That autumn, in what is called the Second Valley Campaign, overwhelming numbers of Federals under General Philip Sheridan defeated Early in three major battles. Early’s lack of magnetism as a leader, his reliance on hunches rather than data, and his lack of appreciation of cavalry contributed to the Union victories. The Valley, known as the “Breadbasket of the Confederacy,” came under permanent Union control. Public outcry at the loss forced Lee to relieve Early from command a month before the war ended.

EARLY, JUBAL ANDERSON (1816–1894). In a war filled with characters, “Old Jube” Early stood in the forefront and remained there far into the postwar years. Raised in rural Virginia, the third of 10 children, he exhibited at West Point good academics and poor behavior. He saw duty against the Seminoles and Cherokees before resigning from the army to become a lawyer. One factor behind his resignation was a severe arthritic condition that rendered Early permanently stooped and aged beyond his years. He became commonwealth attorney for Franklin County. In 1861 the staunch Whig conservative was elected to the Virginia secession convention. Early initially voted against leaving the union because of his home area’s close tobacco ties with the North. Yet it became evident that Union forces would be entering Virginia without the state’s permission. Early then voted for secession. The 47-yearold lifelong bachelor promptly enlisted in the Confederate army and became colonel of the 24th Virginia Infantry Regiment. By firm, sometimes outstanding leadership at First Manassas, Williamsburg, Second Manassas, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Salem Church, Early rose steadily in the army chain of command. He became a familiar figure in Robert E. Lee’s army by both sight and reputation. Dark eyes glared from beneath a dirty white hat and black plume. Arthritis bent his six-foot frame so that he looked of no more than medium height. Combative and outspoken, Early spat tobacco juice and oaths with reckless abandon. A staff officer

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The ex-general refused to sign a pardon and fled south. His initial intention was to move to New Zealand to get as far away from Yankees as he could. Instead, he exiled in Mexico and Canada. On learning in 1867 that he was being considered as a candidate for governor of Virginia, Early squashed that possibility by writing an editor friend, “If I were made governor I would have the whole state in another war in less than a week.” Early returned home two years later and established a law practice in Lynchburg. War memories became his religion. His postwar mission was to vindicate “the truth of history.” He served as president of a number of Confederate veterans’ associations, notably the Southern Historical Society. Its monthly Papers—begun by Early and continuing intermittently until 1952—extolled the Confederacy in general and Robert E. Lee in particular. Early was the godfather of “The Lost Cause” cult, which believed that the South fought for a nobler cause but was overcome by superior numbers of heathen. Any Southerner who displayed even a degree of respect for the North became a target for Early’s pen. His venom became most focused on General James Longstreet, whom Early and his legion of followers accused of costing Lee victory at Gettysburg. (The nicest title Early ever used for Longstreet was “renegade.”) As long as Early lived, no one ever picked up a pen to write about the Civil War without the fear of Jubal Early looming over him. In mid-February 1894, Early was leaving the Lynchburg post office and preoccupied with a bundle of mail when he fell down the building’s marble steps. Early died two weeks later. This most unreconstructed of all Confederates went to his grave in a Southern general’s uniform, with a Confederate battle flag wrapped around the coffin.

or three open-field battles at most. In addition, soldiers existed to fight, not to be ditchdiggers. The frequency and intensity of combat wrought a major change in thinking. Beginning in 1862, whenever an army halted for any length of time, preparing earthworks was the first order of business. Several advantages lay with using trenches and earthen fortifications. The material was already at hand—the ground where one stood. It was inexpensive and limitless. Being down in the ground further strengthened the Napoleonic axiom that it took three attackers to overcome one defender. Further, thick dirt blocked musket fire and reduced the effects of artillery. By 1864, field fortifications were the most common type of defense. Confederates built miles of earthwork systems throughout the South. Slave labor was used in producing major trench networks such as those at Atlanta, Richmond, and Petersburg. Soldiers learned to construct trenches quickly. A fill of logs, fence rails, tree trunks, and stones were stacked in a line that was the pattern for the breastworks. The dirt was piled up on the side facing the enemy. This formation was called the parapet. The trench (or “rifle trench”) gave further cover and was deep enough to be even with the soldier’s shoulders. The front of the parapet was known as the revetment and was designed to take the heaviest fire from the enemy. Artillery emplacements were strong-point redoubts (rectangular earthworks) or redans (triangular gun suites). If time permitted, soldiers would shovel out a dry moat along the front of the earthwork to add another impediment to an infantry advance. In front of it might be sharp-pointed sticks planted at an angle. These additions, known as abatis, chevaux-de-frise, and palisades, are comparable to modern-day barbed wire. It is in the American Civil War that, for the first time in history, the advantage in battle shifted to the defensive side. The advent of the more powerful rifle replacing the musket was one reason. However, the sophisticated earthworks—especially as used by generals such as Lee—go far in explaining why offensive movements so often lost their punch.

EARTHWORKS. Robert E. Lee became so masterful at fortifications that opposing generals considered him as deadly on defense as he was on offense. Earthworks were not in widespread use early in the Civil War. Major thinking on both sides was that the struggle would be short: two

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service. Generally quiet and dutiful, he would succumb on occasion to a violent temper. This was almost automatic when a subordinate responded to a question with “I don’t know.” His Civil War career was at first dazzling. Commissioned a captain of cavalry in the spring of 1861, he was a major general of infantry during the 1862 Shenandoah Valley Campaign. Ewell served as General Stonewall Jackson’s second-in-command. The praise he gained from Jackson brought him a fame he had never known. Enhancing some of that reputation were personal peculiarities. Ewell was bald as an eagle. Bulging eyes transfixed a person with a baleful gaze. Heavy mustache and long narrow beard completed the odd appearance. He had the mannerisms of a startled bird. When Ewell talked, he turned his head to one side and laced his conversation with well-developed profanity delivered in a shrill, piping voice. Difficulty in sleeping resulted in his spending some nights curled around a camp stool. Perhaps oddest of all was Ewell’s total lack of jealousy or ambition. He served faithfully where he was needed and required no recognition for doing so. By the war’s second summer, he was one of Lee’s most dependable second-level officers. On 28 August 1862, everything changed. Ewell was leading his troops at Groveton (in what became a preliminary engagement of the Second Manassas Campaign) when a bullet struck him in the left knee. Some soldiers rushed over to take him to the rear. Ewell did not want their help. “Put me down, and give them hell!” he shouted in a battle cry. Surgeon Hunter McGuire amputated the limb just above the knee. The wound took a long time healing. The shape of the stump, and the poorly made peg, resulted in abscesses on a regular basis. Ewell learned to use crutches and often rode toward battle in a buggy. The loss of a leg crippled Ewell mentally. A sense of uncertainty replaced the fire that previously had marked his presence on the field. Lee was not aware of this when he promoted Ewell in late spring of 1863 to lieutenant general and command of Jackson’s old corps. Yet the change was painfully obvious on the first

ENGINEERS, CORPS OF. A popular 19thcentury saying was that the U.S. Army resembled the human body. The arms, legs, and torso were the artillery, cavalry, and infantry. Engineers were the brains. A corps of engineers was created in the same 1802 law that established a military academy at West Point, New York. The school was to be a training post for civil engineers. Not only would graduates construct forts and strengthen defense; they would survey roads and canals, enlarge harbors, and elevate navigation on the country’s two largest rivers, the Mississippi and the Ohio. The Corps of Engineers quickly gained a high reputation. Because their jobs required depth of knowledge in mathematics, design, and architecture, only the top graduates in a West Point class were posted to the elite unit. They received extra army pay, and their assignments were often near urban areas and the attractions they offered. Engineering was the goal of every cadet, for it was a lucrative position within the military profession. Two types of engineers existed at the time of the Civil War. Topographical engineers performed reconnaissance duty, drew maps, and sketched possible fortifications. Regular engineers oversaw construction of fortifications such as earthworks, forts, and the operational expertise to make them successful. Lee proved skillful at both levels. The supreme accomplishment of the Corps of Engineers in the conflict of the 1860s was the defensive network protecting the Northern capital. Sixty-eight forts were in the 40-mile ring of breastworks. They made Washington, D.C., at the time the strongest defended city in the world. EWELL, RICHARD STODDERT (1817– 1872). “Baldy Dick” Ewell was another of those outstanding division commanders who proved a disappointment when promoted to lead a corps. However, his failure came more from physical than from mental limitation. Descended from a northern Virginia family that had been prosperous but had fallen on hard times, Ewell graduated from West Point and spent 20 years as a cavalryman on frontier

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day’s fighting at Gettysburg. Ewell had the best division leaders in Lee’s army. Nevertheless, his failure to attack retreating Federals late in the day is considered by some historians to have been the major factor in Lee’s ultimate defeat in Pennsylvania. Ewell thereafter saw only limited duties. A leading factor in what physical recovery he made was a distant cousin, Lizinka. Ewell had known and loved her from childhood, but she had married someone else. Now she was a widow. They married, but Ewell could not break old habits. He always introduced her as “my wife, Mrs. Brown.” The general hobbled with Lee’s army as it retreated west from Petersburg. On 6 April

1865, Ewell was one of several high-ranking Confederate officers captured in the rearguard fight at Sailor’s Creek. Three months of imprisonment at Fort Warren, Massachusetts, followed. Once during that period, Ewell confessed to his colleague, General Eppa Hunton, “It took a dozen blunders [by us] to lose Gettysburg, and I committed a good many of them.” During his prison time, Ewell contracted a severe case of neuralgia that left him with a partly closed eye thereafter. He went home to his wife’s huge stock farm in Tennessee and worked hard to become a gentleman farmer. The efforts were short-lived. In January 1872, Richard and Lizinka Ewell died of pneumonia within three days of one another.

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F area to 10,000 men. He told the commander, General George Pickett, to “hold Five Forks at all hazards.” By noon on 1 April, with woods glistening from recent rains, Pickett and his men were reasonably entrenched in the mud. Then overconfidence, plus ignorance of how vital his position was, got the better of Pickett. He and his cavalry chief, General Fitzhugh Lee, rode two miles away to partake of a shad roe dinner. Near 4 p.m., General Philip Sheridan with 30,000 infantry and cavalry attacked the Confederates in front and on flank. The Southern line collapsed. In an hour Sheridan had seized 4,500 prisoners and ripped Pickett’s sector away from Lee’s army. Five Forks brought the greatest loss of men in Lee’s army since the May 1864 battle of Spotsylvania. The military disintegration of the Army of Northern Virginia had begun. In addition to gross negligence at Five Forks, Pickett was also the victim of a phenomenon known as acoustic shadow. Wet woods, the lay of the land, plus wind direction and velocity, can create a natural situation where sound may carry very far in one direction and not at all in another. Pickett was returning leisurely from his meal when he saw—not heard—his position being overrun. See also PETERSBURG, VIRGINIA, CAMPAIGN OF.

“FAREWELL ORDER.” See GENERAL ORDER NO. 9. FARMVILLE, VIRGINIA. It was 23 miles from Jetersville to Farmville, a county seat astride the Southside Railroad. In April 1865, the rail line was still operating westward to Lynchburg. A march all day and all night, General Robert E. Lee reasoned, would get his army away from encirclement and to badly need food at Farmville. Lee had no choice but to give the order for the cruelest march the Army of Northern Virginia ever made. Men staggered along the road in groups. Many were too exhausted and too hungry even to talk. The 6 April march was slowing to a crawl when, in a drizzly rain, Federals struck Lee’s rear at Sailor’s Creek. The remainder finally made it to Farmville. Units in front of the columns were just beginning to enjoy rations when Federal gunfire sent them scampering. For the majority of Lee’s soldiers, pangs of hunger continued. On the following day, 7 April, Ulysses S. Grant made his first overture to Lee to bring an end to the “further effusion of blood.” FIVE FORKS, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF (1 APRIL 1865). The beginning of the end for the Army of Northern Virginia came at an empty crossroads known as Five Forks. Lee’s right flank was anchored there because of its approaches to the Southside Railroad and possibly as a point of rally should Lee have to abandon Petersburg. On the last day of March, with Federals threatening, Lee reinforced the

FLOYD, JOHN BUCHANAN (1806–1863). Whether Robert E. Lee met Floyd prior to the disastrous 1861 campaign in western Virginia is unknown. Floyd was a fellow Virginian, a year older than Lee. From a planter-lawyer career in

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the southwestern mountains, he served a term as governor prior to becoming secretary of war in the James Buchanan administration. Floyd was unimpressive and overweight in appearance, bumbling and incompetent as a cabinet member. He was accused at one point of “purloining” $850,000 in Indian trust funds. Late in 1860 critics charged Floyd with transferring surplus ordnance to forts in Southern states that were likely to secede. In all probability, Floyd was guilty not of thievery and graft but of slipshod management. Following his resignation from the federal government, Floyd became one of Jefferson Davis’s first brigadier generals. Political prominence lay behind the appointment; Floyd had no military talents, was rash, and tended to become confused under pressure. Nevertheless, he raised an independent command, moved into mountainous Virginia, and collided with an old nemesis, Henry Wise, and his independent command. With both men tempestuous and jealous of competition, cooperation was never possible. A prominent citizen of the area wrote President Davis, “I am fully satisfied that each of them would be highly gratified to see the other annihilated.” The president sent Floyd to the Tennessee theater of operations. That move only emphasized Floyd’s incompetence. He took command of Fort Donelson, the Confederacy’s major defense on the Cumberland River in Tennessee. When Union General Ulysses S. Grant was on the verge of surrounding the installation, Floyd ordered a breakout attack that was succeeding until Floyd changed his mind and ordered the victorious soldiers to return to Donelson. At a conference that night, Floyd expressed concern that his misconduct as war secretary in the Buchanan years might get him indicted for treason. He thereupon relinquished command and fled back to Virginia. This act of cowardice and desertion should have led to dismissal from the army. Instead, Davis promoted Floyd to major general in charge of Virginia militia in his home area of southwestern Virginia. Failing health sapped the remainder of Floyd’s strength. He died in the summer of 1863 at Abingdon, Virginia.

FORT CARROLL, MARYLAND. The last engineering work Robert E. Lee did for the U.S. Army was the construction of Fort Carroll. A well-armed installation was needed on the Patapsco River to defend Baltimore. The War of 1812 demonstrated that Fort McHenry (where the words for what became America’s national anthem were written) was too old and too close to the city to provide an adequate defense. Lee spent the years 1848–1851 in bringing up from the river a new and potentially powerful fortification. He first had to create a three-acre artificial island. In the mudflats he employed pile drivers, cranes, and other materials to establish a foundation. It took three seasons to accomplish the work. An attack of malaria slowed all efforts. Lee then designed a hexagonal fort with 14-foot walls. The fort would hold 225 guns and sufficient piers. This was lonely duty for Lee. Social life in Baltimore held little attraction for him. During this period he began a lifelong correspondence with Martha Custis Williams, a first cousin of Mrs. Lee. “Markie” was 17 years younger than Lee. Fantasies and personal feelings would characterize their scores of letters. In September 1851, Lee left the Fort Carroll project to become superintendent at the U.S. Military Academy. Work on Fort Carroll steadily slowed in the decade after Lee’s departure. When civil war came, the installation was only half completed. The army placed two guns on a rampart facing downriver. That was fortunate because the fort was never threatened. FORT HAMILTON, NEW YORK. In 1861 Fort Hamilton was the most vital of the North’s coastal defenses. It and Fort Lafayette guarded New York City from opposite banks of the Hudson River as it emptied into the Atlantic Ocean. The water space between the two installations is still called “The Narrows.” Built during 1825–1831, and named for Federalist patriarch Alexander Hamilton, the stone building was trapezoid in shape and located on the Brooklyn side of the Hudson. Lee was on duty there for six years. His basic assignments were repairs and renovations to the

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four defense bases in the New York City area. Much of his labor focused on rotten gun platforms, leaking casemates, and other equipment that needed updating. It was necessary but unchallenging work. A portion of Fort Hamilton was used during the Civil War to house civilian prisoners.

completed, the fort would hold 200 guns. It early gained the nickname “Gibraltar of the Chesapeake.” Young Lieutenant Robert E. Lee was assigned there for the final stages of construction. He spent most of his duty attending to the outworks and constructing the moat. Lee was only two years out of West Point; his engineering experience was limited. Yet the 1831–1834 tenure at Fort Monroe gave him a full knowledge about building large and permanent fortifications. It was also while stationed at Fort Monroe that Lee married Mary Custis. Their first son was born in the officers’ quarters that still stand. The fort was too powerful for Confederates to seize. General George B. McClellan used it as the staging area for his 1862 Peninsula Campaign on Richmond. During 1865–1867 ex-President Jefferson Davis was confined in one of the casemates while federal officials deliberated over whether he should be tried for treason.

FORT HARRISON, VIRGINIA, BATTLES OF (29–30 SEPTEMBER 1864). A large earthen work known as Fort Harrison stood on the north bank of the James River below Richmond in an area called Chaffin’s Bluff. It was an anchor for the outer defense line of the capital. In the autumn of 1864, the fort contained several pieces of artillery but only 150 men. Federals wanted control of the base to use it as a jump-off point for a possible attack on Richmond from the north. Capturing Fort Harrison might also draw Confederates from the Petersburg sector, thus further weakening Robert E. Lee’s position there. On 29 September, a heavy Union force stormed and captured Fort Harrison along with 15 guns and 50 prisoners. Lee, informed of the loss, ordered two divisions to try to regain the fort. Battle began at 2 p.m. on the 30th. Both sides suffered heavy losses in fighting that often was hand to hand. Superior Federal numbers held fast until sundown ended the action. Lee had to construct a new defensive line closer to Richmond. Federals never used Fort Harrison for any offensive action.

FORT PULASKI, GEORGIA. Robert E. Lee’s first assignment as an army engineer was to assist in the erection of what became Fort Pulaski at the mouth of the Savannah River. Located on Cockspur Island, 12 miles downriver from Georgia’s major seaport, the new fort was surrounded by swampland and seemingly a good distance from civilization. Work began on the fort in 1829 and would take 18 years to complete. The five-sided structure required 25 million bricks and had walls 11 feet thick. Naval authorities considered Fort Pulaski impenetrable to artillery fire. During 10–11 April 1862, Federal naval guns began a 30-hour bombardment of the fort. Among the 37 heavy guns used were 10 rifled pieces with great penetrating power. Some 5,275 shot and shell rained on the fort and blew away the southeast wall. The Confederate garrison surrendered. The destruction of Fort Pulaski was clear evidence that brick was no defense at all against rifled artillery.

FORT MONROE, VIRGINIA. It was the largest coastal defense ever built in America. Fort Monroe, named for the president then in office, was among the first installations constructed to strengthen the nation from attack by sea. The site was the northern lip of the channel leading from the Atlantic Ocean into Hampton Roads harbor, the roadstead into which emptied the James, Elizabeth, and Nansemond Rivers. Surrounding the port were the towns of Norfolk, Portsmouth, Newport News, and Hampton. In 1609 the early Virginia settlers had constructed a fort on the site. Work on a permanent, seven-sided stone installation began in 1823 and continued for 11 years. When

FORT STEDMAN, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF (25 MARCH 1865). It is often called “Lee’s Last Grand Offensive.”

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FREDERICKSBURG, VIRGINIA

By March 1865, Robert E. Lee began to search for a weak spot in the Federal position. He wanted to make a surprise attack and punch through the Union line. If successful, this might force Ulysses S. Grant to constrict his lines and reconsider ideas of an offensive movement. Then Lee could leave a detachment to man the shortened Petersburg line and take his main force to reinforce General Joseph Johnston’s army retiring in the face of General William T. Sherman’s advance through the Carolinas. All of this was a series of desperate hopes on Lee’s part. Yet no other positive option existed. To do nothing was to await certain defeat when Grant unleashed his spring offensive. The site chosen for the assault was Fort Stedman, where the opposing lines were only 150 yards apart. The fort had been constructed months earlier and named for a Connecticut colonel killed in action early in the Petersburg fighting. Fort Stedman was an earthen work surrounded by a moat four feet deep and half full of water. It was 13 feet from the bottom of the moat to the top of the parapet. At 4:30 a.m., 25 March, some 11,500 Confederates under one of Lee’s best generals, John B. Gordon, swept forth in three columns. They seized possession of the fort; one column fanned left and another fanned right to widen the breech. The Southerners occupied about a half mile of entrenchments on either side of Stedman. Momentum began to slow just as heavy Union reinforcements dashed into the combat. The four-hour fight quickly ended. Lee lost 1,600 men killed and wounded, plus another 1,500 captured. Fort Stedman was Lee’s last tactical offensive of the Petersburg campaign. Lee informed President Jefferson Davis, “I feel now it will be impossible to prevent a junction between Grant and Sherman.” Lee could only wait for the Northern hammer to fall.

FRAYSER’S FARM, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF. See GLENDALE, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF. FREDERICKSBURG, VIRGINIA. Situated at the falls and a critical bend in the Rappahannock River, Fredericksburg was exactly midway between the two national capitals of Washington, D.C., and Richmond. It had served as a principal port for products from the Shenandoah Valley since colonial days. George Washington visited the town often. James Monroe had a law office in the middle of downtown. Three generals in the American Revolution called it home. In 1860 it was a charming and bustling city of 5,000 citizens. That the new, heavily used Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac Railroad passed through the heart of town gave it great promise for the future. The war struck Fredericksburg with deadly intensity in the last months of 1862. In November, scarlet fever swept through the city. Thirty-one children died in the epidemic. Then, only two weeks before Christmas, the city was the center of one of the war’s largest battles. On 11 December, Federal soldiers finally got across the Rappahannock River. For a month they had been awaiting the arrival of pontoon boats. Federals promptly vented their impatient anger by sacking defenseless Fredericksburg. A Massachusetts private reported, “I took a stroll through the principal business streets, witnessing the strange spectacle of a desolated, plundered and ruined city. Streets and sidewalks packed with sleeping soldiers, burning ruins of great solid blocks of buildings everywhere. Streets and yards strewed with furniture and articles of every description.” The following day, from mid-morning to late afternoon, Union General Ambrose Burnside hurled one assault after another through the downtown toward Lee’s position on high ground a quarter mile distant. All failed in a loss that cost the Union army 12,600 casualties and added further destruction to the old and once-proud community. On the day after Christmas, a Union surgeon remarked, “if the rebels succeed in holding the city, it will be many years before it can be made tenantable. In fact, I think they may as well found a new city as to undertake to repair the old one.”

FORT WOOL, VIRGINIA. See “RIP RAPS,” VIRGINIA. FORTIFICATIONS. See EARTHWORKS.

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FREDERICKSBURG, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF

Seventeen months later, what was left of Fredericksburg became anew a vestibule of hell. The town was chosen as a medical center for casualties from the battles at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania. The stench of suffering and death hung heavily over the river town. At one point, 7,000 injured soldiers were waiting their turn from one of 40 available physicians. Fredericksburg was a ghost town in the last months of the Civil War. The population consisted of 700 people, mostly women and children. In September 1864, a Florida man detrained at Hamilton’s Crossing three miles from downtown. “A few trees remain upon the hills near the depot,” he wrote, “but there is not a fence nor an inhabited house all the way to Fredericksburg . . . no crops but luxuriant weeds. . . . All is still as death for miles and miles under the sweet and autumnal sun.”

completely bare except for fences and a small ravine. Lee constructed a battle line seven miles in length. Most of it rested on hills 40–50 feet above an open plain. The Confederate position was high enough for a clear field of fire but not high enough to discourage Federals from attacking. Some 82,000 of Lee’s battlehardened soldiers concentrated above and below Marye’s Heights. Infantry, seven men to the yard, were packed in a sunken road behind a stone wall. Along the hilltops were 306 cannon that could lay crisscross lines of fire all over the open expanse below. It was as strong a position as the Civil War allowed. It simply could not be taken by head-on attack. Burnside thought otherwise. A third of the Union army struck Stonewall Jackson’s sector on the right of the Confederate defenses. After a momentary success, Federals were repulsed and lost more troops retiring than they had in advancing. Burnside then shifted attention to Lee’s left-center. That is when a systematic killing began. The Union attacks were never more than 1,000 yards wide, which is a narrow punching line. Each Federal brigade had to advance across open ground three-quarters of a mile wide into the most concentrated fire yet seen in the war. Federals made as many as twelve attacks on Lee’s position. Billy Yanks not killed by cannon fire raking the field came under almost unbroken musketry from Confederates massed along the stone wall. Lee turned to General James Longstreet midway through the assaults and observed, “They are massing very heavily and will break your line, I am afraid.” Longstreet snarled, “General, if you put every man now on the other side of the Potomac on that field to approach me over the same line . . . I will kill them all before they reach my line.” Not one Union soldier got to within 50 yards of the sunken road. It was Malvern Hill in reverse and far more one-sided. For hours, one writer lamented, the scene was one of “a monstrous slaughter, intense pain, raw courage and pointless sacrifice.” Lee sadly watched the action on the hilltop. “It is well that war is so terrible,” he commented at one point. “Else we should grow too fond of it.”

FREDERICKSBURG, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF (13 DECEMBER 1862). Ambrose Burnside was a tall, energetic, cooperative Union general. After General George B. McClellan was relieved of command of the Army of the Potomac, “Old Burn” was named his successor. Burnside knew well that President Abraham Lincoln wanted a commander who would fight. A week into his job, the Rhode Islander quietly shifted the Union army to Stafford Heights, overlooking Fredericksburg and the Rappa­ hannock River. His intention was to cross the river speedily, occupy the city, and make a dash toward Richmond while Lee’s army was still encamped in the northern piedmont. Before starting the Union advance, Burnside ordered pontoon bridges to be rushed to him at Stafford. Bureaucratic mismanagement now came into play. The pontoons were not waiting when the Union army arrived. From the beginning, Burnside’s tactics had been predicated on secrecy and speed. Neither element now existed. Nevertheless, Burnside determined to do what he had set out to do. He would wait for the pontoons and resume the offensive. The stubbornness blinded Burnside to what reactions Robert E. Lee might make. Lee the army engineer found Fredericksburg an excellent site to defend. It was high ground a half mile from downtown and

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Federal casualties at Marye’s Heights exceeded 8,000 men. Lee lost 500 soldiers. Nightfall ended the massacre. Total Union casualties were 12,650 men, about equal to losses suffered by McClellan at Antietam. Confederates losses were near 5,000 soldiers, mostly in Jackson’s segment of the battle. Fredericksburg was Lee’s easiest victory of the war.

Freeman then produced a three-volume work on the commanders in the Army of Northern Virginia. Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command appeared during World War II and was consulted often by officers in the field. Freeman was now writing editorials, making daily radio commentaries, teaching journalism classes at Columbia University, and traveling some 20,000 miles a year on speaking engagements. He was an easily recognizable figure. Tall, of medium build, bald and bespectacled, he spoke in a deep Southern drawl. He antedated the first-name era. He was “Douglas” to a few, “Doctor Freeman” to everyone else. He always appeared polite and unhurried, but his life was rigidly regimented. Freeman had what an associate termed “a careful apportionment of his precious hours.” Every activity of the day was timed to the minute. He arose at 2:30 a.m., allocated two minutes and 40 seconds for breakfast, was at his editorial desk downtown by 6:15, and wrote two editorials plus a radio script before going across the street for his morning radio show. Staff meetings followed until midmorning, when Freeman switched from editor to historian and worked on one of his books. Lunch with his wife at home, a brief nap, and the rest of the day was spent in research and writing. He worked into the night because he could subsist on 4–5 hours of sleep. In 1953 Freeman died of a heart attack while completing the sixth of seven volumes of a biography of George Washington. (Associates produced the concluding volume.) The recipient of 23 honorary degrees, his multitudinous achievement in the combined field of history and journalism are likely never to be matched.

FREEMAN, DOUGLAS SOUTHALL (1886– 1953). “Time is irreplaceable. Waste it not.” This reminder stood on the desk of Robert E. Lee’s preeminent biographer, Douglas Freeman. It was a creed he pursued fiercely throughout his adult life. Freeman became world famous as a newspaper editor, radio commentator, biographer, historian, public speaker, and teacher. Born in Lynchburg, Virginia, son of a Confederate soldier, Freeman received his BA degree from the University of Richmond and, in 1908, his PhD degree from Johns Hopkins University. Unable to obtain a teaching position, he joined the staff of Richmond’s afternoon newspaper, the News-Leader, and six years later became its editor. He held that position for 34 years, during which Freeman wrote an estimated 600,000 words annually. Commensurate with the editorship, Free­man also began research on a biography of Lee. He labored 18 years on the project at a time when computers did not exist and research was done by interviews, newspapers, letters, and travel to libraries. Freeman unearthed a wealth of previously unknown material. In writing the narrative, he employed a “fog of war” technique whereby readers knew only the information Lee had at any given time. The first two volumes appeared in 1934, the other two the following year. They totaled 2,421 pages. Reviewer Stephen Vincent Benet pronounced the biography “a superb achievement” and worthy of “at least ten Pulitzer Prizes.” Robert E. Lee, A Biography was easily a recipient of one. After 80 years, Freeman’s study is still the starting point for any serious study of Lee. Some historians criticize the ­author’s sometimes idolatrous approach, but no Lee biography will ever match it in scope and depth.

FUNERAL OF LEE. At 9:45 a.m., Wednesday, 12 October 1870, the bell in the Lexington Episcopal Church began tolling slowly. All life in the area came to a halt. The local newspaper announced, “The silent air of the sadness of a chamber of death prevailed throughout the town.” Businesses and schools closed. Black bunting began to envelop the downtown. Longtime praise of Robert E. Lee stopped. The time for silent grief had begun.

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FUNERAL OF LEE

Finding a coffin was an instant and critical problem for Lee’s burial. Torrential rains had fallen for three days and turned the nearby Maury River into a raging stream that swept away bridges, buildings, and a dozen homes. Several caskets in Anderson’s Warehouse had disappeared into the floodwaters. Townspeople began searching along the river. A mile east of town, they discovered a coffin lodged in the fork of a tree. Lee’s remains would rest in a proper container. Meanwhile, the body had been moved from the dining room where he had collapsed into the living room of the president’s home. Embalmers did their work, a barber trimmed the hair, family members selected a black suit. A plaster death mask was made of the face. The following day, a long procession formed in front of the Lee home to accompany the remains to the college chapel. Heading the large throng was the Virginia Military Institute band playing the death march with muffled drums. The bells of the town’s four churches rang steadily while VMI cannon fired periodically. College students, cadets, ex-Confederates of every rank, dignitaries, government officials, and visitors created so long a cavalcade that

the three-block journey left the rear of the crowd still standing at the home. Near the head of the procession was the caisson. Immediately behind it was Traveller, who bore the saddle trappings of one in mourning. Throughout the next day Lee lay in state on the rostrum of the chapel. The top half of the coffin was open for viewing. One VMI cadet thought that Lee “looked to be reduced by only half of his original size, and desperately thin.” The face was gaunt, the hairline receding, but the closed eyes bore the look of peace. Saturday, 15 October, was a sunny, unseasonably warm day. At 10 a.m. another procession made its way downtown and to the chapel. The building could not begin to hold the huge crowd assembled there. A large overflow gathered outside around the opened windows. Lee’s longtime minister and friend, Rev. William Pendleton, read the burial service from the Book of Common Prayer. Pallbearers removed flowers covering the casket and then bore the remains to the basement of the building, where a grave had been prepared. Mrs. Mary Lee, crippled by arthritis and grief, watched as much of the proceedings as she could see from her home 100 yards away.

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G rallied and in turn repelled the advance of the enemy. Some brigades were broke, others stubbornly maintained their positions, but it became apparent that the enemy was gradually gaining ground.” Then, in mid-afternoon, Jackson reached the army with his fresh divisions. The “Defender of Richmond” and the “Hero of the Valley” were finally united. One of history’s greatest military partnerships was about to begin. Jackson’s troops rushed to strengthen the Southern lines. At 5 p.m. Lee unleashed the heaviest assault of the day. Some 56,000 Confederates broke the lines of 35,000 Federals. By nightfall what would be the longest and costliest of the Seven Days’ battles ended in a narrow Southern victory. It was dearly bought. More than 8,700 Confederates had fallen. Union losses were 6,800 soldiers. Fourteen of 18 Federal cannon were abandoned. Northern losses might have been higher, but Lee’s army was too exhausted to give chase to Porter’s fleeing troops. This was only the second engagement of the campaign, but McClellan was a beaten general. He ordered the supply lines cut to the York River. Then he directed his entire army to start marching southward across the peninsula to the James River and the protection of naval vessels with high-powered artillery. McClellan called this move a “change of base” and a “strategic withdrawal.” Everyone else labeled it a retreat. Lee was not satisfied. Merely driving back the Federal army accomplished nothing in the

GAINES’ MILL, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF (27 JUNE 1862). On the night of 26–27 June, Union General Fitzjohn Porter withdrew his third of the Union army three miles back from Mechanicsville. His new line was in the area of a five-story gristmill named for the Gaines family. Federals hastily threw up works on high ground overlooking Boatswain’s Swamp. The situation was uncanny. As was the case at Mechanicsville, Confederates would have to attack over open ground, through a marshy bottom, and exposed to fire from Federals entrenched on the slope of a ravine. General Robert E. Lee arrived on the scene at dawn. He had little choice but to try to do what was undone the previous day: attack again in hopes of turning General George B. McClellan’s flank away from Fredericksburg and reinforcements poised there. Yet inadequate communication, loose organization, incorrect maps, and Stonewall Jackson’s nonappearance made for a long and bloody day. Lee had expected Porter’s force to be in retreat. Instead, it was in battle position. The Confederate commander ordered his troops forward. Powell Hill’s division was the first wave. The fighting lacked any subtleness. It was a head-on slugging match in which the defensive side held the advantage for as long as it could withstand the hammering. Hill’s men fought themselves to exhaustion without gain. General James Longstreet’s brigades then charged across spongy ground and up the churned hill. They fared no better. Lee reported, “Though most of the men had never been under fire until the day before, they were

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GENERAL ORDER NO. 9

long run. The Army of the Potomac must be eliminated as a threat to Virginia. Directives went out from Lee’s headquarters: push forward in pursuit. Lee wanted to move in for the kill. See also SEVEN DAYS’ CAMPAIGN, VIRGINIA.

generous considerations for myself, I bid you all an affectionate farewell. “R. E. Lee “Genl.” See also MARSHALL, CHARLES.

GENERAL ORDER NO. 9. Following Robert E. Lee’s agreement to General Ulysses S. Grant’s surrender terms, the Southern commander directed Colonel Charles Marshall of his staff to prepare a farewell dispatch to his soldiers. Marshall wrote the first draft in pencil. According to his recollections, “General Lee struck out a paragraph, which he said would tend to keep alive the feeling existing between the North and the South, and made one or two other changes.” Marshall recopied the order, had it written in ink, and copies transmitted through the chain of command. The following was distributed through the ranks on a rainy Monday. “Headquarters, Army of Northern Virginia “April 10, 1865 “After four years of arduous service, marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources. “I need not tell the brave survivors of so many hard fought battles, who have remained steadfast to the last, that I have consented to the result from no distrust of them. “But feeling that valor and devotion could accomplish nothing that would compensate for the loss that must have attended the continuance of the contest, I determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose past services have endeared them to their countrymen. “By the terms of the agreement officers and men can return to their homes and remain until exchanged. You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed, and I earnestly pray that a Merciful God will extend to you His blessing and protection. “With an increasing admiration of your constancy and devotion to your country, and a grateful remembrance of your kind and

GETTYSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA, BATTLE OF (1–3 JULY 1863). Following his spectacular victory at Chancellorsville, Robert E. Lee concluded that something dramatic had to be done to reverse the blue tide pressing at every point of the Confederacy. Merely containing the enemy in Virginia gained time but at a steady cost. Eventually the South would run out of manpower. Another offensive into the North was hazardous, Lee conceded, but it had promising potential. The mistakes of Antietam would not be repeated. Food and other needed supplies abounded in Maryland and neighboring areas untouched by war. The Union army would give pursuit, of course, but Lee would determine where and when to stand for battle. He wanted a showdown: a signal victory that might bring a sweeping Northern demand for peace, or at least recognition and aid from one of the powers in Europe. With the hesitant approval of Commander in Chief Jefferson Davis, Lee started north in mid-June. His army of 70,000 represented the second largest city in the Confederacy, only Richmond exceeding it in number. However, “Lee’s Miserables” (as the soldiers called themselves) were ill equipped. Fully half of the army was barefooted. Officer quality was weak at the top. Two of three corps commanders were new to the rank, while 17 of 31 brigade leaders were at that level for the first time. Yet Lee’s confidence in his army had led him to the conclusion that, properly led, it was invincible. On May 21, Lee told General John B. Hood, “There never were such men in the Army. . . . If properly led, they will go anywhere & never falter at the work before them.” Ignoring recent heart problems and occasional bouts of diarrhea, the general led his forces through Maryland into Pennsylvania.

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The campaign was a raid, not an invasion. The Southern army was unprepared for a long stay. It was Virginia’s major defense weapon, not a wandering offensive machine. Lee would head north, collect supplies, and await a showdown that possibly might end the war. Impairment developed early. The army was on its own in a strange land. Lee committed a major mistake in releasing General Jeb Stuart’s cavalry. Stuart persuaded Lee that he could make another ride around the Army of the Potomac. Once again he would disrupt Union supply and communication lines, destroy military equipment, capture wagon trains, and create confusion for General Joseph Hooker’s pursuing forces. Lee approved the plan—so long as Stuart continued to protect Lee’s exposed eastern flank. Stuart apparently forgot that caveat. Lee continued northward, driven by an unalterable compulsion. Lacking a supply line, the army had to keep moving continually. If it did not, it would starve. And whenever the Army of the Potomac appeared, Lee’s soldiers had to strike. They had no choice. On 28 June, President Lincoln fired Hooker, who apparently was still somewhat traumatized by Chancellorsville. The new Union army commander was General George Meade, an unpretentious, proven soldier known in army circles as “Old Reliable.” Meade and Lee had enjoyed a warm friendship since Mexican War days. When Lee received news of the command change, he told his officers, “General Meade will commit no blunder in my front, and if I make one he will make haste to take advantage of it.” Lee’s loosely arrayed force at that time was in a 60-mile crescent in enemy territory. On the evening of 28 June, Lee learned that the pursuing Federal army had reached Frederick, Maryland. This news was unexpected as well as unnerving. It meant that Meade was nearer the scattered pieces of the Army of Northern Virginia than the pieces were to one another. Lee immediately ordered the segments to reunite as quickly as possible. Every road in that central part of Pennsylvania was a radius from a small farming community known as Gettysburg. On 1 July,

portions of the two armies collided in battle. They fought all day, both sides absorbing high losses. Lee did not want to fight there. However, army morale was high. Confederates had clearly won the day when Lee arrived in town. Good artillery positions were available, and a follow-up attack the next day gave promise of success. Lee’s problem that night of 1 July was an ignorance of the location and strength of his opponent. He was blind because of the absence of his cavalry. The two armies were bound together now by the first day’s action with no room for maneuver. Confederates must continue the offensive. The battle plan for 2 July called for General James Longstreet to make a morning strike against the Union left near an eminence called Little Round Top. Longstreet was never enthusiastic about making an attack. He wanted then—and insisted for years thereafter—that the Confederates should move around the Union left flank and attack from the side and rear. Such a movement was impossible at the time. Stuart was not there. No one in Lee’s army knew precisely where the Federal left flank ended. Lee’s assaults were late, and they came against both ends of the Union position. On the right, the efforts were too weak for success. At the other end, Confederates pounded Meade’s lines in some of the most vicious fighting of the war. In a peach orchard, on a wheat field, in craggy ravines of rocks known as Devil’s Den, Lee’s forces wore themselves out in a courageous but vain attempt for victory. That afternoon, Stuart’s horsemen finally reached the army. Lee looked coldly at his cavalry chief and said, “Well, General Stuart, you are here at last.” The Army of the Potomac was at full strength by then. Lee had enough fresh troops for one more blow. It would be a head-on charge against the Union center, which might be the weak point in the Federal line. Both sides waited through the morning of 3 July as a heavy calm settled over the battlefield. Near 1 p.m. Confederate cannon opened fire. Federal guns replied, and the heaviest artillery

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GLENDALE, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF

exchange of the Civil War ensued for two hours. Then the large guns ceased firing. Out of the woods on the Confederate side came parts of two divisions, moving with parade-like precision, battle flags rippling in the hot breeze. The attacking line was a mile long from flank to flank. Across a wide wheat field “Pickett’s Charge” moved almost in cadence. The Union lines broke the eerie silence with an explosion of fire. Artillery pounded the columns, and musketry swept across the field. Thick gray smoke enveloped the area. The assault lasted 40 minutes. Three of every five men in the attack were killed or wounded. Included in the losses were three brigade commanders. Of 13 regimental colonels, eight were slain and five injured. Of 35 officers above the rank of captain, only one returned unhurt. Federals captured 30 of 38 battle flags. Lee rode forward to rally the survivors. He told General Pickett, “This has been my fight and upon my shoulders rests the blame.” He repeated himself a few minutes later. “Your men have done all that men could do. The fault is entirely my own.” More than 51,000 losses consumed a third of Lee’s army and a fourth of Meade’s. Lee awaited a renewal of combat on 4 July, but the Union army was as fought out as its opponent. That night Lee started back to Virginia in a steady rain. His ambulance train stretched for 20 miles. Gettysburg was the largest battle in the Civil War as well as in the Western Hemisphere. No one disputes the steadfastness and gallantry of the Union army at Gettysburg. It gained at last the reputation that it deserved. Still, the command level of the Confederate army performed poorly those three days. Lee’s principal lieutenants did not serve him well. Of Stuart, Lee reported, “The movements of the army preceding the Battle of Gettysburg had been much embarrassed by the absence of the cavalry.” What information Lee obtained from his cavalry came too late to make tactical adjustments. Powell Hill started a battle he was ordered not to make. Richard Ewell was inept, Longstreet disgruntled. Lee’s orders during most of the fighting were too imprecise and discretionary to be effective. Moreover, no

question exists but that Lee was ill throughout the campaign. The heart problem of three months earlier was still in evidence. A severe attack of diarrhea lasted throughout the battle. Lee dosing himself with quinine only exacerbated his physical condition. The army commander accepted full responsibility for the outcome. Later that month, with public criticism widespread, Lee offered President Jefferson Davis his resignation. Davis vetoed the idea. “To ask me to substitute you by some one in my judgment more fit to command, or who would possess more of the confidence of the army . . . is to demand an impossibility.” The Gettysburg defeat had some positives. As at Antietam, Lee withdrew from Gettysburg on his own terms and without pursuit. Successful retreat enabled Lee to maintain a balance of power in the Virginia theater. The Pennsylvania campaign also disrupted Union military movements in the East for the next 10 months. Never again, however, would Lee’s army be strong enough or confident enough to inflict the kind of defeat on Northern soil that probably would have fatally damaged the Union cause. However, Confederate soldiers did not see Gettysburg as a crippling defeat. Morale rose in the autumn months. For Lee, the battle was a setback rather than a disaster. In his reports he spoke of objectives only partially achieved, of heroism unrewarded. To his wife, Lee wrote that “our merciful God, our only help & refuge, will not desert us in this our hour of need, but will deliver us by His mighty hand.” GLENDALE, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF (30 JUNE 1862). Years after the Civil War, Confederate General Porter Alexander wrote of a few occurrences when “we were within reach of military success so great that one might have hoped to end the war with our independence. . . . The chance of June 30th ’62 impresses me as the best of all.” Dawn of that day found General George B. McClellan’s army stretched out like an uncoiled snake for 10 miles from White Oak Swamp to Malvern Hill overlooking the James River. It was going to be another oppressively

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hot day; but if Lee moved quickly and decisively, he could cut the Union army in half. Lee directed his forces to advance in two wings. The divisions of Powell Hill and James Longstreet would move due south, Stonewall Jackson and his soldiers would march to the southeast, and the two wings would squeeze together at the crossroads of Glendale, inside the slowly moving Federal columns. The plan unfolded well but soon began to disengage. Confusion replaced logic. For example, Jackson reached the danger point of White Oak Swamp and started his men through the wetlands. Unexpected gunfire from Federals a quarter mile away sent Confederates struggling back to the north side of the swamp. Jackson apparently was unsure whether he was supposed to bring on an engagement or merely to pin down the enemy where it was. Complete physical exhaustion overcame “Old Jack.” In the past three months he had waged war for 700 miles back and forth in the Shenandoah Valley. Then he led his men halfway across Virginia to join Lee—only to be misled by a guide and thus kept on the move but out of the action for two days. Now he was fighting in unfamiliar country with little direction of objectives. This was all past human endurance. On the afternoon of 30 June, Jackson sat down, propped against a tree, and went into a deep sleep with gunfire audible in the background. (He was still so fatigued that at the evening meal he fell asleep again with a biscuit clinched between his teeth.) With Jackson out of action three miles away, Lee had only Hill and Longstreet for a straightforward strike at Glendale. In truth, the Army of Northern Virginia seemed to be breaking down at that point from a combination of losses, battle fatigue, and lack of promptness among the high command. Some 18,000 Confederates tried to sever the Union line at Glendale. Organizational problems brought delay. The temperature was so high that men gasped for breath while waiting in line. It was 5 p.m. before they attacked. Lee, now joined by President Jefferson Davis, rode into the area. General Powell Hill galloped up

and angrily ordered both men to a less dangerous position. The two leaders retreated out of range to watch the battle. Hand-to-hand fighting raged until sundown. More than 6,400 casualties were about evenly divided. Lee could not crack McClellan’s line. The hope of splitting the Union army into two fightable parts vanished. Glendale, Lee biographer Douglas Freeman asserted, “was the bitterest disappointment Lee had ever sustained.” The general gave evidence of that. Lack of coordination and frustrations had marked every step in the Seven Days’ Campaign. On the morning after Glendale, General Jubal Early expressed concern that the Union army might escape after all. Lee’s temper bristled. “Yes, he will get away because I cannot have my orders carried out!” GORDON, JOHN BROWN (1832–1904). In Robert E. Lee’s army, he was the highestranking officer without any prior military training, and he proved to be among the toughest. The Georgia-born Gordon spent the prewar years in the fields of law and coal mining. In 1861 he organized a company of infantry that became part of the 6th Alabama. Not until 1862 did Gordon begin the meteoric rise that made him one of the most outstanding and popular field officers in the Army of Northern Virginia. He temporarily commanded a brigade at Seven Pines, and the intensity of his fighting brought 60 percent losses to his command. In the 14 September 1862 battle atop South Mountain, a fellow officer stated that Gordon fought in a “manner I have never heard of or seen equaled during the war.” Three days later came the battle of Antietam. Gordon survived miraculously. He was shot five times, once by a bullet that entered his cheek and passed out of his jaw. Only the hole in his hat prevented Gordon from drowning in his own blood. Such heroism brought promotion to brigadier general. Gordon was striking in appearance: six feet tall, thin but straight and muscular. Beard and mustache added to the warlike demeanor.

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One of his privates declared, “He’s most the prettiest thing you ever did see on a field of fight. It’ud put fight into a whipped chicken just to look at him!” Up the military ladder Gordon climbed: Gettysburg, Wilderness, Spotsylvania. As a major general, he served with General Jubal Early on the 1864 Washington, D.C., raid. Gordon rejoined the Army of Northern Virginia and commanded half of that force in the last months of fighting. His troops made the last, futile attempt to break Ulysses S. Grant’s lines at Appomattox. Fittingly, Lee chose Gordon to lead the formal 12 April 1865 surrender of men, weapons, and flags. Notoriety followed Gordon for the next half century. As an ex-Confederate general, he toed the line between reconciliation and respect for the Southern cause. Gordon served as governor of Georgia and was twice elected to the U.S. Senate. In 1889 he was founder of the United Confederate Veterans and held the post of commander in chief until his death 15 years later. Gordon’s memoirs, Reminiscences of the Civil War, were published in 1903 and enjoyed high sales, especially to the veterans under his charge. Unfortunately, the book has tarnished Gordon’s reputation because of its self-serving and superficial overtones.

occasions, the general rode with his army through Gordonsville. The community in 1879 received town status. GORGAS, JOSIAH (1818–1893). With the exception of Robert E. Lee, no man contributed more to the success of the Confederate armies than a Northerner, Josiah Gorgas. One authority stated, “the world has probably never seen such a miraculous transformation of ploughshares into swords.” Born to a poverty-stricken family in Pennsylvania, Gorgas graduated from West Point and entered the army’s ordnance department. He devoted his military career to weapons and ammunition. A tendency to criticize and an aloof bearing hampered army advancement, but his 1853 marriage to the daughter of a former governor of Alabama elevated him in Southern society. His wife did much to improve his personality. In two decades Gorgas became a leading authority on ordnance by visiting every arsenal in the nation. He made notable improvements at Fort Monroe, Virginia, and Fort Pickens, Florida. A week before the 1861 bombardment of Fort Sumter, President Jefferson Davis chose Gorgas to be colonel and chief of the Confederate States ordnance bureau. His job was to start with nothing and to convert an agricultural South into a militarized Confederacy. Gorgas always had difficulty with good public relations. Stern looking, with high forehead, thick beard, and bent nose (he tripped over his father’s foot when he was three), Gorgas nevertheless proved as innovative as he was indefatigable. He hired excellent administrators to per­form a wide variety of tasks. Gorgas oversaw the creation of arsenals and armories through­out the Confederacy. Miners in several states toiled to extract minerals and ores from the earth. Ordnance bureau personnel melted down church bells, scoured battlefields for lead to remold bullets, devised substitutes for necessary raw material. Gorgas purchased 600,000 small arms and 1.2 million pounds of lead from abroad. When the War Department appeared lukewarm toward his needs, the bureau chief purchased

GORDONSVILLE, VIRGINIA. Nathaniel Gordon’s tavern was the base for another of those villages that grew because two railroads intersected. The north-south Orange & Alexandria line, stretching through the piedmont, crossed the east-west Virginia Central line, which linked Richmond with the Shenandoah Valley. Gordonsville became a strategic gathering point for troop movements. From June 1862 until the end of the war, a group of town buildings served as the Gordonsville Receiving Hospital for the sick and wounded throughout central Virginia. During one year, it handled 23,000 patients. Robert E. Lee passed through the town for the first time in late April 1861, when he changed trains to go to Richmond for a conference with Governor John Letcher about Virginia’s military forces. On at least two other

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five blockade-runners to maintain European commerce. Neuralgia on occasion interrupted Gorgas’s work. The pain was so severe as to require opium and quinine. Such medications slowed down his well-known energy but never brought it to a halt. In November 1864, Gorgas received belated promotion to brigadier general. He had certainly earned it. The South never lost a battle because of lack of gunpowder. When Lee’s army reached Appomattox in April 1865, it had no food, no clothing, no supplies. But it had enough ammunition in hand still to be deadly. Gorgas continued to fight neuralgia in the postwar years. His search for knowledge never wavered. Gorgas served as vice chancellor at the University of the South and president of the University of Alabama. An 1879 stroke left him partially paralyzed for the final four years of his life.

Grant served in the army until forced to resign in 1854 for alleged drinking. In the six years thereafter, he bounced unsuccessfully from one civilian occupation to another. He was working in his father’s leather-making business when civil war began. Grant accepted the colonelcy of a rowdy Illinois regiment that no other officer wanted. He then surprised most of his acquaintances by becoming a field commander in the Western theater of operations. While McClellan, Burnside, Hooker, and Meade were confronting defeats or stalemates in Virginia, Grant won a series of major victories at Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga. In the spring of 1864, Abraham Lincoln summoned Grant to Washington, D.C., where he gave him a lieutenant general’s rank (only George Washington and Winfield Scott had risen so high) and named him generalin-chief of all Union armies. Grant now was in complete charge of 21 army corps, 18 military departments, and 533,000 soldiers. Wasting no time, Grant ordered every Federal field command to prepare for offensive action. He would travel with the North’s main army in Virginia and maintain contact everywhere else via telegraph and courier. Eastern generals in the Army of the Potomac were unimpressed when meeting Grant. One officer commented that Grant wore the expression of a man determined to drive his head through a stone wall. Feelings were not all onesided. Grant observed shortly after joining the Potomac army, “there are generals who had not enough patriotism to resign.” Grant’s peculiarities soon became apparent. His favorite breakfast was sliced cucumbers in vinegar. If he ate meat, it had to be cooked until it was black. The sight of blood, even in a steak, made Grant queasy. His stern demand at Fort Donelson had caused the press to label him ”Unconditional Surrender” Grant. Newspaper descriptions of Grant riding over the battlefield with a cigar rather than a sword in his hand led to admirers sending him hundreds of cigars. Grant accepted them all and consumed them regularly. Each morning he stored 14 cigars in various pockets for that day’s use.

GRANT, ULYSSES SIMPSON (1822–1885). He stood five feet, eight inches tall, and weighed 135 pounds. He resembled a farmer who had come way up from very far down. Slouchy, round-shouldered, with a red, bristly beard cropped short, he was unmilitary in every appearance. Nobody ever gave him a title such as “Old Fuss and Feathers” or “The Young Napoleon” because he was not a man for nicknames or for striking poses. On the other hand, Ulysses S. Grant more than any other general is the man who won the Civil War for the North. Originally christened Hiram Ulysses, Grant lost that name when he entered West Point. A clerical error listed him as Ulysses Simpson Grant, and the name stuck. Cadets hailed him as “Uncle Sam,” and his friends thereafter knew him as “Sam.” His sole military talent at the academy was in the saddle. Good horsemanship did not produce high class standing, and Grant ended up in the infantry on the Western frontier. A close friend and fellow officer, James Longstreet, introduced his cousin, Julia Dent, to Grant. The two subsequently married. Neither was handsome (Julia was noticeably cross-eyed), but each deeply loved the other.

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Once asked about the art of combat, Grant gave an unexpectedly simple answer. War, he said, means to “find out where your enemy is, get at him as soon as you can, strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on.” That is precisely what Grant did in his 1864 Overland Campaign against Robert E. Lee. Following battles at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, North Anna River, Cold Harbor, and an 11-month siege of Petersburg, the Union general did what none of his predecessors had come close to achieving: he brought “The Gray Fox” to bay. At Appomattox, the Grant whom Northerners had criticized as “The Butcher” because of his persistent battles and high losses displayed a compassionate side in his lenient terms of surrender. In January 1864, a friend had written Grant and inquired if he had any presidential aspirations. It is “the last thing in the world I desire,” Grant replied. “It would be highly unfortunate for myself, if not for the country.” He added, “I am not a politician, never was and hope never to be, and could not write a political letter.” In fact, only once in his life had Grant ever voted. That was before he donned a hero’s mantle, mobbed by crowds wherever he went. Such adulation propelled Grant into political realms that he should have avoided. Both political parties wanted him as a presidential candidate. Grant chose Republicans. At 46, he was the youngest man ever elected president, and he rode Northern adoration through two terms. His political battle cry had been “Let us have peace.” His one political attainment was active endorsement of what became the Fifteenth Amendment. Yet Grant’s overall administration was a national shame, filled with corruption that extended all the way into both his cabinet and his family. Grant interpreted the presidency as that of an administrator, not

a leader. His blind loyalty to discredited friends established a venality, scandal, and rottenness never seen before and overlooked in the cheers of the masses. “Grantism” became a synonym for corruption. After a European tour, Grant invested all he had in a brokerage firm that went bankrupt. This left the general/president both humiliated and penniless. At that point, Mark Twain stepped forward with an offer and large advance for Grant’s memoirs. The general accepted and began work. He soon experienced stabbing pain in his throat. Examination revealed inoperable cancer. Grant spent nine months working feverishly at his home in Mount McGregor, New York. He dictated to a stenographer until the malignancy choked off his voice. Opiates were used to ease the pain, but they also numbed his memory. Nevertheless, Grant continued writing text by hand. He died 23 July 1885, seven days after completing the memoirs. High sales kept his family comfortable thereafter. “Sam” Grant’s brilliance as a general would be sterling were it not beclouded by his incompetence as a president. GUINEY STATION, VIRGINIA. By 1863, Guiney Station was as far north as the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac Railroad was open for Confederates. The railhead, 12 miles south of Fredericksburg, consisted of a cluster of small buildings and supply debris scattered around a road crossing. On 20 April 1863, General Stonewall Jackson went to Guiney to meet his wife and get a first look at his infant daughter. It was probably the happiest day of his life. Three weeks later, Jackson died of sepsis in an outbuilding within walking distance of the train platform.

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H and ringing.” Rarely did Hampton display excitement. The hotter the fight, the cooler he seemed to become. Steadily he evolved into one of the great cavalry officers of the war. By 1863 he commanded one of General Jeb Stuart’s two mounted brigades. It was in the 9 June 1863 battle of Brandy Station that Hampton suffered his first wartime family tragedy. His younger brother was killed in the action. The relationship between Hampton and Stuart was never close. Hampton was 15 years older than his commander. The two men had contrasting personalities, with Stuart being the more flamboyant. State pride also played a role. Hampton regularly complained of the prominence given to Virginia units and officers. After one engagement, he stated, “I suppose Stuart will as usual give all the credit to the Virginia brigades. He praises them on all occasions, but does not often give us credit.” At Gettysburg, Hampton’s fellow brigadier, Fitzhugh Lee, ordered a cavalry charge in Hampton’s absence. The Carolinian rushed onto the field to rally his men. In hand-to-hand fighting, Hampton received two saber strokes to the head. A surgeon had to shave half of Hampton’s skull. The general took it goodnaturedly. “Striking, if not beautiful,” he wrote of his injuries, although “the flies play the mischief as they wander over the bald side.” It took Hampton four months to recuperate. The major general recruited fresh troops from South Carolina, returned to duty, and spent the remainder of the war confronting mounted threats when not conducting raids and flanking

HAMPTON, WADE (1818–1902). Wade Hampton was reputed to be the wealthiest man in the antebellum South. He certainly held that distinction in his native South Carolina. His father and grandfather fought in America’s first two wars. They accumulated cotton plantations in South Carolina and Mississippi as well as a profitable sugar plantation in Louisiana. After graduating from South Carolina College, Hampton studied law before devoting full attention to the family holdings. He considered public office an obligation rather than an opportunity. In 1852 he entered the state House of Representatives and five years later moved up to state senator. Hampton became increasingly resentful of what was widely termed “Northern usurpation of the law.” When his state left the Union, Hampton enlisted in the army as a private. Governor Francis Pickens named him a colonel and asked Hampton to raise his own command. Totally lacking in military experience, Hampton became the picture of a patrician warrior. He used his own money to marshal his neighbors, family, and even some of his slaves (as body servants) into a combination of infantry, artillery, and cavalry known as Hampton’s Legion. The Carolinian was blessed with intuitive leadership and fighting spirit. He commanded with a calm, confident manner. Handsome appearance was also an asset. Hampton was tall and well proportioned, with mustache and muttonchop whiskers. Dark eyes and a peculiar snappy motion accompanied a voice described by one of his men as “tenor

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movements. His victory over General Philip Sheridan at Trevilian Station (11–12 June 1864) momentarily stunted the Union drive on Richmond. With Stuart’s death a month earlier, command of all Confederate cavalry went to Hampton. The September “Beefsteak Raid” was among Hampton’s most publicized feats. Soldiers throughout Robert E. Lee’s army praised the cavalryman for the sudden distribution of greatly needed meat. In an engagement a few months later at Burgess Mill, Hampton’s son Preston fell mortally wounded while the father was directing the action. The general rushed to the scene, dismounted, and took Preston in his arms while murmuring, “My son, my son.” Hampton then kissed the boy and rushed back to the fighting. Two days after the action, Hampton received a note. “I grieve with you at the death of your gallant son. So young, so brave, so true. . . . I believe our Merciful God takes us when it is best for us to go. He is now safe from all harm. . . . Truly your friend, R. E. Lee.” Hampton accepted Confederate defeat, but he never conceded that the Southern cause was wrong. Like Lee, Hampton went to work to rebuild America. He declined to run for governor because he sought to strengthen the Democratic Party into an acceptable alternative to Radical Republicanism. He singlehandedly campaigned among ex-slaves to help him rebuild the state. In 1876, the former general became governor of South Carolina. His margin of victory was 1,100 votes. Ballots of freedmen made the difference. Hampton became known throughout the South for racial moderation and honest fiscal policies. The governor lost his right leg in 1878 after being thrown from a mule. While bedridden, he learned of his election to the U.S. Senate. Hampton served at that post for 11 years. His first speech was his best. A Northern senator made a slur against the South. The freshman was quick to respond. “In the heat of conflict we struck hard blows, and doubtless we spoke harsh words. But does remembering or repeating them now bring us any nearer to the peace and harmony for which the whole

country so ardently longs?” Hampton then expressed the wish that more Union veterans were in Congress. “We learned in a common school how to respect our enemies.” In April 1902, Hampton died of heart disease at his home. HARPERS FERRY, WEST VIRGINIA. A natural wonder buried amid mountains, Harpers Ferry is located at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers. The village grew in the wedge of land between the two streams. In 1794, President George Washington secured legislation establishing arsenals around the new nation. Springfield, Massachusetts, was the first site chosen; Harpers Ferry, the next. The arsenal constructed was the largest in the South. During 1800–1861 it produced more than 620,000 shoulder arms. Master armorer James H. Burton in the 1850s is said to have been the first to create a hollow-barrel, conical-shaped rifle bullet as a replacement for the centuries-old round ball used in muskets. Harpers Ferry was the site of John Brown’s October 1859 insurrection and murders. Brown’s attempt to rally slaves for a massive exodus to freedom ended when Colonel Robert E. Lee and a small detachment of U.S. Marines broke into the engine house where Brown and his band had retreated. Lee must have been impressed by his first sight of the Harpers Ferry area. It afforded a natural pass through the Appalachian chain. The nation’s busiest railroad, the Baltimore & Ohio, curled through town. So did the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, a 184-mile waterway. On 18 April 1861, the day after Virginia’s secession, state militia and active secessionists under the command of ex-governor Henry Wise occupied the town and seized the arsenal. Harpers Ferry became the northernmost point of the Confederacy, as well as the gateway to the Shenandoah Valley. With steep mountains on three sides, the town was indefensible. Yet North and South waged steady efforts to gain control. It was akin to a ball in a ping-pong contest. Twentyeight different generals commanded there. The 900-foot railroad bridge was destroyed

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and rebuilt nine times. When neither side was in control, Harpers Ferry was at the mercy of bushwhackers who had no mercy. War’s end found a town in rubble. Rainwater flowed down the center of abandoned streets. In 1867 Baptist missionaries and the Freedmen’s Bureau collaborated to establish Storer College in abandoned arsenal buildings as a memorial to John Brown’s dreams. People toiled hard to put the village back together, but an 1870 flood swept away the downtown. Reconstruction began anew. The town survives in good order.

HEALTH OF LEE. Health is the most valuable factor in studying the life of a public figure. How a person felt affected what the individual did at any given time. Until the late 19th century, medical knowledge remained so limited as to be primitive. Mastering what was known of medicine could be learned in 12 months at a medical school. (A second required year repeated the first to ensure that one did not forget the basic principles.) Physicians of that time were held in low esteem because what therapy they had to offer was often as harmful as it was helpful. The entire field of bacteriology—the basis of modern-day medicine—lay in the future. In Robert E. Lee’s time, the average life span was 46 years. The major reason for such a low number came from fatalities of mother and/or baby at childbirth. Lee enjoyed remarkably good health in light of assignments stretching from New York to Mexico. A sporadic fever with attendant pain—the usual symptoms of malaria—bothered him in the summer of 1849 but eventually disappeared. An accidental fall on the eve of the 1862 Antietam Campaign left him unable to ride a horse or dress himself for several weeks. Then in March 1863, Lee suffered some form of a heart attack. Physicians knew little of cardiology. The general was left alone to fight the disease, which proved incurable. Weakness, occasional spells of incapacitation hampered his duties (notably at Gettysburg and the North Anna River). Frequent bouts of diarrhea also left the general weakened. A hale and hearty soldier in 1861, Lee was a worn, ill commander four years later. That he labored so courageously for reconciliation in his remaining five years is a remarkable monument to dedication and courage.

HATCHER’S RUN, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF (5–7 FEBRUARY 1865). General Ulysses S. Grant’s first real offensive of 1865 came early in February. The Boydton Plank Road, running northeast to Petersburg, was a major supply line for Robert E. Lee. Grant sent a cavalry division plus two infantry corps toward Hatcher’s Run. The Union strategy was the same: extend the Federal line farther south and west of Petersburg, and sever Confederate supply routes such as the Boydton road. The Union movement began on 5 February in freezing weather. Much of the terrain looked like the Wilderness: a series of ridges with marshes in the lowlands and thick stands of pine alternating with brush-choked fields—all covered now with ice. Federals momentarily got astride the Boyd­ ton road but were slowly driven back. Fighting extended over two days and lacked coordination by either side for most of the time. Some 14,000 Confederates managed to hold their own against 32,000 Federals. Grant’s losses were 1,500 men, mostly conscripts and new recruits. Among the Confederate casualties was highly regarded Brigadier General John Pegram. Eighteen days earlier, he had been the groom at a gala wedding in Richmond. Lee stated of his soldiers at Hatcher’s Run, “Some of the men have been without meat for three days, and all are suffering from reduced rations and scant clothing, exposed to battle, cold, hail, and sleet.” Unless something was done to improve the situation, Lee warned the War Department, “you must not be surprised if calamity befalls us.”

HILL, AMBROSE POWELL (1825–1865). Both Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson called for him on their deathbeds. Yet he lacked the charisma surrounding his two superior officers. Perhaps it was his testy behavior, for he was a proud man who took offense at minor things. Certainly the illness that began at Gettysburg and was leading slowly to the grave by 1865 was a factor.

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Powell Hill came from Virginia piedmont gentry. He attended West Point, but an eightmonth sick leave shoved him back to the Class of 1847. Graduating too late to see service in Mexico, he spent the next 14 years on frontier duty and coastal survey work. In the late 1850s Hill and George B. McClellan courted the same girl. Hill lost the contest but later married the sister of a soon-to-be Kentucky cavalryman, John Hunt Morgan. The marriage produced four daughters. Hill organized the 13th Virginia Infantry Regiment and performed so gallantly at the 5 May 1862 battle of Williamsburg that he was promoted to brigadier general. Continued distinction in the field raised him to major general and command of the “Light Division,” nicknamed such because it had six brigades, double the usual number, and/or because of its speed on marches. At 36, Hill was the youngest of Lee’s division leaders. An easily recognized figure, he was five feet, nine inches tall but weighed only 145 pounds. In army circles, he was “Little Powell.” His curly hair was chestnut and worn long. Hazel eyes flashed as smoke drifted upward from a pipe. Unimpressed by uniforms and adornments, Hill preferred calico shirts made by his wife. He was especially fond of a bright red shirt he often wore in battle. Two factors stand out in Hill’s Civil War service: a proud sensitivity that resulted in open feuds with Lee’s two senior generals, James Longstreet and Thomas Jackson; and promotion to corps command that proved a clear notch above Hill’s military talents. He was the best of Lee’s division leaders for hard fighting, but Hill could go a step beyond and be impetuous. That is why his Confederate career was checkered. He began the Seven Days’ Campaign by running out of patience while awaiting the arrival of Jackson’s Valley army. Hill launched the attack on his own without permission from Lee and was soundly defeated at Mechanicsville. An argument with Longstreet after the campaign got Hill placed under arrest. Lee intervened to bring calm to the situation. Twice, in consecutive months, Hill saved the army. His arrival at Cedar Mountain when

Jackson’s force was under heavy attack swung the tide of battle to Southern victory. A mutual dislike between Jackson and Hill began at West Point and boiled over during Lee’s advance into Maryland. Jackson relieved Hill of command but restored Little Powell to duty a few days later. What followed was one of the dramatic moments of the Civil War. Lee had waged an all-day, vicious fight with McClellan’s army at Antietam. The Southern line by mid-afternoon was bent almost to breaking. Suddenly, double-timing 17 miles from Harpers Ferry, Hill’s brigades slammed into the exposed Union flank near Burnside’s Bridge. His crushing attack reduced Northern victory to a stalemate. The Army of Northern Virginia survived destruction. In late May 1863, following Jackson’s death, Lee recommended Hill for lieutenant general’s rank and corps command. “Upon the whole,” Lee wrote, Hill “is the best soldier of his grade with me.” At this same time, a kidney disease associated with gonorrhea contracted as a youth struck Little Powell. His first performance with a corps was at Gettysburg. Lethargy seemed to replace the fire he had shown in previous battles. Other limitations appeared in October at Bristoe Station. No reconnaissance had been done, but Hill became convinced that the rear of the Army of the Potomac was isolated along the Orange & Alexandria Railroad. On his own initiative, he ordered two brigades forward. The units ran into two full enemy corps firmly entrenched. It was one of the deadliest traps of the war. Hill lost 1,400 men in an hour’s fighting. By the following spring, Hill seemed like his old self again. He displayed high fighting spirit at the Wilderness, but physical problems reappeared. Lee kept him in command because there was no one to replace him. In the long campaign at Petersburg, Hill had charge of the southern half of Lee’s long defensive line. Although pale and obviously ill, the general displayed extraordinary devotion to duty. He never suffered a defeat during nine months of Union probes and raids.

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At dawn, 2 April 1865, General Ulysses S. Grant launched his full-scale attack on Lee’s position. Hill was trying desperately to rally his soldiers when, near 6 a.m., he was killed by a bullet through the heart. Lee received word of Hill’s death. Tears swelled in his eyes. “He is now at rest,” Lee said quietly. Hill is buried beneath his monument in Richmond.

ever-present, biting sarcasm, is unknown. Yet they became the basic foundations of his personality. He observed early in the war, “If captured by the Yankees, there is no insult and no indignity which those infernal wretches will not inflict upon us.” Late in 1861, Hill snarled, “Our regimental Chaplains as a general thing are as trifling as the regimental Surgeons, which is the strongest denunciation I can use.” Soon promoted to division leader with a major general’s rank, Hill was a conspicuous figure for action throughout the 1862 Peninsula Campaign. He led by instruction rather than inspiration. Of medium height, thin, with clamped jaw, dark beard, and blue eyes that seemed to dare anyone to disagree with him, Hill neither sought nor made friends. He thrived on being a hard-driving fighter. Lee recognized and appreciated that trait. Yet always intruding into dependability was verbal sarcasm. Hill’s personal dislike of cavalry leader Jeb Stuart extended quickly to all mounted troops. Of his own cavalry, Hill asserted, “They will neither watch nor fight. . . . In the whole brigade of cavalry, there has been but one man killed in this war. I propose to have a magnificent monument erected to his memory.” Although Hill performed well at South Mountain and superbly at Antietam, unneeded carping of fellow officers became an irritant in the army. Hill “has such a queer temperament,” Lee stated, “I cannot tell what to expect of him.” His “croaking” even in his official reports was enough for the commander. Lee transferred him to command the Department of North Carolina. Hill proved unsuccessful as a military administrator. In the autumn of 1863, he was sent west to join the Army of Tennessee. He immediately got into quarrels with General Braxton Bragg. His conduct at the Battle of Chickamauga was solid; but President Jefferson Davis, Bragg’s strongest supporter, refused to forward for confirmation Hill’s promotion to lieutenant general. Hill spent the remainder of the Civil War trying in vain to clear his record. His postwar years began with editorships of two publications: a monthly magazine, The Land We Love, and a weekly newspaper, The Southern Home. His continued criticisms

HILL, DANIEL HARVEY (1821–1889). “Sarcasm is the language of the Devil,” Thomas Carlyle once commented. If that be so, Harvey Hill was the Satan of the Confederacy. His troops called him “Old Rawhide” in part because he turned biting sarcasm into a fine art. Had Hill kept his mouth shut and allowed his fighting prowess to speak for him, both he and the Confederate cause would have fared better. The youngest of 11 children born to a family of South Carolina genteel poverty, he grew up amid a fervent Presbyterianism that matched the faith of Stonewall Jackson. A boyhood illness left Hill with occasional outbursts of pain. Two grandfathers had been officers in the American Revolution. Hill sought to follow in their steps. He graduated from West Point in 1842 and won brevet promotions in the Mexican War for bravery at Monterrey and Chapultepec. Hill left the Army in 1849 to pursue a career in education. For six years he taught mathematics at Washington College in Lexington, Virginia. He became friends with—and later a brotherin-law to—Professor Thomas J. Jackson at nearby Virginia Military Institute. Hill spent five years teaching at Davidson College in North Carolina. He married the daughter of the president of the college. By 1861 he was superintendent of the North Carolina Military Institute. A natural choice for high-rank assignment, Hill became colonel of the 1st North Carolina Infantry Regiment and was a prominent figure in the Civil War’s first skirmish at Big Bethel, Virginia. This brought promotion to brigadier general and assignment to improve general defenses in North Carolina. When and why Hill developed a passionate hatred of Northerners, plus factors behind his

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of Lee’s generalship further damaged Hill’s reputation. He even began to voice negative opinions of Stonewall Jackson, probably the closest friend Hill ever had. In 1877 “Old Rawhide” became president of the all-male University of Arkansas. His leadership ended 10 years later when school trustees refused his demand for a code of student conduct similar to that of a military academy. Superintendent of the Georgia Military and Agricultural College was Hill’s last job. It brought him peace of mind but only for a short period. Early in 1889, he was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Morphine controlled pain for the last weeks. Hill died in Charlotte, North Carolina, on 24 September, appropriately in the midst of a thunder-filled rainstorm.

physical wreck a year later. A bullet at Gettysburg passed through his left hand, forearm, elbow, and biceps. The limb thereafter was without use or feeling. He asked for and received a transfer to the Army of Tennessee. Two months later, on the second day’s fighting at Chickamauga, Hood went down from a bullet that fractured his femur. The leg was amputated. Although the stump healed properly, it was constantly painful because it was too short for an artificial leg. Men in the Texas Brigade contributed funds for a prosthesis that proved more comfortable. Hood was never the same physically or mentally from the loss of two limbs. He clamped about on crutches, had to be strapped in the saddle, could use only one arm for everything, and relied on laudanum to control pain. Yet the lust for battle continued to arouse him. While recuperating in Richmond and lionized by the public, Hood constantly sought army command by undermining first General Braxton Bragg and then General Joseph Johnston. On 18 July 1864, President Jefferson Davis relieved Johnston and assigned Hood to command the Army of Tennessee. At 33, Hood was the youngest full general in Confederate service. Lee opposed the appointment. The army commander had no doubts about Hood’s aggressiveness; his planning and execution of strategy were the questions. Lee’s judgment proved correct. Union General William Sherman reached the same deduction. He knew that although Hood was not too smart, he was as combative as any general in the field. So the larger Union army braced for attack. It did not have to wait long. Two days after assuming command, Hood at Atlanta delivered the first of four attacks that were repulsed with heavy losses. Hood abandoned Atlanta early in September just before Sherman’s forces surrounded the city. It was the North’s major victory in 1864, and the capture of Atlanta helped ensure President Abraham Lincoln’s reelection two months later. Undeterred, Hood launched a counteroffensive by marching into Tennessee. Sherman detached part of his army under General George Thomas to give pursuit. Stunning

HOOD, JOHN BELL (1831–1879). In August 1864, Captain Jacob Ritner of the 25th Iowa in W. T. Sherman’s Union army wrote his wife, “We all like the rebel General Hood firstrate. . . . He makes his men charge our works, where they are sure to get repulsed, and if he keeps on a few days longer, he will have no army left.” John B. Hood remains a tragic figure in Civil War history. He was one of the best combat leaders on either side. However, ambition and circumstances pushed him into army command, a position far beyond his capabilities. Son of a Kentucky physician, he graduated from West Point and served in the famed 2nd U.S. Cavalry with Albert Sidney Johnston and Robert E. Lee. Hood’s rise in Confederate service was dazzling. A lieutenant in 1861, he was a highly praised major general a year later. Hood led one of the Civil War’s most dependable units, the Texas Brigade, which Lee often employed as shock troops. Soldiers called him “The Gallant Hood.” Powerfully built, heavily bearded, and with a melodious voice, he personified the fighting general. Hood was always a lady’s man. He started pursuing women as an adolescent. Women seemed automatically attracted to the huge man with sad eyes and shy manner. Following gallantry at Antietam, he was the rising star in Lee’s army. Yet Hood was a

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defeats at Franklin and Nashville all but destroyed the Army of Tennessee. On the night after the Nashville disaster, a soldier found Hood sitting at his headquarters. “He was much agitated and affected, pulling his hair with one hand (he had but one) and crying like his heart must break.” War’s end found Hood crippled, homeless, and void of funds. He moved to New Orleans and struggled as a cotton merchant. In 1868 he married the daughter of a local attorney. She bore him 11 children in 10 years (three sets of twins and five singles). Hood was devoted to his family. He found a degree of prosperity as an insurance broker. In public, he always wore a glove to conceal his withered hand. General Joseph Johnston published his military memoirs in 1874, and they were especially critical of Hood’s wartime activities. Hood angrily began work on his own recollections. He was writing steadily in 1878, when a two-year epidemic of yellow fever began sweeping back and forth through New Orleans. Business firms closed, which financially strapped Hood anew. Suddenly, in September 1879, yellow fever struck the Hood family. Hood’s wife died first, the eldest son next, and then Hood himself. He was 48. His memoirs were published posthumously. Hood’s heroism under Lee in the great battles of the East is forgotten because of his failure as an army commander in the West.

venture in California. His stability went into steady decline, and he became virtually a beachcomber. Civil war came, and with it the need for experienced field officers. Hooker received a brigadier general’s appointment. Hard-nosed fighting in the Peninsula Campaign brought him command of a division. Union soldiers called him “Fighting Joe.” A bullet wound in the foot at Antietam left him with a permanent limp but added to his laurels. While recuperating in Washington, D.C., Hooker openly sought command of the Army of the Potomac. He was brash and boastful but politically well connected. Hooker courted presidential favor by being one of the first army officers to endorse Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Because the president simply had no one else to replace the hapless Ambrose Burnside, he gave army command to Hooker. He looked like the head of an army. Fully six feet tall, disarmingly handsome, with smooth face, blond hair, and blue eyes, he emitted a courageous air. He also was a soldier who understood the needs of the army. Hooker worked out a system of winter furloughs; found back pay; filled all supply requests; initiated a number of sanitation reforms; shoved older, nonperforming generals into retirement; and created unit badges for greater esprit de corps. By late winter, morale was high again. Hooker, said one private, “proved a veritable Santa Claus to the army.” Another remarked simply that under Hooker, “we began to live.” In sharp contrast was another side of the man. At no time was Hooker ever a favorite among his generals. He bragged too much. To him, the Lincoln administration was a group of imbeciles. More than once Hooker mentioned publicly the advantages of a dictatorship. The man was seemingly void of morality. He had an uncontrollable, well-known fondness for women and whiskey. Captain Charles Francis Adams sneered that Hooker’s headquarters was “a place to which no gentleman cared to go and to which no lady would go.” Lee anticipated that Hooker would move quickly once in command. Yet the Union commander’s reorganization took time. Late in

HOOKER, JOSEPH (1814–1879). He connived, manipulated, and backstabbed to get army command. Once it was his, he boasted that he would succeed where others had failed. His 1863 battle plan against Robert E. Lee was masterful. Then, in a critical moment at Chancellorsville, something happened to General Joseph Hooker, and he suffered one of the most stunning defeats of the war. Professionally trained at West Point, he served in the Seminole wars and gained three brevet promotions for valor in Mexico. Hooker then sided with fellow officer Gideon Pillow in an argument with Winfield Scott. The general-in-chief never forgot it. By 1855, seeing that he was going nowhere in the army, Hooker resigned and began a farming

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February 1863, Lee wrote his wife, “I owe Mr. F[ighting] J[oe] Hooker no thanks for keeping me here in this state of expectancy. He ought to have made up his mind long ago what to do.” Hooker developed a battle plan that came dangerously close to succeeding. His 130,000 soldiers moved into position to force Lee into open ground and attack the Confederate army from two different directions. “May God have mercy on General Lee,” Hooker stated at the outset,” for I will have none.” The flanked suddenly became the flanker. Lee moved out to fight the larger of the Union segments. Hooker inexplicably paused at the Wilderness crossroads named Chancellorsville. When the smoke cleared four days later, Hooker had been soundly whipped. In the autumn of 1863, Hooker with two corps was transferred to the Western theater. He regained part of his reputation for fighting prowess, but his commander, Ulysses S. Grant, thought him “a dangerous man.” Grant explained, “He was not subordinate to his superiors. He was ambitious to the extent of caring nothing about the rights of others.” The remainder of Hooker’s war career was insignificant but for the fact that the Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War found him blameless in the defeat at Chancellorsville. In November 1865, while at a reception for Grant, Hooker suffered a stroke. He was reduced to a cripple who could sign his name only by guiding the pen with both hands. A second stroke in 1868 forced his retirement from the army. Hooker gained weight; his hair grayed. He attended veterans’ meetings and criticized fellow Union generals. Following the popular trend, Hooker began work on his military memoirs. They were never completed. He died in October 1879 from a heart attack. Weeks after the disaster at Chancellorsville, one of Hooker’s few friends, General Abner Doubleday, asked Fighting Joe what went wrong in the battle. Hooker paused for a moment, then replied, “I lost confidence in Joe Hooker, and that is all there is in it.”

HOPEWELL, VIRGINIA. See CITY POINT, VIRGINIA. HORSES. The most famous horse in American military history was Traveller, Robert E. Lee’s gray gelding. Other Civil War generals had favorite mounts: Ulysses S. Grant and “Cincinnati,” Stonewall Jackson and “Little Sorrel,” George B. McClellan and “Daniel Webster.” Horses remain the most overlooked necessity in the Civil War. Without them, there would have been no war because it would have been impossible for massed bodies of men and their accoutrements to assemble and to maneuver in battle. Horses did not merely carry cavalrymen in fierce combat: they pulled wagons and dragged cannon in all conditions of weather, they were necessary for construction such as bridge building, they were lines of communication and expected to gallop any distance without showing fatigue. In number, horses comprised a third of living beings in an army. (General McClellan’s Army of the Potomac at one time had 100,000 soldiers and 33,000 horses.) Still, how much horses suffered in the four years of war should make anyone cringe in revulsion. Battle casualties were higher in proportion to horses than to men. They also were victims of atrocities. During General William T. Sherman’s 1864 “March to the Sea,” Union cavalry chief Judson Kilpatrick needed horses to replace worn-out mounts. His men scoured the Georgia countryside, stealing every horse they found. Federals collected 500 more horses than needed, whereupon Kilpatrick herded them into the front yard of a plantation and slaughtered them with bullets and bayonets so that Confederates would not be able to use them. For every horse killed in combat, three others perished from non-battle causes: exhaustion, mistreatment, exposure, starvation, and such epidemics as glanders and sore tongue. At least 1.5 million of those animals died in the Civil War. Not one was given a decent burial. Lee paid unusually close attention to the four-legged animals in his command. In the

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political situations.” That was evident in his new command. All of the whites had fled the area, which left 3,000 slaves as wards of the Union government. Hunter promptly issued an emancipation proclamation for his department and began organizing not one but five all-black regiments. Such precipitous actions, totally unauthorized, led to his recall to administrative duties in Washington. In May 1864, General Ulysses S. Grant began his multipronged Overland Campaign in Virginia. Radical Republicans in Congress secured Hunter’s assignment to command Federal forces in the Shenandoah Valley. His orders were to advance up the Valley, destroy rail lines and military supplies, then turn east and capture the major Confederate depot at Charlottesville. Whether Hunter was trying to impress his superiors, or whether it was his dour nature, is irrelevant to what happened. First he bypassed his assigned target, Staunton, and bombarded the defenseless town of Lexington. Next, during three days of occupation, Federals set fire to Virginia Military Institute, pillaged at will, burned a number of private homes (including that of Virginia Governor John Letcher), and allegedly hanged two civilians for being “bushwhackers.” President Jefferson Davis immediately branded Hunter an “outlaw,” subject to death if captured. General Robert E. Lee dispatched several thousand troops from the Petersburg line to go to the defense of Lynchburg, supposedly the next Union objective. Hunter aided in the Southern efforts: he ravaged his way eastward but on the wrong road. By the time he reached Lynchburg, Confederates were entrenched and waiting. A brief but sharp fight convinced Hunter that he was heavily outnumbered (he was not). The Federal general ordered a retreat. Confederates gave pursuit, and the movement took on the appearance of a foot race. Hunter overlooked the Shenandoah Valley escape route and fled westward into the mountains of West Virginia. This action took Hunter’s command entirely out of the war for several weeks. Naturally, it marked the end of his field service.

Second Manassas Campaign, Lee watched a wagon train passing down the road. He turned to an aide and said, “I observe that some of those mules are without shoes. I wish you would see to it that all of the animals are shod at once.” Lee reported regularly on the lack of food for his troops and forage for his horses. Only four times in the war was Lee known to lose his temper. Two of those occasions involved soldiers abusing horses. In the postwar years the railroad, followed by the automobile, slowly pushed the horse into the background. Today he remains a beautiful animal but not the indispensable mistreated creature he once was. HUNTER, DAVID (1802–1886). At the northern end of the Shenandoah Valley, they still call him “Hunter the Hyena.” David Hunter was the son of a minister and born in Washington, D.C. In 1822 he graduated from West Point and quickly got into trouble because of a hot temper. A court-martial found him guilty of shooting three men in duels. President John Quincy Adams, for reasons unknown, overruled the court. Until the Civil War, “Black Dave” Hunter was an active abolitionist and army paymaster without any other discernable qualities. He was of medium height, broad-shouldered, swarthy, with a dyed mustache, dark brown wig, and perpetual scowl. Following Abraham Lincoln’s 1861 presidential victory, Hunter sent the president-elect a number of letters about supposed Southern uprisings around the country. Lincoln was impressed. He called Hunter to Washington, placed him at the head of the White House guard, and got him a brigadier general’s star. Hunter’s first battle action came in July 1861, at Manassas, where he was wounded in the cheek and neck. This led in March 1862 to his appointment as commander of the Union Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. One of his subordinates thought Hunter’s prejudices “so intense and violent as [to] render him at times quite incapable of making a fair and unbiased view of many military and

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After the war Hunter presided over the trial of the Lincoln assassins. He also continued to seek justification for his retreat from Lynchburg. Hunter found no support in the North. He then brazenly asked Lee if the Union withdrawal was

not a strategically sound move. With deadpan courtesy, Lee replied that he was not competent to pass judgment on Hunter’s retirement, but that his flight had been of great help to Lee personally and to the Confederacy in general.

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J Jackson promptly established a reputation as the worst teacher at the Institute. He followed the West Point tradition of teaching memorization, and it had to be verbatim. Lacking a sense of humor, uneducated in basic social arts such as conversation, and widely known for personal quirks (he only ate food he did not like because he considered it more nutritional), Jackson became the campus “character” to cadets. In time, however, students recognized his earnestness and dedication to their welfare. His initial nickname at VMI, “Tom Fool,” gave way to “The Major.” His 10 years at VMI were also the time Jackson acquired the faith that dominated every facet of his life. His long search for a religious home ended when he joined the Lexington Presbyterian Church. Thereafter, The Major was a fervent Calvinist who accepted completely the existence of a dual Supreme Being: the belligerent Jehovah of the Old Testament and the loving Father of the New Testament. Jackson’s God became the familial father he had never known. “To attempt to portray the life of Jackson while leaving out the religious element,” celebrated cleric Moses Hoge declared, “would be like undertaking to describe Switzerland without making mention of the Alps.” Jackson first discovered love in Lexington. In 1853 he married a minister’s daughter. She and a son died in childbirth 14 months later. His 1857 marriage to a longtime friend (she also was the daughter of a cleric) produced a surviving child that Jackson saw once before his own death.

JACKSON, THOMAS JONATHAN “STONEWALL” (1824–1863). To the world, he was known as “Stonewall.” To Southern Christians, he was “Confederate Cromwell.” To his men, he was “Old Jack.” To Robert E. Lee, he was indispensable. No great general has ever risen from humbler beginnings. Born in the isolated mountains of western Virginia and orphaned at seven, Thomas Jackson was raised by a callous uncle. The lonely, humorless lad was unprepared for the appointment to West Point that came his way in 1842. On the entrance exam, Jackson ranked dead last among 109 plebes. Professors urged him to return home to avoid embarrassment. Jackson was no quitter, certainly with the one opportunity he had to make something of himself. He spent four years, day and night, studying to keep abreast of the curriculum. Progress came because of his favorite axiom, “You may be whatever you will resolve to be.” Jackson graduated 17th in the famous Class of 1846; and professors as well as cadets stated that if the curriculum had lasted another year, the quiet, determined Virginian would have been first in his class. Three brevets for gallantry in the Mexican War demonstrated his qualities as a soldier. Yet postwar advancement in the artillery was slow. In 1851 Jackson obtained a professorship at a new academy: Virginia Military Institute in the upper Shenandoah Valley town of Lexington. His courses were natural and experimental philosophy in the mornings and artillery tactics in afternoons.

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The professor not only became an elder in the Presbyterian faith. Feeling that all humans were children of God and were entitled to the road to salvation, Jackson taught a Sunday afternoon religious service for Lexington’s slaves and freedmen. The teacher, as well as his more than 100 attendees, knew that state law prohibited the public gathering of blacks. No one ever challenged the Sunday meetings. War clouds gathered in 1860–1861. The professor’s allegiance to Virginia matched that of Lee, but faith also was a determinant in Jackson aligning himself with the Confederate cause. The North, Jackson felt, was guilty of exceeding the God-given U.S. Constitution. A scourge had descended on the land. The more devout side eventually would triumph. For Jackson, therefore, the Civil War was a Christian crusade. Yankees were not just the enemy; they were Philistines, to be eliminated by God’s will. Thus, like Joshua and David of old, Jackson went to fight for God. He was a colonel in command of troop organization at Harpers Ferry when a newspaper reporter first saw him. “The Old Dominion must be sadly deficient in military men, if this is the best she can do,” the journalist wrote. “There is a painful want in him of the pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war. His air is abstracted, his bearing is stiff and awkward . . . and [he] says little to anyone.” The nickname Stonewall came for holding the line at a critical point in the Battle of First Manassas. Promotion to major general and command of the Shenandoah Valley defenses opened the way in 1862 for one of the war’s most sterling campaigns. For six weeks, outnumbered four-to-one, Jackson moved secretly, marched swiftly, and fought heavily. His so-called foot cavalry raced over 670 miles in that period, fought four battles, sent three Union armies scurrying in retreat, created momentary turmoil in Washington, D.C., and gave positive spirit to a Confederacy struggling for survival. Jackson then moved eastward with his force to help Lee in the counterattack against General George B. McClellan’s huge Union army at Richmond. In the Seven Days’ Campaign, an exhausted Jackson in unfamiliar

territory did not perform well. Lee nevertheless won the campaign, and an 11-month association with Jackson would turn the war around in Virginia. They were an odd pair to be so close. Lee was old enough to be Jackson’s father. The army commander was likable, dignified, possessed of tact and kindness that endeared him to soldiers and civilians alike. Jackson was uncommunicative, abrupt, attributing all success to the blessings of God. He demanded the utmost from his men because he gave the utmost of himself. Each became the other’s best friend when in the field. Together they built a foundation of professional trust cemented by Christian faith. Lee once said of his principal lieutenant, “I have but to show him my design, and I know that if it can be done, it will be done. Straight as the needle to the pole he advances to the execution of my purpose.” Jackson in kind asserted, “So great is my confidence in General Lee that I am willing to follow him blindfolded.” In July 1862, Lee dispatched Jackson’s divisions to confront a new Federal army moving through the northern part of the state. Jackson struck the vanguard of that force on 9 August at Cedar Mountain and brought the Union advance to a halt. Lee’s part of the army then linked with Jackson. After quick consultation, Old Jack and his force went on a twoday, 56-mile march that brought them behind General John Pope’s Union army. Jackson destroyed the major Federal supply base at Manassas Junction. Pope hastily backtracked and delivered repeated attacks against Jackson’s defensive lines. Lee suddenly arrived on the scene and made a pounding flank assault. It brought victory at Second Manassas and, at the same time, cleared Virginia of any large Union threat. Lee thought it expedient to push the advantage by making a raid into the North. Stonewall Jackson reaffirmed his nickname by repulsing the first waves of Union attacks at Antietam. Lee was able to hold firm through 13 hours of fighting that became the bloodiest one-day engagement in American history. Three months later, the two opposing forces met again at Fredericksburg. James

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With Jackson’s passing, the Army of Northern Virginia lost the elements of speed and mobility that had made it the South’s premier force. Thereafter, Lee had to wage a standup, slugging match with the always-powerful Army of the Potomac. It would be a kind of war that Lee could not win.

Longstreet and Jackson now commanded the two halves of the Army of Northern Virginia. Both withstood repeated assaults in what was Lee’s easiest victory of the war. At one point, a North Carolina soldier spied Jackson. “He suddenly appeared in our front with his cap pulled down over his forehead, almost hiding his eyes. The troops cheered him wildly. He gave us a sharp, searching, but not unkindly look, raised his cap, and rode wildly on. His eyes seemed to be on fire, so eager was he for the fray.” By then the South had profound respect for Lee, but it was the zealous Jackson, blue eyes flashing, that brought righteousness to the Southern cause. Then came Chancellorsville. On paper, Lee could not win the May 1863 contest inside the Virginia Wilderness. Yet again Lee did the unpredictable. He split his outmanned army into three parts, one of which entailed Jackson making a secret, 12-mile march around the Union right (western) flank. In late afternoon on 2 May, Jackson’s assault roared through the woods and began rolling up the Union line like a rug. Darkness halted the fighting for that day. However, Old Jack was anxious to renew the battle. But first he needed to ascertain where the Federal line was located in that thick woodland. His determination momentarily blocked logic. Jackson himself with his staff rode through the darkness to find points of attack. He was galloping back to his lines when Confederates mistook his party for Union cavalry and opened fire. A bullet shattered Jackson’s upper left arm. He was borne and bounced to a field hospital far in the rear. Hours after the wounding, surgeons amputated the limb. A week later, appropriately on the Sabbath (10 May), Jackson merged from unconsciousness long enough to say clearly, “Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.” Those were the last words of the 39-year-old general. Lee confessed to his wife, “I know not how to replace him.” A day or so later, Lee met with Reverand-General William Pendleton. When the subject of Jackson arose, Lee sobbed openly for several minutes.

JOHNSTON, ALBERT SIDNEY (1803–1862). He fought with distinction for three republics. Jefferson Davis was one of his closest allies. How far Sidney Johnston might have risen in the Confederate army is one of the continuing questions in studying that conflict. Born in Kentucky, Johnston attended Transylvania University and West Point. He and Davis began a lifelong friendship while cadets. Johnston was commanding officer in the Republic of Texas’s fight for independence. Solid service in the Mexican War played a role in his 1855 appointment by Secretary of War Jefferson Davis to lead a new and elite unit, the 2nd U.S. Cavalry Regiment. Johnston’s second-in-command was Robert E. Lee. In 1860 Johnston was assigned command of the Army’s Department of the Pacific. A New Orleans reporter described Johnston as “a prompt, decisive man, possessing an indomitable will and the greatest tenacity of purpose. . . . In general appearance, he is self-reliant, bold, and dauntless, exhibiting the hero of leonine courage and unfailing energy.” He looked the role: tall, muscular, mustached, a courtly man with pleasing manner. General Winfield Scott considered Johnston the second best officer he had (Lee being first). When Johnston cast his lot with the Confederacy, President Davis placed him in charge of the entire Western theater of operations. Johnston, the president declared, was “the only man I felt able to lean upon with confidence.” The new general, however, found that maintaining a 400-mile front with limited manpower was an impossible task. His personality did not lend itself to encourage organization. Although accustomed to high rank, Johnston struck most associates as one who lived by himself. He ignored disagreements among subalterns, and he made little effort to establish

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the rapport that a successful leader must possess. Johnston’s indecisiveness resulted in the loss of Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, and control of the vital Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. To loud criticism from Congress and the press, Davis responded, “If Sidney Johnston is not a general, we had better give up the war, for we have no general.” Johnston sought to regain much of what had been lost with a 6 April 1862 surprise attack on the encamped Union army at Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee (near a Methodist church named Shiloh). By midafternoon the Confederates were close to routing the enemy. Johnston was in the midst of organizing a new assault when a bullet from friendly fire struck him behind the right knee. Enthusiasm masked the pain until Johnston reeled in the saddle with blood pouring over his boot. He died moments later. Sidney Johnston was the highest-ranking officer killed in the Civil War.

Lee wrote his son Custis that Johnston got the quartermaster position and “has thrown more discredit than ever on the system of favoritism and making brevets.” Nevertheless, in 1861 Johnston was the senior ranking officer to join Confederate service. As such, he became the first field commander of an army raised in Virginia. “Uncle Joe” had the appearance of an experienced leader. Although a bit undersized, he had an unusually large head, staring eyes, and wellfashioned mustache and goatee. He maintained a stern expression and was an excellent horseman. Experience and organization should have made Johnston an outstanding general. Yet three factors proved his undoing. The first was his proclivity for defensive fighting. Only three times in his four years of service did Johnston attack a Union army. He failed in each endeavor. Second was a disastrous relationship with Commander in Chief Jefferson Davis. The two men were proud, sensitive, too quick to take offense, and slow to forget. They argued in person and in writing over little things. They did it all the way to the grave. And although Johnston was always courteous and friendly to Lee, underneath was a jealousy that occasionally was visible. In the first battle of the Civil War at Manassas, Johnston’s dash from Winchester with three brigades to strengthen the Confederate position may well have been his most sterling achievement in the Southern victory. Johnston wore a hero’s mantle for six weeks. Then Davis made his announcement of five full generals. Naturally, Johnston expected to be first on the list because of his seniority in the old army. Instead, he was listed next to the bottom. Davis’s opinion was that a staff position (quartermaster general) was below a field officer colonelcy. In one of the most illconsidered communiqués of the war, Johnston sent Davis nine pages of near-hysterical wrath. Davis remembered one of General Winfield Scott’s axioms (“Compassion is always due to an enraged imbecile”) and responded with a pointed acknowledgment. Thus began a permanent vendetta that never slackened.

JOHNSTON, JOSEPH EGGLESTON (1807– 1891). Even though he was the only officer to command both of the Confederacy’s major field armies, Joseph Johnston was never as good a general as he thought he was. He and fellow Virginian Robert E. Lee were born within a month of one another. His father had been a private in Colonel Henry Lee’s command in the Revolution. “Joe” Johnston and Lee both graduated in the West Point Class of 1829. Whereas Lee was a model cadet, Johnston was so militarily demonstrative that classmates dubbed him “The Colonel.” The two served on General-in-Chief Winfield Scott’s personal staff in Mexico. Johnston was seriously wounded at Cerro Gordo and brevetted accordingly. From Mexico, Lee began his familiar upward career as engineer and educator. Johnston made his way through the ranks as a brave and competent soldier. In 1855 he became lieutenant colonel of the 1st U.S. Cavalry. Five years later, Secretary of War John B. Floyd appointed Johnston quartermaster general of the Army. The position carried a brigadier general’s rank (staff grade), although Johnston remained a lieutenant colonel (permanent grade).

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The following spring brought General George B. McClellan’s huge Federal army up the Virginia peninsula to within eight miles of Richmond. (Ironically, McClellan and Johnston in prewar years had been close friends who regularly exchanged letters.) All this time Johnston remained mute with Confederate authorities. He detested Davis, both as a man and as commander in chief. He regarded Lee as inferior in rank. Johnston continued to manage “his” army without any “outside” interference. An identical relationship between Davis and Johnston existed between Abraham Lincoln and McClellan. The presidents thought the field commanders were unpredictable and too secretive; the generals criticized the presidents for nagging and lack of support. On 31 May 1862, Johnston finally launched a piecemeal attack at Seven Pines. The first day was a drawn battle; so was the second day’s action, highlighted when Johnston fell from wounds that would incapacitate him for months. Lee replaced Johnston as the head of an Army of Northern Virginia that Johnston would never lead. Instead, Uncle Joe was sent in November to coordinate all field operations in the Western theater. In Johnston’s mind, he was nothing but an administrator. His lack of enthusiasm widened the breach with the president. After Ulysses S. Grant seized Vicksburg, Mississippi, in July 1863, Johnston and Davis fell into a continuing squabble over who was responsible for the loss of the vital river port. General Braxton Bragg’s failure as commander of the Confederate Army of Tennessee reached its height in November 1863 with stunning defeats at Chattanooga, Tennessee. Davis had no one else of rank and experience to take the reins of army command except Johnston. He made the reluctant appointment, and Johnston sought to get his battered force in shape for the 1864 spring campaign. In May, Union General William T. Sherman left Chattanooga with his army and started southward with the intent of seizing the Deep South’s one remaining industrial center: Atlanta. Once again Johnston’s strategy was to fall back and gain time while watching for an opportunity to deliver a successful assault. For

two months, Confederates retreated 90 miles in the face of Sherman’s force. An angry Davis removed Johnston and put in his place a wellknown, combative fighter, General John B. Hood. Johnston returned to lead what was left of the army after it suffered defeats in six subsequent battles. Lacking an alternative, Johnston could only retire through the Carolinas with Sherman in steady pursuit. On 26 April 1865, Uncle Joe surrendered his force at Bennett House near Durham Station, North Carolina. The postwar years were unpleasant for Johnston. He dabbled in insurance and he worked for several railroads, which is surprising because Johnston paid so little attention to rail lines during the war. In 1874 he completed his memoirs. As expected, they were a scathing indictment of Jefferson Davis, who responded in kind a decade later. Johnston served a term in the U.S. Congress and, through appointment by President Grover Cleveland, was U.S. commissioner of railroads. The most noteworthy of Johnston’s activities in old age was a remarkable friendship with once-bitter adversary William Sherman. They exchanged correspondence and visits. Disagreements became dim as the years passed. In 1891 Sherman died. The aged Johnston struggled to New York City for the funeral. He stood bareheaded in sleety weather during part of the ceremony. A month later, Johnston died of pneumonia—probably contracted when he stood without a hat in freezing temperature to say good-bye to a friend. Johnston was a general who displayed reluctance to put everything into action. The same could be said of his friend and enemy, McClellan. Both men were so fearful of losing that they became incapable of winning. JONES, JOHN WILLIAM (1836–1909). One of the loudest voices in the early glorification of Lee came from minister-writer J. William Jones. He was born in Louisa County, Virginia, and graduated from both the University of Virginia and Southern Baptist Seminary. In 1860 he received ordination into the Baptist ministry.

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It was during a six-year term as pastor of the Lexington Baptist Church that Jones’s friendship with Robert E. Lee grew more intimately. The minister became chaplain of both Washington College and Virginia Military Institute. His literary output became legendary. Jones edited the first 14 volumes of the Southern Historical Society Papers and produced six books. One was a biography of Lee written with the authority of the family; a second contained many of Lee’s personal letters; a third, Christ in the Camp, remains a basic source for religious activities inside the Army of Northern Virginia. In all of the volumes, Jones never wavered in his quest to make Lee an inspiration for all people of all time.

Jones enlisted as a private in the 13th Virginia and four months later became chaplain of the regiment. For much of the Civil War, Jones served as “missionary chaplain at large” in General Powell Hill’s corps. He was indefatigable. In 1863 Jones baptized 222 soldiers and preached 161 sermons. He regularly sent letters to the Religious Herald in Richmond under the pen name “Original.” Widely hailed as “the Baptist clearinghouse” for recruiting ministers into the army as chaplains, he also had a leading role in two great religious revivals that occurred in the Army of Northern Virginia during the second and third winters of the war. In the summer of 1864, Jones was discharged from service because of chronic diarrhea.

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Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee, father of Robert E. Lee. Courtesy of Stratford Hall.

Stratford Hall, birthplace of Robert E. Lee. Courtesy of Stratford Hall.

Lieutenant Robert E. Lee, 1838 (his first likeness). Courtesy of Washington and Lee University.

Robert E. Lee with son “Rooney,” 1845 (first photograph of Lee). Courtesy of the Virginia Historical Society.

Robert E. Lee in civilian dress. Photograph by Mathew Brady. Courtesy of the Virginia Historical Society.

Arlington House, 1857–1861 (Lee’s home). Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

The army commander, 1863 (Lee’s first formal photograph as a general). Courtesy of Stratford Hall.

Robert E. Lee at Chancellorsville, with troops cheering the moment of victory. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

General Lee in formal attire, 1863 (photo­ graph taken at Vannerson’s Studio in ­Richmond). Courtesy of Stratford Hall.

Close-up of Robert E. Lee (note the colonel’s insignia on his lapel). Courtesy of Stratford Hall.

Respect of an Army by Mort Künstler, © 2014 Mort Künstler, Inc., www.mkunstler.com. Courtesy of Künstler Enterprises, Ltd.

Robert E. Lee at his home in Richmond, April 1865, with Generals Custis Lee and Colonel Walter Taylor. Courtesy of Stratford Hall.

Robert E. Lee and his horse, Traveller, 1866, in Lexington. Courtesy of Stratford Hall.

Last photograph of Robert E. Lee, 1870. Photograph by Michael Miley in Lexington. Courtesy of Stratford Hall.

Peace in Our Country, drawn by Thomas Nast in 1890. Courtesy of Stratford Hall.

Robert E. Lee Asleep in the Field, Edward Valentine sculpture at Lee’s grave. Courtesy of Stratford Hall.

K their front. Federal horsemen had dismounted and were assuming a defensive position when Lee attacked. Federals repulsed the assault; and for the next five hours, the two forces took turns charging the other’s line. The greatest loss of the day occurred early in the action. Major John Pelham was killed. The 25-year-old Alabamian was then the most promising artillerist in the Army of Northern Virginia. Three month earlier, at Fredericksburg, Pelham’s courage under fire caused General Robert E. Lee to term him “the gallant Pelham,” and the commanding general added, “It is glorious to see such courage in one so young.” Pelham was killed when a piece of shrapnel struck him in the back of his head. In late afternoon Averell withdrew his forces. His casualties (78) were fewer than Fitzhugh Lee’s (170). The Union brigadier also left a quantity of coffee and a written inquiry whether Fitz Lee enjoyed his visit. Kelly’s Ford is significant because it marked one of the first times Federal cavalry held its own in a fight with Confederate horsemen.

KELLY’S FORD, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF (17 MARCH 1863). In February 1863, Federal and Confederate armies were in winter encampments on opposite sides of the Rappahannock River. Yet cavalry units maintained steady patrols. A Southern detachment under General Fitzhugh Lee made a surprise raid on an outpost at Hartwood Church and captured 150 members of a Federal brigade under General William W. Averell. Lee and Averell had been friends since classmate days at West Point, and at this stage of the war they maintained a spirited rivalry. Before leaving Hartwood Church with his prisoners, Fitz Lee left a note inviting Averell to pay a visit sometime and to bring coffee with him. Averell soon learned that Lee’s cavalry were near Kelly’s Ford, a major Rappahannock crossing 25 miles northwest of Fredericksburg. The Union brigadier set out with 2,100 troopers. They crossed the frigid, waist-deep river and captured 25 Confederate pickets. Lee was at Culpeper when he learned of Averell’s advance. The Virginian gathered his brigade of 800 men and galloped into woods halfway between Kelly’s Ford and Brandy Station. There they waited. The Union column had proceeded about a mile. Word came that Confederates were in

KILPATRICK-DAHLGREN RAID, VIRGINIA (28 FEBRUARY–2 MARCH 1864). See DAHLGREN, ULRIC (1842–1864).

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L She did not return the attention, but Ann did. Wedding ceremonies in June 1793 lasted several days. This marriage for the first time linked together the powerful Carter and Lee clans. Husband and wife were of contrasting personalities. While “Nancy” (a family nickname) was of medium height with brown eyes and hair, Henry was tall, heavyset, with large blue eyes. He was charming, outgoing, ever active. The husband paid little attention to religion, whereas his wife was a strong, evangelical Christian. Scarcely two years after their marriage, and with Henry Lee’s terms as governor ended, his passion for wild land speculation returned. He soon was selling lands belonging to his wife. The couple sank steadily into debt. Stratford Hall likewise descended into disrepair. The family occupied only three or four rooms in the mansion. Henry Lee could not afford to entertain. The once-laughing mother was left alone because her husband’s irresponsible business dealings had driven away their friends. Her father had put her inheritance into trust to prevent the son-in-law from squandering it. Ann Lee by herself had to raise the children: two by Lee’s first wife, five from her own marriage. Just before the birth of their fourth child (a son to be named for her two brothers Robert and Edward), Mrs. Lee sent a plea to her absent husband, “Oh! Mr. Lee, remember, that your poor afflicted fatherless wife can now only look to you, to smooth her rugged path through life, and soften her bed of death.” For several years, with her husband away from Stratford Hall pursuing business deals

LEE, ANN CARTER (1839–1862). “Annie” was the third child and second daughter of Robert E. and Mary Lee. She was named for Lee’s mother, who had died a decade earlier. Black-haired, gentle, and pious, she was never a strong person. In her infancy, she stabbed herself in the eye with a pair of scissors. She grew increasingly self-conscious about her affliction as the years passed. Annie was the least outgoing of the Lee children and more attached to her father, who once mentioned that “her quiet and innocent repose I much covet.” After the 1861 abandonment of Arlington House, Annie accompanied her mother and other members of the family in a refugee life with friends. Tragically, in October 1862 she died of typhoid fever while visiting in Jones County, North Carolina. Lee was reorganizing the Army of Northern Virginia when he received the news. He told his wife, “To know that I shall never see her again on earth, that her place in our circle which I always hope one day to rejoin is forever vacant, is agonizing in the extreme.” Her remains today are in the Lee crypt at Washington and Lee University. LEE, ANN HILL CARTER (1772–1829). Robert E. Lee’s mother, Ann Carter, fell in love with Henry Lee III the first time she saw him. She was then the 20-year-old daughter of Charles Carter of Shirley Plantation, a huge estate in Virginia. When 37-year-old Governor “Light Horse Harry” Lee visited the Carter home, he was first attracted to Ann’s sister.

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that regularly failed, Mrs. Lee endured a lingering illness. (Writers have variously labeled it tuberculosis, edema, and narcolepsy.) Son Robert became her nurse and most constant companion. A family friend remembered, “What impressed me most in my youthful days was his devotion to his mother. . . . She used to say he was son & daughter to her. He was her housekeeper & relieved her of all domestic cares, looked after the horses, rode out in the carriage with her, did the marketing for the family.” The father’s reckless pursuits forced the family to abandon Stratford and move 50 miles away to Alexandria. Henry Lee spent a year in debtor’s prison, then did little thereafter but work on his memoirs of service in the American Revolution. No one would lend him any financial backing. Illness and depression kept Mrs. Lee in a mood of stoic fortitude. She died just weeks after Robert’s graduation from West Point. He was by her bedside when the end came, but he was too distraught to attend her funeral.

through Virginia. She was the only Lee daughter who came close to marriage. The episode changed her life and personality. In the Lee family’s close-knit circle was Orton Williams, “Markie” Williams’s brother. He and Agnes had known one another since childhood. Orton was bright but reckless. He began a madcap military career. Robert E. Lee thought him unstable. Yet Williams and Agnes fell in love. They kept it as secret as possible. On Christmas Day 1862, Orton proposed marriage to Agnes. She declined for unknown reasons, and he departed for war. A month later came word that Williams had been hanged in Tennessee as a Confederate spy. This was an emotional blow from which Agnes never recovered. Long-suffered facial neuralgia worsened; an “intestinal disorder” eventually became chronic. Agnes with­ drew slowly from life (to some it appeared as aloofness). Agnes Lee died of dysentery in November 1873. Mrs. Lee became so distraught at the loss of husband and daughter within three years that she passed away three weeks after Agnes’s death.

LEE, ELEANOR AGNES (1841–1873). “Wiggy” was the third of four daughters and the fifth of seven children in the Robert E. Lee family. Her early years were spent in reading, piano playing, and working in the gardens at Arlington House. In defiance of Virginia law that forbade the gathering in public of blacks, Agnes taught a Sunday evening school for Arlington House slaves. At the age of 12, and at the insistence of her governess, Agnes began keeping a diary. She maintained it for five years she spent at Arlington House; at a girl’s school in Staunton, Virginia; and at West Point. It is a warm and revealing chronicle by a young girl far more mature than her years. Agnes viewed the breakup of the Union with ominous feelings. On 19 April 1861, as Lee was making his fateful decision to cast his lot with Virginia, Agnes wrote a sister that nothing at Arlington House was “talked or thought of but our troubles. . . . our poor father & brothers need all our prayers.” With her sister, Agnes accompanied Mrs. Lee from Arlington to a gypsy-like wandering

LEE, FITZHUGH (1835–1905). Lee’s beloved brother, Sidney Smith Lee, was a distinguished naval officer whose career spanned 40 years. The eldest of Smith Lee’s six sons was christened Fitzhugh. He would become one of Uncle Robert’s worst cadets but most reliable soldiers. Fitzhugh Lee was born at the family estate, Claremont, near Alexandria, Virginia. He entered West Point in 1852 and spent much of the next four years bordering on dismissal because of violation of academy rules. That his well-known uncle was superintendent at the academy seems to have made no impression on the youngster. “Fitz,” as everyone called the spare, short (five feet, six inches tall) Virginian, was highly popular in the corps, but not with the faculty. He graduated 45th of 49 cadets in his class. As in the case of Ulysses S. Grant, Fitz Lee’s highest grades were in horsemanship. His climax to duty in Texas came in an 1859 engagement. An arrow pierced through

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His Civil War career ended on a sour note. On 1 April, he and General George Pickett— commanding the Confederate right flank— were behind the lines enjoying a shad bake when Union forces overran the Five Forks sector and opened the way for Grant’s all-out assault the following day. Only 30 years old at war’s end, Lee became a gentleman farmer in Stafford County. A convivial and outgoing nature won him a legion of friends and led to his 1885 election as governor. Lee was in Washington, D.C., when the Spanish-American War began. He received a commission as a major general of U.S. volunteers. He served ably enough in the field to be named postwar military governor of Cuba. Weight problems led to a slow breakdown of health. Lee died 28 April 1905 in Washington, D.C., of apoplexy. He was buried in Richmond’s Hollywood Cemetery near the grave of his close friend, Jeb Stuart. Not only was Fitzhugh Lee the quintessential cavalier; he was the only Southern general thereafter to gain a similar rank in the U.S. Army.

both of Lee’s lungs. It took several months for the wound to heal, after which Fitz Lee was assigned as an instructor of cavalry at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, and West Point. Lee’s first months as a Confederate staff officer ended with his August 1861 appointment to lieutenant colonel of the 1st Virginia Cavalry. The road to fame had begun. His regiment was the vanguard of General Jeb Stuart’s famous reconnaissance, which completely surrounded the huge Union army encamped at the gates of Richmond. Stuart promptly recommended Fitz Lee for promotion. “In my estimation,” Stuart wrote, “no one in the Confederacy possesses more of the elements of what a brigadier of cavalry ought to be.” A dark, heavy beard extending to the chest helped conceal a brigade commander in his mid-twenties. Fitz Lee continued to be conspicuous wherever he fought: Second Manassas, Antietam, and Kelly’s Ford. In March 1863, Mary Custis Lee wrote her husband that several people had requested his autograph. The army commander replied, “You can give Fitzhugh’s autograph to those persons desiring mine. It is worth more.” At Chancellorsville he led Stonewall Jackson’s great flank march around the unprotected end of the Federal army. Following similar gallantry at Gettysburg, army commander Robert E. Lee recommended Fitz Lee for promotion to major general. “I do not know of any other officer in the cavalry,” the uncle declared, “who has done better service.” Fitz Lee and Jeb Stuart formed a solid bond similar to that between Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jackson. A staff officer, Robert Hunter, observed that the cavalry leaders “were alike in temperament and devoted as brothers. . . . On the march they generally rode together and their songs and peals of laughter could often be heard far down the columns. . . .” In late summer 1864, while leading the cavalry in General Jubal Early’s Shenandoah Valley army, Lee received a thigh wound that incapacitated him for the remainder of the year. He returned to the Army of Northern Virginia in January 1865 and led the depleted mounted column to Appomattox.

LEE, GEORGE WASHINGTON CUSTIS (1832–1913). The oldest of Robert E. and Mary Lee’s seven children was born at Fort Monroe, Virginia, and named for his maternal grandfather. He was of such high intellectual stature that President Zachary Taylor appointed Custis to West Point when he was but 17. His father became superintendent of the academy in the son’s second year and made it a point not to show any favoritism toward the boy. At one point Custis reached what is popularly called a “sophomore slump.” His attention and grades began to fall. His father (himself once a cadet) gave the son advice that reflected his own being: “Shake off those gloomy feelings. . . . Fix your mind & pleasures upon what is before you. . . . All is bright if you will think it so. Do not dream. It is too ideal. . . . Look upon things as they are. . . . Make the best of them.” Custis Lee graduated first in the Class of 1854. One of his favorite classmates was a fellow Virginian, James Ewell Brown “Jeb” Stuart.

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Military engineering projects from California to Washington, D.C., occupied the prewar years. One inaccuracy marks the period. Supposedly, in May 1856 Robert E. Lee sent Custis this advice about life: “Duty is the sublimest word in our language. Do your duty in all things, like the old Puritan. You cannot do more, you should never wish to do less.” The letter first appeared publicly in the Baltimore Sun. It has been quoted widely and for decades. However, research has shown conclusively that although Lee might have felt such sentiments, he never expressed them in writing. The letter is a forgery. Custis followed his family into Confederate service. He was assisting in the construction of defenses around Richmond when, in August 1861, Jefferson Davis appointed him a presidential aide with the rank of colonel. It was a good move for several reasons. Custis Lee was a handsome, cigar-smoking gentleman who compensated for many of the president’s personality defects. The new aide knew the military arm well from travel and friendships. He could maintain an impenetrable reserve about confidential matters. The staff position made Custis an excellent intermediary between the commander in chief and the leader of the South’s army: his father. Being stationed in Richmond enabled him to pay close attention to his mother and sisters quartered in the city. Custis performed a number of fact-finding missions for Jefferson Davis. He acted as the president’s spokesman on other occasions. This led to his June 1863 promotion to brigadier general, a rank Custis did not think he deserved. The following spring, Davis elevated Custis to major general and placed him in charge of the overall defenses of Richmond. Lee’s conscription of clerks and laborers into home guard units subject to call for duty at any time did not sit well among town residents. The major general never sought field command. Perhaps he was afraid of failure, having never been under enemy fire. Or Custis may have considered his natural shyness a liability in commanding troops in the field. His father urged him to come to the front. “You refuse command because you have no experience in

the field, but until you come in the field you will never gain experience.” Young Lee’s response was an unselfish declaration. “It would not do for me to take a general’s commission now [1864], over the heads of men who have been in active service from the beginning while I was doing office work.” The son joined the field army for the retreat from Petersburg. He was captured on 6 April in the Sailor’s Creek action. Federal authorities quickly issued him a parole so that he could return to his ailing mother in Richmond. Custis was at the Franklin Street residence when exGeneral Lee came home to the family, and he posed with his father on the back porch for a series of images by Northern photographer Mathew Brady. Custis Lee accepted a professorship of mathematics at Virginia Military Institute in Lexington. He was an informal aide to his father when the latter assumed the presidency of nearby Washington College. Following Robert E. Lee’s death in 1870, Custis was chosen to succeed his father as the head of what had become Washington and Lee University. His tenure (1870–1897) was long but unproductive. Lee’s reserved nature was quickly evident in his inaugural address, which took less than two minutes. A bachelor, Lee was also poor in the areas of entertainment and public relations. He soon began suffering from a series of illnesses both real and imagined. They led to prolonged absences from the campus. In 1874 Lee offered the first of several resignations. By 1897 the school was declining in everything, including enrollment. Announcing that he was “utterly useless” as president, Custis Lee retired from academia and moved to the family ancestral home, Ravensworth, in northern Virginia. A fractured hip confined him to bed for the last six weeks of his life. Lee died in 1913 of nephritis and pneumonia. The unhappy postwar years did have one moment of brightness. Having inherited the Arlington House estate, Lee sued the federal government for illegal seizure in 1861. The Supreme Court in 1882 ruled that he claim was valid. For the previous 20 years Arlington

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had been a cemetery for Union soldiers. Lee did not want thousands of bodies exhumed, so he sold the property to the government for $150,000—a high sum in those times. Arlington National Cemetery, with more than 400,000 military graves, is now the most hallowed ground in the Union.

Matilda Lee bore her husband three children before her death in 1790. The following year, riding his wartime reputation, Lee won the governorship of Virginia. Impressive appearance accompanied high political standing. Just under six feet tall, Henry Lee had an oval face, blue eyes, and brown hair. An athletic build accompanied the manners of a gentleman, a resonant voice, and an always-engaging manner. Lee was charming in society and brilliant in politics. It was in the midst of his gubernatorial years that Light Horse Harry married Ann Hill Carter. He was 37; his bride, 20. She was the daughter of Charles Carter, the wealthiest man in the state. Ann loved Henry intensely. She would bear him five children in their tumultuous wedded life. Lee served three one-year terms as governor while the U.S. Constitution was still in the experimental stage. He took a leading role in national politics, which brought him into the growing fight between his Hamiltonian Federalist thinking and Jeffersonian Democrat policies. In 1799 Lee won election to the Congress. In that position he is best remembered for his eulogistic tribute to George Washington: “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” In 1800, Lee’s support for Aaron Burr over Thomas Jefferson in the presidential election ended his political career. By then, however, Lee was in serious financial condition. The situation grew worse with each passing month. Lee’s weakness was land speculation, in which he was consistently overconfident and reckless. He began risking family property with harebrained investments. Stratford Hall’s cash flow slowly disappeared; distant tracts of the estate were sold to meet debts. Lee became a gambler trying to recover his losses. Debt was no stranger to Tidewater gentry, but Lee led investors astray, reneged on promises, hid from bill collectors, and alienated one friend after another. In wintertime the Lees were forced to occupy only three or four rooms at Stratford Hall for lack of firewood and servants. Still, Lee maintained a cheerful countenance—and was known on occasion to lend a needy associate money he had just borrowed.

LEE, HENRY, III (1756–1818). Robert E. Lee never knew his father, although Henry Lee III was one of the genuine heroes of American independence. He spent 34 months as an infant in his father’s presence. When Robert was old enough to realize the shame Henry Lee had brought to the family, he rarely referred to him. In 1641 Richard Lee I had planted the family roots in Virginia’s Northern Neck, the peninsula formed by the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers. Richard Lee’s grandchildren split the family into two lines: the Lees of Stratford Hall in Westmoreland County and the Lees of Leesylvania in northern Virginia. The Stratford line was much the larger. Henry Lee was raised in the Leesylvania wing. He graduated from Princeton College and practiced law until the outbreak of the American Revolution. The young man quickly demonstrated talents as a soldier. Brave but showy, Lee rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel by leading a small detachment of 300 men. The unit, named “Lee’s Legion,” was lightly equipped but highly mobile. It acted basically as partisan rangers conducting raids and excelling in small actions. Lee’s band won repeated praise from General George Washington. At twenty-five, “Light Horse Harry” Lee was a national hero. In 1782 Lee married Matilda Lee, his second cousin. The courtship had lasted a month. She was the widowed mistress of Stratford Hall, and the marriage reunited the two parts of the Lee family. Henry Lee made a number of improvements to Stratford Hall. It then contained 6,000 acres of tobacco soil and a large retinue of slaves. Yet the ex-soldier was not content to be a gentleman farmer. Public service beckoned. He became an active member of the Congress of Confederation (1786–1788) and the Virginia General Assembly (1789–1791).

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Henry Lee was 50 when his wife gave birth to a son, Robert. Two years later, the father was sentenced to debtors’ prison for a year. His extravagance and imprisonment broke his wife physically as well as mentally. It also left the long-proud Lee family with a tainted reputation. Lee returned from jail to Stratford and worked on his military memoirs of the Revolution. He had no funds to maintain life at the family estate. Hence, the family was forced to move to a simple dwelling 50 miles away in Alexandria. War again with England loomed. Lee actively opposed it. He visited a Baltimore friend, Alexander Hasson, whose antiwar editorials had infuriated many of the city’s residents. One night a Democratic mob attacked Hasson’s print shop. The hoodlums killed one man and seriously wounded the others. Lee was among the most injured. Men tried to cut off his nose but instead slashed through his cheekbone. Someone poured hot candle wax in his eyes. Lee was so brutally beaten that physicians first thought he was dying. Lee managed to make his way back to Alexandria. His face was badly disfigured, and his health was permanently shattered. Penniless, halfblinded, humiliated, Lee fled to the West Indies to escape the pity of friends and the pursuit of creditors. He remained out of the country for six years. How Lee obtained living expenses is unknown. He started home in 1818, but he became so ill that the ship put him ashore on Cumberland Island, Georgia. Lee took refuge in the home of the daughter of fellow Revolution hero General Nathanial Greene. There, Lee died in May 1818. In 1933 his remains were reburied in the family crypt on the campus of Washington and Lee University. Robert E. Lee could never forget the disgrace his father brought to a once-proud family. In 1868, under pressure from his family, Lee agreed to write an introduction for a new edition of his father’s Memoirs. Lee took an assembled collection of letters, obituaries, and tributes and pasted them together with no insertion of personal feelings.

LEE, HENRY, IV (1787–1837). Henry Lee IV was Robert E. Lee’s half brother by Henry and Matilda Lee. His misbehavior earned him the sobriquet “Black Horse Harry” (as opposed to his father’s famous nickname, “Light Horse Harry”). Lee was an engaging and promising figure in politics during his early mature years. He served in the Virginia General Assembly and was a staff officer in the War of 1812. Marriage to wealthy Anne McCarty, the orphaned daughter of a Westmoreland County planter, enabled Henry IV to restore Stratford Hall to much of its past glory. All looked promising for the future. In 1820, Lee’s infant daughter died in a fall down the front steps of Stratford. Mrs. Lee was so inconsolable that she took to her bed and was soon locked in regular doses of morphine. Living with the Lees at the time was Anne’s teenage sister, Elizabeth. Henry IV was her guardian. He soon became her lover. Reports circulated that Elizabeth had given birth to a child. No infant was ever discovered. Accompanying this revelation was the additional finding that Henry IV had stolen funds from the trust established for the upkeep of Stratford. Anne Lee eventually recovered from her grief, forgave her husband’s indiscretions, and continued to live with Henry. Yet the ancestral home of six generation of Lees had to be sold to meet Henry IV’s debts. Once more, public disgrace smeared the Lee family name. Teenager Robert Lee had to have been aware of the new scandals, but nothing appears in his writings. The half brother served as a speechwriter for John C. Calhoun. Andrew Jackson used Lee for speeches and similar tasks. Once president, Jackson rewarded Lee with a consular appointment. The U.S. Senate by unanimous vote refused to give confirmation. Henry Lee IV spent his last seven years wandering abroad while working on a biography of Napoleon Bonaparte. He died of influenza virtually alone in Paris, France. LEE, MARY ANNA RANDOLPH CUSTIS (1808–1873). The thread that held the Robert E. Lee family together was not the father but

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his wife, Mary Custis. She was the ever-present parent, the centerpiece wherever events took the family. Yet for Mary, it was a lifetime of extremes. She was the only child of George Washington Parke and Mary Custis of Arlington House estate. As such, the daughter lived in luxury. Her features were more aristocratic than attractive. Diminutive in size, frail, with sharp nose and chin, Mary possessed as compensations bright eyes, engaging smile, and good conversation. Robert E. Lee was a distant cousin and lifelong friend. In the initial courting stage, he had to compete with Mary’s strong devotion to God. The couple married two years after the death of Lee’s mother. Naturally, Lee yearned for female companionship. Mary Custis had the status, wealth, and stability Lee’s mother never enjoyed. However, Mary was not prepared for the abrupt change that her marriage to Lee wrought. They were markedly different in habit. Lee considered punctuality to be the essence of courtesy. Mary enjoyed being late to anything. Lee was studious in dress; his wife wore what suited her fancy, inappropriate though it might be. The husband was accustomed to neatness and order in living quarters; Mary was lazy and careless around their home. She expected social attention, which did not come in the move from a gay mansion to a bare apartment in the Fort Monroe, Virginia, officers’ quarters. Spoiled and helpless before her wedding, she became more so in barren army outposts she found repulsive. Visits to Arlington House became more frequent as family size increased. Childbirth at that time was a harrowing experience for both mother and child. Terrible pain marked every step; after-effects such as postnatal hemorrhage and infections were commonplace. Mary Lee went through the ordeal seven times. That all seven children survived and lived full lives is remarkable. A son, Custis, was born at Fort Monroe after the first year’s marriage. The other six children were all born at Arlington House. Mary on occasion would accompany her husband to established locales such as St. Louis, New York, and Baltimore, but she spent more

time at Arlington House. In 1855, after Lee’s tenure at West Point, the family lived full-time at Mary’s home. It was well that this separation existed for Mary. The couple’s seven children came in a 14-year period. Mary seemed always to be either pregnant or getting over the throes of childbirth. The birth of the second child, also named Mary, was extremely painful and produced abscesses. The health of the mother was never the same thereafter. Periodic colds occurred; then, in the early 1850s, appeared the first signs of crippling arthritis. Pain increased while mobility decreased. Mary was outspokenly bitter when the Union dissolved. The advent of war was the work of “fanatical abolitionists, unprincipled & cruel,” she stated. “Even after the election of Abraham Lincoln by this faction, peace might have been maintained if they had not predetermined to provoke the South to hostilities or if their chosen President had possessed the moral courage to resist the evil influences that were brought to bear upon him.” Civil war began. Union soldiers prepared to cross the Potomac River in order to control the southern bank of the river opposite Washington, D.C. Having to abandon Arlington House added to her miseries. Mary saw her husband often during the war years. Their love for one another never diminished. However, arthritis took a heavy toll. By 1863 Mrs. Lee was confined to a wheelchair. She maintained composure and was always cheerful to her children. Friends who called on her were amazed by her optimism of Confederate victory. In the last winter of the war, the rented Lee home in Richmond became a veritable sockknitting factory. Mary, the daughters, and a host of acquaintances gathered regularly to make woolen socks for barefooted soldiers in the field. A caller described the knitting room as “like an industrial city—everybody so busy.” The commanding general always acknowledged receipt of a shipment. The postwar years in Lexington lacked the splendor Mary had once known at Arlington House, yet she rarely complained. Invalidism prevented her from being the social mistress

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of a college president. Photographs of the time show gray ringlets of hair hanging loosely under a lace-trimmed hat. The face seemed sharper but was masked by the hint of a smile. She still talked in lively animation. And always there was the open love she felt for Robert E. Lee. To the end, she cut his hair when it looked in need of trimming. In 1873, two years a widow, Mary endured great pain to make one last trip to Arlington House. The mansion was in ruins, gardens buried amid weeds, thousands of soldier graves scattered everywhere. The sight shattered all of Mary’s memories as a youth. Three months later, she died in Lexington. Her daughter Mildred recalled that in her final moments Mary Custis spoke of a young girl, full of life, frolicking at a utopian estate overlooking the capital of a nation.

and defiant to the end, Mary was the first Lee member to be cremated. LEE, MILDRED CHILDE (1845–1905). “Milly” Lee had the misfortune to be the baby of the family, the last of seven children. She was christened with the name of General Robert E. Lee’s sister. Her parents and siblings often called her “Precious Life” because she had her father’s warm, family-oriented nature. Mildred tended to be spoiled and willful, especially when a doting father was nearby. Except for time spent at St. Mary’s School in Raleigh, North Carolina, Milly was at home tending to the dogs, cats, and brood of chickens that lived at Arlington House. The general once teased her by writing, “I see for [the chickens] no prospect of peace but the frying pan.” Milly was a teenager when civil war ended. Her greatest concern was whether the family would suffer poverty. However, during the short stay at Derwent in the summer of 1865, she took comfort from her father being “enthusiastic about a home life, however humble after those five years in a tent.” The family settled into the president’s home in Lexington. New friends described the 20-year-old Mildred as “not beautiful, but had a bright, interesting face and a pleasing personality, and fine literary taste and culture.” To the surprise of the Lee family, Mildred took charge of housekeeping duties in Lexington, and she did it with an authority no one had ever seen. Her mother’s deteriorating condition was one reason. Love for an aging father was a factor. Her resignation never to marry may also have played a role. In truth, she remained a spinster because she never found a man like her father. “To me,” she wrote, “he seems a Hero—other men small in comparison.” Father and daughter became increasingly close in the Lexington years. When Mildred contracted typhoid fever in 1868, and hovered near death for several days, Lee was at her bedside. She survived the disease (but lost all of her hair). The death of her father two years later was a permanent mental setback. Soon thereafter, Mildred began showing that she had inherited her mother’s arthritic condition.

LEE, MARY CUSTIS (1835–1922). The “outsider” in the Robert E. Lee family was the eldest daughter and second child, Mary. She was named for her mother but displayed few maternal traits. There never was place for her in the family circle, which is the way young Mary wished it. Her father called her Daughter, which sounds distant. She grew up tall and angular, large-eyed and intelligent. Although Mary had many suitors and grew more attractive with age, she was too outspoken to form any lasting relationships. Even after the Civil War, when both father and mother were ailing, daughter Mary seemed quite content to let younger sister Mildred take care of the parents. Mary happily accepted her share of the Arlington House compensation and, with a zest for adventure, spent most of the period 1871–1914 traveling through Europe and Asia. She jealously guarded her independence and, hence, could count on but few friends. In 1902 she gained national attention when she was arrested in Alexandria, Virginia, for riding in the back of a streetcar, a place restricted to black Americans. Late in life, oblivious to history, Mary burned all correspondence she had with her father. She was the last of the Lee children to die, and the oldest (87). By prior arrangement,

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After Mrs. Lee’s passing, Mildred spent her life in traveling. The family anchors were gone. She cared for her ailing brother Custis for a period. Then she began drifting from place to place. On 27 March 1905 she died of a stroke while visiting in New Orleans. Her remains joined those of her parents in the Lee crypt at Washington and Lee University.

Robert Jr. settled into a farmer’s life at an inherited estate, Romacoke, on the Pamunkey River and near brother Rooney Lee’s White House property. The younger brother married twice. His first wife, Charlotte Haxall, a best friend to Rob’s sister Mildred, died childless in 1872. Twenty-two years later, he married Juliet Carter, who was 17 year his junior. The couple had two daughters. Robert Jr. proved to be as successful in literature as in farming. In 1904 he completed his Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee, a highly personal memoir filled with excerpts from family letters. The book remains one of the half dozen basic reference works on his father. Rob Lee died in October 1915 and was buried in the Lee chapel at Washington and Lee University. His wife, Juliet, lived but a year thereafter.

LEE, ROBERT EDWARD, JR. “ROB” (1843– 1915). “Rob” Lee was the third son and sixth child of Robert E. and Mary Lee. He was born and raised at Arlington House. The boy was as dutiful as a parent could wish. Young Lee himself recalled, “I always knew it was impossible to disobey my father. I felt it in me, I never thought why, but was perfectly sure when he gave me an order that it had to be obeyed.” In contrast to his two older brothers, Rob never considered a military career. The teenager enrolled at the University of Virginia but eventually was infected with war fever. In March 1862, he enlisted as a private in the Rockbridge Artillery. Why he chose a Shenandoah Valley unit is unclear. The battery was raised at the Rockbridge County seat, Lexington—the town where the Lee family would spend the postwar years. Lee’s battery helped repulse the first wave of Union attacks at Antietam. During a lull in the action, the 17-year-old Lee saw his father dismounted and talking with aides. He walked over and saluted the general, who was obviously pleased that the son was unhurt. Young Robert then asked, “General, are you going to send us in again?” “Yes, my son,” Lee replied, “you all must do what you can to help drive those people back.” Friends often remarked at the striking resemblance between father and son. The facial shape was identical, but the son wore a mustache and goatee in the war years to conceal his youthfulness. On 20 October 1862, Robert Jr. was appointed a lieutenant and aide to his brother, newly commissioned General William Henry Fitzhugh Lee. Robert served on “Rooney” Lee’s staff for the remainder of the war. He was twice wounded and attained a captain’s rank.

LEE, SIDNEY SMITH (1792–1869). Robert E. Lee’s older brother, the two siblings were with one another through most of the growing years. In 1820, Smith Lee received appointment as a midshipman in the U.S. Navy. His whole career was spent as a naval officer. Smith Lee was best man at the Lee-Custis wedding. The brothers came together in the Mexican War. Following the heavy bombardment of Veracruz, Robert expressed relief that Smith had emerged unhurt. “I felt awful at the thought of your being shot before me,” he wrote. In 1850 Smith Lee received promotion to commander. He successively accompanied Matthew Perry on the expedition to Japan, spent a term as commandant of the U.S. Naval Academy, and was in charge of the huge Philadelphia naval yard. Lee resigned from the navy when Virginia seceded. High-spirited and charming, he led diarist Mary Chesnut to write in July 1861, “He is handsome enough to bring up the average. I like Smith Lee better [than his brother], and I like his looks too. I know Smith Lee well. Can anybody say they know his brother?” Three of Smith Lee’s sons (including Fitzhugh) served in the Southern armies. Yet Smith himself was never an enthusiastic

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supporter of the Southern cause, although he performed every task given him with success. He secured Gosport Navy Yard at Portsmouth, Virginia; led the prestigious James River Squadron protecting Richmond; and—for the last half of the war—was chief of the Office of Order and Detail. This watchdog agency oversaw all paperwork and personnel in the Confederate naval system. After the war, Smith Lee engaged in a bit of farming. However, a liver ailment slowly took his strength. He died in July 1869 and was buried in Christ Church Cemetery, Alexandria.

Physically, Rooney Lee stood out in a crowd. Fully six feet, two inches tall, and weighing near 200 pounds, he had the dark eyes and hair of the Lees. His many friends considered him s quiet but capable gentleman. With the advent of war, Lee accepted a captaincy in the 9th Virginia Cavalry. Promotion to colonel followed naturally as he repeatedly displayed attributes of leadership. Although he first attained fame in the Seven Days’ Campaign, Lee was too heartbroken to enjoy it. His infant son had died of pneumonia. Lee continued to excel in field service. Gallantry at Second Manassas and Antietam won him promotion to brigadier general. Rooney was not a dashing soldier, a fellow brigade commander recalled. “He was quite content with the serious, earnest, steady performance of his duties. . . . In his relations with his subordinates, he was the perfection of military propriety.” At the June 1863 battle of Brandy Station, Lee was shot in the thigh. He was recuperating at his wife’s family home when captured by Federal soldiers. For nine months, Lee was a prisoner at Fort Monroe and Fort Lafayette (installations that his father had improved years earlier). At Christmastime 1863, Lee had to weather another personal loss. His wife died after a battle with tuberculosis. Lee was exchanged in March 1864, and he returned to duty as a major general. At 27, he was the youngest division commander in the Confederate army. His subsequent cavalry service was limited because of the declining strength of the mounted arm of his father’s army. Lee returned to a White House in ruins. He slowly restored the property to workable state. In 1867 he married Mary Tabb Bolling of a well-to-do Petersburg family. The couple had two sons. Lee moved his family in 1873 to the ancestral mansion, Ravensworth (near modern-day Annandale). He himself had a notable postwar career: president of the Virginia Agricultural Society, state senator (1875– 1878), and U.S. congressman (1887–1891). Only seven months after completing his second term in Congress, Lee died of congestive heart failure.

LEE, WILLIAM HENRY FITZHUGH “ROONEY” (1813–1891). The second son and third child of Robert E. and Mary Lee, he was born at Arlington House only two weeks before the father departed for duty in St. Louis, Missouri. The child was named for a close friend and counselor to his grandmother. In fact, when the Lee family abandoned Stratford Hall and moved to Alexandria, they lived for a time in a home owned by Mr. Fitzhugh. Except for General Lee, family members called the second son Rooney, a Celt word that means “darling.” His father addressed him more formally as Fitzhugh. He was his mother’s child, indolent and impulsive. At the age of eight, the precocious youth was playing with tools in a barn when a straw cutter took off the tips of two fingers on Rooney’s left hand. Like father and older brother, the lad wanted to go to West Point, but he was not a scholar. In 1854 he entered Harvard University and spent three years more in extracurricular activities than in the classroom. Rooney drank and smoked—not traits shared by his father. Robert E. Lee used his influence with General-in-Chief Winfield Scott to get Rooney a direct commission in the U.S. Army. He became a lieutenant in the 2nd U.S. Infantry. A year’s duty in Texas, the Pacific Northwest, and Utah was as much military life as Lee wanted. He resigned from the army, married Charlotte Wickham of a prominent Hanover County family, and settled into his White House estate on the Pamunkey River. (In earlier years, George Washington had courted Martha Custis there.)

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Originally buried at Ravensworth, the remains were moved to the family crypt at Washington and Lee University. Rooney Lee—the least promising of the seven Lee children—became the most successful.

Nevertheless, the 6 May event is part of history. If nothing else, it reflects the adoration felt by soldiers for their general. LEESBURG, VIRGINIA. Leesburg is one of the oldest cities in northern Virginia. This seat of Loudoun County lies close to the Potomac River. Its first association with combat came in the War of 1812, when the federal government transferred such documents as the original Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution there as a temporary haven from British soldiers. Leesburg had become a major road junction when civil war began. This made it a vital target for both sides. The city changed hands several times in the war years. It also was a base of operations for Colonel John Mosby and his Confederate rangers, who prowled the area throughout the second half of the conflict. When Robert E. Lee began his first raid into the north, he used Leesburg as the jump-off point. The general was not in good health in those first days of September 1862. He had accidentally fallen and instinctively put out his hands to cushion contact with the ground. The result was one hand broken and the other badly sprained. He led the Army of Northern Virginia into Maryland while riding in a carriage.

“LEE TO THE REAR” INCIDENT. After more than 150 years, the Lee to the Rear story remains one of the most remembered human episodes of the Civil War in Virginia. The problem with the incident is: Which version does one believe? The facts behind the incident are indisputable. At dawn on 6 May 1864, Federals delivered a heavy attack against the Confederate right (southern) flank in the Wilderness. Lee’s divisions—scattered, bloodied, weary from the previous day’s battle—began falling back through the thick woods. Lee rode back to the area and saw indications of a pending rout. Just before the Southern line dissolved, a fresh column of Confederate soldiers double-timed toward the front. It was the veteran Texas Brigade, with the rest of General James Longstreet’s corps behind it. Lee was so elated to see these reinforcements that he galloped forward to lead the Texans into the fighting. Suddenly, from the Confederate ranks, came shouts, “Go back, General Lee! Go back! We won’t go forward unless you go back!” Reluctantly, the commander backed away. Longstreet’s men slammed into the attacking Union columns and the outcome of the battle shifted to the Confederates’ favor. The Lee to the Rear incident became one of the unforgettable episodes of the Wilderness Campaign. Naturally, with time, it assumed hues and dimensions that varied between passionate and exaggerated. Historian Robert Krick discovered 38 “eyewitness” accounts of that single occurrence among the two days of the shooting, shouting hell of battle. Certainly an entire brigade of Texas soldiers did not shout the exact three sentences like a well-trained choir, and whether it was only Texans hollering instructions to Lee. Within the next week, three other Lee to the Rear episodes supposedly took place in the Spotsylvania Campaign.

LETCHER, JOHN (1813–1884). Letcher looked like a man who had stepped from the pages of a Charles Dickens novel. Baldheaded, florid, bespectacled, and stout, he was a warm gentleman who enjoyed his bourbon. Letcher was not brilliant, but he was known for incorruptible integrity. This asset was fully tested during his term as Virginia’s Civil War governor. The Lexington native, one of the first graduates of Randolph-Macon College, practiced law while aiming toward a career in politics. He rose steadily through the ranks of the Jacksonian Democrats. In 1850 he was a delegate to the convention that liberalized the state constitution. Grateful voters sent Letcher to Congress for four terms (1851–1859). He then won election as governor after a close race. Letcher took office recovering from erysipelas and the death of his 10-year-old son.

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In the secession crisis, he championed patience and compromise. His stand increasingly drew anger from the growing ranks of Virginia secessionists. Letcher remained steady and stubborn. On the night before the Virginia Convention was to take another vote on leaving the Union, a mob gathered near the governor’s mansion. Letcher wondered if the crowd was coming for his guidance or his head. He refused to endorse secession until Abraham Lincoln called on the states for volunteers to crush the Southern “rebellion.” Allowing federal troops to march across Virginia without the state’s permission was coercion: a usurpation of state sovereignty. Letcher replied to Lincoln, “You have chosen to inaugurate civil war, and having done so we will meet you, in a spirit as determined as the Administration has exhibited toward the South.” Being governor of the most powerful state in the Confederacy as well as the principal battleground on which the war would be fought placed a heavy burden on Letcher. He was a calm, conservative man who offered little more than a steady hand. However, he got along better with Jefferson Davis than did any other state leader. Letcher was also willing to compromise. For example, he thought conscription to be unconstitutional, but he adopted a policy of win the war first and test constitutionality in its own good time. Helpless to stop the exodus of 50 western counties and their formation as a new state, Letcher also failed to gain any support to fight rampant extortion and speculation. Old Dominion conservatives were continually irritated by the governor’s cooperation with Confederate officials. Letcher nevertheless ended his term in 1864 with praise as “War Governor” and “Honest John.” He returned to a Lexington home burned by Federals the preceding spring. He was then taken into custody for seven months while federal authorities deliberated whether to put him on trial. They did nothing. After his release, Letcher resumed his law practice and served a term in the Virginia General Assembly. A stroke in 1876 paralyzed the right side of his body. Letcher endured eight years of suffering before his death.

LEXINGTON, VIRGINIA. The seat of Rockbridge County, Lexington is on high ground at the southern end of the Shenandoah Valley. It was settled largely by Scotch-Irish immigrants. By 1860 it was an isolated and provincial town of 2,000 residents, dominated by Virginia Military Institute, Washington College, and Presbyterians. Its most famous wartime citizen was Thomas J. Jackson. In April 1861, the VMI professor led a contingent of cadets to Richmond to serve as drillmasters for Confederate recruits. Jackson became internationally known as Stonewall. After he was mortally wounded at the 1863 Battle of Chancellorsville, his body was brought back to Lexington for burial. A year later, in June 1864, Federals under General David Hunter first bombarded and then occupied the town. The VMI buildings were burned, as were small businesses and a dozen homes—including that of Virginia Governor John Letcher. Robert E. Lee had never seen Lexington before he arrived there in September 1865 to become president of impoverished Washington College. He would spend the last five years of his life as the town’s most prominent citizen. Often the general would take afternoon horseback rides through the country. On many occasions he would dismount at the town cemetery and stand silently at the grave of Jackson, his most trusted subordinate. LINCOLN, ABRAHAM (1809–1865). The Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter, South Carolina, lasted 36 hours and changed the national situation from crisis to war. Among new President Lincoln’s most immediate tasks was to find an officer to command a 75,000-man army to be raised to suppress the “rebellion” by Southern states. General-inChief Winfield Scott urged Lincoln to offer the position to Robert E. Lee. The invitation came indirectly through the highly influential Francis P. Blair Sr. Lee declined the offer. No evidence exists that Lee ever met the 16th president. Lincoln did sign Lee’s 20 March 1861 promotion to colonel in the U.S. Army, and the two men came to know one another well by reputation.

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a slate. This, plus an amazingly clear memory, enabled him to produce what many regard as the best of the early military biographies of Lee. It appeared in 1886, five years before Long died of a stroke. His Memoirs of Robert E. Lee contains a host of personal observations. For example, Long was with Lee and Jackson when the two generals sat on wooden boxes in the night and planned the flank march Jackson would make the next day around the Union army at Chancellorsville. The two officers had finished talking. Suddenly, Long wrote, Jackson’s sword which had been leaning against a tree, fell to the ground. Long retrieved it with an ill omen coursing through him.

Lincoln’s role in saving the Union is well documented and continues to make him—in the judgment of historians—the greatest of our presidents. His murder at the moment of victory added martyrdom to his memory. Lincoln earnestly desired a peace with malice toward none and charity for all. At his death in April 1865, the conquered South lost the best friend it had. LONG, ARMISTEAD LINDSAY (1827–1891). Thirty-two years old when he joined Robert E. Lee’s staff, Armistead Long would become the highest-ranking officer from the West Point Class of 1850. He had spent 11 years of solid service in the artillery when he cast his lot with the Confederacy—against the wishes of his father-in-law, Union General Edwin V. Sumner, who offered Long an appointment as aide-de-camp. Long served briefly in western Virginia prior to accepting appointment as a member of Lee’s inner circle. He was an impressive looking officer: six feet tall, handsome, with a heavy mustache and commanding presence. Initially, Colonel Long performed reconnaissance for Lee. However, he proved more useful in overseeing the movement and use of artillery batteries. In the 1862 Fredericksburg campaign, Lee praised Long for being “particularly useful on posting and securing our artillery.” The commander reorganized his army following the 1863 battle of Gettysburg. Long was promoted to brigadier general and command of the artillery of Stonewall Jackson’s old corps. With the possible exception of General Porter Alexander, Long proved to be Lee’s most reliable gunner during the last 18 months of the war. Long was hampered in that period with what was diagnosed as “facial neuralgia.” It still troubled him after Appomattox, when he became chief engineer for the James River and Kanawha Canal Company. In 1869 Long completely lost his vision from Guillain-Barre syndrome. He spent the remaining 20 years of his life in total darkness. Yet in a sanitarium for the blind, Long mastered the art of writing on

LONGSTREET, JAMES (1821–1904). Today he remains the most controversial general among Robert E. Lee’s high command. No signs exist that opinions of James Longstreet will ever mold into a single path. He has only himself to blame. The record shows that his ambitions exceeded his ability. The South Carolina native was a low graduate of West Point. He rose through the ranks in the prewar years to major and paymaster. Longstreet was the first Confederate officer appointed a brigadier general. He and his close friend Joseph E. Johnston worked well together at First Manassas. There, Longstreet acquired an ever-growing predilection for defensive fighting. In January 1862, personal tragedy struck hard. A scarlet fever epidemic swept through Richmond. Three of Longstreet’s children died within a week. His gay and outgoing personality vanished. Thereafter, he was a soldier and little else. Johnston’s May 1862 attack at Seven Pines failed in part because of tactical mistakes made by Longstreet. It took him awhile to acquire admiration for Lee because he did not regard him as Johnston’s equal. Victories at Second Manassas and Fredericksburg, plus the draw at Antietam, elevated Longstreet’s estimate of Lee. At the same time, however, the successes fully convinced Longstreet that going on the offensive was unnecessary and costly.

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“Old Pete’s” size complemented his ego. A large, powerful man, six feet tall and weighing 200 pounds, he wore a long beard and spoke in a low voice. Usually he attended to duties with an unlit cigar in his mouth. Longstreet became the senior corps commander in the Army of Northern Virginia. Although he was enthusiastic and energetic when he agreed with strategy, he was sullen and hesitant when orders were contrary to his thinking. Longstreet clearly demonstrated this at Gettysburg. Lee called him “my old war horse” because he seemed an unflappable leader. A staff officer who likened him to Julius Caesar considered the general’s greatest strength to be “the seeming ease with which he can handle and arrange large numbers of troops.” At critical moments in the fighting at both Second Manassas and Gettysburg, however, Longstreet displayed a reluctance to attack. Postwar Maryland governor John L. Carroll remembered Lee saying on one occasion, “General Longstreet when once in a fight was a most brilliant soldier, but he was the hardest man to move that I had in my army.” A contrasting view came from Longstreet’s chief of staff. He saw the general as “a rock of steadiness when sometimes in battle the world seemed flying to pieces.” Longstreet always sought independent command. Twice Lee gave him free rein: in southeastern Virginia and eastern Tennessee. Both times the general demonstrated that he was best not left to his own devices. On 6 May 1864, in the chaos of the fighting at the Wilderness, Longstreet was accidentally shot by his own men. A bullet entered his throat and passed through his right shoulder. Severe bleeding followed, along with paralysis of his arm. Longstreet never regained use of the limb. The general had to learn how to write with his left hand. He was a crippled corps commander for the remainder of the war. Nevertheless, when Lee first mentioned surrendering at Appomattox, he demurred when Longstreet replied, “Not yet.” The disabled general settled in New Orleans, renewed his friendship with Ulysses S. Grant (who had married Longstreet’s cousin),

joined the Republican Party, and became an apologist for Radical Republican policies. His open criticisms of the Confederate hierarchy, particularly Lee, drew the wrath of Southern leaders, who quickly pointed to Longstreet’s inactivity at Gettysburg as the primary reason for Southern defeat. The more Longstreet sought to respond, verbally and in print, the louder the return damnation became. Meanwhile, his health began failing. Rheumatism plagued Longstreet; deafness became more obvious; pain in the feet prevented him from standing for any length of time; his speech was largely a whisper; he lost the ability to maintain a conversation. In 1890 the old soldier began work on his wartime memoirs. Yet he had difficulty in obtaining official records, and former comrades in arms refused to share material with him. An 1889 fire at Longstreet’s home destroyed much of the manuscript collection he had amassed. His memory was failing noticeably. Former staff members helped as much as they could. A copy editor, Pascal J. Moran of the Atlanta Constitution, wrote most of the memoir, and he used a much freer hand than prudence would have allowed. Longstreet approved the final copy, though one wonders how much of the narrative he comprehended. In 1897 Longstreet married Helen Dortch. He was 76; she was 34. Mrs. Longstreet outlived her husband by 58 years, and she continued to the end to defend the general’s reputation. Cancer developed in Longstreet’s right eye. He was visiting a daughter in Gainesville, Georgia, when he died 2 January 1904 of pneumonia. Longstreet may deserve better in the judgment of history, but his own postwar stubbornness and blunders led to a self-destruction that may never be adequately repaired. LORING, WILLIAM WING (1818–1886). William Loring loved the soldier’s life, but his stellar career upward began a slow descent in the Civil War. Born in Wilmington, North Carolina, he fought Indians at the age of 14 and received an officer’s commission four years later.

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Loring studied law briefly and served a term in the Florida legislature. He returned to the army with the outbreak of the Mexican War. At the climactic battle of Chapultepec, Loring was seriously wounded. Surgeons amputated his right arm without anesthesia. Loring calmly smoked a cigar through the ordeal. When he left the U.S. Army in 1861, Loring was the youngest line colonel on duty. This quickly brought him a brigadier’s rank in Confederate service. A dark man with receding hair and piratical mustache, Loring was experienced but uninspiring. He openly looked down on volunteer soldiers. This caused a member of the 21st Virginia to assert, “The men were very indignant and put Loring down at once as an officer who knew nothing.” He could be brusque, and he always was argumentative. This revealed both a lack of aptitude for high command and an incapacity for maintaining tight organization among his troops. Further, a staff officer declared, Loring “was always filling himself with brandy, thus incapacitating himself for his duties.” In late summer 1861, Loring commanded a band of recruits known as the Army of the Northwest. It was stationed in the mountains of western Virginia. The three Confederate generals with commands in the area (John Floyd, Henry Wise, and Loring) were operating at odds. President Jefferson Davis sent Robert E. Lee there to straighten out the personal frictions and lack of cooperation. Loring immediately balked: he did not consider Lee his equal as a soldier and showed it in the poor operations Lee planned against Federals posted at Cheat Mountain. Following that debacle, Loring encountered a tough tenure serving under General Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley. In late spring 1862, Loring was transferred to the Western theater. He commanded a division under General John C. Pemberton but quarreled more than he performed. Loring then served in the Army of Tennessee until the end of the war. A battle wound in the Atlanta campaign helped his reputation to a degree. By April 1865, he was the Confederacy’s senior major general on active duty.

During 1869–1879 Loring was a general in the army of the khedive of Egypt. He was visiting New York City when, in 1886, he died after 10 days of uncontrollable hiccoughs. “LOST ORDER.” Robert E. Lee’s victory at Second Manassas in late August 1862 cleared Virginia of any serious Union threat. The Southern general thereupon determined to take the initiative, cross the Potomac River, and carry the war into the North. On halting at Frederick, Maryland, Lee made two discoveries: General George B. McClellan had started a pursuit with the Army of the Potomac, and an 11,000-man Union garrison at Harpers Ferry had not abandoned the post when Lee made his northward march. Harpers Ferry had to be secured because it was on Lee’s escape route and it stood across his communication lines with Richmond. Ever audacious, Lee took a daring risk. He would split his numerically inferior army into three parts while an overwhelming force was moving directly against him. Half of Lee’s army would move southwestward and seize Harpers Ferry. Lee would take a fourth of his army westward over South Mountain to Hagerstown, Maryland, to meet any threat from north and west. The remaining fourth would defend the crest of South Mountain and at least give Lee time to reunite his army. All of these directives were spelled out line-for-line in Special Orders No. 191. A copy of the directive went to each of Lee’s division commanders. The movements then began. Two days after Lee departed from Frederick, McClellan’s army arrived and fanned out in the fields surrounding the town. An Indiana soldier found three cigars lying on the ground. Wrapped around them was a copy of Special Orders No. 191. Within an hour, McClellan was beneficiary of one of the greatest security leaks in American military history. The Union commander now knew not only where Lee’s army was but also what he planned to do in the days ahead. Moreover, the massive Federal army at the moment was closer to Lee at Hagerstown and closer to Jackson at Harpers Ferry than Lee and Jackson were to each other. The discovery was virtually a

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timetable for the Army of Northern Virginia. If McClellan took advantage of the good roads and balmy weather, and if he acted promptly, he could annihilate Lee’s army and possibly end the Civil War. McClellan failed on all accounts. Growing uncertainty and self-doubt began to overcome the general. Suddenly the amazing gift looked like a Trojan horse: an enticement to an ambush. While McClellan dragged his feet, Lee rapidly got his army back together again for what became the bloodiest single day of fighting in the war. Decades of research have solved the mystery of the “Lost Order.” Every division commander got a copy and could account for it. General Harvey Hill’s division had just been transferred to Jackson’s corps. Stonewall Jackson, to ensure that Hill knew of Lee’s new plan, sent a copy of his orders to Hill. The North Carolinian retained the copy he received from Lee’s headquarters. It was the copy from Jackson that mysteriously went astray.

Longstreet, who was seriously wounded in the 1864 Battle of the Wilderness. The city inadvertently became part of General Ulysses S. Grant’s 1864 Overland Campaign. Grant ordered General David Hunter, commanding forces in the Shenandoah Valley, to move southeast from Staunton, destroy the Orange & Alexandria Railroad as he marched, then seize and secure Charlottesville. Hunter would then join forces with General Philip Sheridan’s large cavalry command for a heavy attack on Richmond from the west. Hunter decided, however, to ignore Grant’s instructions and wage his own contest. From Staunton, his men continued up the Valley and destroyed everything of value in Lexington. Hunter dismissed the idea of a linkup with Sheridan. Instead, he turned east and pillaged as he moved toward what he regarded the greater prize of Lynchburg. When Lee learned of Hunter’s presence in Lexington, it was clear that the next Federal objective was Lynchburg. On 12 June, Lee dispatched General Jubal Early and some 8,000 troops from Stonewall Jackson’s old corps to stop the threat. Half of Early’s force reached Lynchburg the following day to strengthen the town’s defenders, which included home guard, reserves, convalescents, and some cadets from Virginia Military Institute. General Harvey Hill, commanding the city, was erecting hasty but strong entrenchments. Meanwhile, Hunter took the wrong road to Lynchburg and compounded his slowness with needless foraging. He reached Lynchburg before Early had all of his troops at hand. A quick assault by Hunter’s 18,000 troops would easily have swept aside the defenders. Yet the Union general convinced himself that he was outnumbered. Early contributed to the ruse by sending an empty train up and down the Orange & Alexandria Railroad. It would leave the city quietly, go north a couple of miles, then return with whistle blowing, steam hissing, soldiers in town cheering with every “arrival.” A few Union stabs the next day were easily repulsed. Under cover of darkness on 18 June, Hunter began retracing his steps to Lexington. Early angrily gave pursuit. Soon the marches became a race. Hunter dashed past

LYNCHBURG, VIRGINIA. The center of commerce for the south-central piedmont region of Virginia, Confederate Lynchburg increasingly became a vital military hub in the last year of the war. In 1860 the city had 6,800 residents. It was known for tobacco and transportation. Thirty-nine tobacco manufacturers (“factories”) annually shipped tons of the state’s most important export. Three railroads ran west, north, and east. The city was an always-busy port on the James River and Kanawha Canal, which connected the Shenandoah Valley with Richmond. Its sons enlisted early and in great numbers. A majority of volunteers served in the 2nd Virginia Cavalry and the 11th and 24th Virginia Infantries. One of Lynchburg’s most promising officers, General Samuel Garland, was killed in the 1862 Battle of South Mountain, Maryland. The town’s central location and its transportation facilities made it an ideal haven for convalescing soldiers. Lynchburg slowly became home for one of the largest hospital complexes in the entire Confederacy. Among its thousands of patients was General James

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the Shenandoah Valley opening and fled into the mountains of West Virginia. That left Early and his troops with no opposition. “Old Jube” decided to make a raid of his own, with the Union capital, Washington, D.C., his target.

Grant broke through Lee’s lines at Petersburg the following April. Lee began his retreat. His hope was to reach Lynchburg and make a new stand there. Lee would come up 20 miles short, at a village called Appomattox.

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M His useless marches, and failure on two occasions to attack properly, gave the impression of confusion and made Magruder in the government’s eyes one of the campaign’s failures. The press singled him out for special criticism. Lee transferred him to the Texas frontier. Magruder came to the spotlight one time thereafter. On New Year’s Day 1863, he led a force that attacked and captured the Union stronghold at Galveston. This victory brought Magruder lasting praise from Texans. At war’s end, he fled to Mexico without a parole. He served as a major general in the Imperial forces until the overthrow of Maximilian. Thereafter, Magruder’s health declined. He was unable to walk or talk when he died in poverty. However, after New York editor Horace Greeley published a scathing obituary, the Galveston News responded, “Any living ass can kick a dead lion.”

MAGRUDER, JOHN BANKHEAD (1807– 1871). One of the first field officers Lee transferred from the Army of Northern Virginia was Major General John Magruder. No one is quite sure where his nickname, “Prince John,” originated, but suggestive sources are many: a penchant for theatrics, impeccable manners, social graces, flamboyant behavior on occasion, love of parties where alcohol flowed freely. Magruder possessed both intelligence and talent, but they did not appear consistently. Four months younger than Lee, he was born at the Rappahannock River village of Port Royal. West Point–trained, Magruder was three times brevetted for gallantry as an artillerist in the Mexican War. He received a brigadier general’s commission in June 1861 and immediately gained newspaper attention. Prince John stood six feet tall, had black hair, thin lips, well-groomed mustache, and gaudy uniforms. He was put in charge of defenses at the tip of Virginia’s lower peninsula. Much activity gave the impression of a leader hard at work. That was a deception. Colonel (later General) Harvey Hill wrote his wife, “Magruder in command is always drunk and giving foolish and absurd orders.” Nevertheless, Magruder’s earthworks stalled General George B. McClellan’s 1862 Peninsula Campaign for a month. The general’s great downfall came in Lee’s counteroffensive against McClellan’s army. Offensive tactics seemed to bring out the worst in Magruder. Controversy still exists over whether in the fighting Magruder suffered from lack of sleep, illness, reaction to medicine, mental distress, or simple drunkenness.

MAHONE, WILLIAM (1826–1895). Robert E. Lee did not have the opportunity to know “Billy” Mahone well, but the strange general was one of Lee’s best division commanders in the last year of the Civil War. The son of a Virginia tavern keeper, Mahone early became familiar with drinking, swearing, and gambling. He graduated from Virginia Military Institute and embarked on a career of railroad building. Mahone was president of the Petersburg and Norfolk line when civil war came. Boundless energy and dependable service as colonel of the 6th Virginia brought

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him promotion late in 1861 to brigadier. That rank would hold for two and a half years, not because of any command weakness, but because no opportunities for battle and advancement came his way. Mahone was one of those officers who never rise to full potential until fully challenged to do so. His appearance and habits were hardly recommendations for promotion. Barely five feet, three inches tall, Mahone weighed no more than 110 pounds. Early in the war, when his wife learned that he had received a flesh wound, she moaned, “Now I know that it is serious, for William has no flesh whatsoever.” Deep-set eyes peered out from heavy brows; drooping mustache and a beard that extended to his chest were startling; his feet were so long and narrow that they resembled bed slats. Mahone’s voice was a falsetto tenor. A staff officer thought him “the oddest and daintiest little specimen of humanity I had ever seen.” On 30 July 1864, Federals attempted to break the Petersburg defenses in a fight known as the Battle of the Crater. Union attackers were on the verge of victory when Mahone and his fresh division spearheaded a counterattack that drove the Federals from the field. Thereafter, until Appomattox, Mahone was a bruising fighter, always punctual and always fearless. His first postwar success was the construction of the Norfolk & Western Railway. The exgeneral and his wife named the depots along the way. When they once fell into dispute over what to call one station, they acknowledged the impasse and settled on Disputanta. The railroad builder also created one of the most powerful political machines in Virginia history. His “Readjuster” Party was actually Republican in nature. Mahone’s 15-year reign as political czar had equal shares of the disruptive and the productive. He was serving in the U.S. Senate when he died of a stroke. By his wishes, Mahone was buried with his former Confederate soldiers in Petersburg. His whole life could be summarized by a wartime comment: “When Mahone moves out, somebody is apt to get hurt.”

MALVERN HILL, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF (1 JULY 1862). Only twice in the Civil War did Robert E. Lee allow his aggressiveness to overcome his judgment. Once was at ­Gettysburg; the other came a year earlier at Malvern Hill. The site of the final battle engagement of the Seven Days’ Campaign was a high plateau. It was a mile and a half long, three-quarters of a mile wide. Natural ravines protected both flanks, and open ground lay in front. Malvern Hill was 150 feet above the banks of the nearby James River. The area had once belonged to Charles Carter, Robert E. Lee’s grandfather, but the general was unaware of the ancestral holding. For the first time in this 1862 campaign, the Army of the Potomac was united. It was also consolidated on the highest, most defensible ground it had seen on the peninsula. Union General George B. McClellan carefully placed 100 cannon across the front of Malvern Hill, with another 150 guns strengthening the flanks. The position looked too strong to be taken. However, Lee’s desire to crush the Union army had become desperation. Abandoned Federal equipment along every mile of McClellan’s retreat convinced Lee that the Union force was weak, possibly in morale as well as in materiel. And although Lee’s generals were unenthusiastic about an assault, most of the men in the ranks supported their commander’s belief that one more push would accomplish the job. Lee’s strategy that hot, cloudless Tuesday was again uncomplicated. Confederate batteries on left and right would lay down a heavy, converging fire. Infantry columns would then sweep across the field, drive up and onto Malvern Hill. What happened in the first stage should have been ample warning to Lee. His 16 guns fired a salvo or two. Then 37 Federal cannon— mostly rifled guns—sent a withering fire of surgical accuracy that either destroyed or silenced the Confederate artillery. Despite the one-sided artillery duel, Lee ordered the infantry forward. Again there was confusion about order of combat: who followed whom to where. At Malvern Hill, such disorder

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made no difference. It was a battle of Union artillery versus Confederate infantry. Cannon fire shredded each assaulting line as soon as it came within range. The 3rd Alabama lost half of its members, including six color bearers, killed in quick succession. Not one Southern unit came close to the brow of the plateau. Confederate General Harvey Hill watched the action with a heavy heart. “It was not war,” he said. “It was murder.” The killing stopped with sundown. Lee had suffered 5,400 losses. It was his worst defeat in the Seven Days’, but he had won the Peninsula Campaign. Richmond was no longer in danger.

years,” he warned those who would listen to him. “I know the Northern people well, and know that they will never yield in the contest except at the conclusion of a long and desperate struggle.” Improving in the face of emergency, Lee ordered defenses constructed along the Potomac, Rappahannock, and James Rivers, as well as at key points all over the state. He found the manpower base to be no base at all. Militia units existed only on paper. Enlistees were untrained and unarmed. Officers in the main were prominent citizens or local politicians. The state had no abundance of equipment. Weapons were scarce and generally antiquated. Every obstacle notwithstanding, Lee stead­ily created a military arm. Almost overnight, Richmond went from a quiet capital to an armed fortress. On 10 May, Lee received promotion to general in the Confederate army. He imparted to his lieutenants the devotion to duty and high sense of morale that had marked his more than 30 years of military service. His subalterns, in turn, passed on these attributes to the eager young men under their command. As a result, when Union forces advanced into Virginia, 40,000 soldiers and a dozen artillery batteries were waiting for them along Bull Run. What resulted on a hot Sunday was a collision between two armed mobs. The opposing generals, Gustave Beauregard and Irvin McDowell, never had a firm grip on the action. The side making the least mistakes would win. The North, on the offensive, had more opportunities for error. A daylong fight, highlighted by a stonewall-like defensive stand by Southern General Thomas J. Jackson, gave the south victory and a hero. Yet Lee deserved a large share of the praise.

MANASSAS JUNCTION, VIRGINIA. Located 25 miles southwest of Washington, D.C., the village marked the spot where the Manassas Gap Railroad, a 77-mile line stretching to Mount Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley, met the Orange & Alexandria line, which ran 148 miles from Alexandria to Lynchburg. Who controlled the junction commanded most of northern Virginia. Fighting for such control over a two-year span leveled the countryside. A Connecticut soldier arrived at Manassas in November 1862 and wrote, “This is one of the most wretched God forsaken places I ever saw. Nearly every building has been burned and not a living soul to be seen except soldiers. The country around has been stripped of everything by both armies and a man would almost as soon starve there as he would in the center of the Arabia Desert.” MANASSAS, VIRGINIA, FIRST BATTLE OF (21 JULY 1861). Robert E. Lee had never led troops in battle prior to civil war; and although he physically was not in the opening engagement at Manassas, his presence was very much on the field. It was Lee who fashioned the Confederate host that confronted Federal troops when they advanced across the Potomac River three months after Fort Sumter. On 23 April, Lee had assumed command of all Virginia units and recruits. The general’s first order of business was to prepare the state for long-term defense. “War may take ten

MANASSAS, VIRGINIA, SECOND BATTLE OF (29 AUGUST–1 SEPTEMBER 1862). John Pope was the second Union commander to be outwitted by the Lee-Jackson military partnership, and his downfall was the most embarrassing of all. When Robert E. Lee heard in mid-July that General George B. McClellan had been ordered to abandon the lower peninsula of

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Virginia, he concluded that the Army of the Potomac was going to reinforce Pope’s forces in the northern part of the state. Now was the time to join Jackson at Gordonsville and strike Pope before he could develop any union with McClellan’s returning army. On arrival at Gordonsville in the third week of August, Lee learned from cavalryman Jeb Stuart that Pope’s army was scattered all over the north side of the Rappahannock River. Lee was unwilling to risk a frontal attack across the river, even though he now had with him “Stonewall” Jackson, whose deceptions and maneuvers had produced a brilliant victory in the Shenandoah Valley. Lee determined on a typically bold but dangerous move. Pope had 65,000 soldiers, Lee only 50,000 men. Lee would divide his army into halves: James Longstreet’s divisions to occupy Pope’s attention in front, Jackson and his troops to make a secret, wide flank march around Pope’s right to sever the Union supply lines to Washington, D.C., and leave the Union host “stranded.” Jackson carried out his part of the strategy in spectacular form. Federal scouts saw Jackson depart from camp, but Pope convinced himself that the Confederates were retiring to the Shenandoah Valley. Thus ignored, Jackson displayed an incredible marching talent. His men tramped 56 miles in two days. Bloodstains from bare feet marked the route. Confederates seized the huge supply depot at Manassas, took everything they could eat or carry, and set fire to the rest. Pope had a tendency to ignore what he did not wish to hear. News of Jackson in his rear and the loss of his supply base stunned the Union general to false optimism. If he could pounce on Jackson and destroy that part of Lee’s army, he could then overwhelm Longstreet’s segment and bring the war to an end. Yet Jackson proved elusive. “Old Jack” secretly moved his three divisions by separate route to a wooded ridge just west of the site of the 1861 battle. Pope slowed his advance as Union columns searched for Jackson. The Southern commander announced his location with a 28 August attack on a portion of the Union army at Groveton.

Now a flurry of orders went out from Pope for all Federal units to concentrate in front of Jackson’s position. The Confederate line extended for 3,000 yards. Its anchors were the cuts and fills of an unfinished railroad. Pope’s attacks were disjointed: as one division arrived on the field, it was sent into action; and whenever one gained a foothold, Pope failed to give it support. Jackson beat back six attempts that day. Federals broke through the first line, then the second, but could not penetrate the third defense. Hand-to-hand fighting characterized much of the action. While this battle was raging, Lee had another surprise for Pope. In late morning of 30 August, Lee arrived with Longstreet’s divisions in tow. This half of the Confederate army quietly took position on Pope’s left flank. The Union general, totally dedicated to attacking Jackson, had forgotten the other half of Lee’s army. Three times Lee urged Longstreet to assail the Union flank. However, his “old war horse” did not like the lay of the land, and he wanted Pope to shift to a position that would make for better success when Longstreet did advance. Lee spent much of the afternoon riding from point to point to keep both of his army segments in view. In mid-afternoon he approached an aide and said, “A Yank sharpshooter near killed me just now.” He showed the officer his cheek and the scratch where the bullet had grazed his face. It was as close as Lee came to death in the Civil War. Jackson had taken heavy punishment during the day’s fighting. At nightfall he began adjusting his lines to meet the enemy’s attacks the next day. Pope misinterpreted the activity as Jackson preparing to retreat. Still unaware that half of Lee’s army was poised on his flank, and still determined to destroy Jackson once and for all, Pope did precisely what Lee wanted. At 1:30 p.m. on 31 August, Pope unleashed his entire army in an attack on Jackson’s position. Battle sounds roared over the countryside. Individual fighting occurred all along the line. When a Louisiana brigade ran out of ammunition, the men threw rocks at the Federals. The Confederate situation became critical. Then,

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at 4 p.m., Lee gave the order. Thousands of Longstreet’s fresh troops dashed forward and slammed into Pope’s undefended left flank. Lee’s forces drove Pope’s army a full mile before darkness ended the combat. The Union army began staggering back to Washington. On 1 September, Lee sought to go for the kill by sending Jackson on yet another flank movement around Pope. Johnny Rebs were near exhaustion. A spirited fight in a torrential rainstorm at Chantilly checked Jackson’s advance and ended the Second Manassas Campaign. Lee won a clear and a clearing victory. Three months earlier, Union forces were threatening Richmond and occupying the Shenandoah Valley. The war appeared lost for the South. Now Lee, with Jackson, had removed all Union menace in the Mother State. Lee was on a pedestal of fame from which he never descended. Now, Lee reasoned, it was time for the North to feel the heavy hand of war.

Lee would then delete the criticism. Or he would make the deletion with the simple statement that the responsibility for the army was his alone. The most difficult composition Marshall ever wrote was General Order No. 9: Lee’s farewell address to his army. Late on the afternoon of 9 April 1865, Lee directed Marshall to prepare one last order to his soldiers. The next morning it was raining; confusion swirled around army headquarters; Marshall was buried in paperwork. Around 10 a.m. Lee learned that his farewell order had not been written. He ordered Marshall into a nearby ambulance wagon to get to work. Lee posted an orderly at the wagon to ensure against any interruptions. Rain pelted the canvas cover. The colonel wrote the first draft in pencil; Lee made corrections, and Marshall redrafted the announcement in ink. Numbers of copies were made. In late afternoon, through the thin ranks of the Army of Northern Virginia, went the pronouncement, “After four years of arduous service, marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, [this] army has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources. . . .” In the several paintings done of the surrender scene, Marshall is the single officer who accompanied Lee. Marshall returned to Baltimore and resumed his law practice. His strongly personal war memoirs were published posthumously. In the Marshall papers is a letter attributed to Lee. The general stated philosophically, “The march of Providence is so slow, and our desires so impatient, the work of progress is so immense, and our means of aiding it are so feeble, the life of humanity is so long, and that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave, and are thus discouraged. But it is history that teaches us to hope.”

“MARKIE.” See WILLIAMS, MARTHA CUSTIS. MARSHALL, CHARLES (1830–1902). Born in Warrenton, Virginia, and a graduate of the state university, Marshall established a law practice in Baltimore, Maryland. He was the great-nephew of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall. As in the case of fellow officers Armistead Long and Charles Venable, Marshall was in his thirties when Robert E. Lee invited him to join his personal staff. Thin and bespectacled, Marshall looked the part of military secretary. His duties were to prepare Lee’s orders and dispatches. Communiqués from subordinate officers underwent his editing before being given to Lee. Yet the colonel’s most arduous and enduring task was writing Lee’s official battle reports. Marshall would take the various accounts submitted by corps, division, brigade, and regimental commanders, interpret the contents, and then weave the reports into a single narrative. When an officer had failed in his duty, Marshall said so. Lee might reply in a playful way, “Colonel, if you speak so strongly of this, you will have nothing left to say of anything better.”

MARYLAND, STATE OF. The so-called border states in the Civil War lay between North and South, and they were divided in their loyalties. Two states were on opposite sides of the Appalachian Mountains: Kentucky and Missouri in the West, and Maryland and Delaware in

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the East. Geographically, the border states stretched along a 1,000-mile front; politically, they had little contact or relationship with one another. Union President Abraham Lincoln’s initial concern about the group focused on Maryland. If that state seceded, the national capital would be inside enemy lines. Maryland was distinct in other ways. In the 1860 presidential election, Lincoln received fewer than 3,100 of 92,000 votes cast. The number of free blacks in Maryland nearly equaled the number of slaves. Southern sentiments were very strong in the eastern half of the state, including Baltimore, whereas western Maryland had longstanding business and family ties to Ohio and Pennsylvania. During the secession crisis the state legislature was decidedly pro-Southern, but Maryland’s moderate governor refused to call it into session to discuss the matter. The state ultimately sought to be neutral. Yet events prevented it. On 19 April 1861, less than a week after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, Union troops en route to the defenses of Washington, D.C., passed through Baltimore. Mobs pelted the troops with rocks; shots were fired; hand-to-hand fighting occurred in the downtown streets. Four soldiers were killed and 36 wounded; at least 12 civilians were slain. Lincoln moved quickly to secure Maryland. Baltimore and Annapolis were placed under martial law. Scores of individuals were arrested on suspicion of disloyalty. Included among them were the mayor and police chief of Baltimore, 31 state legislators, the grandson of Francis Scott Key (composer of “The Star-Spangled Banner”), and wealthy landowner John Merryman. The last-named individual filed suit against illegal arrest. The Supreme Court, in a path-breaking decision (ex parte Merryman), ruled that the federal government did not have the power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus as it had done in all of the cases involving alleged disloyalty by Marylanders. Lincoln ignored the decision as a wartime necessity. The state contributed 30,000 whites and 9,000 blacks to the Union armies. Another 20,000 men from the state fought for the Confederacy.

Lee’s first incursion into the North ended 17 September 1862 along Antietam Creek in western Maryland. The Army of Northern Virginia passed through the state the following spring. This second raid got as far as Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. On 9 July 1864, General Jubal Early’s Confederate forces made a thrust at Washington, D.C., but lost a day’s march because of a sharp fight with Federals at Monocacy, Maryland. Had the South been able to persuade Maryland to join its ranks, the course of the Civil War would have been markedly different. McCLELLAN, GEORGE BRINTON (1826– 1885). No Civil War general inspired more passion and controversy than George B. McClellan. No officer exuded more promise and delivered fewer results. He was born to well-to-do parents in Philadelphia. Intellectually gifted, he attended the University of Pennsylvania for two years and did so well in his studies that the U.S. Military Academy waived the age requirement and admitted him as a cadet at the age of fifteen. The teenager graduated second in the famous Class of 1846, from which 21 Civil War generals came. McClellan and Robert E. Lee served together on General Winfield Scott’s staff in the Mexican War. Engineering skill brought the Pennsylvanian two brevet promotions. For a decade thereafter, his was one of the most brilliant minds in the army. McClellan invented a saddle that bears his name, he created the pup tent, and he translated two French manuals on bayonet techniques. Yet he found military life unrewarding. McClellan resigned his commission and by 1860 was an executive of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad. When civil war began, the governor of Ohio offered McClellan command of all of the state’s military forces. This brought a major general’s rank and head of the Department of the Ohio. He won a couple of minor scraps in the mountains of western Virginia. These successes came simultaneously with the defeat of General Irvin McDowell’s forces at Manassas. The North needed a hero, and McClellan stood

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in the wings. President Abraham Lincoln asked the young general to make an army from troops flocking toward the capital. McClellan immediately set to work with organizational skills matched only by his vanity. “By some strange operation of magic,” he wrote his wife, “I seem to have become the power of the land.” McClellan looked the part. Only 34 years old, he was handsome as well as charming when need be. His gray eyes were steady. Thick hair, mustache, and an imperious attitude gave him a look of wisdom. Although average in height at five feet, eight inches, McClellan had a 45-inch chest that hinted of sturdiness and self-assurance. He was aware of where military command might lead. The Army of the Potomac he was building could be a political path to the presidency. So he carefully molded his 120,000man force. It received everything it needed, including high morale and a mutual affection between a general and his soldiers. McClellan was contemptuous of civilian administrators who interfered with his work. (He once referred to Lincoln as “the original gorilla.”) The Army of the Potomac was his army, and he never stopped believing it. Confident and energetic in preparation, McClellan proved slow and timid for battle. He thought so long and so hard about a campaign that it never got anywhere. Lincoln had to order the army to take the offensive. McClellan spent three months inching his way up the lower Virginia peninsula toward Richmond. The greatest gaffe of his career came in an April 1862 letter to the president. “I prefer Lee to [Joseph E.] Johnston,” he told Lincoln. “The former is too cautious & weak . . . he is wanting in moral firmness when pressed by heavy responsibility & is likely to be timid & irresolute in action.” McClellan’s highly publicized Peninsula Campaign failed, not from his delays, uncertainties, and halfhearted tactics, but from “heartless villains” in Washington, D.C., who would not send him reinforcements he actually did not need. A second encounter with Lee’s army came in September 1862 at Antietam. McClellan’s

piecemeal, uncoordinated attacks resulted in the bloodiest one-day battle in American history. His refusal to pursue the badly wounded Southern army was the last straw for even the patient Lincoln. The general was relieved of command. McClellan thereupon resigned from service and moved to New York City, the Democratic stronghold in the North. The party eagerly nominated McClellan for president in 1864. Lincoln beat him in the electoral college vote by a 10–1 margin. McClellan then traveled to Europe on a selfimposed exile and did not return home until after the 1868 elections. He remained out of politics until 1877, when he was elected governor of New Jersey. Financial frugality gained him a second term. McClellan campaigned for Grover Cleveland in 1884 with the expectation of becoming secretary of war. Cleveland won, McClellan lost. He produced his memoirs, McClellan’s Own Story, but did not live to see the book published. On 29 October 1885, he died of angina pectoris at the age of 58. “Little Mac,” as his troops affectionately called him, will forever be an enigma. A master at planning, a failure at execution, he was a military genius crippled by insecurity. McClellan did not know how to fight. Grant did not know how to retreat. McDOWELL, IRVIN (1818–1885). While Robert E. Lee was putting together a Virginia army in the spring of 1861, an old acquaintance across the Potomac River was likewise toiling to create a Union force to go to war. Neither Lee nor Irvin McDowell had ever led a force of any size in combat. However, Lee proved better in his organizational skills than McDowell. The Ohio native had shown promise in the antebellum period. He had taught at West Point, fought bravely in Buena Vista in Mexico, and, while serving 20 years as a deputy in the Adjutant General’s Department, had become a favorite of General-in-Chief Winfield Scott. In April 1861, after first Lee and then Sidney Johnston declined appointment to command the Union forces being raised in Washington, D.C., Scott promoted Major McDowell three

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grades to brigadier general and directed him to create an army from scratch. The task would have been demanding for the most knowledgeable and likable commander. McDowell was neither. Nervous energy made his face redden and his speech thicken. These features triggered rumors of heavy drinking when, in fact, McDowell did not even drink coffee. He was a huge man of gargantuan appetite, blue eyes, and modest in the main though he could be dogmatic. A bad listener, McDowell often forgot advice people gave him—and even worse forgot names and faces instantly. He was, in short, a man who did not seek or gain popularity. Certainly the odds were against him from the start. He had never faced anything akin to the vast, badly mixed collection of volunteers and state militias that somehow had to be turned into an army. Because no one understood the myriad problems he faced, McDowell received no help. Fellow officers were too resentful of the major turned brigadier to be cooperative. Finally, McDowell was basically a good man, but he totally lacked one necessary ingredient: luck. Nothing ever went right for him. He gained a reputation for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The notoriety began with the first battle of the Civil War. Shoved into action by the Lincoln administration, McDowell got his 35,000man army (armed mob would be a more correct designation) 25 miles into Virginia. The 21 July battle fought along Bull Run near Manassas was a classic example of how not to wage war. Delays, piecemeal attacks, and inexperience everywhere produced a Union rout known as the “Bull Run Races.” Lincoln replaced McDowell as army commander but retained him as head of a division. McDowell encountered Lee in August 1862 at Second Manassas. The Union army again met stunning defeat, and McDowell was made the scapegoat. His career thereafter was anticlimactic. McDowell was assigned to the West Coast and spent most of his remaining years trying to clear his name for the Second Manassas debacle. His efforts failed. The hard-luck general

died of stomach cancer in 1885 and is buried at San Francisco’s Presidio. McLEAN, WILMER (1814–1882). McLean could make an astounding claim: the Civil War began in his backyard and ended in his front parlor. The Alexandria-born McLean was a wholesale and retail grocer. He married a wealthy widow, Virginia Mason, whose first husband was a physician in one of the state’s most prominent families. The couple built Yorkshire, a plantation home near Manassas, and began raising a family. In July 1861, armed forces of North and South converged on the area for the war’s opening engagement. It was apparent that Yorkshire was going to be part of the battlefield. McLean took his family south to escape the damage. Thereafter, McLean’s home was “so ravaged & torn up by the constant passage of armies” that McLean looked elsewhere for a permanent residence where he hoped “never to see a soldier” again. He found the spot 160 miles away in an isolated hamlet called Appomattox Court House. There the McLeans lived in peace and increased in number. Suddenly, on 9 April 1865, the McLean home was designated as the site for a meeting between opposing generals Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant. It was in McLean’s front parlor that Lee surrendered his army and the end of the Civil War came into sight. In 1869 President Grant rescued the impoverished McLean by appointing him an officer in the Internal Revenue Service. The family moved back to Alexandria. They never visited what was left of Yorkshire. MEADE, GEORGE GORDON (1815–1872). When Union corps commander George Meade was awakened in the middle of the night of 28 June 1863 and told that he had been appointed to head the Army of the Potomac, he replied, “Well, I have been tried and condemned without a hearing, and I suppose I shall have to go to the execution.” Meade was the fourth and last commander of the North’s premier army. He would have

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the longest tenure of any who led that force. To many of his fellow officers, Meade was “Old Reliable.” Compatriots regarded him as an army leader without fire or imagination. Born in Spain in 1815 (his father was a merchant), Meade graduated from West Point and devoted his life to being a professional soldier. He became a brigadier at the outset of the War, was twice wounded in the Seven Days’ Campaign, and at Fredericksburg he led the attack that momentarily broke Stonewall Jackson’s line. His appearance was hardly inspiring. Tall, thin, bespectacled, Meade was never a charismatic general. He reminded soldiers of a clergyman or college professor. A light stoop shortened his six-foot frame. His sad eyes were sunken, and he wore a habitual frown. The man had a streak of genuine humility, but it was obliterated by an uncontrollable temper. Down in the ranks, troops called him “a damned, goggle-eyed old snapping turtle.” Still, Meade was a wholly admirable man, void of undermining ambition, deeply religious, and anxious always that his command be well organized and well led. His failure to pursue Lee’s beaten army after the three-day battle of Gettysburg was his downfall, just as winning the battle was the apex of his career. Meade’s hesitation at Gettysburg is understandable. He had been at the head of the army only three days when one of the war’s largest battles exploded. He spent three days fighting for the army’s life. A fourth of that army comprised the casualty list. Neither Meade nor his troops were prepared for a running battle with Robert E. Lee’s retiring forces. Meade commanded the Army of the Potomac through the 1864–1865 fighting, even though he was overshadowed by General-inChief Ulysses S. Grant, who traveled with the army. Meade’s reputation would also be higher had he not died of pneumonia only seven years after the war. On the day after Lee surrendered at Appomattox, Meade came through the lines to greet his old friend. Lee shook his hand and said, “George, what are you doing with all that gray in your hair?”

Meade snapped back, “You have a good deal to do with it!” MECHANICSVILLE, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF (26 JUNE 1862). Three weeks after taking command of a disorganized, dispirited Confederate force, Robert E. Lee launched a counterattack. His opponent, General George B. McClellan, was not taken totally by surprise. The mid-June ride of General Jeb Stuart’s cavalry completely around the Union army was a warning that McClellan’s line of supplies at White House Landing on the York River was vulnerable. The Federal general ordered another corps to recross the swollen Chickahominy River and strengthen the Union right flank. Lee secretly moved his army into attack formation. His engineers had constructed miles of entrenchments and redoubts in front of Richmond. About 25,000 troops, under General John Magruder, were left there to make diversions against McClellan (who had three times the number facing Magruder). Lee shifted the bulk of his force northward to the area of Mechanicsville. It was a crossroads village on high ground above the Chickahominy River. The end of the Federal line was just to the east. Lee’s strategy was to assault McClellan’s flank from the west simultaneously with Stonewall Jackson’s troops, moving from the Shenandoah Valley for the past two days, assailing the enemy from the northwest. On 26 June, as monthlong rain showers continued, Lee’s huge force stood poised to attack. Word came from Jackson at 8 a.m.: he was six hours behind schedule. Time passed slowly; Lee’s army waited with diminishing patience. Morning became afternoon. Fears began to arise that McClellan was surely aware of the dreadnaught waiting to crush his flank. At 3 p.m., General Powell Hill, Lee’s most aggressive division commander, could remain still no longer. He ordered his brigades forward on the assumption that Jackson would be on the field by the time the attack began in earnest. Southern troops swept across the Chickahominy bottomland, up through Mechanicsville, veered right and, near 5 p.m., struck the

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Federal line. The Union commander, General Fitzjohn Porter, had posted his men on an elevated ridge behind a nasty swamp called Beaver Dam Creek. Federals were in earthworks and supported by a dozen pieces of artillery. Jackson was nowhere in sight, and Hill’s troops were inexperienced and not well disciplined. Yet momentum sent this part of Lee’s army smashing into Porter’s line. Confederates could not even gain a foothold. Union fire raked the column again and again. By nightfall, Hill had lost 1,500 men (five time the Union casualties). Porter’s line remained intact. Lee had now committed his army to battle. There could be no turning back. McClellan knew where Lee was and he began making frantic adjustments. Meanwhile, there still was no word from Jackson, the key to the whole operation. See also SEVEN DAYS’ CAMPAIGN, VIRGINIA.

asked in 1862 what to do with the abandoned Arlington House property, Meigs sneered, “The Romans sowed the fields of their enemies with salt. Let us make it into a field of honor.” Using the land as a soldier-cemetery would forever prevent the Lee family from living there. Meigs began dumping all unknown Union dead soldiers into scattered graves. One afternoon he superintended the burial of 2,111 bodies in a single pit in what had been Mrs. Lee’s rose garden. By the end of the Civil War, 16,000 graves surrounded three sides of the mansion. In 1882 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Meigs’s seizure had been illegal. The federal government was directed to return the property to the Lee family and pay a compensatory fine of $150,000 (equivalent to $4.5 million today). The family found the idea of such mass exhumations abhorrent and accepted the money as a sale price for the estate. The court decision haunted Meigs for the remainder of his life. He never knew that the burial ground he created in anger would become the hallowed resting place for 400,000 American servicemen and servicewomen.

MEIGS, MONTGOMERY CUNNINGHAM (1816–1892). A former colleague and friend of Lee, Meigs took delight in destroying the Lee estate Arlington House. He was the son of a Southern obstetrician who moved to Pennsylvania when slavery became a national political issue. The son apparently had a rambunctious childhood. When he was only six, his mother thought him “hightempered” and “tyrannical.” After graduating from West Point, Meigs gained a military reputation working with fellow officer Robert E. Lee to bring the Mississippi River under control at St. Louis, Missouri. Meigs then oversaw construction of the Potomac Aqueduct at Washington, D.C., and he was chief army engineer in charge of building the Senate and House chambers, plus the dome, of the Capitol building. In May 1861, Abraham Lincoln appointed Meigs quartermaster general of the army. He would hold that post for the next 21 years. Meigs was a tall, heavyset man with dark hair and beard. A perpetual scowl filled his face. No one ever recorded seeing him smile. His hatred of the South was boundless. He became infuriated at Lee, his longtime friend, casting his lot with the South. When Lincoln

MEXICAN WAR (1846–1848). Robert E. Lee had been an officer for 19 years when he got his first taste of battle. The war with Mexico is the most obscure conflict America has ever waged, and for a number of reasons. It was limited in area to only a portion of Mexico. Americans won every battle, some lopsided victories. It lacked the total-war destruction of wars that would follow. The greatest fear in the struggle was yellow fever, not the enemy. Historically, the Mexican War lives in the shadow of America’s most popularly remembered war, which came 12 years later. Perhaps the major factor for the war’s obscurity is a collective guilt feeling. American forces ripped away half of a country for purely self-serving reasons. The annexation of Texas has long been given as the cause of the struggle between Mexico and the United States. That is oversimplification. Accepting Texas as a new state was the spark that ignited into international pushing

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and shoving. Americans had been making expansionist moves in northern Mexico for four decades. Atrocities such as the 1836 Mexican slaughter of more than 200 men at the Alamo were frequent on both sides and instilled a mutual hostility that grew worse with time. By 1846, the instability of the Mexican government had created confusion throughout Texas. Efforts at diplomacy had failed. President James Knox Polk determined that the time for resolving the issue with military might had arrived. Mexico accepted the challenge to arms. It believed that the American people with an army of only 7,000 soldiers would not accept a blatantly imperial war against their southern neighbor—especially a country with rugged and forbidding mountains, desert territory, and the ever-present danger in marshlands of deadly yellow fever. Lee personally opposed the war. He felt that President Polk had “bullied” the Mexicans into a fight. The Virginian also had doubts as to “the justice of our cause.” But he was a soldier, dedicated to do his duty. Americas invaded Mexico from two directions. General Zachary Taylor marched through Texas and entered Mexico from the north. General Winfield Scott landed his army at Veracruz and advanced steadily westward toward the capital, Mexico City. The conquest ended in 18 months. Mexican ineptitude was no match for American determination. Lee seemed to be Scott’s point man in every one of the major engagements. Twice he found routes that enabled the American army to make flank marches around heavily entrenched Mexican forces. Several times Lee risked his life while carrying out orders. After the fighting ceased, Lieutenant Richard Ewell wrote about Lee, “By his daring reconnaissance up [to] the [enemy] cannon’s mouth, he has enabled General Scott to fight his battles almost without leaving his tent. His modest, quiet deportment is perfectly refreshing compared with the folly and bombast of the generals and officers made by General [President] Polk.” Scott was superlative in his praise. At Contreras, Lee’s behavior was “the greatest feat

of physical and moral courage performed by any individual in my knowledge.” Scott added, “the gallant, indefatigable Captain Lee was “as distinguished for felicitous execution as for science and daring.” Brevet promotion from captain to lieutenant colonel followed. America’s first offensive war undertaken by political decision set a number of precedents. For the first time, the nation established martial law on foreign soil, used West Point graduates to a significant degree, and had war correspondents keeping the public aware of activities. The war was a testing ground for large numbers of officers who would play important roles in another, far more expansive conflict. Mexico lost about half of its territory—an area larger than France and Germany combined. New American lands extended from Texas to California. From that conquest the United States moved thereafter toward becoming a nation bordered on two sides by oceans. From the Mexican War, Lee gained much. He wore a hero’s laurel. As a member of Scott’s personal staff, he learned the importance of good reconnaissance, how a small force—properly led—can overcome superior numbers, the value of picking good lieutenants, and the success that seizing the initiative can bring. MOSBY, JOHN SINGLETON (1833–1916). Boldness in combat leadership during the Civil War was not confined to professional soldiers. John Mosby was an attorney with no military experience. However, once in service, it was as if he had donned a well-fitting pair of shoes. History remembers him as “The Gray Ghost of the Confederacy.” As a young boy in Virginia, he once saw a schoolmaster in a drunken state. The spectacle turned Mosby into a lifelong teetotaler. He enrolled in the University of Virginia and became an above-average student until the day he got into a dispute with a campus bully. The confrontation ended when Mosby shot the student in the neck. He served seven months in jail, then studied law under the prosecutor in the “malicious wounding” case. Mosby

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married in 1858 and settled into the tranquil life of an attorney in southwestern Virginia. In 1861 love of state sent him quickly into military service. “Virginia is my mother, God bless her!” he exclaimed. Small, thin, and restless (when in deep thought he would pick his teeth with a small twig), lacking any knowledge of soldier life, Mosby hardly seemed a promising recruit. Yet serving in Colonel Jeb Stuart’s 1st Virginia Cavalry, he rose rapidly from private to regimental adjutant. Stuart praised his “shining record of daring and usefulness.” As a youth, Mosby had idolized Francis Marion, the famous ”Swamp Fox” of the American Revolution. The Civil War exploits of General Stonewall Jackson and cavalryman Turner Ashby also fascinated him. Six weeks after Ashby’s death in June 1862, Mosby gained permission from Robert E. Lee to recruit a band of horsemen to wage irregular warfare behind enemy lines in northern Virginia. The little band grew in number with success. It officially became the 43rd Virginia Cavalry Battalion. To friend and foe, the unit was “Mosby’s Rangers.” They farmed by day and fought by night. Most of them lived in Fauquier and Loudoun counties. From that point, they could strike eastward toward Washington, D.C., westward into the Shenandoah Valley, and northward to the Potomac River. The Rangers operated in wooded mountains and hills interspersed with fertile farmlands. Obscure trails provided a network of easy movements. Homes and villages offered places for refuge and supplies. Mosby raided troop detachments, rail lines, wagon trains, storage depots, and command outposts. In one of his early forays, Mosby’s small band captured a sleeping general, 32 soldiers, and 38 horses without firing a shot or suffering a casualty. A disdainful President Abraham Lincoln commented that he did not mind losing a general officer, “for I can make a much better brigadier in five minutes, but the horses cost $125 apiece.” The partisan ranger fired the Southern imagination and became the most successful guerrilla leader in the Civil War. He and Lee shared a common admiration of the actions

of one another. Mosby saw himself as the shadow of Lee, whom he described as “the most aggressive man I met in the war.” Lee responded to a report of one of Mosby’s raids by exclaiming, “Hurrah for Mosby! I wish I had a hundred like him.” Union authorities dispatched 70 missions to capture him. None succeeded. One got ugly. In August 1864, General Ulysses S. Grant told General Philip Sheridan, commanding Union forces in the Shenandoah Valley, “When any of Mosby’s men are caught, hang them without trial.” General George Custer, one of Sheridan’s cavalry leaders, executed six guerrillas, whereupon Mosby had six captured Federal cavalrymen from Custer’s brigade draw lots and go before firing squads. Mosby refused to surrender in the days after Appomattox. Never indicted, he resumed his law practice in Warrenton, Virginia. He was outspoken in his scorn for Radical Republicans and diehard Southerners. On more than one occasion, his abrasiveness led to fistfights. Soon he developed a friendship with Grant, joined the Republican Party, and campaigned for Grant in the 1872 presidential election. Mosby was branded “a political outcast” and ostracized by fellow Virginians. He served seven years as minister to Hong Kong. The 1884 election of Democrat Grover Cleveland left Mosby with nowhere to go. He turned to ex-President Grant for help. The Union hero responded. On the day before he died, Grant secured a job for Mosby with the Southern Pacific Railroad. The feisty Virginian did not mellow with age. He lectured frequently to large audiences, defended General Jeb Stuart’s conduct at Gettysburg, and argued often and rudely with such “unreconstructed” Southerners as Jubal Early and John B. Gordon. An 1897 kick in the head by a horse left Mosby blind in his left eye. He remained irascible and intolerant. On 28 May 1916, at his insistence, the 82-year-old Mosby underwent prostate surgery. He died on the operating table. “MUD MARCH” CAMPAIGN, VIRGINIA (20–24 JANUARY 1863). General Ambrose

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and artillery backed up in a two-mile traffic jam. Wagons sank to their axles; mules drowned attempting to churn through the mess. The Union army advanced only three miles that day. Lee learned of the effort and made no reaction. Mother Nature was handling the situation for him. Meanwhile, on the south side of the Rappahannock, Confederate soldiers put up signs pointing the direction to Richmond; some shouted their willingness to come over the river and help the Yanks with their pontoons. On 23 January, Burnside canceled the operation. The return trip was a nightmare unto itself. A New Jersey artilleryman wrote after reaching Fredericksburg, “If this hellish state was sacred, after this [march], it will be sanctified if we are not all sacred, living monuments of Virginia mud.” The heavy defeat at Fredericksburg, followed by the unwarranted suffering of the Mud March, sent Northern morale plummeting. President Lincoln had no choice but to start again a search for a general who could compete with Lee.

Burnside refused to accept the crushing defeat of his Union army on 13 December 1862 at Fredericksburg. As a new year began, Burnside made plans to go at Robert E. Lee again. It made no difference that it was wintertime and the weather unpredictable. Moreover, Burnside’s strategy was the same one that had led to disaster the previous month. Then he had sought to employ secrecy and speed to turn Lee’s right flank. Now he was going to use secrecy and speed to turn Lee’s left flank. This time the Union army would proceed west up the Rappahannock River, cross the stream at an available ford, and come at Lee from the west. The plan had some merit, if secrecy and speed prevailed. Again, Burnside would lose both. On the cold and cloudy morning of 20 January, Federals left their camps. All went well until dusk, when howling winds and driving rain began. The downpour would continue uninterrupted for the next three days. Progress slowed to a crawl. The earth changed into depthless mud while temperatures hovered at the freezing mark. Pontoons

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N lunch the previous day) had rendered him all but helpless. When Hill reported the situation, Lee snapped back, “Why did you not do what Jackson would have done—thrown your whole force upon those people?” Grant carelessly had placed his army in a vulnerable position, with three large bodies of troops separated by the curving river. Union attacks lost coordination. The veteran II Corps was vulnerable to attack on front and right, with the obstacle of the North Anna behind it. Lee saw this too. Yet he was confined to a bed and unable to direct operations. His three corps commanders—Hill, Richard Anderson, and Richard Ewell—were not up to the task of making the full attack that might have permanently damaged the Union army. From his bed Lee could only say with frustration, “We must strike them a blow. . . . We must strike them a blow.” Nightfall brought an end to the fight. Each side had lost about 2,500 men killed, wounded, or missing. Grant, uncomfortable with his position, withdrew his forces back across the North Anna on 26 May and resumed his flanking movement to the southeast. Both generals received public criticism for not launching all-out offensives when the situation was favorable. Workers quickly repaired the Virginia Central Railroad, thus maintaining the valuable rail communication between Richmond and the “Bread Basket of the Confederacy.” See also OVERLAND CAMPAIGN, VIRGINIA.

NORTH ANNA RIVER, VIRGINIA, CAMPAIGN OF (23–26 MAY 1864). The real importance of the struggle between Generals Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee at the North Anna River was what did not happen. For two weeks in May 1864, some of the hardest fighting of the Civil War occurred at the Wilderness and at Spotsylvania. Grant abandoned the Spotsylvania line on 22 May and started for Hanover Junction. It was 25 miles from Richmond and the crossing of the two most vital railroads in the state at the time. One of those lines was the Virginia Central, the main rail connection in mid-Virginia because it linked Richmond with the agriculturally rich Shenandoah Valley. The 195-mile Virginia Central proceeded north from the capital, then turned west and paralleled the North Anna River for 10 miles. After Spotsylvania, Lee hustled his army 20 miles south and reached the North Anna ahead of Grant. Confederates prepared a hasty but sturdy defensive line. The Army of the Potomac spread out on the other side of the stream. On 23 May, two Union corps got across the North Anna at an unguarded ford and established a beachhead. Confederate General Powell Hill thought the movement but a heavy probe and sent only 6,000 troops to the area. In late-afternoon fighting, they proved too little and too late. Lee was furious, in large part because he was ill. A sudden and severe attack of diarrhea (possibly from buttermilk and stale bread for

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This was among the worst presidential assignments Davis ever made. Northrop’s only responsibility was to provide food for Southern troops. Yet the task was beset with problems: hoarding, collapse of the railroad system, shortages of wagons and teams, and the steady loss of Southern territory where food was plentiful. In 1863 the commissary general was also directed to feed tens of thousands of Union prisoners of war. Davis considered Northrop a man of strong political sense and incorruptible integrity. This may have been true, but it ran completely counter to popular opinion throughout the South. The commissary general’s position demanded tact and diplomacy. Northrop substituted pettiness, rigidity, and blind devotion to bureaucracy. Others found him “extremely obnoxious . . . condescending . . . fault-finding.” One general asserted that it would be in the national interest if Northrop could be named ambassador to China. Even Davis faulted the colonel for losing two herds of beef cattle consigned to Robert E. Lee’s army. When Northrop voiced the opinion that hungry Confederate soldiers should learn to eat less meat, critics assailed him for either endorsing starvation or for attempting to convert everyone to his own vegetarianism. A true patriot, it has been said, would resign when it was clear that he could not do his job. Northrop spent hours petulantly answering his opponents. Congress passed a resolution calling for Northrop’s ouster. Davis responded by promoting him to brigadier general. Yet the president did not submit the nomination because of the certainty of rejection by the legislature. General Lee was involved with Northrop from the beginning. Repeatedly Lee complained of the commissary department issuing excuses and suggestions when he begged for food. In January 1865, Lee gave furloughs to up to 16 percent of a command so that soldiers could go home, get food, and thus reduce the need of the army. A month later, Lee officially requested that Davis fire the colonel. “If such a change is not made, and the Commissary

NORTHERN NECK OF VIRGINIA. Robert E. Lee’s birthplace was in the northernmost of three peninsulas that comprise Virginia’s eastern boundary. The Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers are its northern and southern borders. The Northern Neck is laced with zigzagging estuaries whose depths depend on when it last rained. At the time of the Civil War, the peninsula consisted of four counties: Westmoreland (where Stratford Hall was located), Richmond, Lancaster, and Northumberland. King George, the westernmost of the counties, was not then regarded as part of “the Neck.” In Lee’s day, the soil was rich, with the major crops being tobacco, grains, and forestry. Slaves outnumbered whites in the four counties. Union gunboats quickly took control of river traffic. Major armies shied from venturing into a relatively narrow strip of land. Federal parties made regular raids across the peninsula and eventually stripped neighborhoods of most usable assets. Although many homes were burned from pure vandalism in the course of the war, Stratford Hall escaped major damage. NORTHROP, LUCIUS BELLINGER (1811– 1894). Diarist Mary Chesnut, whose knowl­edge of Southern wartime leaders was extensive, considered Colonel Lucius Northrop “the most cursed and vilified man in the Confederacy.” Certainly he was the most despised member of the group of favorites known as “Davis’s Pets.” His personality was his worst enemy. Northrop was born to affluent parents in Charleston, South Carolina. At West Point, he formed a lifetime friendship with fellow cadet Jefferson Davis. In 1849, while campaigning against the Indians, Northrop accidentally shot himself in the knee. The wound left him permanently crippled. He studied medicine while on army duty, thanks to special permission granted by Secretary of War Jefferson Davis. Northrop had established a medical practice in Charleston when, in 1861, the new Confederate president appointed him commissary general of the Southern armies.

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Northrop spent 25 years living on a farm near Charlottesville, Virginia, and trying to clear his reputation. He found solace only from comforting letters sent by Jefferson Davis. A stroke in 1890 left Northrop partially paralyzed. He was moved to a veterans’ home in Pikesville, Maryland, where he died in February 1894.

Department reorganized,” Lee stated, “I apprehend dire results.” Davis relieved Northrop, but it was too late to revamp the feeding of the Southern soldiers. In June 1865, Federal authorities took Northrop into custody and planned to try him for mass starvation of captured Union soldiers. The case was not pursued.

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O In the first week of May, about 120,000 Federals moved against 64,000 Confederates. For Grant and Lee, a grinding, blood-filled, six-week campaign followed. It extended 90 miles from the Rapidan River in north-central Virginia to the area east of Richmond and Petersburg. The opposing armies were always in contact; at times, fighting was vicious. Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor rank among the most savage engagements in national history. The routes of the two armies were strewn with lifeless bodies. Grant’s tactics were aimed at turning Lee’s right (eastern) flank and forcing the Confederates from their defenses into an open fight. One authority has stated, “Victory was no longer measured by the land held, but rather by the continuation of the will to fight again the next day, and the next.” The Union army battled its way through dense woods, over open fields, across rivers. Lee managed to counter every movement while using extraordinary skills at constructing fortifications. Inside the Army of the Potomac, awkward command relationships on occasion took place and hampered operations. Grant was precipitous at times, lethargic on other occasions. Yet his determination to push forward never wavered. By mid-June, Federals had crossed the James downriver from Richmond. When this Overland Campaign first began, Lee told General Jubal Early, “We must destroy this army of Grant’s before he gets to the James River. If he gets there, it will become a siege, and then it will be a mere question of time.”

OVERLAND CAMPAIGN, VIRGINIA (5 MAY–14 JUNE 1864). Three years of fighting had produced a weary stalemate in Virginia. Ulysses S. Grant came east in March 1864, with a new command (all of the armed forces of the North), a new rank (lieutenant general), and a new plan for winning the war. His strategy was one of simplicity and totality. Grant was convinced that in the past the various Union armies had “acted independently and without concert, like a balky team [of mules], no two ever pulling together.” Now all forces would go after Southern armies, with coordinated attacks in Virginia, Georgia, and Louisiana to prevent the South from concentrating at any one point. In Virginia, Grant laid plans to send one Federal force into the Shenandoah Valley, another through the mountains of southwestern Virginia, a third up the lower peninsula to approach Richmond from the southeast, and the major advance—by the Army of the Potomac—driving south through the state in search of Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. Grant’s war aims were twofold: “to use the greatest number of troops practicable against the armed force of the enemy”; and second, “to hammer continuously . . . until by mere attrition if in no other way, there should be nothing left” for Lee but surrender. The general-in-chief would travel with and oversee movements of the Army of the Potomac. It was now going to be a contest between the South’s best general and best army against the North’s best general and least successful army.

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him “Butcher” and “Sledgehammer.” Six weeks of fighting had cost the Union 60,000 casualties—an average of 1,400 men per day. Further, Grant was no nearer Richmond than General George B. McClellan had been two years earlier. But Grant had at last pinned down Lee. Although Lee’s casualty numbers were fewer than Grant’s, the Southern army had shrunk by a third. Lee could do nothing more than wage an exhaustive, dogged, ultimate fatal defense of its capital city. See also NORTH ANNA RIVER, CAMPAIGN OF; YELLOW TAVERN, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF.

Lee was correct. The Confederate army was still intact, but it was in pitiful condition. In the previous six weeks it had suffered 25,000 men killed, wounded, and missing—a third of its strength when the campaign started. Lee had lost 62 field officers. The replacements would be nonprofessional soldiers. An officer corps no longer existed. Worst of all, Lee had lost the element of mobility. Never again would he be able to mount an offensive and make aggressive moves with his army. On the other side, the North recoiled in horror at what appeared to be Grant’s blunders and bloodletting. Newspapers labeled

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P “Old Penn” returned to his Lexington church at war’s end. Lee became a member of his vestry when he moved to Lexington. It was after a lengthy vestry meeting in October 1870 that Lee suffered a fatal stroke. Reverend Pendleton was noticeably emotional as he conducted the funeral service.

PENDLETON, WILLIAM NELSON (1809– 1883). Pendleton was a familiar figure in either priestly garb or military dress. The Richmond native was a longtime friend of Robert E. Lee. After graduation from West Point, Pendleton spent but three years in the army. He became an Episcopal minister and by 1861 was rector of Grace Church in Lexington, Virginia. Because of military training three decades earlier, he organized and became captain of a four-gun battery called the Rockbridge Artillery. Pendleton named his cannon “Matthew,” “Mark,” “Luke,” and ”John.” In the battery’s first engagement, the captain turned to his gunners and shouted, “May the Lord have mercy on their souls—Fire!” Lack of competition among field-gun officers was the major factor in Pendleton’s rise to brigadier general and command in 1862 of Lee’s artillery. It was a post far beyond his ability. Pendleton was well meaning but ineffectual—an able organizer who could not explain anything at great length. One of his lieutenants commented in October 1862, “Pendleton is Lee’s weakness. He is like an elephant. We have him and don’t know what on earth to do with him, and it costs a devil of a sight to feed him.” Lee may well have kept Pendleton in the army more for his religious influence on the soldiers than for his skills as an artillerist. He was “a lovable man,” a fellow officer noted, who on more than one occasion entered a battle “preceded by an invocation of a blessing upon the enemy.”

PENINSULA, VIRGINIA, CAMPAIGN OF (17 MARCH–1 JULY 1862). Following the July 1861 rout of Union forces at First Manassas, President Abraham Lincoln directed Major General George B. McClellan to build an army that would crush the Southern insurrection speedily. McClellan eagerly pursued the first stage of his assignment by gathering in the Washington, D.C., area the largest assemblage of recruits the world had ever seen. Civilian volunteers trained, paraded, drilled, paraded, learned, paraded, and relearned the fundamentals of soldier life. They fired guns, cheered officers, sang patriotic airs, and waited. For six months the army—and the North—waited. Yet McClellan continued to fine-tune his creation. “I shall take my own time to make an army that will be sure of success,” he informed his wife. Lincoln, under heavy pressure from press and public, grew tired of waiting. In January 1862, he ordered McClellan to cross the Potomac River and engage General Joseph Johnston’s Confederate forces peacefully wintering practically within sight of Washington. McClellan responded with a counterproposal. Rather than get in a battle with

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Confederates and follow the logistically difficult overland route to Richmond, McClellan wanted to employ an amphibious operation. He would commandeer every available vessel, transfer the army and all of its equipment down the Potomac River, across Chesapeake Bay, then up the York River to the vicinity of Yorktown. This would enable McClellan to advance westward toward Richmond via unguarded routes. Richmond would fall without a battle, and the Union would win the chess game of war. President Lincoln reluctantly agreed to the plan. (No other proven general was available.) In March, the largest waterborne movement in history to that point began. Some 390 vessels ranging from frigates to ferryboats started southward with 121,000 soldiers, 15,000 animals, 59 batteries of artillery, 1,100 supply wagons, and tons of equipment. When McClellan jauntily stepped off a boat at Yorktown, he got the shock of his career. Johnston’s Confederate army was in his front, blocking the peninsula. Rather than use his mammoth force to attack in strength and get rid of Johnston once and for all, McClellan determined to prepare elaborate earthworks, bring up his heavy siege guns and, when all was ready, use artillery to destroy the enemy. This decision was clear evidence that the leader of the largest army in the world had little intention and no desire to fight. For a month, Union engineers and soldiers prepared gun emplacements and dragged large cannon through the mud. Just as McClellan was ready to unleash his bombardment, Johnston’s force fell back out of range. A sharp fight at Williamsburg in the rain occurred between the vanguard of the Federal forces and the rear of Johnston’s army. General Robert E. Lee was then President Jefferson Davis’s military adviser. Throughout April and May, Lee sought to concentrate as many troops as possible for the defense of Richmond. He produced the first draft of a conscription act that the Confederate Congress adopted in mid-April. At that same time, Lee expressed his frustrations and his fears in a letter to his wife. “Our enemies are on all sides. I hope a kind Providence will protect us & drive them back.”

During the month of May the ponderous machine that was the Army of the Potomac inched up the peninsula. It rained and kept raining, day after dreary day. The wettest spring in 20 years was at hand. McClellan took no chances. Caution became the byword. Some days the huge Federal army advanced all of two miles; other days it moved half a mile. Slowly McClellan came to a halt at the hamlet of Seven Pines. Richmond was nine miles away. The 42,000 Confederates under “Uncle Joe” Johnston had been forced back to the gates of the capital. All Johnston could do was hope for an opportunity to strike an isolated segment of McClellan’s army. At Seven Pines it came. The two-day battle that followed was poorly executed and a tactical failure. Yet the 11,000 casualties produced on both sides convinced McClellan of the futility of fighting. He settled down at Seven Pines to ponder and wait for reinforcements. A much greater result of the battle came on the Confederate side. Robert E. Lee replaced the wounded Johnston as commander of the South’s most important army. In the days thereafter, when McClellan should have been thinking of action but did not, Lee should have been thinking of defense but did not. On 26 June, Lee boldly launched a counterattack against McClellan’s right (northern) flank. Federals repulsed the assaults, but McClellan’s thoughts of seizing Richmond gave way to saving his army. He ordered a “strategic withdrawal” southward to the James River and the protection of large guns on Federal ships anchored there. Five battles occurred as Lee gave pursuit. He gained tactical victory in only one, but his unrelenting pursuit of McClellan’s army extinguished the fires of Union initiative. At the end of what has been called the Seven Days’ Campaign, Lee had defeated McClellan’s offensive and—for a time—saved Richmond. See also GAINES’ MILL, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF; GLENDALE, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF; MALVERN HILL, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF; MECHANICSVILLE, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF; SAVAGE STATION, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF.

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The “Little Creole” now enjoyed his greatest success. He gathered 2,500 old men, wounded soldiers, and young boys and placed them in the Dimmock Line. This hodgepodge group created such a stir of gunfire and noise that Federals, still reeling from the horror of Cold Harbor, hesitated at making another headlong assault against sophisticated entrenchments. Confusion and mistakes brought Grant’s advance to a halt. Halfhearted probes cost Grant another 11,000 losses. By 19 June, Robert E. Lee’s army had reinforced Beauregard’s little band and stood defiantly in Grant’s front. The Union commander settled down for a siege he did not want. Actually, it was not a siege in the defined sense. Petersburg was not surrounded. Confederates could leave the earthworks and move behind the trenches. Yet Grant’s army stood poised, seemingly ready to leap at any opportunity. It came a month into the stalemate. Grant approved the idea of Pennsylvania coal miners digging a tunnel to beneath the Southern lines, then exploding enough gunpowder to create a vast hole in the Confederate position and open the way into Petersburg. The resultant Battle of the Crater was a failure. Grant lost another 3,000 men and concentrated on strengthening his earthworks. This longest sustained defensive operation of the Civil War would last 292 days. Grant made nine separate attacks in an attempt to break Lee’s lines. In September, with General W. T. Sherman successful at Atlanta and General Philip Sheridan’s horsemen wreaking havoc in the Shenandoah Valley, Grant sought to deliver knockout blows. Simultaneously, Federals struck both ends of Lee’s lines. North of the James, Union troops captured Fort Harrison, part of the Richmond defenses. Yet Grant was unable to achieve a breakthrough there or at the Petersburg sector. A month later, Grant again assailed both enemy flanks. This time the hardest fighting was on the Petersburg front. Union forces attempted an end-around on the Confederate right (southern) flank to strike the rail line entering Petersburg from the west. Again Lee’s ragged veterans repulsed the Federals with heavy losses.

PETERSBURG, VIRGINIA. Civil War Petersburg is often characterized as “the underbelly of Richmond.” That is neither fair nor accurate. Located on the fall line of the Appomattox River, 24 miles south of the capital, Petersburg was the second largest of the three incorporated cities in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The “Cockade City” and Richmond were the world’s two largest tobacco towns. In 1860 Petersburg handled 17,500 hogsheads (huge wooden barrels with a capacity of 100–125 gallons) of tobacco. Within easy reach of the James River, Petersburg was an inland port as well as a major junction of three railroads. Some 18,000 residents (9,340 of whom were white) comprised the population, which had the largest percentage of freedmen of any community in the state. It was a progressive city, with 20 tobacco factories and six cotton mills, surrounded by elegant homes. Although underneath Richmond’s shadow, Petersburg did not grow appreciably during the war. However, it had a strategic importance of its own. PETERSBURG, VIRGINIA, CAMPAIGN OF (15 JUNE 1864–2 APRIL 1865). In 1862 Captain Charles H. Dimmock came down from Richmond to build an earthen shield for Petersburg. He was a young, hardworking surveyor/engineer. With a skillful mind and abundant slave labor force, Dimmock constructed a 10-mile fortification that resembled a string of beads. The “Dimmock Line” extended like a horseshoe around Petersburg, with the two points anchored on the Appomattox River. The earthen work was filled with redoubts—triangular projections that enabled 45 batteries of artillery to deliver a converging fire on any attackers. It was an imposing defensive position, when properly manned. Yet after its completion in 1863, the line was ignored for 18 months. Earthworks began to crumble; weeds obscured vision. The Dimmock Line looked formidable when, in mid-June 1864, the lead elements of General Ulysses S. Grant’s army arrived before Petersburg. In charge of the city’s defenses was General Gustave Beauregard, who for two years had bounced from one insignificant assignment to another.

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Behind those Union reversals was a significant change in the makeup of the Army of the Potomac. It is an axiom of warfare that the first men to rush to arms are the best, the most spirited and motivated. Progressively after 1862, the quality of the young men coming into Federal service gradually declined, with the exception of those just passing the lawful age for enlistment. Men who enlisted for bounties, were conscripted, or who hired out as substitutes risked less, endured less, and in the main gave less. Although not successful in offensives, Federals unleashed an almost daily bombardment of Petersburg. Grant slowly kept extending his line to the west. Lee had no choice but to do the same. Eventually two armies stared at one another from a battle line that stretched 40 miles. Historian Charles Roland concluded, “Lee strove mightily during those days just to keep his army alive: hunger, exposure, demoralization, and constant attack by Grant’s well-fed and well-clad army rendered this a burden beyond description. That, in the face of so many impediments Lee was able to maintain a cohesive fighting force through the winter of 1864–65, is an enduring tribute to his leadership.” The long-expected, all-out assault by Grant came at 4:30 a.m. on Saturday, 2 April 1865. Lee’s line stiffened, broke at one point, snapped at another, collapsed at a third. Confederates fought delaying actions and launched counterattacks that stopped Union soldiers from occupying Petersburg until the following day. By then, Lee’s soldiers were trudging westward along the Richmond & Danville Railroad. Grant posted security forces in Richmond and Petersburg before beginning a dogged pursuit of what was left of the Army of Northern Virginia. One thinks of a siege as two opposing armies, both hunkered down in entrenchments, staring menacingly at one another, with action sporadic and casualties minimal. It was not that way at Petersburg. The 10-month standoff claimed an estimated 42,000 Union losses. Lee’s casualties, 28,000 soldiers, were more costly because replacements were nonexistent.

As for Petersburg, Union soldiers entered a veritable ghost town. Some 625 structures had been reduced to rubble. PICKETT, GEORGE EDWARD (1825–1875). His name is attached to one of the most famous assaults in American history. Yet his Civil War career ended in disgrace. The saddest part of George Pickett’s life was that the exalted opinion of him was shared by but a few others. The Richmond native graduated last in the West Point Class of 1846. Good service in the Mexican War and on frontier duty qualified him in 1861 for appointment as a Confederate colonel. He was placed in charge of defenses on the lower Rappahannock River. A year later, Pickett was promoted to brigadier general more from military need than from any demonstrated competence. His close friendship with General James Longstreet helped his advancement. A shoulder wound at Gaines’ Mill in June 1862 kept him from field service for almost a year. He rose to major general and division command, thanks again to Longstreet’s influence. Lack of center-stage attention did not stop Pickett from developing an air of flamboyance. Of medium height, he usually wore buff gauntlets, a small blue cap, and matching blue cuffs on a splendidly tailored uniform. Curving mustaches would have been more prominent but for his dark brown hair that, heavily perfumed, hung shoulder-length in ringlets. Early in the war he fell in love but had to wait for his intended to come of age. LaSalle Corbett was 23 years his junior. Pickett’s moment of glory came on 3 July 1863 at the Battle of Gettysburg. He led parts of two divisions in a head-on attack on the center of the Union lines. “Pickett’s Charge” lasted 40 minutes. Of 14,000 soldiers involved in the assault, fully half were killed, wounded, or captured. Pickett rode off the field with tears rolling down his cheeks. “Taylor,” he said in a broken voice to one of Lee’s aides, “we’ve lost all of our friends.” The general was never the same thereafter. He fired off a near-hysterical battle report that Lee refused to accept. Embittered and

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ineffective, Pickett found himself shuttled from one inconspicuous assignment to another. He developed notoriety in February 1864 while commanding in North Carolina. A number of captured Federals were identified as former North Carolina soldiers. Pickett had 22 of them hanged in three separate executions. Late in March 1865, Pickett was back in Lee’s army. The commanding general ordered him to “hold at all costs” the strategic road junction of Five Forks on the extreme western flank of the Petersburg defenses. A surprise 1 April Union attack overran Pickett’s defenses. The general at the time was attending a shadbake picnic a mile from his lines and out of ear range of the battle. Lee immediately relieved Pickett of command. On the day after the Appomattox surrender, Lee caught sight of Pickett and angrily exclaimed, “Is that man still with this army?” After the war, Pickett settled in Norfolk, Virginia, with his child bride. His limited talents, lingering bitterness, and close association with “Republican turncoat” James Longstreet hindered his business ventures. In March 1870, Pickett and former compatriot John Mosby had a chance meeting with Lee in Richmond. The encounter was unpleasant. Both Lee and Pickett had icy but polite exchanges. After departing, Pickett sneered, “That old man had my division massacred at Gettysburg.” “Well,” replied Mosby, “it made you immortal.” Pickett died of a liver abscess and was buried in Richmond’s Hollywood Cemetery. His wife devoted the next 50 years publishing idealized accounts so far from the truth as to do disservice to all involved.

POPE, JOHN (1822–1892). He was the only Union general for whom Lee openly expressed contempt. Contrasting personalities was a major cause. The Kentucky-born Pope was a blustery, bombastic officer whose Civil War career was like a skyrocket: it went up fast and toppled down in pieces. Pope was a collateral descendant of George Washington. After West Point, he did adequate service in the Mexican War and demonstrated some skills on the frontier. He became related by marriage to Mrs. Abraham Lincoln. In 1861 the new president summoned Pope from building lighthouses on the Great Lakes and made him a brigadier general. At first Pope seemed deserving. In the autumn of 1861, he conducted a series of wellexecuted movements that kept Missouri in the Union and gave the North a large bloc of the upper Mississippi River. President Lincoln brought him east, elevated him to major general, and placed Pope in command of a new army composed of scattered forces in the East. The tall, burly, impressive-looking Pope soon moved his force into northern Virginia. His first acts were bombastic proclamations to Union soldiers and Virginia citizens. Pope told his men that unlike their past performances as losers, he was accustomed to victory. He then announced to Virginia residents (who had previously not been molested by Federals) that he planned to confiscate from them all foodstuffs and other needed supplies. Disloyal citizens would be jailed; anyone giving aid to Confederate guerrillas in the area would be hanged. Such threats were unprecedented. General Robert E. Lee dismissed Pope as a “miscreant” who “must be suppressed”—a statement that conjured up an image of someone stepping on a cockroach. (Lee also told his wife that he could forgive a nephew who sided with the North, “but not his joining Pope.”) In the end, Pope proved to be all bluster and no bite. On 9 August, Stonewall Jackson’s men struck the lead element of the Union army at Cedar Mountain and drove it from the field. Lee joined Jackson with the rest of the Confederate army. A thoroughly confused Pope began issuing conflicting orders in some instances and no orders at all in other

PIEDMONT REGION, VIRGINIA. The piedmont region is a range of foothills that extend from New Jersey to Alabama. The word is more commonly used in Virginia and refers to the rolling hill country between the Appalachian Mountains to the west and the sandy flatlands to the east along the Atlantic coast. It is generally about 150 miles in width. Most of the major battles fought in Virginia occurred in the piedmont because it was easier to traverse and easier to defend.

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situations. Lee’s attacks at Second Manassas sent the Federal army reeling in defeat toward Washington, D.C. One of Pope’s officers wrote disgustingly, “It can in truth be said of him that he had not a friend in his command from the smallest drummer boy to the highest general officer.” Pope was banished to the military department in Minnesota, where he spent much of his remaining years trying to blame the Second Manassas disaster on subordinates in his command. His death certificate stated that he died of “abscess of the liver.”

Virginia turned the river into a completely Union stream. The origin of the word “Potomac” is not clear. Two different Indian tribes in the area had words in spelling and sound that approach Potomac, but the meanings of the words are obscure. Beginning as a stream in what is now Tucker County, West Virginia, the Potomac River drifts in a southeasterly direction for 405 miles. It is the fourth largest waterway emptying into the Atlantic Ocean. Its fall line is Great Falls, 10 miles upstream from Washington, D.C. George Washington and Robert E. Lee were both born at estates on the Potomac and only a few miles from one another. Washington later built his home, Mount Vernon, on the river a short distance downstream from the city of Alexandria. Union armies in the Civil War were customarily named after rivers. Significantly, the largest and best known of those forces was the Army of the Potomac.

POTOMAC RIVER. No clearer line of de­ marcation between North and South existed than the Potomac River. On its north bank were Union states and the national capital; the southern bank was Confederate territory. In time Federal troops would gain control of the Virginia side of the Potomac as well, and the addition in 1863 of the state of West

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R Of 9,000 miles of track in the Confederate States, 1,700 miles were in Virginia. Fourteen rail companies had lines. A majority of the railroads were only 60–80 miles in length. The largest railroad, the Virginia & Tennessee, stretched 204 miles from Lynchburg, in Virginia’s central piedmont, to Bristol on the Tennessee state line. Second to it was the Orange & Alexandria, which ran 148 miles from the Potomac River at Alexandria to Lynchburg. The small Virginia lines were locally owned and operated. Construction rarely passed the minimal level. In sparsely populated areas, laying track was careless. Dynamite did not exist; therefore, heavy grading was never done. When a line encountered the hills of the piedmont, it ran around them in a series of violent curves. Only one line used ballast (crushed rock as a foundation). Most tracks were laid on bare dirt. On a wartime map, the Virginia rail lines appear as a well-integrated system. They never were. Their gauges varied, which created bottlenecks at stations where goods had to be transferred from one boxcar to another a short distance away. Limited mileage gave the lines local outlooks rather than long-range perspectives. Jealousy between lines became an increasing liability in wartime. The railroads were in good running condition when civil war began. They served the state well and enabled generals such as Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson to be successful in the field. Possibly the greatest achievement of Confederate rail efforts involved a massive 1863 troop movement. Following the Battle of Gettysburg, Lee concluded to send the 12,000

RAILROADS. The most productive 10 years in the history of American transportation came in the 1850s with the development of railroads. Construction tripled that decade from 9,000 to 30,600 miles of track as the advantages of the “Iron Horse” became more obvious. Trains moved faster than wagons. (A New York–Cleveland trip in 1850 took seven weeks by wagon. The same trip in 1860 could be made by rail in five days.) Railroads could carry heavier loads in all kinds of weather. They were so reliable that the use of standard time came into use with train schedules. Naturally, railroads produced growth wherever tracks were laid. Their value in combat was fully tested in the 1860s. Indeed, the Civil War could not have been fought without rail lines. No other means of transportation existed to move men and supplies the huge armies demanded over long distances. As events would show, field commanders who used rail lines had a distinct advantage. Generals who ignored the value of this new form of transportation—and Joseph E. Johnston is a glaring example—consistently came up short of expectations. Being an army’s lifeline, railroads were therefore major targets throughout the struggle. The side using a rail line had to detach troops to guard bridges, tunnels, stations, and other prime spots. Opponents sent out raiding parties to damage if not destroy the tracks and rolling stock. Once soldiers moved to another sector, they ripped up tracks, dismantled locomotives, and burned cars to prevent use by the other side. Hence, railroads were doomed to havoc by their mere presence.

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Finally, in February 1865, Congress in effect took control of all rail lines in an effort aimed at unification. However, one railroad historian concluded, “Even the prerogatives of an Egyptian Pharaoh could not have saved the Confederacy” at that point. The Civil War was a railroad war from start to end. Open-field fighting began for control of a rail junction at Manassas. Fighting ended at a rail station called Appomattox. For four years, as several writers have declared, “victory rode the rails.”

soldiers in General James Longstreet’s corps from Virginia to reinforce General Braxton Bragg’s army in eastern Tennessee. Six different rail lines carried soldiers, who were crammed into every type of car: box, flat, coal, and stock. The 776-mile roundabout ride took 14 days. Although most of Longstreet’s troops arrived too late to participate in the Battle of Chickamauga, Georgia, the rail feat showed how much potential the “Iron Horse” had. Various rail shortcomings developed as the war progressed. Adequate maintenance was either difficult or impossible. Locomotives were not high on the Confederate ironworks preference lists. The Confederacy built only 19 railroad engines—as compared to 451 constructed in the North. Deterioration, corruption, attrition, sometimes disloyalty all played a role. As rail efficiency declined, so did the fortunes of the Army of Northern Virginia. One of General Ulysses S. Grant’s primary goals in the 1864–1865 investment of Petersburg was to break every rail line supplying the Petersburg defenders. It took 10 months, but cutting the rail arteries was a key factor in Lee’s eventual downfall. Southern lines struggled against every adversity during the war years. They failed in overall performance. Wartime production was too limited to give railroads major attention. Overtaxed locomotives and outdated tracks took a toll. Lack of coordination among the lines hampered effective operations. Worst of all was the absence of central control. Voluntary agreements between rail companies failed to improve conditions. Hence, in May 1863, the Confederate States Congress authorized the president to seize uncooperative lines and take all steps necessary to keep the lines running. Jefferson Davis was an avowed nationalist. Many states’ righters questioned his loyalty. Not wanting to be hit anew with criticisms of being a dictator, Davis backed away from using nationalism to meet the crisis. Soon it was necessary to tear up the rails of a lesser-used line and place the tracks on busier lines. Rolling stock suffered the same fate. This form of cannibalism brought only short-term relief.

RAVENSWORTH ESTATE, VIRGINIA. It was the home of William Henry Fitzhugh, a leader in both the Virginia General Assembly and the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1829– 1830. His sister Mary had married George Washington Parke Custis. She became close friends with Ann Carter Lee, the mother of Robert E. Lee. Family connections were strong. It was Fitzhugh who offered his Alexandria townhouse to the Lee family when it had to abandon Stratford Hall. Ravensworth became a second Arlington House for the homeless Lees. Robert’s mother died there a month after her son graduated from West Point. Ravensworth was located in Fairfax County and consisted in acreage of most of modernday Annandale. The mansion, like Stratford Hall, was H-shaped. Built of wood rather than brick, it was a two-story, Palladian-style home with unusually large rooms (one was 27 feet square). In 1831 Lee and his bride spent their honeymoon at Ravensworth. While there, Lee received word of his assignment to duty at Fort Monroe, Virginia. The home survived the Civil War in spite of Federal occupation, although more than 4,000 acres of woodland were cut down for military use. When Lee made his final trip through the South in March 1870, he spent a week at Ravensworth on the return trip. One of Lee’s sons, appropriately William Henry Fitzhugh “Rooney” Lee, resided there several years after the Civil War. His older brother, George Washington Custis Lee, spent his retirement years at Ravensworth. On 1 August 1926, a fire of undetermined circumstances destroyed the mansion. The

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Ravensworth Shopping Center now occupies the site.

wanted a smooth and beneficial peace. Toward that end, in 1864 he offered the Southern states a “Ten Percent Plan.” When one of every 10 citizens in a state took an oath of allegiance to the Union and the state abolished slavery within its boundaries, it could rejoin the Union on equal grounds with the Northern states. The proposal, issued in the middle of bloody war, seemed startlingly lenient. However, the view of Lincoln and the moderate in Congress was that the South had never left the Union because secession was illegal. Thus, a bad war could be followed by a good peace. Radical Republicans, gaining control of Congress, saw the situation quite differently. Ignoring the Emancipation Proclamation, they wanted all slavery abolished immediately, and they demanded that the South be severely punished for its “treasonable” sins. The assassination of President Lincoln removed the hand of moderation from the steering wheel. The killing gave new vigor to Northern anger that the Radicals nurtured. Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, had neither the acumen nor the personality to keep Lincoln’s ship of state on course. Johnson sought to implement the “Ten Percent Plan.” Radicals shot him down at every turn, repeatedly passing stern measures over Johnson’s vetoes. Johnson fought back viciously and escaped by a single vote from impeachment and removal from office. The ugliest power struggle in all of American history peaked 3 March 1867 when Congress overrode presidential veto and passed the Military Reconstruction Act. The defeated and still-angry South was placed under military occupation. Eight military districts replaced the former Confederate States. Most former Confederates were disenfranchised and thus were powerless to stop what they considered gross usurpation that continued for a decade. In Lincoln’s last public address, he observed of the postwar challenges, “We must simply begin with, and mould from, disorganized and discordant elements.” Robert Lee died in the midst of Reconstruction, yet he was still convinced that obedience to law and practicing reconciliation of the Union were America’s greatest needs.

REBEL YELL. Oddly, Lee is rarely associated with the Rebel Yell. The famous scream originated 21 July 1861 at the Battle of First Manassas. A Confederate brigade under General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson was con­cealed behind the crest of a key elevation on the battlefield. Union soldiers slowly fought their way up the hillside. Jackson ordered his men to prepare for attack. “Reserve your fire until they come within fifty yards!” he shouted. “Then fire and give them the bayonet! And when you charge, yell like furies!” The Rebel Yell was heard in scores of battles thereafter. Yet it is not a defined shout. Indeed, it varied with every rendition. The fullest description came from a Confederate who later became a clergyman. “There was in that sound something of the boy’s fierce play of Indian warfare, something of the exultant shout to hounds when the deer breaks cover, something of the wild laughter of reckless youth that mocks of death, something of the growl of hunted beast whose lair has been invaded; and then the deeper tones of that wordless rage of the strong man as he leaps to guard the threshold of his home.” One autumn evening, in the quietness of a Southern encampment, a group of soldiers began screaming and hollering. Other soldiers added their voices, and quickly thousands of men were involved in a nighty chorus of the Rebel Yell. General Jackson emerged from his tent. He listened until the racket subsided, then turned to an aide and declared, “That was the sweetest music I ever heard.” Whenever Robert E. Lee rode through an encampment, soldiers greeted him not so much with the Rebel Yell as with removing their hats and standing silently by the road. RECONSTRUCTION. Peace did not come to the land when the opposing armies stopped fighting. The Civil War shifted from the military to the political arenas, where hatred and violence so often reigned over a seven-year period. Union president Abraham Lincoln

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One of President Rutherford B. Hayes’s first official acts in March 1877 was to declare Reconstruction at an end. Union soldiers marched away, but angry memories lingered for years.

was prominent in establishing the Episcopal faith in the new nation. Socially elite, especially in the South, tended to flock toward that denomination. It was formal and not too demanding. Yet Protestantism grew steadily throughout young America. The first casualties of the Civil War were the Baptist and Methodist Churches. In the early 1840s, the two denominations each split in two over the basic premise: can a good Christian be a slaveholder? The Methodists reunited in the 20th century; Baptists are still divided into northern and southern wings. When secession brought civil war, Episcopalians likewise broke in two. Bishop Leonidas Polk of Louisiana spearheaded the push for “religious independence.” The bishop of North Carolina asserted that for the Episcopal Church not to follow the citizenry was “treason to the Southern cause.” In 1862 the Confederate Episcopal Church came into being. Economics played a role with the ministers. The 1860 Virginia census listed 112 Episcopal priests in the state. Of that number, 84 owned slaves. Ninety-eight Episcopal priests also became chaplains in the Army of Northern Virginia. Lee’s devotion as an Episcopalian was total. He attended church services whenever possible during the war. His enthusiasm for revivals that swept through his army was genuine. Indeed, and at his own expense, Lee distributed copies of the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer to soldiers who requested them. His faith never wavered. Once when president of Washington College, he asserted, “Oh, if I could only know that all the young men in this college were good Christians, I should have nothing more to desire.”

REGIMENT. In the Civil War army chain of command, the regiment was the soldier’s home. It was intended to have 10 companies of 100 men each—theoretically 1,000 soldiers. A colonel led the unit. Here the recruit took his oath of allegiance to the cause. The regiment was recognizable by the name of a state and a number signifying the order in which the regiment was accepted into active service. Thus, the “Moore’s Creek Rifle Guards” became Company E of the 18th North Carolina Infantry Regiment. The Old Dominion was the most populous state in the Confederacy. Its last regiment was the 64th Virginia Infantry. Each regiment officially had its own surgeon, chaplain, quartermaster, commissary, and other supply officers. Battle reports started at regimental level and were submitted along with communiqués from brigade, division, and corps commands. Casualties, illness, detached duty, and desertion took a steady toll from regimental rosters. By the war’s midway point, some regiments entered battle with fewer than 100 men. Altogether, the Southern states organized 642 regiments of infantry, 137 of cavalry, and 16 of artillery. Most batteries of artillery operated on a semi-independent status. The Union side contained 2,144 regiments of infantry, 272 of cavalry, 61 of heavy artillery, and 13 of engineers. RELIGION. Religious liberty had been the major impetus in the colonization of America. Church growth and revival movements were an integral part of society well into the 19th century. One commentator noted that although there might be a wide divergence between the preacher’s exhortations and the laity’s response, “religious sanction was demanded by the righteous, approved by the lukewarm and tolerated by the wicked.” Robert E. Lee’s ancestors helped bring Anglicanism to the British colonies. The family

RICHMOND, VIRGINIA. It was the living symbol of the Confederacy’s ability to exist as a nation. Only when it fell did Northern victory come clearly into view. Tradition has it that William Byrd II marked the spot for the city in 1608, a year after the first English settlers stepped ashore at Jamestown. Located at the fall line of the James River, Richmond came to look like a capital. Actually, starting in May 1861, it was the

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capital of three governments: City of Richmond, Commonwealth of Virginia, and Confederate States of America. It was the state’s largest metropolis, with a long history, wellestablished society, and stately buildings—all of which Washington, D.C., lacked. Prestige was but one of Richmond foundations. It was the closest thing to a manufacturing center as existed in the South. Tobacco and slave trading were twin pillars for the city’s early development. In 1860 Richmond could boast of 40 tobacco factories, 14 iron foundries, six rolling mills, 50 metal works, and eight flourmills (including the largest in the world). The Tredegar Iron Works became the Confederacy’s greatest producer of cannon. The Richmond Arsenal had the capacity to turn out 5,000 small arms monthly. Five railroads and a 150-mile canal stretching all the way into the Shenandoah Valley converged on the city. Richmond ranked 13th in the nation in manufactured goods, which was far above the productivity of the larger Southern cities of Charleston and New Orleans. Indeed, ­Richmond’s 1860 population was just slightly less than that of Charleston. Its 38,000 residents included 11,700 slaves. Twenty percent of the citizens were foreign-born. Although Richmond was not the most inhabited Confederate city, political transients and seasonal visitors gave it an appearance of a much larger capital. The “City on Seven Hills” was also the social center of the state. Four colleges, including a medical school, brought an intellectual air to Richmond. It was a churchgoing town, with St. Paul’s Episcopal, Second Presbyterian, and First African Baptist having the largest congregations. Four daily newspapers (Dispatch, Inquirer, Examiner, and Whig) had a total circulation of 84,000 readers. Then civil war came. Eighty-six years earlier, Patrick Henry had shouted in a Richmond church, “Give me liberty or give me death!” Now the capital was embarking again on a crusade for state independence. Richmond was strongly represented in the Confederate armies. More than 7,300 of its males entered military service. They furnished 40 companies of infantry, cavalry, and

artillery. Two regiments—1st and 15th Virginia—were almost exclusively composed of Richmond citizens. The capital itself suffered for four years from nearby battles, transitions, and want of necessities. Population explosion was the first major problem. Overnight the city became the principal gathering point for refugees, families driven from their homes by invading Union troops, destitute wives of soldiers, runaway slaves, military camps, prisons, hospitals, prostitutes, black-market salesmen, speculators, criminals, and other fortune seekers. Within three years, Richmond’s population swelled to four times its prewar number. Available housing could not begin to match the flood of new residents. Slums replaced once-attractive neighborhoods. Crimes of every nature rose sharply. In March 1862, the city was placed under martial law. Yet much furor arose over enforcement. The provost marshal, General John H. Winder, proved a martinet who acted in dictatorial fashion, and his police (usually called “plug uglies”) too often seemed more guilty of crime than the ones they were seeking. Scores of civilians were arrested and thrown into a warehouse called “Castle Thunder.” It became the most dreaded political prison in the Confederacy. A newspaper announced that martial law had turned Richmond into “a hostile city taken by storm.” Inflation appeared with war. It reached galloping speed as month after month passed. On 2 April 1863, shortages of goods and skyrocketing prices led to an ugly incident. A crowd, predominantly female, gathered in Capitol Square. Lack of sufficient food was the initial motivation. Soon hundreds gave vent to collective anger about life in Richmond. A full-scale “bread riot” began. People stormed through a 10-square-block area of downtown. They used hatchets and other tools to break into stores and steal whatever they wanted. Only the threat of military forces firing into the crowd brought the uprising to a close. This incident did nothing to curb shortages and inflation. A year later, a War Department clerk stated that the biggest fear in Richmond was not the Union army but starvation.

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Meanwhile, civil war brought two other major and unwanted distinctions to Richmond. Within two years, the capital had the largest concentration of prisoner-of-war compounds in the South. By mid-1863, more than 14,000 captured Federals were at such prisons as Libby, Belle Isle, and Castle Godwin. Overflow came the next year, whereby hundreds of prisoners were transferred to hastily built confinements at Danville, Virginia, and Andersonville, Georgia. Wartime Richmond similarly had the greatest number of soldier-hospitals of any locale in the nation. Of the 85 medical infirmaries established, Camp Winder on the west side of town was the largest, and Chimborazo on the east side was the most famous. Many hospitals were previously abandoned warehouses; in several instances, private homes were converted to caring for the sick and injured. Naturally the presence of such aid stations, plus the limited medical knowledge of the time, promoted epidemics. Richmond had to weather at least two outbreaks of smallpox. Typhoid fever, tuberculosis, and diarrhea were commonplace. A visitor early in 1865 declared, “Everyone lives in filthy conditions here in Richmond: I have never been so filthy in all my life.” The city’s internal hardships were difficult to bear, but Richmond also faced major external dangers. From war’s beginning, it was the principal target of Union might—the king in the chess game of war. In 1862 the largest army North America had ever seen advanced up the Virginia peninsula to almost within sight of Richmond’s church spires. Robert E. Lee managed to repulse Union General George B. McClellan’s effort. A heavy raid by General Judson Kilpatrick the following year failed in its objectives. Similarly, a February 1864 stab by Federal cavalry under Colonel Ulric Dahlgren proved unsuccessful. Three months later, General Ulysses S. Grant began his Overland Campaign. He fought Lee from the Wilderness to the outskirts of Petersburg but could not penetrate the Confederate defenses. Citizens of Richmond as well as those of their sister city 25 miles to the south, had to endure a 10month investment in which the deadly boom of cannon was an everyday sound.

Defeat finally came in sheets of fire. Throughout the morning and afternoon of April 2, Confederate officials abandoned Richmond. Warehouses loaded with munitions and other army supplies were set afire to prevent capture by Federals. That night mobs of uncontrollable and hungry citizens, along with stragglers, deserters, and former Union prisoners, swarmed through the streets in wild looting. The warehouse fires, fanned by high winds and widespread chaos, spread swiftly through the heart of the city. At least 90 percent of Richmond’s commercial businesses burned to the ground. Eight hundred buildings in a 40-block area were reduced to ashes. Union soldiers marched into Richmond the next morning. Instrumental in helping bring the flames under control was the XXIII Corps, composed in the main of black soldiers. A new Richmond slowly rose from the ashes. Eventually it resumed its place as one of the South’s leading cities. Among the more dramatic moments in that reconstruction came in January 1990. Douglas Wilder, the grandson of Richmond slaves, was inaugurated as the first elected black governor in American history. RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, HOME OF LEE FAMILY. Custis Lee, the general’s eldest son, was stationed in Richmond as an aide to President Jefferson Davis and a colonel for the city’s defenses. He and other staff officers rented a home at 707 East Franklin Street as a “bachelor’s mess.” Built in 1844, the Greek Revival townhouse was three stories high and three windows wide, with the entrance way at the left-hand wall. In January 1864, Custis Lee helped his mother and two sisters move into their new quarters. It would be their home for the remainder of the war. General Robert E. Lee returned there after the Appomattox surrender. Miss Jessie Gordon conducted a school for young ladies in the house following the departure of the Lees. Beginning in 1883 and for the next 66 years, the Lee House was headquarters for the Virginia Historical Society. Today it is a commercial business and is dwarfed on the west side by a high-rise office building.

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Raps, an artificial island a mile offshore from Fort Monroe. Piles of stones stacked atop a shoal produced enough ground for an installation initially called Fort Calhoun (in honor of Secretary of War John C. Calhoun). Laying the foundation began in 1819, but little progress had been made when Lee arrived there a decade later. Work would continue slowly after Lee’s departure. Rip Raps played no role of note in the Civil War. The name of the post was later changed to Fort Wool.

“RIDE AROUND McCLELLAN” RECONNAISSANCE (12–15 JUNE 1862). The Battle of Seven Pines (31 May–1 June) brought a halt to General George B. McClellan’s advance on Richmond. It also brought General Robert E. Lee to command of the Army of Northern Virginia. Lee wasted no time in displaying the audacity that would make him famous. He immediately began to make plans for a counterattack. One of Lee’s first tasks was to determine how far the Union army extended across Virginia’s lower peninsula. Especially important was learning where the Federal right (northern) flank ended. It was like a hand stretching toward reinforcements positioned at Fredericksburg. Lee ordered his young cavalry chief, General J. E. B. “Jeb” Stuart, to ride north and pinpoint the exact end of the Union line. On 12 June, Stuart and 1,200 Confederate horsemen galloped 22 miles and accomplished their mission. Yet Stuart was not finished. He had determined from the start to make a reconnaissance in force of the entire Federal army. Retracing his steps would almost certainly bring on an engagement with the enemy, whereas a circular return would befuddle the Federals, gain far more information for Lee, and allow Stuart to maintain the initiative. A skirmish near Totopotomoy Creek was the only real impediment to Stuart’s dramatic ride. Just before dawn on Sunday, 15 June, after a 200-mile journey, the Confederate column wearily rode into the empty streets of Richmond with 165 prisoners and 260 horses. In addition, Stuart had learned more about the Union army than Lee had hoped to obtain. Stuart had fed McClellan’s fears of being in danger while demonstrating how effective cavalry raids could be if properly led. Southern spirits in Virginia arose appreciably. Praise for Stuart included promotion to major general.

RIPLEY, ROSWELL SABINE (1823–1887). Bearded, portly, and pompous, General Ros­ well Ripley seemed always at odds with at least one superior officer. He detested Robert E. Lee, one of few people who did. Ripley was born in Ohio and graduated in the same West Point class as Ulysses S. Grant. He taught math briefly at his alma mater and provided useful staff service in the Mexican War. He was assigned to duty on Sullivan’s Island at Charleston, South Carolina. In 1852, he met and married a wealthy widow, Alicia Middleton Sparks. Ripley resigned from the army and established a successful business in Charleston. His Northern federalism changed to a confirmed states’ righter. He also became an officer in the South Carolina militia. In 1857 Ripley gained some notoriety by publishing a two-volume history of the Mexican War. A brigadier general’s commission came in August 1861. Ripley’s first Civil War duty was reconditioning Forts Moultrie and Sumter. He greeted the newly appointed departmental commander, Robert E. Lee, with a resentment that became open hatred. South Carolina Governor Francis W. Pickens felt compelled to apologize for Ripley in a letter to President Jefferson Davis. “His habit is to say extreme things . . . and this is well calculated to do great injury to General Lee’s command. I do not think General Ripley means half of what he says in his energetic way, but others construe it differently.” Lee chose to ignore Ripley whenever possible. Following Lee’s return to Virginia, Ripley complained so loudly to so many that in March 1862 he was sent to the Confederate army

“RIP RAPS,” VIRGINIA. Lieutenant Robert E. Lee’s second assignment following West Point was to Fort Monroe, Virginia, which guarded the entrance from the Atlantic Ocean into the state’s chief seaport, Norfolk. Among Lee’s duties was assisting in the construction of Rip

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Despite Ripley’s cantankerous nature and overfondness for women and drinking, he was always popular with Charlestonians. Henry Timrod wrote the poem “Ripley” in honor of “Charleston’s Gallant Defender.”

maneuvering around Richmond. Ripley commanded a brigade in the Seven Days’ Campaign and at the battles of South Mountain and Antietam. He seemed repeatedly to have trouble getting his men in proper position on time. At Antietam, he was shot in the throat. That the bullet first passed through a thick necktie prevented it from being fatal. When Lee reorganized the Army of Northern Virginia in the autumn, no place existed for Ripley. He remained commander of Charleston throughout the 1863–1864 campaigns, but Ripley appeared to spend as much time fighting superiors as he did the Federals. In October 1864, Adjutant General Samuel Cooper and Secretary of War James Seddon requested that Ripley be removed from command “for insulting a lady in one of his fits of drunkenness.” Davis refused to intervene. Ripley and departmental commander Gus­ t­ave Beauregard shared a mutual dislike of one another. Ripley accused Beauregard of needlessly sacrificing Morris Island, South Carolina, to the Federals. Beauregard accused Ripley of intoxication and insubordination. In February 1865, Beauregard transferred ­Ripley to what was left of the Army of Tennessee and “fortunate to be rid of such an ­element of discord.” His wife and daughter had left him at that point. After the war Ripley went to England and failed in a business venture involving firearms. He returned to the United States and divided his time between attempted business enterprises at Charleston and New York City. None were successful. He died of apoplexy while in New York and was buried in Charleston. His wife did not attend the funeral.

RIVERS, VIRGINIA. The problem with fighting in Virginia, Union General George Meade snorted, was that “the damned rivers run in the wrong direction!” Meade was correct. To get directly to Richmond, Federals had to march only 100 miles in a north-to-south route. However, the streams in the Virginia piedmont ran from the mountains in a west-to-east direction. Seven major streams stood in the way. The Potomac, Rappahannock, Rapidan, Mattaponi (formed by the slow merger of four creeks (Mat, Ta, Po, and Ni), North Anna, South Anna, and Pamunkey each had to be forded before Federals reached the Confederate capital. Then there was the Chickahominy River, which more resembled a swamp. It began around Mechanicsville, five miles north of Richmond, and twisted slowly 40 miles southeasterly to Williamsburg. It bisected the lower peninsula. Each of those waterways was a natural defensive barrier. An invading army had to find shallow points in order to get all of its components (artillery, loaded supply wagons, caissons, etc.) across the water. Pontoon bridges were dangerous to build and offered open targets for Southern gunfire. Robert E. Lee was a skillful engineer and highly knowledgeable student of his state’s geography. Repeatedly during 1862–1864, Lee’s strategy was based on the location and flow of rivers.

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S was impossible because Longstreet had to protect the road up which Lee’s army was marching. Southern commanders at Sailor’s Creek were too weary to think carefully. The grinding fight, sometimes marked by handto-hand battle, lasted but a short while. Confederates who tried to run away found that the strength for flight was not there. Lee rode up just as the fight was ending. “My God!” he shouted. “Has the army been dissolved?” He grabbed a battle flag in an attempt to rally his soldiers. It was too late. Although historians have traditionally put Lee’s casualties at Sailor’s Creek as a fourth or third of his army, actual battle casualties were 15 percent. However, Lee’s son Custis and eight other generals were captured. The westward march resumed but at decreasing speed. General Ulysses S. Grant sent a telegram to President Abraham Lincoln. “If the thing is pressed, I think Lee will surrender.” Back came the reply, “Let the thing be pressed.”

SAILOR’S CREEK, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF (6 APRIL 1865). Lee’s retreat westward from Petersburg and Richmond was agonizingly slow. Horses were near exhaustion; soldiers were unfed and dispirited; although what was left of the army was marching, its attitude was defensive and its destination unknown. The army was strung out for miles on a single road. James Longstreet’s men were in the lead, followed by troops under Generals Richard Anderson and Richard Ewell. The army’s wagon train followed, with General John B. Gordon’s brigades bringing up the rear. On a rainy 6 April, a gap developed between Longstreet and Anderson near Sailor’s Creek, a rain-swollen tributary of the Appomattox River. Union General George Custer’s cavalry sliced through the opening, momentarily cutting Robert E. Lee’s army in two. Ewell managed to get the supply wagons turned in a more northerly direction. Gordon, receiving no orders, dutifully followed the wagons. Custer’s attack forced Anderson and Ewell to form battle positions. The gap widened between the two halves of Lee’s army. Custer captured the wagons, killed most of the drivers, and set the horses loose. Meanwhile, hordes of Federals concentrated against the two Confederate corps. At 5 p.m., some 20 Union cannon unloaded what Ewell termed “a terrific fire.” A half hour later, Federals attacked in strength. The Confederate situation was hopeless. Two tiny corps, numbering 15,000 men and with no artillery support, were overwhelmed by superior numbers advancing in some places from three directions. Getting reinforcements

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS. The village was an important crossroad in south Texas and a focal point in the long struggle of Texans for independence from Mexico. San Antonio first became known as the site where, in March 1836, some 1,500 Mexican soldiers slaughtered 200 Americans barricaded in a Catholic mission called the Alamo. Shortly after war with Mexico began, Robert E. Lee passed through the town en route to joining General Winfield Scott. In 1857 the lieutenant colonel spent a three-month tenure at San Antonio as temporary commander of

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amputated and became the centerpiece of a victory parade that followed. Continuing turmoil in Mexico enabled Texas to organize a government. In 1845 the United States annexed the area. Santa Anna refused attempts at negotiation over the lost territory. When he mobilized his army for battle, President James Knox Polk resorted to a war Lee personally opposed. Santa Anna was not a brilliant field commander. He led inept troops, many of whom were convicts freed to serve in the army. His 20,000 soldiers lacked serious training, and most of their officers resented Santa Anna’s arrogance. American soldiers under General Winfield Scott ran over their opponents in a quick and decisive war that ended Santa Anna’s military career. Many women claimed children by the general. He acknowledged four. Twice he took a wife, but for financial convenience. In each instance the wealthy bride was only 15 years old. Santa Anna did not attend either wedding: the father of the bride served as his proxy. During 1855–1874 Santa Anna lived in exile outside Mexico. Once he made a visit to New York City in a futile attempt to peddle chicle (the milky juice of the sapodilla tree) to replace the rubber on carriage wheels. That failed, but an associate was able to sell tons of chicle for a new candy called chewing gum. Santa Anna, crippled and blind from cataracts, returned to Mexico just in time to die. See also MEXICAN WAR.

the 2nd U.S. Cavalry. Lee returned in 1860 to command the Department of Texas, headquartered at the now-thriving cattle town. The colonel had an uncomfortable experience in San Antonio. In February 1861, Texas seceded from the Union. Suddenly Lee found himself an army officer stationed in a hostile country. Lee promptly changed into civilian garb until orders from General Scott sent him to Washington, D.C. Dressed in his uniform, the Virginian headed east to the center of a national crisis. SANTA ANNA, ANTONIO LOPEZ DE (1794– 1876). He has been called everything from “scoundrel” to “Napoleon of the West.” Although Santa Anna was the dominant figure in 19th-century Mexican history, he created a legacy of disappointment and disaster. Patriotism never got in the way of self-interest. He was born in Veracruz to a respected colonial family. At the age of 16, Santa Anna joined the army. He belonged to a group of officers who helped Mexico gain its independence from Spain in 1821. Yet the new country for years proved fractured and chaotic because of opportunists such as Santa Anna. During the period 1833–1855 the country had 16 presidents. Santa Anna ruled 11 of those times. Tall, handsome, with broad shoulders, he had an engaging charm when necessary. He always wanted to be Mexico’s president, but he was not interested in governing. His passions were power, gaudy uniforms, women, and money. In 1835 Santa Anna was president and general of the national army. Democracy faded. Among his many dissidents were Americans living in the Texas province. The general put together an army and led an advance into Texas with a “take-no-prisoners” attitude. He won victories at the Alamo and Goliad. Yet Santa Anna’s overconfidence led to tactical carelessness. This allowed Sam Houston and a band of Texans to win a crushing victory at San Jacinto, Texas. Santa Anna was captured and paroled. In 1838 he repulsed a French invasion. In the major fighting, a shell fragment shattered his right leg below the knee. The limb was

SAVAGE STATION, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF (29 JUNE 1862). The day of 28 June passed with General George B. McClellan retreating slowly across the lower Virginia peninsula and Robert E. Lee trying to put together the pieces of his army for a full-scale attack. One of Lee’s first targets was Savage Station, three miles east of Seven Pines. It was a major Union supply point at the moment. McClellan had dispatched additional troops there to delay Lee as the Federal wagon trains rumbled southward. Lee ordered the divisions of Generals John Magruder and Benjamin Huger to leave the Richmond defenses and proceed east to

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Savage Station. General Stonewall Jackson would come in from the northwest and provide a three-pronged advance on the rail depot. Yet the orders were unclear and lacking in any sort of timetable. Magruder dutifully started forward and soon encountered heavy Union resistance. A two-hour fight ended when Federals retired from the field. Magruder decided to wait for Huger and Jackson before advancing farther. Huger never arrived; Jackson sent word that another objective would prevent him from moving toward Savage Station. Left alone, Magruder edged forward to the supposedly ill-defended station. He arrived to find two Federal corps and 40 guns in battle position. Magruder’s nerves were already frayed from the previous days of standing alone between the huge Union army and Richmond while Lee made his flanking offensive. Now this unforeseen situation left him totally unraveled. The Confederate general sent three divisions forward, but commanders failed to execute properly. The effort might have been more of a disaster if nightfall and rain had not come. What did not happen at Savage Station was a keen disappointment to Lee. In an unusually strong dispatch to Magruder, Lee declared, “I regret that you have made so little progress today in pursuit of the enemy.” The fault was not totally Magruder’s. However, he paid the full price. Lee shortly transferred him to the Texas military theater. See also SEVEN DAYS’ CAMPAIGN, VIRGINIA.

he became the hero of the Canadian Campaign in the War of 1812 and was the victorious general in the Mexican War. The Duke of Wellington pronounced Scott’s movements in Mexico “unsurpassed in military annals. He is the greatest living soldier.” Field service had its costs: a fractured collarbone, bruises from a spent cannonball, a broken shoulder, and yellow fever. Scott was general-in-chief of the army (only the second officer ever to hold a lieutenant general’s rank) when he ran unsuccessfully for president in the 1852 election. The firing on Fort Sumter nine years later became the third war for “Old Fuss and Feathers.” He had served 13 presidents. His devotion to the Union was unchallengeable. By 1861, however, he was physically and mentally no longer up to the task. Instead, he was Washington’s most imposing monument—a mountain of a man eroded and crumbled by age. He was 74 years old, and six feet, five inches tall. Even walking was an effort. An epicurean appetite had swelled his massive frame to 350 pounds. A combination of vertigo, dropsy, and gout limited his attention span. Subordinate officers dismissed him as a grotesque caricature of a soldier, but the general still had some fire. Scott’s military secretary wrote that the general-in-chief “had an almost idolatrous fancy for [Robert E.] Lee, whose military genius he estimated far above that of any other officer of the day.” As war clouds gathered, the old general exclaimed, “If I were on my death-bed tomorrow, and the President of the United States should tell me that a great battle was to be fought for the liberty or slavery of the country, and asked my judgment as to the ability of a commander, I would say with my dying breath: ‘Let it be Robert E. Lee.’” Lee looked on Scott as a surrogate father. Scott proved a good teacher, Lee an alert student. From Scott the colonel had learned many qualities a successful field commander needed. Thus, when Virginia left the Union, Lee faced a terrible dilemma that pitted love of Union and Scott versus his devotion to his birthright, the Old Dominion. Lee chose the

SCOTT, WINFIELD (1786–1866). Following in the shadow of the sainted George Washington would be a challenge to any general, but Winfield Scott proved a most worthy successor. He was the nation’s first truly professional soldier, and he was the man who molded Robert E. Lee into the status of military greatness. Born a year before the Constitution was adopted, Scott requested appointment to the army from fellow Virginian and then president Thomas Jefferson. Scott never received any formal military education. Nevertheless,

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latter. Immediately after submitting his onesentence resignation from the army, Lee sent a personal note to his mentor. “I shall carry to the grave the most grateful recollections of your kind consideration,” he told General Scott, “and your name and fame will always be dear to me.” Scott belonged to another age when civil war came. Still, he possessed a good eye for warfare. In quick fashion in the spring of 1861, he developed a plan for the restoration of the United States. It involved a long, step-by-step process at little human cost. The navy would blockade Southern ports on the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico, and Mississippi River. Union forces would mass along the northern border of the Confederacy. With the South sealed, the North could wait for slow suffocation. When Scott’s plan became public, it was greeted with contempt. Newspaperman Horace Greeley called it the “Anaconda Plan.” Something about the picture of an ugly snake slowly constricting the life out of an enemy was ungallant, lacking in dash and patriotism. It required too much time and effort in a war that would surely end after a couple of battles. The plan was shelved. In 1864 General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant discovered Scott’s plan and implemented it to the extent of attacking everywhere simultaneously. Scott’s proposal, and Grant’s determination, ultimately saved the Union. Scott retired from the army late in 1861. He traveled to Europe and in 1864 published his memoirs. Too much elapsed time limited the book’s usefulness. The old general died in 1866 and was buried at West Point, a school he always wished he could have attended. Lee mentioned Scott once in his wartime writings. Just days before Grant launched the April 1865 attacks at Petersburg, Lee informed his wife that he was sending her “Genl. Scott’s autobiography, which I thought you might like to read. The Genl. of course stands out very prominently & does not hide his light under a bushel, but he appears the bold sagacious truthful man as he is.”

the American colonies long before the preparation of a constitution. The basic premise was that states existed before a nation. Thirteen independent states agreed by constitution that a national government would be created and would possess limited powers. However, all powers not specifically designated to the central government remained with the states. Thus, the United States was actually a confederation of sovereign states. The U.S. Constitution neither provides for secession nor does it prohibit it. Therefore, because a state voluntarily agreed to belong to a union of such states, just as voluntarily did it reserve the right to leave said union. Southerners felt that they were well within the thinking of the Founding Fathers. Liberal interpreters of the Constitution viewed secession quite differently. States relinquished their sovereignty when they became a nation. The Union was perpetual. It could not be divided by the will of any minority. The Founding Fathers never intended a nation where parts could leap in or jump out at their pleasure. The irony is that both sides based their thinking on what they assumed the framers of the Constitution wanted to achieve. Movements toward secession occurred three times before the 1860–1861 events. Shortly after the Louisiana Purchase, New ­England debated the issue because of smallstate fear of new and larger states being carved from the huge new land acquisition. Opposition to the War of 1812 sent the New England states into a Hartford Convention to discuss the pros and cons of secession. In 1850 a group of unhappy Southern leaders met in Nashville, Tennessee, for the same reason. At none of those meetings was the constitutionality of leaving the Union of major concern. Robert E. Lee had strong feelings about such a breakup. He had been an American soldier for 30 years, but he had been a Virginian all of his life. Lee family roots had been planted in the Old Dominion for 225 years when the 70-yearold nation faced its greatest challenge. Nevertheless, Lee opposed dismantling the Union. He stated early in 1861 that dissolution was

SECESSION. It was the most pronounced outgrowth of states’ rights, and it prevailed among

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The Army of the Potomac stretched all the way across the peninsula. However, an overlooked stream, the Chickahominy River, meandered from northwest to southeast toward the James River. A third of the Union army was north of the rain-swollen Chickahominy and isolated because of lack of stable bridges. That segment on the end of McClellan’s line would be the focal point of attack. To ascertain how far the Federal line extended, Lee dispatched his cavalry leader, General J. E. B. “Jeb” Stuart, to make a reconnaissance. Stuart and 1,200 horsemen did so—and promptly rode completely around the Federal army to return to Richmond. That exploit brought much information to Lee. He developed a good plan, although it was filled with risks. Roads were soggy and streams flooded. Such conditions would keep McClellan immobile. Turning the Federal flank away from the York River would sever supply lines and eliminate the firepower of Union gunboats anchored in the York. Lee’s strategy would capitalize on secrecy and speed. General Stonewall Jackson’s divisions would move from the Shenandoah Valley toward Richmond. Leaving a small force in the capital’s earthworks to hold McClellan’s attention, Lee would shift the bulk of his army to the Union right flank and, with Jackson, deliver a two-punch attack on 26 June. Such daring action, however, required coordinated staff work, close timing, and correct movements by all units at all times. If everything worked, Lee could “roll up” the Union army and crush it. Lee was at the critical moment of his military career. The Army of Northern Virginia, about to receive its baptism in blood, numbered around 80,000 men. It was the largest force Lee would ever command. He had seen no real-scale action for 15 years. The army’s organization had not been tested, many of the units unfamiliar with battle. Lee would have to prove himself to the world. The resultant Seven Days’ Campaign was for Lee a mixture of accomplishment and failure. McClellan unknowingly began the campaign with a small probe from his left flank. The skirmish—usually named Oak

“anarchy” and secession “nothing but revolution.” Extremists on both sides were equally to blame for an avoidable calamity. There seems to be inconsistency in a letter Lee sent his son Custis. “As an American citizen I take great pride in my country . . . and would defend any State if her rights were invaded.” However, Lee added, “a Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets, and in which strife and civil war are to take the place of brotherly love and kindness, has no charm for me.” War spread across Virginia. It was then that Lee stated, “I cannot raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home.” He had to follow the destinies of his state. SEVEN DAYS’ CAMPAIGN, VIRGINIA (25 JUNE–1 JULY 1862). For the first time, Robert E. Lee was an army commander. Although confronting the massive Union force on the outskirts of Richmond, Lee had to listen to entreaties for favors from friends and family; he had to shuffle officers for better organization; he had to build a staff to handle the myriad paperwork daily. Meanwhile, Lee began analyzing the earthen defenses around Richmond. He ordered work begun on a second line in case of defeat. Soldiers, slaves, and civilians were forced into labor. One resident dubbed Lee merely “old stick-in-the-mud.” Of course, most menacing was the Federal army east of the capital. Lee had an uncanny ability to read the mind of an opponent. He knew General George B. McClellan from Mexican War days. Watching him inch his way up the Virginia peninsula the previous month, avoiding action whenever possible, Lee concluded that the two-day battle at Seven Pines (31 May–1 June) had brought the Union army to a halt. McClellan, Lee concluded, will await reinforcements before resuming his campaign. Ignoring the superiority of Federal numbers, Lee speedily made preparations to seize the offensive. It would be the one action McClellan would least expect, especially from a Confederate leader whom McClellan had dismissed as “too cautious and weak under grave responsibilities.”

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Grove—was brief but produced 900 casualties. McClellan fell back to his original position. On 26 June, with Jackson running late, part of Lee’s force attacked at Mechanicsville and was soundly defeated. During the night, Federals retired to an even stronger position at Gaines’ Mill. Lee resumed the assaults the next day and was suffering heavy losses when Jackson’s men dashed onto the field and won a dearly bought victory. McClellan had now abandoned any hope of capturing Richmond. Saving his army was the sole concern. The Union general ordered his forces southward to the James River and the protection of heavily armed gunboats. Lee pushed hard in pursuit. A 29 June Confederate attack at Savage Station was late, disorganized, and repulsed. Lack of communication and uncoordinated movements cost Lee another defeat on 30 June at Glendale. McClellan reached the James River and desperately prepared strong works atop a long plateau known as Malvern Hill. Lee, equally desperate to destroy the Army of the Potomac, ordered a series of attacks that Union artillery blew to pieces. In losing the battle, Lee nevertheless won the campaign. McClellan’s offensive threat had disappeared. His army had been driven 20 miles in retreat and was now fortified under the protection of the U.S. Navy. Lee had saved Richmond. If McClellan’s campaign had succeeded, the Civil War likely would have ended. Lee’s maneuvering assured a prolongation of the war to a bitter end. With McClellan’s failure, Union President Abraham Lincoln issued a call for an additional 300,000 volunteers. The war was going to continue, and it would evolve into a total war with immeasurable destruction. For Lee, there was anything but joy at the end of the Seven Days. He had not gained his major objectives: to crush the North’s premier army and to bring an end to the war. Failure was not due to any actions by McClellan. Lee admitted to his wife, “Under ordinary circumstances the Federal Army should have been destroyed.”

The reasons were internal. Trying for the first time to maneuver 80,000 mostly raw soldiers into the first attack the Confederate army had ever made was the basic weakness. Unfamiliarity with terrain because of incorrect maps, inadequate staff work, a too-tight schedule, and relying too much on subordinates undeserving of such trust all were additional handicaps. Total losses in the Seven Days were about equal to Richmond’s prewar population. Lee inflicted 16,000 casualties, captured 52 cannon and 35,000 small arms. Yet his army suffered 20,000 losses, roughly a fourth of its strength. Over the long haul, the Confederate army could not sustain such victories. In the larger picture, Lee’s army gained strength and experience in offensive warfare. As for Lee, he had to weather a blast of criticism from the public. Newspapers went from hoping for deliverance to carping about Lee’s mistakes in the field. Although he was the hero of the hour to Richmond citizens, Lee had no time to refight battles. Word arrived of another military threat in Virginia’s northern piedmont. See also GLENDALE, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF; “RIDE AROUND McCLELLAN” RECONNAISSANCE. SEVEN PINES, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF (31 MAY–1 JUNE 1862). May 1862 was the rainiest month in Virginia memory. Federal General George B. McClellan’s huge army crawled up the Virginia peninsula toward the Confederate capital. The Federal host, numbering more than 110,000 soldiers, finally halted at Seven Pines. It was a hamlet only nine miles from Richmond. Yet at Seven Pines was the last natural barrier McClellan faced: the Chickahominy River. There he decided to wait for reinforcements before starting the final push. (His opponent, General Joseph Johnston, had no more than 42,000 men defending Richmond.) The flooded Chickahominy meandered diagonally across the peninsula. In doing so, it forced the Union army into two isolated wings. A desperate Johnston, who had refrained for a month to give battle, saw this as the last chance to make an attack.

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Outnumbered more than two to one, he would have equal strength against 33,000 Federals on the southern side of the Chickahominy. On the night of 30 May, a violent storm dumped more than three inches of rain and turned the Chickahominy into a raging torrent. Johnston’s first mistake was issuing verbal orders for an 8 a.m. assault. Thereafter, confusion marked every Confederate effort. Troops failed to move at appointed times. General James Longstreet’s division advanced down the wrong road. Longstreet and General Benjamin Huger got embroiled in an argument over seniority in rank while soldiers stood in the mud. The battle did not get under way until 1 p.m. Only six of Longstreet’s brigades delivered the first assault. McClellan, ill at the time, recovered sufficiently to send a full Union corps across the river on rickety bridges. These reinforcements blunted the momentum of the Confederate drive. On the following day, Johnston tried again. The efforts added only to the casualty lists. Confederates lost 6,100 men in the battle. Near sundown on 1 June, Johnston was struck in the shoulder by a bullet and in the chest by a shell fragment. It would take six months for him to recover from broken ribs and hemorrhage. President Jefferson Davis and General Robert E. Lee had watched much of the action that day. On the ride back to Richmond in the darkness, Davis appointed Lee to take command of what would become the Army of Northern Virginia. The move was not merely because Davis had high admiration for his military adviser. Lee was the only full general at hand whom Davis trusted at the time. As a result of Seven Pines, McClellan dropped all ideas for resuming the offensive. He also concentrated his army on the south side of the Chickahominy, leaving only a single corps as a detached right flank.

Shenandoah Valley in 1861: “Everything had a thrifty look. The horses and cattle were fat and sleek; the large barns were overflowing with the gathered crops; the horses looked comfortable; and the fences were in splendid order. It was truly a land of milk and honey.” The Shenandoah Valley was so important—and became so famous—that in Civil War writing it is generally referred to simply as “the Valley.” Indians were its first inhabitants and called it “Shenandoah,” which means “Daughter of the Stars.” The valley lies between the two easternmost ranges of the Appalachian chain. (The first range is popularly known as the Blue Ridge Mountains.) The valley loses elevation as it runs northward. Hence, one goes northward down the valley to Harpers Ferry. Conversely, one travels southward up the valley to Lexington. It is 130 miles from Lexington to the Potomac River. The valley is 25 miles at its widest. Between Harrisonburg and Front Royal is a 40-mile ridge called Massanutten Mountain. It divides the center of the valley into two parts and was a vital factor in the first of two campaigns fought for control of the region. The Shenandoah Valley stretches in ­northeast–southwest directions. The northern end was like a spear pointing at the heart of the North. Citizens of Maryland and southern Pennsylvania were kept in constant anxiety over the valley being used as an invasion route. And Washington, D.C., itself was but 30 miles downriver from Harpers Ferry. On the other hand, Union armies advancing up the valley would actually be heading away from Richmond into a mountainous wilderness. Although the Blue Ridge offered a high, western fence for Robert E. Lee’s army, 11 passes offered breakthroughs into Virginia’s piedmont. A second reason the valley could not be ignored in military circles was its source for foodstuffs and animals. It was one of the South’s richest agricultural and livestock regions. Wheat production was double that of any other area of the Confederacy. Grain of all kinds, beef cattle, horses, hogs, poultry, apples, and garden crops came in profusion from its farms.

SHARPSBURG, MARYLAND, CAMPAIGN OF. See ANTIETAM CREEK, MARYLAND, CAMPAIGN OF (2–17 SEPTEMBER 1862). SHENANDOAH VALLEY, VIRGINIA. A Confederate recruit recalled his first sight of the

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Great plantations and slave gangs were rarely in evidence in the valley. The wealthy were few and the poor even fewer. Residents were largely Scotch-Irish and German immigrants. Quiet and hardworking, they were highly religious. Presbyterian, Lutheran, and/ or Church of the Brethren denominations were present in all communities. Two major campaigns took place in the valley, The first occurred in the spring of 1862, when a relative unknown general named Stonewall Jackson led 17,000 men against three separate Union forces totaling 64,000 troops. Marching nearly 700 miles in three months, victorious in six of seven battles he fought, Jackson changed the character and the course of the war in Virginia. His strategy and tactics in the Valley are still taught at military academies around the world. In the summer of 1864, General Ulysses S. Grant faced Lee’s army at Petersburg. Grant reasoned that the Southerners could only be neutralized if their supply base—the “Breadbasket of the Confederacy,” the valley had come to be called—was destroyed. Grant dispatched one of his more ruthless fighters, General Philip Sheridan, to do the job. Federals accomplished the task in three months. Having routed a Southern army under General Jubal Early, Sheridan methodically laid waste a large section of the Valley with a total-war tactic known as “The Burning.” What had been a garden spot in 1861 was a vast wasteland at war’s end.

first commanded cavalry, then infantry, and he excelled at both in the West. In March 1864, now General-in-Chief Grant brought Sheridan to Virginia to turn inept Union cavalry into a real fighting organization. Sheridan rebuilt the mounted wing in his image. He looked as mean as he was—despite the tam-like cap he wore that seemed to be one size too small. Although only five feet, four inches tall, his black hair, olive-dark face, heavy mustache, and hard eyes warned of a man of no nonsense. Sometimes he stormed and raged; other times he stiffened and glared. “Little Phil” sought combat with cold determination. In May 1864, Sheridan commanded Grant’s cavalry as the Overland Campaign began. Sheridan with just under 10,000 cavalry galloped southward, not so much to threaten Richmond as to have an open fight with Confederate Jeb Stuart and his troopers. The showdown came on 11 May 1864, when the opposing horsemen met at Yellow Tavern. Stuart’s depleted command proved inadequate, and Stuart himself was mortally wounded. Ever active, Sheridan sought more action. In late summer Grant sent him with a miniarmy over the Blue Ridge Mountains. “If the war is to last another year,” Grant told Sheridan, “we want the Shenandoah Valley to remain a barren waste.” Sheridan needed no further prodding. He pursued a campaign of cold ruthlessness. His army engaged General Jubal Early’s outmanned force in battles at Opequon Creek, Fisher’s Hill, and Cedar Creek. Those victories virtually eliminated Confederate opposition. Next, Sheridan turned to his primary assignment: to destroy productivity in the Valley. Federals moved through the lower Shenandoah with methodical effectiveness. More than 2,000 barns filled with grain and implements went up in flames, 70 flourmills were destroyed, 4,000 head of livestock seized, 3,000 sheep slaughtered. No mention was made in official reports of homes and furnishings being put to the torch. Sheridan rejoined Grant for the final drive against Lee. He led the 1 April 1865 attack that crushed the Confederate flank at Five

SHERIDAN, PHILIP HENRY (1833–1888). Colonel Robert E. Lee was superintendent at West Point when he first met Philip Sheridan. The feisty son of Irish immigrants, Cadet Sheridan early displayed the hair-trigger temper for which he became infamous. For chasing a student while brandishing a bayonet, he served a one-year suspension from the academy. Sheridan was a low graduate in the Class of 1853. Infantry service on the western frontier occupied the years prior to civil war. Not until his May 1862 appointment as colonel of the 2nd Michigan Cavalry did Sheridan’s career begin an upward swing. Friendship with General Ulysses S. Grant was a huge boost. Sheridan

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American slavery was morally wrong, of course. Yet it was widespread throughout American society. Almost all of Robert E. Lee’s life was immersed in a culture of slavery. Even ministers were numbered among slaveholders. Bondage was most prominent in the South. It was the foundation for Southern cotton, the dominant American export by the start of the 19th century. Of the 3.5 million slaves in America in 1860, 95 percent resided in the South. They were the labor force for the area’s agricultural output. Slaves comprised the region’s most enormous investment. Certainly there were instances of abuse. When one person holds absolute authority over another, mistreatment will occur. And it occurred just often enough to make the whole system appear brutal. However, suddenly freeing all slaves in the South would send that region into bankruptcy. Further, the rationalization went, dumping more than three million uneducated, ill-prepared people on society would result in total chaos for both blacks and whites. That is why Lee and many Southerners viewed the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation as a declaration of war against civilization. Lee could not fathom how blacks in such massive numbers would prosper in a free society totally dominated by whites. Lee saw the need of the hand of God in slavery. The Almighty had decreed the racial situation. Until then, slavery was the black man’s duty and the white man’s obligation. The “painful discipline they are undergoing,” he observed, “is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long that subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence.” Architects of the Lee idol-image have misconstrued his feelings about slavery. Their base is a distortion of Lee’s 1856 comment to his wife, “In this enlightened age, there are few I believe but will acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral & political evil in any country.” Lee was a slaveholder of sorts over a 30year period. At his mother’s death in 1829, he inherited several slaves whom he quickly hired

Forks, and it was Sheridan’s cavalry that circled around Lee and trapped the remnant of the Southern army at Appomattox. The little general’s turbulent behavior continued into the postwar years. Dictatorial administration of the military district including Texas caused President Andrew Johnson to strip him of command. Sheridan retorted, “If I owned both Hell and Texas, I’d rent out Texas and live in Hell!” Assigned to duty farther in the West, Sheridan applied to Indians the same scorchedearth tactics he employed in Virginia. He ordered the senseless killing of four million buffaloes to deny tribes both food and clothing. Cavalry detachments attacked Indian villages with no distinction made between men, women, and children in the killings. If Sheridan did not say “the only good Indian is a dead Indian,” he displayed such a belief to a degree that left a legacy of hatred in its wake. Sheridan served a four-year term as general of the army. He was instrumental in preserving what became Yellowstone National Park, but no one remembers. His two-volume Civil War memoirs appeared commensurate with those of Grant and William Sherman. Sheridan’s work is rarely quoted. His weight in old age zoomed past 200 pounds. His heart eventually could not take the strain. Sheridan is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. SLAVERY. It is as old as man. Western civilization flourished on the bedrock of human bondage. Because Native Americans, blacks, and Asians in the Western world had not demonstrated intelligence and energy enough to create nations of their own, the feeling of white supremacy matured through the centuries. Slaves were obviously biologically inferior to whites. They were physically able to do good work but mentally unable to rise above childhood level. In addition, an argument ran, bondage was part of civilization. Sociologist John Forsythe wrote, “at the beginning of the nineteenth century, an estimated three quarters of all people alive were trapped in bondage against their will either in some form of slavery or serfdom.”

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out or sold. Lee was just beginning his army career and had no way to attend to them. He intermittently had a black servant with him on some military assignments. His first direct association with the slave system came with the 1857 death of his father-in-law, Parke Custis. Mrs. Robert E. Lee was sole inheritor of Arlington House and two other Virginia estates. Lee took what became a two-year furlough to try and revitalize the long-neglected Arlington property. Recently discovered papers clearly show that Lee steadily carried out Parke Custis’s first stipulation and paid off Arlington House’s accrued indebtedness. However, as for freeing the slaves within five years of Custis’s death, Lee took his time. The explanation was economic expediency. Lee’s army salary was insufficient to restore and maintain the large Arlington House property. Providing for the family was a fundamental responsibility. Quick emancipation would be fatal to the estate and the Lees. Obligation as a husband and father outweighed any antislavery crusade. Lee chose the middle ground. He openly acknowledged slavery’s faults but justified its existence as a necessary evil. A recent biographer declared that for Lee, slavery “was an unfortunate historical legacy, an inherited problem for which he was not responsible, and one that could only be resolved over time and probably only by God.” Freeing the slaves should come through moral persuasion, careful planning, and obedience to God’s will. It should not result from Northern fanatics openly breaking laws. Abolitionists reminded Lee of New England Puritans. They sought religious liberty for themselves but denied it to all who disagreed with them. General Lee repeatedly expressed the hope that the Confederate States would develop “a well-digested plan of gradual and general emancipation.” Throughout 1862, as abolitionist demands for black freedom grew louder, Northern newspapers began publishing accounts and assertions that Lee had a long reputation for abusing his slaves. On 29 December 1862, Lee went before a justice of the peace in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. He submitted a deed of manumission for the 201

slaves listed as being the property of various Custis-Lee properties. Thus, Lee issued his own emancipation proclamation three days before Abraham Lincoln’s document became the law of the land. Lee was an early advocate of using slaves as Southern soldiers. On 2 September 1864, he wrote a long letter to Secretary of War James Seddon about needed manpower in the Army of Northern Virginia. Using blacks as soldiers, he stated, “seems to me that we must choose between employing negroes ourselves, or having them employed against us.” However, he asserted, the slaves should get something in return. “The negroes, under proper circumstances, will make efficient soldiers. . . . Those who are employed should be freed. It would be neither just nor wise . . . to require them to serve as slaves.” In February 1865, the Confederate Congress finally approved the measure (by a margin of one vote). The idea was too little too late. In 1869 the Reverend John Leyburn had an interview with Lee. The highly respected Presbyterian cleric raised the slave question. Lee replied, “In engaging in a war to perpetuate slavery, I am rejoiced that slavery is abolished. . . . So fully am I satisfied of this, as regards Virginia especially, that I would have lost all that I have lost by the war, and have suffered all that I have suffered, to have this object obtained.” SOUTH MOUNTAIN, MARYLAND, BATTLE OF (14 SEPTEMBER 1862). On 12 September 1862, Union General George B. McClellan’s army reached Frederick, Maryland, in its pursuit of Robert E. Lee’s invading forces. There, McClellan luckily obtained a copy of Lee’s marching orders for the days to come. Lee was taking a heavy risk. He had divided his small army, sending half southwestward to seize Union-held Harpers Ferry and the other half west over South Mountain to occupy Hagerstown should Federals come at him from Pennsylvania. The two wings were 25 miles apart. McClellan was beneficiary of his opponent’s timetable. The Union army was nearer

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each of the Confederate pieces than they were to each other. A now-jubilant Union commander told one of his generals, “Here is a paper with which if I cannot whip Bobbie Lee, I will be willing to go home!” An immediate and concentrated march over South Mountain, followed by attacks on Lee’s two wings, might have ended the Civil War. Yet, characteristically, self-doubts began eating at McClellan. He waited 16 hours before leaving Frederick. By the morning of Sunday, 14 September, Lee had stationed soldiers atop South Mountain at the three major gaps: Turner’s at the northern end, Fox’s a mile to the south, and Crampton’s four miles farther south. McClellan’s army started up the mountain in a slow blue wave. Gunfire exploded. It was Thermopylae all over again: a handful of defenders fighting untold numbers scrambling upward to get at them. General Harvey Hill, one of the least timid men in Lee’s army, remarked later that he looked down at the approaching mass and never in his life felt so lonely. Although heavily outnumbered, Confederates waged a daylong, fierce defense. Hand-to-hand fighting marked much of the action; bodies caromed down the mountainside in the battle. By sundown McClellan’s forces had gained control of the mountaintop, at a cost of 1,500 men. Confederate losses were 2,700 soldiers. Darkness prevented further movement. Meanwhile, the battle gave Lee a day to consolidate his army. McClellan’s discovery of Lee’s orders came to naught. To reunite with Jackson, Lee shifted his main force from Hagerstown, 12 miles south to the village of Sharpsburg. It rested along the banks of a lazy stream called Antietam Creek.

Lee’s men barely won the race and quickly began constructing earthworks. Grant had no intention of deviating from the master plan simply because he had been momentarily outmaneuvered. For two days opposing armies prepared defenses and eyed one another warily. Lee’s entrenchments stretched for five miles. At a point near his center, a salient jutted forth on high ground for almost a half mile. It was in the shape of an inverted “V” and named the Mule Shoe. A 10 May probe by Grant was inconclusive, although it convinced the Union commander that Lee’s weak point was the salient. Against its west face, starting at 4:30 a.m. on 12 May, columns of Union soldiers charged through a driving rain. For 17 hours some of the wildest combat ever witnessed occurred along the 400-yard entrenchments. One authority declared, “Never before on earth had so many muskets been fired so fast on so narrow a front and at such close range. About all that kept the two armies from completely annihilating each other was the fact that most men were firing too rapidly to aim.” The two sides ignored the steady rain. Fighting madness turned men into unthinking machines. For hundreds of yards, only the width of the earthworks separated the two foes. Individual soldiers would leap up to the tops of the trenches and fire down into the other side as fast as comrades could hand up loaded rifles. Dead men fell atop wounded men in trenches whose bottoms were a slimy ooze of blood and rain. Unhurt soldiers coming up to fight had to step on the hideous, twisting mass of humanity. Lee became so concerned about the course of the battle that he ventured too close to the action. Two more incidents of men shouting “Lee to the rear!” occurred at Spotsylvania. The intensity of the fighting blasted trees and logs into splinters. Rifle balls chopped down an oak tree 22 inches in diameter. One Union officer later stated, “I never expect to be fully believed when I tell what I saw of the horrors of Spotsylvania, because I should be loath to believe it myself were the case reversed.” Rain and battle ceased at nightfall. Lee formed a new line 800 yards to the rear. On

SPOTSYLVANIA, VIRGINIA, CAMPAIGN OF (8–21 May 1864). General Ulysses S. Grant’s bloodied army marched out of the Wilderness on 7 May and made for Spotsylvania Courthouse, a crossroads village 12 miles to the south. If Grant could seize that road junction, he would be closer to Richmond than Robert E. Lee was. This would force the Confederates either to fight or to retreat.

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siege. We must end this business on the battlefield, not in a fortified place.”

14 May, Grant attempted another frontal attack. Confederate artillery raked the blue lines so destructively that Grant called off the infantry assault at the midway point. A week later, a little-known massacre occurred at Harris Farm, east of the main battlefield. Lee sent General Richard Ewell with 6,000 troops to probe the Union left and ascertain if Grant again was moving south. Grant had recently ordered some reinforcements sent from the Washington, D.C., defenses. Two of the first units to arrive were the 1st Maine and 1st Massachusetts Heavy Artillery Regiments. Not one of the gunners had ever seen combat; most of them had never held a musket. Unfortunately, both units were placed at the spot in the Union line where Ewell’s men struck. The two regiments substituted determination for direction. They met the Southerners head-on by standing on a hilltop—in full view—and clumsily trying to fire rifles. Veteran Confederates calmly took aim against soldiers silhouetted against the sky. Row after row of Federal soldiers went down. Fighting soon was so intense, experience so lacking, that many of the Northern soldiers delivered volleys into their own ranks. A Union quartermaster wrote sarcastically, “First there was Kitching’s brigade firing at the enemy; then Tyler’s men fired into his; up came Birney’s division and fired into Tyler’s; while the artillery fired at the whole damned lot.” The artillery regiments alone lost 860 men in the fight—higher casualties than Ewell’s entire corps suffered. In the battles around Spotsylvania, Grant lost 18,000 men. Southern casualties, however, totaled 12,000 troops (a higher percentage of those engaged). To an outsider, Grant’s Overland Campaign seemed doomed to failure. A few knowledgeable officers thought otherwise. One of them was Lee. While at Spotsylvania, Lee had an informal meeting with some of his subordinates. One made reference to Grant’s senseless attacks. Lee quickly took exception. “Gentlemen,” he said with a tone of sadness, “I think General Grant has managed his affairs remarkably well to the present time.” A few moments later, Lee added, “We cannot stand a

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI. In the early years of the nation, St. Louis was the starting point for western migration. The Mississippi River flowed by it; north of the town was the Ohio River; to the southwest was the Missouri River. All seemed to point to the city whose population doubled in the 1830s to 26,000 residents. Then a geographic crisis developed. Mississippi River currents began depositing sand and silt that were sealing the town’s docks. Navigation of the river became hazardous; steamboats were running aground on sandbars. The Mississippi was slipping away from St. Louis, threatening to leave the city “high and dry.” Lee and a young lieutenant named Montgomery Meigs were sent in 1837 to try to bend the river back to the town’s piers. The Virginian was lonely and homesick after his arrival. St. Louis, he wrote his wife, is “the dirtiest place I was ever in . . . a bloody humbug.” For the better part of three years, Lee oversaw work on the river. City officials supplied all the tools and labor needed. Lee developed a plan to construct a dam and dikes upriver. These would send the water flow onto the river’s western bank, where St. Louis stood. Mayor John Darby praised Lee’s efforts. The officer “went in person with the hands every morning about sunrise, and worked day by day in the hot, broiling sun. . . . [Lee] shared in the hard task and common fare. . . . He maintained . . . his dignity and gentlemanly bearing, winning and commanding the esteem, regard, and respect of every one under him.” St. Louis got back its river. Lee had come to the city as a promising young engineer. He returned to Washington, D.C., with experience and confidence in military engineering and a widely recognized reputation among his compatriots. STATES’ RIGHTS. Although slavery was the fundamental cause of the Civil War, states’ rights had a long-standing role in the breakup of the Union. Indeed, it was the primary reason for Robert E. Lee’s decision to cast his lot with the Confederate States of America.

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Thirteen colonies existed before the adoption of the U.S. Constitution. They were created, settled, and governed independently of one another. Thus, Virginia—180 years old when the United States was born—felt far superior to a union of states scratching for life. That is why the rights of the states were the largest impediment to the framers of the Constitution. Opposing viewpoints developed over the implementation of the document. Strict interpreters insisted that the federal government could do only those actions expressly stated in the Constitution. Individual states, being sovereign entities, possessed all other powers. Further, the Tenth Amendment specifically limited federal control over the states. Loose constructionists of the Constitution, on the other hand, maintained that the federal system had control over everything—such as slavery, citizenship, voting, individual rights—not specifically denied it by the Constitution. Tradition was on the side of the states. The 1777 Articles of Confederation (the first attempt at a constitution) gave states the sole right to levy taxes. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John C. Calhoun all insisted that the states should judge the constitutionality of federal law. Calhoun even argued that his native South Carolina could nullify any federal statute it thought legally unacceptable. Throughout the first half of the 19th century, states’ rights grew alongside the young nation. The South increasingly used it as a weapon to defend slavery from Northern abolitionist attacks. As settlement moved westward, so did attempts to expand the borders of King Cotton. States’ rights advanced to the forefront. In 1857 the Supreme Court (Dred Scott v. Sandford) declared slaves to be not oppressed human beings but personal property. Now the debate with states’ rights came to focus on whether Congress had the authority to regulate or stop the spread of slavery. Abolitionist activities thereafter became personal and increasingly bitter. The 1860 presidential victory of an antislavery candidate was the last straw. Southern states felt no recourse but to resort to the last expression of states’ rights: secession.

Robert E. Lee had devoted more than half of his life to the U.S. Army. He was an American soldier, but he was a Virginia citizen and member of one of the Old Dominion’s most distinguished families. To turn his back on his birthright would have been a gross violation of his devotion to his family and to the land he loved. He declared early in 1861 that he would follow his state regardless of which course it took. If it remained in the Union, so would he. If it cast its lot with the Confederacy, so would he. STRATFORD HALL PLANTATION, VIRGINIA. Thomas Lee was the grandson of the first member of the Lee family to settle in the Virginia colony. He was an energetic visionary who longed to acquire a particular string of bluffs overlooking the Potomac River. In 1717 Lee bought the 1,443-acre property. However, with Lee immersed in government politics at Williamsburg, it was not until 20 years later, when a fire destroyed his home on the Virginia peninsula, that Lee began work on the Westmoreland County mansion. In 1740 Stratford Hall was completed. It is often said that probably no home in America, with the exceptions of the White House and Mount Vernon, has more association with famous men and women than Stratford Hall. Named for a family estate in England, the two-storied building is H-shaped. All the brick and woodwork came from the property, all installed by slaves. Two clusters of four chimneys dominate the skyline. A single chimney was the vent for a fireplace on each floor. Hence, 16 fireplaces could be operating at one time. The second level was the main floor. It contained the dining room, parlor, library, and bedchambers. The first floor had two additional bedrooms, plus a classroom, warming kitchen, sewing room, and servant chambers. Between the two wings, on the main level, was the Great Hall. It was the all-purpose room of the home. There, large gatherings would meet, dine, and dance. Oftentimes the only room a visitor would see would be the Great Hall. It has always—literally and figuratively— been the centerpiece of Stratford Hall. Exterior stairs to the hall existed on either side of the

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home. They were wider at the bottom than at the top—seeming to draw visitors inside. A quarter mile from the home, at the base of the bluffs, was an always-busy wharf area at the Potomac River. The Lees owned or held interest in a number of deep-draft ships that sailed regularly between Stratford and England. For a century, vessels carried tobacco and other produce to Europe and brought back furniture, textiles, clothing, metalware, china, and similar goods to the plantation. Stratford Hall in its prime was a self-sufficient, flourishing community. Thomas Lee had six sons and two daughters. Two of the sons, Richard Henry and Francis Lightfoot, were signers of the Declaration of Independence. Two other sons, Richard and Arthur, served abroad as ambassadors for the new nation. Robert E. Lee was the fifth generation of Thomas Lee descendants and the last Lee born at Stratford Hall to reach maturity. The boy was only three years old when the financially strapped family moved to a small home 50 miles away in Alexandria. In June 1828, Stratford Hall was sold and passed out of the Lee family. Lee was too young to have memories of his birthplace. However, in his growing years he occasionally visited Stratford Hall. The place became for him a mixture of glimpses and dreams. He told a daughter in November 1861 that Stratford Hall was “endeared to me by many recollections.” A month later, on Christmas Day, Lee wrote his wife, “I wish I could purchase Stratford. That is the only other place [besides Arlington House] that I could go to, now possible to us, that would inspire me with feelings of pleasure & local love.”

A short stint at Emory & Henry College preceded appointment to West Point. Among his classmates was Robert E. Lee’s eldest son, Custis. While at the academy, Stuart acquired the nickname “Beauty” because cadets did not regard him as such. He was assigned to the 1st U.S. Cavalry and fought Cheyenne Indians in the Kansas Territory. Stuart survived a pistol wound at point-blank range because the ball had insufficient powder behind it. The young officer was trying to help keep the peace in “Bleeding Kansas” when he met abolitionist John Brown. Three years later, Stuart was in Washington, D.C., when reports arrived of a terrorist raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. He volunteered to serve as an aide to Colonel Robert E. Lee, who led a detachment of Marines to quell the uprising. Stuart acted as a messenger during the standoff. He recognized “Mr. Smith” as John Brown and gave the signal for the Marine assault that lasted only minutes. The heavily bearded Stuart married the daughter of well-known Colonel Philip St. George Cooke. Nevertheless, he was an early volunteer for the defense of his native state. He became colonel of the 1st Virginia Cavalry and directed troop movements in the victory at First Manassas. Promotion to brigadier general gave him a brigade and the opportunity to mold cavalry into more than scouting parties. He rejected the old Napoleonic tactic of sending mounted troops against entrenched infantry. Cavalry should control the area between opposing armies, Stuart maintained. Destroying enemy lines of supply and communication was a primary duty for horsemen. More important, securing knowledge of enemy location and strength was the first priority. Military success rested on careful reconnaissance. Stuart’s large brigade gave him an advantage over Union troopers operating in smaller units. He became a Confederate man-of-thehour in mid-June 1862 when he undertook a reconnaissance of the Union right flank on the lower Virginia peninsula and returned to base by riding completely around 110,000 Federals poised for action at Richmond’s doorstep. The cavalry leader’s appearance and habits fed a growing legend. One staff officer

STUART, JAMES EWELL BROWN “JEB” (1833–1864). The quintessential cavalryman of the Civil War, Jeb Stuart embodied the dash, color, and bravery in a mounted wing he developed into a more integral part of the army. Stuart was born of middle-class folk in southern Virginia. At the age of 12, owing in great part to his father’s known fondness for alcohol, Stuart took an oath to his mother that he would never imbibe. He kept his word.

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wrote, “He was a little above medium height, broad-shouldered and powerfully built, ruddy complexion and blue-gray eyes which could flash fire on the battlefield, or sparkle with the merry glance which ladies love.” Jeb Stuart was aggressive and intuitive, with no drains of alcohol, tobacco, nerves, or worry. He could lie down and go to sleep at once, then come fully awake at a touch. While he was lighthearted and loved music on the march, Stuart possessed a devotion to duty and to God that created a close friendship with an opposite such as General Stonewall Jackson. On occasion Stuart was demonstrative, but Lee regarded him as the best cavalry officer in the Confederate army. An August 1862 cavalry raid on Catlett’s Station resulted in the capture of Union General John Pope’s uniform, dispatch book, and valuable data on the Federal army’s whereabouts. Three months later, Stuart made a 200mile foray to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and returned with a large horde of prisoners and supplies. A month thereafter, Stuart again rode roughshod over the enemy. He attacked two Union depots only 12 miles from Washington, D.C., and captured a large number of draft animals. To add insult to injury, Stuart sent a letter to Union Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs to complain about the poor quality of the mules the Federal army was using. As the 1863 Chancellorsville Campaign got under way, Stuart discovered that the western end of the Union army was uncovered. This enabled General Stonewall Jackson to deliver his most spectacular flanking movement of the war. Jackson was wounded that night of May 2, and Lee put Stuart in command of Jackson’s infantry corps. The cavalryman managed well the crucial reconnection with Lee’s line. He then rejoined his division of horsemen. Inevitably, Stuart had his bad moments. He was caught totally off guard by a Union cavalry

attack on June 9 at Brandy Station, Virginia. He later claimed victory, but many questioned his assertion. The fight implanted in Stuart a strong desire to regain a lustrous reputation. After providing an effective screen for Lee’s army as it headed north across the Potomac River, Stuart used Lee’s discretionary orders and attempted another ride around the Union opponent. Soon he lost contact with both armies. Worse, Stuart left Lee in enemy territory and blind to the movements of the enemy. He did not rejoin the Confederate army until the afternoon of the second day’s intense fighting at Gettysburg. When Stuart walked up and saluted Lee, the army commander supposedly said in a chilling voice, “Well, General Stuart, you are here at last.” By 1864 Union might began to tell. Stuart’s troopers were now outnumbered, their effectiveness crippled by lack of equipment and jaded horses. One step in General Ulysses S. Grant’s 1864 Overland Campaign was to eliminate what remained of Southern cavalry forces in Virginia. General Philip Sheridan led a mounted raid against Richmond. On 11 May, Sheridan lured Stuart into battle at Yellow Tavern, six miles north of the capital. Fighting was sporadic until Sheridan launched a full-scale charge against Stuart’s outmanned force. In the midst of the disjointed combat, Stuart reeled in the saddle when a bullet pierced his right side. The general was carried to a private home in Richmond. Torso surgery was not performed in that age. Stuart struggled with severe pain and slow hemorrhage. The ordeal lasted 26 hours. Precisely a year earlier, Lee had to confront the loss of his “right arm”: Jackson. Now Lee’s dependable “eyes” were gone. Stuart was “a most valuable and able officer,” Lee told his staff. He paused; then, in a quivering voice, he added, “He never brought me a piece of false information.”

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T he was torn between allegiances to North and South. He went to Mexico to engage in rail construction. While on a business trip to New York City in March 1863, Talcott was arrested and charged with espionage. Higher authorities intervened and released him after a twomonth imprisonment. In 1883 Talcott died at his home in Richmond.

TALCOTT, ANDREW (1797–1883). He was a superb army engineer and Robert E. Lee’s first mentor in army service. Ten years older than Lee, the Connecticutborn Talcott graduated second in his West Point class. He displayed instant success in plotting a passage to Fort Snelling in the Minnesota Territory and in making improvements to the flow of New York’s Hudson River. Thereafter, Talcott’s military service was in building fortifications. He was in charge of constructing Forts Calhoun and Monroe when Lee in 1831 reported to him for duty. Lee found Talcott capable in his duties and considerate of his subordinates. He and his wife quickly became Lee’s closest friends at Fort Monroe. The couple took the lead in welcoming Lee’s bride to army life, although their efforts were only partially successful. Talcott resigned his commission in 1836 to pursue civilian engineering, especially building railroads. Yet he and Lee maintained a steady correspondence for 20 years. The letters were both personal and professional. For example, Lee leaned heavily on Talcott’s advice during his Mississippi River duty at St. Louis. In 1856 Talcott completed the Richmond & Danville Railroad, which would become a vital Confederate supply artery. Five years later, as commander of Virginia’s defenses, Lee appointed the aging engineer as colonel and state engineer in charge of the state’s coastal defenses. Talcott held the position for 12 months—the same length of time that his son was a member of Lee’s personal staff. The elder Talcott resigned from service because

TAYLOR, WALTER HERRON (1838–1916). The youngest, best remembered, and most prolific of Robert E. Lee’s personal staff was Walter Taylor of Norfolk, Virginia. He was officially Lee’s assistant adjutant general, but in many ways he was as close to a one-man staff as existed in the Civil War. Taylor attended the Virginia Military Institute until the death of his father necessitated his return to the family business at home. There he came quickly to display the three qualities that made him as successful in commerce as he was in war: an astute business sense, an engaging personality, and a photographic memory for facts. He joined Lee’s staff as a captain and served the general for the duration of the war. He was the librarian, bookkeeper, archivist, and doorkeeper. Only 23 when he began his staff duties, Taylor had responsibility for paperwork relative to the largest actions and smallest details of the Army of Northern Virginia. This meant collecting and collating every sheet of paper to and from army headquarters. He compiled the monthly return for the army. Only Taylor knew at any given time the effective strength of Lee’s force. In August 1863, he

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years he was an instructor at the academy. In 1815 Thayer was sent to France to study the military education system so reflective of the greatest soldier of that era, Napoleon Bonaparte. The French academy, L’Ecole Polytechnique, especially impressed the American officer. In 1817 President James Monroe appointed Thayer superintendent of West Point. Secretary of War John C. Calhoun said in his charge to the colonel, “In future wars the Nation must look at the Academy for the skill to conduct valor to victory.” Thereafter, Thayer’s iron hand was in every seam of academy life. Reforms were sweeping and innovative. Having the bearing of an aristocrat, always flawlessly dressed, the colonel created the first engineering school in America. He broadened the curriculum. As an example, nations instinctively looked to the French for military guidance. The best published military studies were in French, so the superintendent hired two French professors to teach the language to cadets. He established a commandant of cadets to take charge of studies and discipline. Thayer created a board of visitors to make annual inspections as well as suggestions for further improvements. A rigid code of honor was implanted. At the same time, a precise grading system for student recitation was put in place, with faculty required to submit weekly grades. The colonel installed a demerit system in which 200 misbehavior points in a school year brought expulsion. It was a disagreement with President Andrew Jackson over a dismissal of a cadet who had strong political connections that led to Thayer’s 1836 resignation as superintendent. He served as chief engineer in the Boston area for 30 years. By his wish, Thayer was buried at West Point.

wrote home, “Whereas Joe Johnston, Beauregard, and others have ten, twenty, & thirty Adjt. Generals, this army has only one and I assure you that at times I can hardly stand up under the pressure of work.” In addition, Taylor was the staff hurdle any visitor to headquarters encountered. He warmly greeted anyone who came to see Lee, but he determined whether the man would be admitted to Lee’s presence. The commander was extremely fond of the man who was a lieutenant colonel in the last year of the war. At a critical moment, Lee gave Taylor permission to go to Richmond and marry Elizabeth Saunders. The wedding was performed on the night of 2 April 1865, as crowds evacuated a burning city. Before dawn the next morning, Taylor was galloping westward to rejoin the now-retreating Confederate army. Following Appomattox, Taylor took his bride to Norfolk. He became one of that town’s leading businessmen for the next half century. To the end of his life, Taylor could answer questions from memory—usually quoting orders verbatim. That is why he was regarded as “an unofficial court of last resort” in arguments relative to Lee’s manpower and movements. He wrote two detailed volumes on Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. No good historian does adequate research without consulting Taylor. In 1995 his many and highly revealing war letters were published and added to his importance as a basic reference source. Taylor died in 1916 at the age of 77. He was still able to pose in his Civil War uniform. The former staff officer had been the recipient of numerous plaques and recognition as a businessman. Yet what pleased him most was for someone to refer to him as “the adjutant of General Lee.” THAYER, SYLVANUS (1785–1872). He was the “Father of West Point” and reigning supremely over the academy when Robert E. Lee received his education there. Lee could not call Thayer a friend. No cadet could. Thayer was valedictorian of his class at Dartmouth College. He attended West Point for a year and obtained another degree. For two

TIDEWATER REGION, VIRGINIA. This is the geographic title given to the easternmost region of the state. The land tends to be flat and low, with sandy soil, tidal swamps, and marshes. The ongoing argument is about what constitutes the western boundary of the tidewater.

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Various answers have been offered for how far inland the tidewater goes before it gives way to the piedmont region. The fall lines of the rivers marked the early lines of demarcation, but not all of the area east of fall-line cities Fredericksburg, Richmond, and Petersburg has tidewater characteristics. Some geologists insist that the line is where the rivers cease rising and falling in concert with oceanic tides. Even some counties claim tidewater allegiance because of county borders. Today Virginia grants licenses for freshwater and saltwater fishing, but critics claim that such a dividing line is too far to the west. In the Civil War era, the term tidewater applied generally to the area east of Richmond.

Lee’s home. He was permitted to remain in the front yard where the grass was greenest and freshest, notwithstanding the flowers and shrubbery. . . . I have often seen [General Lee] as he would enter his front gate, leave the walk, approach the old horse, and caress him for a minute or two before entering his front door.” Students began pulling hairs from Traveller’s mane and tail for good luck. Lee stopped the practice by complaining that his horse was beginning to resemble a plucked chicken. At Lee’s funeral in October 1870, old Traveller plodded slowly behind the caisson in the funeral procession. Eight months later, Traveller stepped on a rusty nail and contracted tetanus. Students fashioned a huge bed of straw, on which the animal was placed and then euthanized. His bones were on display for many years. In 1971 the remains were buried just outside the wall of the Washington and Lee University chapel. Traveller is only feet from the crypt of his beloved master.

TRAVELLER (1857–1871). This American gelding is the most celebrated horse in American military history. He was also Robert E. Lee’s closest companion in the last nine years of the general’s life. The horse was born in Greenbrier County, Virginia. Lee first became enamored of the animal in late 1861 while serving in the illfated campaign in the western Virginia mountain country. Lee returned to Richmond before going on assignment to South Carolina. Upon his return, he saw the horse again and purchased him for $200 (equivalent to about $5,000 by today’s standards) from a fellow Confederate officer. Although he previously had been called “Jeff Davis” and “Greenbrier,” Lee named him Traveller after George Washington’s mount. Four years old, 16 hands high, the animal weighed 1,100 pounds. He was iron gray in color, with black points, a long mane, and flowing tail. Lee thought that Traveller preferred either “a fast, springy walk” or “short, high trot.” The few others who mounted the animal found him skittish and prone to gallop in less than smooth fashion. In any event, the horse had unusual stamina and was indifferent to noise. He bore Lee throughout the Civil War without receiving a wound. After Lee became president of Washington College, he had a brick stable built behind the home. A student recalled, “The old iron-gray horse was a privileged character at General

TRENCHES. See EARTHWORKS. TREVILIAN STATION, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF (11–13 JUNE 1864). Although Lee had inflicted a stunning defeat on General Ulysses S. Grant at Cold Harbor, the Union chieftain lost none of his determination to keep pushing ahead. On 7 June, Grant ordered General Philip Sheridan to take 7,000 cavalry and ride west to Charlottesville. There he would link with General David Hunter’s Federals moving east from the Shenandoah Valley. The two forces would destroy the Virginia Central Railroad and come at Lee from a different direction. Union cavalrymen got three days’ rations, two days’ grain for the horses, and 200 rounds of ammunition per horseman. The long ride got under way. Heat and humidity were oppressive. Scores of horses broke down and were shot to keep them from enemy hands. Lee deduced what was taking place and moved quickly. General Wade Hampton (the likely successor to the fallen Jeb Stuart) and 5,000 troopers raced to intercept the Federal advance. Meanwhile, Sheridan learned that the planned hookup with Hunter was not going to

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By noon on 12 June, Sheridan had torn up four miles of Virginia Central tracks. However, his men and mounts were jaded, ammunition was low, and Hunter was too far away to lend assistance. Federals withdrew from the railroad on the 13th—the day Grant and the Army of the Potomac crossed the James River. Sheridan generally is credited with victory at Trevilian Station. It is difficult to see how. The union with Hunter never occurred; Sheridan’s losses (1,000) were equal to those of his opponent; the railroad was repaired and operational again within a week. Hampton’s success, Lee reported, showed that “we are not forsaken by a gracious Providence.”

happen. Hunter had become more interested in moving on Lynchburg, a major supply depot some 65 miles to the south. Sheridan changed directions and headed for the Virginia Central line. He arrived near Trevilian Station to find Hampton’s cavalry waiting for him. The Confederates had won the race. Two days of intense fighting occurred, mostly on foot, at close range in underbrush. At one point, General George A. Custer’s Union brigade got behind the Southern line and captured stores and horses waiting at the rail depot. Hampton’s troopers galloped back, recaptured the station, and came close to bagging Custer as well.

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U the Texas border. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis chose to make it an elite unit. It received the finest horses and best equipment. The secretary personally selected the officers. Albert Sidney Johnston was appointed colonel and Robert E. Lee lieutenant colonel. Sixteen officers who served in the regiment during 1855– 1861 became generals in the Civil War. Lee left the Corps of Engineers and, for the first time, assumed command of troops in the field.

UNIFORM OF LEE. The general shunned fancy uniforms and wore them when required. Portraits of him as a young engineer and as superintendent of West Point show the emblazoned officer’s collar. Yet he was never comfortable in such apparel. He wore civilian clothes when he led two dozen Marines to quell John Brown’s 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry. Contrary to the statue in the Virginia capitol building, Robert E. Lee in 1861 accepted command of all state military forces in a civilian suit. The first photograph of Lee was taken in 1863, and it revealed the uniform he customarily wore in the field: kneehigh boots, long tunic with a double row of buttons and a dark leather belt. On his lapels were the three stars of a colonel. Lee chose it probably because George Washington preferred to show only a colonel’s rank. When not on field duty, the general wore gray trousers that matched his coat. On 9 April 1865, Lee dressed formally for the meeting at Appomattox with Ulysses S. Grant. He donned a dress uniform made in England. A general’s rank—three stars inside a wreath—adorned the collars, and gold braid swirled around the wrists. Lee also wore a sash of deep red. He never carried a weapon.

UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY, WEST POINT, NEW YORK. The world-famous academy was in its developing stage when Robert E. Lee was a cadet. The idea for such a school came from President Thomas Jefferson. In 1801 he proposed that Fort Arnold, New York, which sat on a rocky promontory and guarded the Hudson River during the American Revolution, be converted into a military academy of higher education. West Point opened its doors to students the following year. It remains the oldest continuously operating army post in the United States. For the first decade the school floundered. Then two events occurred. War with England in 1812 showed the need for more officer training. In 1817 Lieutenant Colonel Sylvanus Thayer began a 16-year tenure as superintendent. Thayer instituted the rigorous, highly disciplined system still in place. The curriculum switched dramatically from classical subjects. Cadets studied engineering slanted toward military architecture. They learned the rudiments of soldier life and the

UNITED STATES CAVALRY: 2ND REGIMENT. In 1855, largely to provide added protection to settlers on the western frontier, Congress approved the creation of four new regiments (two cavalry, two infantry). The 2nd U.S. Cavalry would be assigned to guard

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principles of war. The curriculum focused on the construction of forts, bridges, and canals. In short, West Point became the only civil engineering institution whose curriculum was adopted for army use. Young Robert E. Lee wanted to attend the academy. His mother tried to talk him out of it. Yet as the youngest of three sons, Robert was unlikely to inherit anything. The misbehavior of his father and half brother precluded any success in society. The world of the soldier seemed the most promising route. By the time of Lee’s 1824 appointment, the incoming class was full. He had to wait a year before beginning cadet life. Lee wisely spent a year in school at Alexandria to improve his skills in mathematics, the staple of West Point education. In July 1825, he arrived at the academy 40 miles upriver from New York City. In attendance were 175 cadets and 15 faculty members. The campus was a plain with four gray stone buildings. Two were barracks, a third was the mess hall, and the fourth was a two-story, all-purpose building that contained classrooms, a laboratory, library, administrative offices, and a chapel. Lee proved an ideal cadet. No demerits marred his permanent record. Lee had a selfassurance that enabled him to maintain perfect discipline in an academic atmosphere where lack of discipline was often interpreted as a sign of achievement. Because of Lee’s mastery at math, Colonel Thayer appointed the sophomore an “an assistant professor,” which was actually a tutorial position to help less skillful cadets over the math road bumps. The Virginian capped his West Point career as adjutant of the corps, the highest honor for a cadet at West Point. Lee graduated second of 46 cadets in the Class of 1829. He was one of two graduating cadets to secure coveted assignment to the Corps of Engineers. “No other youth or man so united the qualities that win warm friendships and commands respect,” added classmate Joseph Johnston. In 1852 Lee returned to the “Point” to serve as the ninth superintendent. He considered himself responsible for the physical and moral well-being of each cadet. Cadets labeled him

the “Marble Model.” One wrote in 1853, “Our Superintendent Colonel Lee is liked. He has the highest notions of military duty of any man I ever saw.” Lee watched with pride as his son Custis graduated first in his class. He worried about his brother’s son Fitzhugh, who came close to expulsion for misconduct but managed nevertheless to graduate. Colonel Lee’s three-year term at West Point was unspectacular. He served diligently and efficiently, even though he thought college administration far less pleasant than army challenges in the field. The military academy had a major impact on Civil War leadership. On the Union side, 228 of 583 generals were academy graduates, as were 156 of 425 Confederate generals. By simple statistics, only 37 percent of the war’s generals were West Pointers. However, that one-third, with but a few exceptions, made the major military decisions and were in the upper echelons of the armies in the field. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. In 1861 the new nation was totally unprepared for war. The U.S. Army consisted of 16,000 soldiers, in small units, scattered at outposts across the continent. General-in-Chief Winfield Scott had been born before the Constitution was adopted. The U.S. Navy had 90 vessels, but only 42 were in commission. They tended to sail singly rather than operate as a flotilla. Ships were built and sailors were trained for deepwater duty, not coastal and inshore operations. No one at the outset was concerned with long-range planning. Like the Mexican War 15 years earlier, this would be a quick contest or one or two battles between civilian soldiers. The “civic uprising” would end before the autumn leaves fell. The union of states calling themselves a nation was only 70 years old when its future suddenly became dim. This occurred because the so-called union was actually two countries: an agricultural South and a mercantile-shipping North. When the Constitution was adopted in 1788, North and South were running neck and neck in wealth and population. Yet with every passing decade the North became more

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thickly populated and diverse. The nation experienced its greatest growth in the first half of the 19th century. The six million Americans in 1803 were 26 million by 1853. Unprecedented immigration merged with unparalleled mechanization to create an industrial revolution that swept through the North. Growth was qualitative as well as quantitative in the North. The South wanted to get bigger for cotton and tobacco production; the North wanted to get bigger and better not only through production but through mass production. A foreign visitor in the 1840s wrote, “Everything new is quickly introduced here. There is no clinging to old ways, the moment an American hears the word ‘invention,’ he pricks up his ears.” A rising sectionalism became a wedge in the development of nationhood. Western expansion, running concurrently, brought its own tensions to a country tottering toward federalism and wisdom. Sectional hostility had thundered across the nation for five decades. If the issue was not slavery, it was states’ rights. Now the two issues had joined and ripped apart a shaky union. With reason having failed and compromise beyond possibility, the stage was set for secession. The 1860 national election ended the Southern political dominance over the nation. Abraham Lincoln won the presidency with less than 40 percent of the popular vote. Yet Lincoln carried every free state except New Jersey, and his margin of victory in the North was 60 percent. Republicans seized control of the House of Representatives. The Republican majority of the Senate increased as Southern statesmen departed to follow the road out of the Union. New president Lincoln would not listen to justifications for secession. The Union was never-ending, he declared. A minority has no right to attempt to overthrow the will of the majority. What the Deep South was doing was misguided rebellion. As chief executive,

Lincoln had taken an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Union. Now only a spark was needed to start the fire. When news spread through the North of the April 1861 bombardment of Fort Sumter, South Carolina, millions of Northerners were at first stunned, then angered, by the reports. A mob of New Yorkers stormed a pro-Southern newspaper office. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a judge and jury heard the news while in the middle of a court proceeding. They walked out of the courtroom and enlisted as a group, with the judge as captain. Northern advantages from the beginning of the war seemed overwhelming. Twenty-four states, with a population of 22 million mostly white citizens were arrayed against five and a half million white Southerners and their three and a half million slaves. This gave the North a four-to-one advantage in numbers. The Civil War was the world’s first railroad war. Here again the North enjoyed superiority. It had 21,000 miles of tracks in 1861 and would add 4,000 miles more during the struggle. The South’s 9,000 miles of railroads never grew but eroded as the war years passed. In the four years of war, the North would build 451 new locomotives. The South managed to get 19 new rail engines constructed. Northern states produced 92 percent of the nation’s manufactured goods. It had 100,000 industrial establishments to 18,000 Southern factories. The Union produced 20 times more pig iron and 17 times more textiles than did the Confederacy. The Northern states also possessed an established government, sound banking system, a host of traditions, and an active diplomatic service. Therefore, the Union states were a functioning nation that needed only to concentrate on winning the war. The Southern nation, by contrast, was faced with two crises: fighting a war while trying to consummate a functional government. And the longer the war lasted, the higher the North’s advantages became.

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V VALENTINE, EDWARD VIRGINIUS (1838– 1930). Born in Richmond, the youngest of nine children, Valentine spent several years of artistic study before establishing a sculpture studio in his hometown. He would become the most talented sculptor in the postwar South. Valentine had a well-established reputation when, in 1870, he received a commission to do a full-bodied sculpture of Robert E. Lee. Valentine visited Lee in Lexington to get an artist’s acquaintance with the general. Photographer Michael Miley made several images for Valentine to use. The sculptor selected a seven-ton piece of Vermont marble and began work on the slightly larger-than-life creation. It depicted Lee asleep in his tent, a blanket casually draped over his midsection. Completed in 1875, “Recumbent Lee” was installed and officially dedicated above Lee’s crypt in the chapel of Washington and Lee University. It is by far the most famous and revered of a dozen stone likenesses of the Virginian. Valentine’s later works included the monument over General Stonewall Jackson’s grave (1890), the Jefferson Davis memorial on Richmond’s Monument Avenue (1907), and the marble likeness of Lee in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall (1909). A strikingly handsome man with white mustache and goatee meticulously manicured, Valentine was easily recognized and widely acclaimed. A friend thought that “his features were those of the artist, and [his] sparkling eyes evidence of his genius.”

VENABLE, CHARLES SCOTT (1827–1900). Venable seemed ill suited for a military staff. He was an intellectual. In the prewar years he participated in an astronomical expedition and taught mathematics at universities in South Carolina and Virginia. Along the way, as a hobby, he had studied a little military strategy. Lee first used the heavyset, bearded academician as an inspector of fortifications and personnel. Venable, with fellow staff member Charles Marshall, handled much of Lee’s correspondence under dictation. He and Assistant Adjutant General Walter Taylor were tent mates during field operations. Whenever the staff wished to make a case to the “Great Tycoon,” as they sometimes referred to the demanding Lee, Venable acted as spokesman. Venable was congenial but had difficulty in concealing his inner thoughts. In the dark days of November 1863, diarist Mary Chesnut invited him to a Richmond party. “So out of spirits,” she wrote of the officer. “He knows everything that is going on. His depression bodes us no good.” He is the primary source for the famous “Lee to the Rear” incident in the 5 May 1864 fighting at the Wilderness. The colonel spent his postwar years teaching at the University of Virginia. He wrote several textbooks and maintained a steady but gruff correspondence with former compatriots. In August 1868, Venable wrote fellow aide Walter Taylor about a forthcoming program at Gettysburg. Lee, of course, had declined an invitation, but Venable thought he or

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the north and vast ranges of mountains to the west. Yet the state was extremely vulnerable to attack by sea. Virginia’s tradition as a haven of patriots and a producer of presidents gave the state formidable prestige. Containing 67,230 square miles between the Atlantic Ocean and just short of Cincinnati, Ohio, the commonwealth was roughly the size of New England. Its 490,000 slaves comprised 31 percent of the state’s population. About 170,000 white males joined the armies. The state would furnish the Confederacy with 75 regiments and battalions of infantry, 27 regiments and battalions of cavalry, 104 batteries of artillery, plus local defense forces, state rangers, home guard, reserves, and militia. A fourth of the Confederate generals were Virginians. They included Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Joseph Johnston, Jeb Stuart, Powell Hill, and Jubal Early. In the state were 5,400 manufacturing firms, roughly equal in number to those of the original seven Confederate states. A third of the South’s nonagricultural goods came from Virginia. Iron yield in the Old Dominion was three times greater than that of any other Confederate state. Some 1,770 miles of track in Virginia represented 20 percent of the South’s railroads. One series of lines, extending from Richmond to New Orleans, was the only unbroken connection across the Confederacy to the Mississippi River. The Shenandoah Valley, lying between the two easternmost ranges of the great Appalachian chain, was a rich farmland offering bumper crops of grain and orchards, as well as livestock. Most of the Confederacy’s coal, salt, and lead came from the mountainous southwestern region. Southside Virginia was the world center for tobacco; the northern region was known internationally for fine horses. Norfolk was a principal seaport, and Portsmouth next door would become the largest navy yard in the Southern nation. Virginia’s greatest asset in 1861 was Richmond, a model city in the fullest American sense. The two opposing capitals—Richmond and Washington, D.C.—were only 100 miles apart. European military strategists had long taught that the capture of the enemy’s capital

Taylor should attend as Lee’s representative. “I am opposed to the whole thing as a piece of Yankee vanity & impudence but think at the same time all chances of keeping these army men our friends should be taken. . . . You know that you & I know more of that field than the old man & could tell more to keep the Yankees straight.” VIRGINIA, COMMONWEALTH OF. It is both ironic and sad that the “Mother State,” which had contributed so much to the formation of the Union, would experience the worst destruction of any state in the Civil War. Virginia lost the western third of its territory. More than 200 engagements, including a dozen of the most famous battles, were fought inside the Old Dominion. Every county was damaged; most towns were left in shambles. It had to be that way because Virginia was the heart of a Southern Confederacy always fighting to stay alive. In 1861 Virginia had the largest population of any state. Many of its citizens opposed secession. Others came to accept it reluctantly. That Virginia was among the last states to secede was evidence of its strong ties to the federal system. Yet this was an instance when the union’s perennial enemy, states’ rights, interceded. Prevalent at the time was the feeling that the federal government did not have the right to send troops across Virginia without the state’s permission. To get at the Deep South (which was the Confederate States), Federal soldiers had to march through Virginia. This would be an act of coercion—and, hence, a declaration of war against the Commonwealth. The April 1861 firing on Fort Sumter in South Carolina, followed by President Lincoln’s call for 75,000 troops to invade the South, brought the issue to a head. On 17 April, Virginia’s secession convention voted 88–55 to leave the Union. (The final, official vote was 103–46.) A public referendum held the following month passed by a six-to-one margin. The onset of civil war put Virginia in a pivotal position. In terms of Southern power, the presence of the state could not be overestimated. It was the most northern and most exposed of all Southern states. Its geographical defenses were the Potomac and Ohio Rivers to

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brought checkmate in the chess game of war. The early stages of the American struggle thus became “a tale of two cities,” with Virginia the major stage. It was only 250 miles from the mountains to the coast. Any Federal advance would of necessity have to pass through a relatively narrow corridor of dense forests, open expanses, and occasional swamps. In addition, one Union commander snorted, Virginia’s rivers ran in the wrong direction. A Union force advancing southward had to get across a half dozen streams, all flowing west to east. Each afforded a natural defensive position. Neither the Confederate nor the Virginia government was equipped to handle the poverty and overall suffering the war brought. By 1863 shortages of every sort plagued the population. Even when necessities became momentarily available, galloping inflation sent prices far beyond the reach of common folk. Lawlessness was prevalent throughout the war years in every sector of Virginia. Federal occupation forces were rarely known for good behavior. Guerrilla bands roamed the countryside and preyed indiscriminately on the innocent. It was dangerous to walk on city streets, even in daytime. Because gas and lamp oil quickly became unavailable, those who ventured far after dark risked their lives.

No one in the South considered all of these negatives when Lee assumed command of Virginia’s military forces in 1861. “One battle and the Yankees will come to their senses and leave us alone” was the common refrain. Lee thought otherwise. Full-blown war had erupted, he warned, and the conflict might last 10 years. “I know the Northern people well,” Lee said. “I know they will never yield in the contest except at the conclusion of a long and desperate struggle.” Lee’s warning fell on deaf ears. A faculty member at the University of Virginia told President Jefferson Davis that Lee was “too despondent. His remarks are calculated to dispirit our people. . . . Noble and glorious as he is, I fear he does not know how good and how righteous our cause is and consequently lacks one quality the times demand.” In the four years of civil war, at least 254 military events occurred in Virginia. Some were major battles: First Manassas, Seven Pines, Seven Days, Cedar Mountain, Second Manassas, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and Weldon Railroad. Others were skirmishes, expeditions, raids, diversions, and occupations. From first to last, the ultimate target of Union effort was the Old Dominion’s capital: Richmond.

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W such levels that foreign diplomats considered an assignment to Washington to be at least a hardship and at most a threat to life. When civil war began, no one gave any thought to moving the capital. It was the symbol of the Union and had to be maintained. During the four years of conflict, Washington’s population jumped to 160,000 people. The capital’s appearance suffered. During the war, a Pennsylvania cavalryman visited Washington and afterward informed his brother, “Of all the Mud Holes that I have been in I think that Washington will take the Premium. The Store Keepers and the People in general are nothing but a set of Thieves. . . . The Public buildings in Washington are very fine but take them away and it is the meanest City in all Creation.” In the course of the Civil War, Washington became the most fortified capital in the world. Thirty-seven miles of trenches and earthworks, with 68 forts, 762 cannon, and 74 mortars, ringed the city. However, fewer than 10,000 troops generally manned the works, and many of them were home guard, convalescents, or members of 100-day militia. The one threat made on the capital—General Jubal Early’s 1864 raid—was easily repulsed when Union General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant rushed a Union infantry corps from the Petersburg line to assist in the defense. The triumphal climax of Washington’s Civil War history came 23–24 May 1865, when 150,000 Union soldiers from east and west marched in a grand review up Pennsylvania Avenue. Behind them gleamed the completed dome of the U.S. Capitol.

WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. Civil War Washington bore little resemblance to its Confederate counterpart, Richmond, only 100 miles away. While Richmond had traditional values, Washington was still in development stage when war began. In July 1790, Virginia and Maryland donated to the new federal government 10 square miles of woods and swamplands along the Potomac River. They designated it the District of Columbia. It was to be the site of the national capital, which would be called Washington in honor of the living legend. When the town was only 15 years old, the British burned it. Forty years of redevelopment followed. Lee was witness to a great part of it. If he was impressed, he never said so. By 1860 Washington had a population of some 41,000 people (just above that of Richmond), and the upper class bore a distinctive Southern atmosphere. The city lacked any eye appeal. A few public buildings stood among vast expanses of open ground. Conspicuous among them was the Treasury Building, so large that it housed the State Department as well. The U.S. Capitol was undergoing expansion and lacked a dome. Pennsylvania Avenue was a clear line of demarcation between power and poverty. On the north side of the boulevard were Willard’s Hotel, fashionable shops, and stately homes. South of the street were blocks of shabby boardinghouses, brothels, and squalid slums. Cows and hogs roamed the streets at will. The Potomac bottomland contained everything that was putrid. Filth and sickness were at

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not giving stronger support to the armies in the field. One reason Lee was so crushed by defeat in 1865 was the feeling that he had failed to meet the standards and, hence, the successes of the figure he revered. He carried thoughts of Washington into the postwar years. Certainly the name of the college whose presidency he assumed had appeal. In a postwar conversation with General Gustave Beauregard, Lee commented on why he sacrificed 30 years of federal army duty to serve in the Confederate forces. “Patriotism sometimes requires of men to act exactly contrary, at one period, to that which it does at another.” To illustrate, Lee mentioned how Washington had successively fought for the British, French, and Americans. Lee added, “He has not been branded by the world with reproach for this, but his course has been applauded.” That Lee mentioned Washington by name only occasionally in his lifetime correspondence has no relevance to how he felt. Lee was not given to public praise of individuals. Further, he may have refrained from citing Washington out of respect and/or embarrassment about his father’s well-known vices. The Lee-Washington comparison began in earnest with Lee’s death. He was “the second Washington,” one eulogist proclaimed. “We place the name of Lee by Washington. They both belong to the world,” another declared. A third writer passed eternal judgment. “When General Lee had been taken up to heaven, George Washington was relieved from the sense of an eternal loneliness.” Two recent writers illustrate that the link still exists. Lee “through kinship and kindred spirit . . . was a Washington,” and he “believed that he was doing as Washington would have done.”

WASHINGTON, GEORGE (1732–1799). George Washington was the hero of the American Revolution, the key figure in the 1787 Constitutional Convention, and the first president of the United States. He regarded the holding of power as a trust, and he understood that men have a duty to serve, not a right to govern. His legacy was the existence of the nation. Henry Lee III was truthful when he hailed Washington as “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” Washington was Robert E. Lee’s inspiration, if not his idol. It was a lifetime feeling. Lee grew up in Alexandria, forced to live there because of the public failures of the father he never knew. Lee worshipped at the same church as Washington. Mount Vernon, the Washington estate, was only a few miles down the Potomac River. The general-president had died eight years before Lee’s birth, but his aura still permeated Alexandria. Lee naturally came to revere him, and the passion deepened naturally with the passing years until Lee eventually became the shadow of the legendary patriot. A dozen connections existed between the Washington and Lee families. Their roots in Virginia were deeply planted. It was not happenstance that Lee married the daughter of Washington’s adopted son. While stationed on the western frontier, Lee often read Washington biographies. Surely, in 1861 Lee saw his going to war against the federal government as similar to Washington going to war against the British government. Lee the general wore a colonel’s insignia, as did Washington. Lee named his horse after Washington’s favorite mount. An item in Lee’s baggage was one of Washington’s swords. The two generals resembled one another in certain ways: powerful physical presence, personal reserve, and an unshakable adherence to devotion to duty. Both men were courteous to all, intimate with only a few. Like Washington in the American Revolution, Lee in the Civil War sought a “victory of attrition.” Win battles and suffer defeats, but keep fighting relentlessly until the other side concludes that the contest is too burdensome to continue. Both commanders criticized the national congress, and often the general public, for

WASHINGTON COLLEGE, VIRGINIA. Robert E. Lee agreed to become president of Washington College for three reasons: he had educational administrative experience from being superintendent at West Point, the school would be a good platform from which he could work toward national reconciliation, and it was named for the man who had been his lifetime hero.

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Augusta Academy was the first classical school in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. The principal founder was William Graham, a close friend of Lee’s father. It was located in 1749 in the Augusta County village of Greenville. A burst of patriotic fervor in 1776 led to a name change to Liberty Hall Academy. After fire destroyed the school building in 1780, a new home was selected 20 miles away in Lexington. George Washington became interested in the academy and, in 1796, made a sizable donation of stock to its development. (Dividends are still received from the gift.) In 1813 school officials renamed the school Washington College in honor of its benefactor. The school escaped a second destructive fire in 1864 when General David Hunter’s Union soldiers occupied and burned much of Lexington. Federals looted the library and destroyed the scientific equipment but left everything else fairly intact. The following summer, Judge John Brockenbrough visited Lee in Richmond. He offered the ex-general the presidency of the college. The school was paralyzed. Funds were not available even to pay the president, and no endowment existed. It then had 49 underage students and four unpaid faculty. Washington College was as near death as it could be. Lee was asked to save the school for an annual salary of $1,500 and a home. The ex-general then proceeded to turn the feeble school into a vigorous pacemaker for higher education. He instituted a modernized curriculum substituting practical subjects such as mathematics, experimental philosophy, and American history for Greek literature, theology, and English history. The president encouraged suggestions from faculty. A new honor system became a foundation of student life. Under his direction, the school built a new chapel whose location and design stood in contrast to the major building. Daily chapel services were voluntary, but a chapter of the Young Men’s Christian Association was large and active. Lee even directed the planting of numerous trees on campus. “Never plant trees in a row,” he instructed. “As far as possible, imitate nature.”

By the end of the first school year, more than 100 students were enrolled, the faculty had doubled in number, and Lee had managed to pay all of the college’s debts. To some observers, Lee’s example was more important than his administration because he stood for reconciliation as much as he did for education. Despite a myriad of duties, exacerbated by declining health, Lee made it a habit to know every student by name and academic progress. He referred to them as “my boys.” The president gave special attention to the struggling students. Once he told the faculty, “Always observe the stage-driver’s rule; always take care of the poor horses.” It has been said that Lee killed students with kindness. One miscreant remembered being summoned to the president’s office. “I wish he had whipped me but he talked to me about my mother and the sacrifices she is making to send me to college . . . the first thing I knew I was blubbering like a baby.” School enrollment during Lee’s tenure climbed to 410 from 22 states. On 15 October 1870, the day of Lee’s funeral, trustees changed the name of the institution to Washington and Lee University. Yet generations of alumni have called it “General Lee’s College.” WELDON RAILROAD, VIRGINIA, CAMPAIGN FOR (22 JUNE–20 AUGUST 1864). Once General Ulysses S. Grant had Robert E. Lee pinned down at Petersburg, the Union commander began efforts to cut the railroads that supplied the Confederate armies. The Weldon line, connecting Petersburg with Weldon and Wilmington, North Carolina, was closest to the Union entrenchments. Grant began with it. The first offensive (22–28 June) involved 5,000 cavalry under General James H. Wilson. Federals struck the railroad at Ream’s Station, burned everything in sight, then continued to the Southside Railroad, eliminating all that was combustible. Wilson’s foray soon ran out of food and energy 100 miles from the Union lines. The horsemen suffered 1,300 casualties in returning home. The damaged rail lines remained in Confederate hands. The second attempt (18–20 August) involved another mounted Union force sent

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to secure the Weldon line, but this time in a steady rainfall. Federals cut the tracks at Globe Tavern, three miles south of the Petersburg fortifications. Southern reinforcements arrived on the scene, and nasty fighting in the mud followed for two days. Union cavalry managed to dig earthworks near the Weldon Railroad. That line was now lost to Lee. It was a costly but little-known campaign in the long contest at Petersburg. Grant lost 4,400 of 23,400 engaged; Lee suffered 1,600 casualties of the 14,000 men he concentrated to defend one rail system.

such as tobacco. Western residents felt closer ties, both family and business-wise, with neighboring Ohio and Pennsylvania. The largest city in the area, Wheeling, was only 60 miles from Pittsburgh but 330 miles from Richmond. For decades prior to the 1860s, traditional thinking has maintained that westerners complained of being Virginia’s stepchildren. They felt overtaxed and underrepresented in state government. When the secession ordinance was put to a vote in mid-April 1861, 29 of 49 western delegates approved the document. The subsequent 23 May public referendum granted approval by a six-to-one margin. The vote was closer in the western counties. An Ohio County leader declared, “I should like to show those traitors at Richmond . . . that we are not to be treated like the cattle on the hills or the slaves on their plantations.” The “hardline unionists” who walked out of the secession convention were a minority who did not represent the thinking of most of their constituents. Yet enlisting some local leaders who agreed with them, unionists conducted mass meetings in the northern part of the region. Angry heat waves for separation from Virginia began to blaze. The unionist bloc then created an unelected government that was supported by an invading Federal army. Self-appointed politicians never chosen by any enfranchised electorate and many with strong business ties to the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad met on 12 June 1861 at Wheeling. Separatists controlled the proceedings. They favored their own statehood but had somehow to overcome Article IV, Section 3, of the U.S. Constitution, which affirms, “no state shall be formed . . . without the consent of the States concerned.” Wheeling delegates promptly gave themselves permission to create a new state. Their constitutional justification was unique. They were proclaiming a “restored government” to a state that no longer was in the Union. Subsequent conventions declared all previous state offices vacant. Francis H. Pierpont was elected governor, and Wheeling was chosen as the seat of said government. Thirty-four counties (the number would increase eventually to 50) would be in the state of West Virginia.

WEST POINT, NEW YORK. See UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY, WEST POINT, NEW YORK. WEST VIRGINIA, STATE OF. Recently a historian observed, “West Virginia statehood is one of the most fascinating and controversial results of the Civil War, an event of constitutional ambiguity and fiercely disputed analyses.” Another writer asserted, “While the United States was purportedly invading the Southern states in denial of the rights of self-determination, the western counties of Virginia were encouraged to secede from their own state and assert their rights of self-determination.” The western portion of Virginia had two highly strategic factors in the Civil War: the Ohio River and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, both of which ran along its northern border for 200 miles. Second in size only to the mighty Mississippi, the Ohio was a natural water barrier between the North and the Old Dominion, while the B & O—the only east–west trunk line in the nation—ran through the northern tier of western counties and was the dominant business for a large portion of the inhabitants and their political leaders. In addition, a socioeconomic difference long existed between Virginia’s mountain folk and the Tidewater aristocracy. The 35 counties west of the Shenandoah Valley and north of the Kanawha River contained a fourth of Virginia’s population. Slaves comprised only 4 percent of western Virginia inhabitants because the mountainous region was unsuitable for large-scale production of money crops

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Further straining the limits of democracy, a convention declared that only those who took a loyalty oath to the United States were eligible to vote or hold office. Some 3,000 citizens who opposed these actions were imprisoned at Camp Chase, Ohio, and similar compounds. Another convention elected two senators and three representatives to serve in the U.S. Congress if their statehood request was granted. All of this was embodied in a state constitution, which passed in a “public referendum” by an 18,862–514 vote. The 1860 census returns for the 50 counties involved showed 79,515 eligible voters. Hence, fewer than 25 percent officially voiced their opinion about the new constitution. President Abraham Lincoln was fully in support of these political machinations. The state-consent clause in the Constitution did not bother him. Article II, Section 3, of the same document gives the president “such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient” in situations where the laws must “be fully executed.” Moreover, Lincoln welcomed the prospect of five new Republican legislators in a Congress where his party had a fragile majority. None of these state-making efforts would have amounted to anything appreciable had not the U.S. Army moved promptly in the first weeks of war. Two weeks after Virginia’s secession, Confederates cut the B & O line a few miles above Harpers Ferry. All other Southern attempts thereafter were unsuccessful. Federal forces overwhelmed the enemy at Grafton and Carrick’s Ford. The Harpers Ferry defendants, facing attack on two fronts, retired to Winchester. This permanently secured the railroad for the North. Young General George B. McClellan by June had organized 20,000 troops in the region. Dispersing portions of the command to guard vital points, McClellan started southward to reach Charleston and gain complete control of the “state.” It was tough going for all involved. A young Georgia soldier wrote home, “It is no use to try and tell you what sort of country this is. This is the damdest hole I ever saw and how the people live, God only knows, for it is nothing but mountains.”

Confederate ineptitude contributed much to Union successes. Bickering among the Southern commanders in the region, a major effort to defeat the Federals at Cheat Mountain—despite General Robert E. Lee’s presence—all led to failure. Confederate losses, mostly in soldiers captured, were 10 times Federal casualties. All of the engagements were minor affairs in the overall picture of the Civil War, but McClellan’s dispatches and official reports made his accomplishments seem like a great deal more than they were. And they arrived in Washington commensurate with the Union disaster at First Manassas. McClellan seemed the hero the North needed. Lincoln called him to Washington, D.C., to take charge of the war in the Eastern theater. On 20 June 1863, West Virginia was admitted to the Union as the 35th state and “the child of the rebellion.” The area remained split in sentiment. While 20,000 of its sons fought for the North, 20,000 other men served in the Southern armies. The whole statehood issue is a paradox. Confederate Virginia, a product of secession, fiercely condemned the withdrawal of its western counties, while the federal government, a sworn enemy of secession, aided the western counties openly and heavily. In addition, an ambiguity of sorts exists today. In Charleston, the state capital, no streets are named for any of the dozen leaders who fought strenuously for statehood, but it has streets named for George Washington, Lee, and Virginia. A statue of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson, who never set foot in West Virginia as a state, and who campaigned vigorously to keep the region as part of Virginia, is on a hero’s mantle in front of the state capitol. WHITE OAK SWAMP, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF. See GLENDALE, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF. WILDERNESS, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF THE (5–7 MAY 1864). The major threat of General Ulysses S. Grant’s 1864 Overland Campaign was going to be made by the Army of the

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Colonel Horace Porter of Grant’s staff wrote, “All circumstances seemed to combine to make the scene one of unutterable horror. It was as though Christian men had turned to fiends, and hell itself had usurped the earth.” Fighting surged back and forth near the two road intersections until nightfall. Some 70,000 Federals had held their own against 40,000 Confederates. That night men on both sides nodded where they lay. Lines were a confused jumble. Regiments and sometimes brigades were disconnected all over downed trees and scorched land. At dawn on 6 May, Grant ordered the veteran II Corps to attack Lee’s right (southern) flank. Southerners were driven back a mile through the woods to a clearing where Lee had his command post. By then, the Union attackers had become weary and disorganized by the painful advance. Just at that moment, the lead elements of General James Longstreet’s fresh troops double-timed into the clearing. Lee was so elated to see reinforcements that he galloped over and shouted that he would personally lead the men in a counterattack. The famous Texas Brigade, immediately in front, was not going to have its beloved commander risk his life. “Go back, General Lee! Go back!” they shouted. “We won’t go forward unless you go back!” Lee agreed to back away, and Longstreet, in a rare display of offensive mettle, calmly directed an assault that first stunted and then smashed the Union line. The Texans had promised to turn the tide of battle. They proved as good as their word. Yet in the day’s fighting they paid a deadly price; 560 of 800 men were killed or wounded. Cohesion on both sides began to collapse as Lee’s men slowly drove the Federals back through the Wilderness. Amid the smoke, confusion, and gunfire, Longstreet received crippling wounds when shot accidentally by his own troops. The two-day battle in the Wilderness ended with sunset. Neither side had gained a foot. Lee’s losses exceeded 7,000 soldiers. Grant suffered at least 17,500 men, had both flanks broken, and escaped disaster by the narrowest margin. By any indication, the Army of the

Potomac moving due south toward Richmond, still the heart of what was left of the Confederate States. Lee had spent the winter in the Orange Courthouse region, not only to protect the railroads but to extend his western flank toward General James Longstreet’s corps, which was returning from unsuccessful duty in Tennessee. Grant’s hope was to turn Robert E. Lee’s eastern flank and bring him to battle in the open country south of the Rapidan River. One of Lee’s chief characteristics was his unwillingness to fight where his opponent wanted him to fight. In this campaign he was outnumbered two to one, but in a surprise move Lee took advantage of geography to unleash a heavy attack. When Grant’s army crossed the Rapidan on 4–5 May, it plunged into a bad place for an army to be. The Wilderness, it was called, was 12 miles long and six miles wide. Dense woods and underbrush were so thick that nobody could see 50 yards in any direction. Ravines, little watercourses, and brambles further impeded knowledge as well as movement. The roads through the Wilderness were few, narrow, and hemmed in on both sides by heavy woods. Farm clearings were scarce, which negated artillery having much effect in a battle there. The lead elements of the Union army bivouacked in the Wilderness on the night of 4–5 May because their vast wagon trains were already lagging behind. The next morning the long column resumed marching down the Brock Road. Suddenly Confederates assailed the Federals from two west-to-east dirt roads. No time existed to construct earthworks. A standup, vicious fight exploded, sending echoes of violence in every direction. For two days of fierce combat, soldiers seldom saw their enemies but fired at the spot where the sound and smoke indicated they were. Entire brigades blundered the wrong way; friendly soldiers fired on each other; officers had little control of their men because battle lines were indistinguishable in the smoke and dense woodland. Muzzle flashes from thousands of rifles set underbrush on fire, and untold numbers of injured soldiers too weak to crawl to safety were burned to death. Lieutenant

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Potomac had been beaten as badly as General Joseph Hooker had been mauled at nearby Chancellorsville a year earlier. That night Grant pulled back his firing lines and began marching away. Federal soldiers accustomed to defeat said little; but as the long, weary column struggled along the road, Billy Yanks suddenly realized that they were not heading north in defeat or pausing to lick their wounds. The Union army was resuming its march southward. A brigadier general expressed concern to Grant that Lee might hit them again unexpectedly. The Union commander angrily replied, “I am heartily tired of hearing what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to think what we are going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do.” Grant knew that time was on his side. He sent a telegram to President Lincoln: “Whatever happens, there will be no turning back.”

The Williams and Lee families, close neighbors, became closer friends. Markie and her two young brothers spent much time at Arlington House and became intimate family members. In time Markie Williams became especially close to Agnes and Annie Lee. In 1842 Williams’s mother died. Five years later, her father was killed in the Battle of Monterey. For a time Markie lived with the Lees. Robert Lee was rarely at home because of army assignments in Missouri, New York, and South Carolina, Markie grew into a remarkably attractive lady. Tall, slender, with dark eyes and brown hair, she had what a friend called “a sweet temperament.” She learned to play the piano, write poetry, and paint. The widowed Mary Fitzhugh Custis thought Markie “a lovely, warm girl” and “a Christian in name and deed.” She was 17 when, in 1844, she began a correspondence with Robert E. Lee. They would exchange letters for the next 26 years. Markie supposedly had an attraction for older, unavailable men, and Lee—20 years her ­senior—had a flirtatious spirit that often came to the forefront. Their letters ranged far and wide in subject, although mention of family members was a dominant theme. Markie always addressed Lee as “Cousin Robert.” Yet, on occasion, their thoughts slipped beyond the socially acceptable. After receiving one letter, Lee replied, “I have thought upon it, slept upon it, dwelt upon it (pretty long you will say) & have not done with it yet. I only wish you had brought it on yourself.” One day in the 1850s, Lee appeared unexpectedly at Arlington House. Williams recorded in her diary that seeing him was “quite over-powering. What ecstasy to meet one so much loved after so long an absence. My love for Cousin Robert is perfectly unique.” Not one shred of evidence exists that the relationship between Lee and Williams became physical. Indeed, Mrs. Lee knew of the correspondence and apparently read many of the letters. What occurred between Lee and his much-younger kinsman could be called “a long-distance affair” between “kissing cousins.”

WILLIAMS, MARTHA CUSTIS “MARKIE” (1827–1899). Women were naturally attracted to the handsome and dignified Robert E. Lee. At the same time, no one enjoyed the company of ladies more than did Lee. Mary Lee, once a flirt herself, always felt secure of her husband’s fidelity. She passed off his flirtations as the “greatest recreation in his toilsome life.” Lee declared early in his military career that he opposed anyone leading a woman into indiscretion. His half brother’s sexual misconduct and the scandal it brought to the Lee family was a lesson Lee never forgot. All of the above is fundamental in discussing Lee’s relationship with Markie Williams. She was Mary Lee’s cousin and distantly related to the Lee family. She was born at the family estate, Tudor Place, in Georgetown, District of Columbia. Her mother was the great-granddaughter of Martha Washington. Her father, William G. Williams, was a highly regarded officer in the Corps of Engineers. The mother had 15 pregnancies, but only five children survived infancy.

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At Lee’s death in 1870, Markie wrote Agnes Lee from Philadelphia, “I am in a distant country as it were—in a strange boarding house pacing my room—weeping alone & mourning without one receptive heart . . . your dear, dear Mother—this is the overwhelming sorrow of her life.” Six years later, at the age of 50, Markie Williams married a longtime friend, Samuel Perry “Powhatan” Carter. He is the only American military officer ever to hold the rank of army general and navy admiral. Carter died in 1891. Markie lived for eight more years. Husband and wife are buried in the same grave in Oak Hill Cemetery, Georgetown.

both sides. General Stonewall Jackson had his headquarters there in the war’s first winter. The city changed hands dozens of times in the course of the Civil War. It was the pivotal point in three major campaigns of the war. In the third week of May 1862, during Jackson’s Valley Campaign, Southerners engaged in a running assault on Union General Nathaniel Banks’s 10,000 soldiers. Jackson attacked the Union forces inside Winchester early on the morning of 25 May. Colonel E. G. T. Warren of the 10th Virginia wrote his wife, “We made a most gallant & splendid charge at the Enemy stationed behind a stone fence & drove them off without firing a gun. They ran like skunks.” Two weeks later, Jackson had regained control of the Shenandoah Valley. The Second Battle of Winchester marked the initial engagement of what became the Gettysburg Campaign. General Richard Ewell’s corps was leading Robert E. Lee’s army on its second invasion of the North. Ewell approached Winchester; the Union commander there, General Robert Milroy, underestimated Ewell’s strength and position. In late afternoon on 13 June, an artillery bombardment, followed the next day by an infantry attack, forced Milroy’s soldiers to flee Winchester. Ewell caught the Federals outside the town at Stephenson’s Depot the following day. More than 3,000 Federals surrendered, with Milroy himself barely escaping. Ewell lost 240 men. This victory opened the lower Valley for Lee’s movement across the Potomac River into Maryland. By late summer 1864, the opposing forces of Confederate General Jubal Early and Union General Philip Sheridan faced each other at Winchester. Sheridan had 33,000 soldiers and orders from Grant to seize control of the Shenandoah Valley. Early and his 12,000 soldiers were all that stood in Sheridan’s way. Lee, pinned down on the Richmond-Petersburg line, was unable to dispatch reinforcements. On 19 September, Sheridan made a somewhat disjointed assault. Confederates held their own for a while in the Third Battle of Winchester, but late in the day a huge Union charge broke the Confederate flank. Early

WINCHESTER, VIRGINIA. No records exists that Lee ever visited Winchester, but he was continually mindful during the Civil War of that key city in the Shenandoah Valley. Founded in 1752, and the seat of Frederick County, the town was encircled by low rising hills. It was originally laid out in a grid, with the seven principal streets running north and south. Growth was steady because Winchester had nine roads and turnpikes. Among them was the macadamized highway known as the Valley Turnpike. It stretched from Staunton to Martinsburg and was the main, always-busy avenue of the Valley. In addition, the Winchester & Potomac Railroad ran from Winchester 32 miles to Harpers Ferry. There the line connected with the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and the eastern markets at Baltimore and Philadelphia. In 1860 the town had a population of 4,400 residents. Included in that number were 708 slaves and 655 free blacks. Winchester boasted more than 50 stores, a dozen churches, two newspapers, and the state’s first medical school. Winchester was as far north of Washington, D.C., as was Baltimore. The door to the northern end of the Shenandoah Valley, it was a natural a jump-off point for a Confederate invasion of the North or a base for a Union move into one of the nation’s richest agricultural regions. The town became a primary training camp for Southern recruits, a major supply depot, and a command post for

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retreated, a fourth of his army lost in the fight. Combat at Fisher’s Hill three days later further reduced Southern resistance, and a smashing victory by Sheridan at Cedar Run on 19 October left Federals in permanent control of the Valley and its anchor, Winchester.

damned!” Wise shouted. “There has been no country for a year or more. You are the country for these men!” Lee could only shake his head. Wise spent the postwar years practicing law, penning his memoirs, and restoring friendship with his brother-in-law, Army of the Potomac commander George G. Meade. Wise died in September 1876 of tuberculosis.

WISE, HENRY ALEXANDER (1806–1876). When Democrat Henry Wise was elected governor of Virginia in 1856, his Whig opponent declared that the Democratic Party had abandoned an old-time policy of choosing an idiot for governor and instead placed a lunatic in the office. Wise was the political king of Virginia’s Eastern Shore, and he became the state’s most outspoken secessionist. Like John Floyd, Wise’s political standing got him a brigadier general’s commission; like Floyd, Wise organized his own military force (“The Wise Legion”); like Floyd, he was past military age and so ignorant of battlefield situations that he often failed to recognize danger. Unfortunately, in the summer of 1861 the two political generals and their small commands were not only assigned to the same western Virginia region; they were expected to cooperate in joint ventures. It was not humanly possible. Floyd, the senior in rank, would issue orders to Wise, who would disregard them by responding directly to Commander in Chief Jefferson Davis. The president sent his military adviser, General Robert E. Lee, to try to bring something positive from the collision of two mammoth egos. Lee’s efforts were hard-pushed but futile. The Wise-Floyd rivalry was a major factor in Lee’s hair turning gray during the autumn 1861 military collapse in western Virginia. Wise’s inexperience also played a significant role in the February 1862 loss of Roanoke Island, North Carolina. After Lee assumed army command in 1862, he dispatched him to two years of various duties along the South Carolina and Florida coasts. In 1864, Wise and his brigade eventually joined Lee at Petersburg. The old politician served dutifully through Appomattox. On the morning of 8 April 1865, as a story goes, Lee expressed anxiety at what the South might say if he surrendered. “Country be

WOMEN. Women played a unique and influential role in Robert E. Lee’s life. With no father at home, the youngster grew up totally under the shadow of his mother, Ann Lee. She was caring, attentive, and a lasting example of the good qualities of life. Her son worshipped her. When Mrs. Lee fell victim to a crippling disease, the son forsook his adolescent wishes to tend to her needs. She referred to him lovingly as both son and daughter. Lee rushed from graduation at West Point to Mrs. Lee’s bedside. He arrived in time to watch her die. Lee was too heartbroken to attend the funeral, but he never ceased practicing the tenets his mother had imparted. His marriage two years later to Mary Custis was a hallmark for Lee. The couple, in appearance and custom, seemed to have little in common. Yet the love they shared ran deep for 39 years. Lee’s long assignments to military outposts kept them apart for extended periods, but Mary was usually pregnant after her husband’s furlough ended. She bore him seven children, even though the birthing process for the last five was excruciatingly painful. When Lee married in 1831, he also gained a mother-in-law with whom he shared deep affection. Mary Fitzhugh Custis regarded Lee as the son she never had. She in turn helped fill the gap made by the passing of Ann Carter Lee. He began calling her “Mother” and continued doing so until her death. Lee’s four daughters had a love of their father that simply could not be broken. None of the four ever married. Apparently only one of them ever fell in love with someone else. Both Lee and his wife had a flirtatious nature. Army service boosted that trait in Lee. He openly enjoyed the company of women, and teasing was always pleasurable. On the other hand, Lee could never forget the sex scandal

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of his half brother Henry that brought disgrace to the Lee name. Any intimacy Lee might have committed was verbal, never physical. For American women in general, the Civil War was their great breakout. Women in the 1860s who recorded wartime life form a minority of the gender. They were wives or daughters of successful businessmen. We know them because the letters they wrote or diaries they maintained are in print or in file folders at research libraries. However, even the most educated women of that time were second-class citizens. In 1860 they could not vote. None held any public office. In many states they could not own property. Yet the coming of civil war opened three new avenues for women. They proved their worthiness in each pursuit. The call to arms sent thousands of factory workers into military service. Keeping the machines running was critical to the war effort. Without being asked, women volunteered for the menial tasks. They replaced women’s hoop skirts with men’s trousers (thus giving birth to slacks) and proved as capable in the factory as they had been as wives at home.

Similarly, schoolmasters abandoned classrooms to defend their country. Education came to a momentary halt. Women, with knowledge or the ability to acquire it, stepped forward. They added a new word to the vocabulary: “schoolmistress.” They have dominated the field of basic education ever since. With thousands of soldiers trying to kill each other on the battlefield, and even larger numbers stricken by communicable diseases, male nurses were inadequate to handle the flood of wounded and sick. In those days, no lady dare visit a hospital with all of its stench, blood, filth, and screams. But the patients desperately needed human care. Women by the hundreds volunteered for duty. Clara Barton, Phoebe Pember, Judith McGuire, Sally Tompkins led a long list of women who pioneered—and now dominate— the nursing profession. The American Red Cross was a direct outgrowth of the Civil War. Such wartime services could not be overlooked. Among the many legacies of that struggle are the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Women at last, and by law, became men’s equals.

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Y position. His men repulsed Sheridan’s first mounted attack. Near 4 p.m., Sheridan’s troopers galloped forward again. They gained some ground before Stuart determined to try to capture an enemy artillery battery. He would lead the attack himself. In the fighting that followed (the Southern effort was unsuccessful), a Michigan trooper spotted the red beard, plumed hat, and scarlet cape of a Confederate officer. The soldier took aim and fired at the target 15 yards away. The .44-caliber pistol bullet ripped into Stuart’s body. He remained in the saddle until aides got him into a wagon. As the party was leaving the field, Stuart spotted some men fleeing to the rear. “Go back! Go back!” he yelled. “I had rather die than be whipped!” The circuitous roads to Richmond were bumpy, and the wagon had no springs. Stuart endured severe pain throughout the 15-mile journey. The party reached the home of Stuart’s brother-in-law. There, surgeons carefully examined the wound. The bullet had lodged somewhere in his lower abdomen. No treatment was possible. Twenty-six hours after being wounded, Stuart died. Lee was deeply moved at the passing of his cavalry chief. He “never brought me a piece of false information,” Lee declared. “I can scarcely think of him without weeping.”

YELLOW TAVERN, VIRGINIA, BATTLE OF (12 MAY 1864). Part of General Ulysses S. Grant’s 1864 strategy in driving southward through Virginia was to neutralize the effectiveness of the weakened Confederate cavalry. To accomplish this, Grant ordered volatile, hard-hitting Philip Sheridan to ride south with 10,000 horsemen, cut supply lines along the way, and strike Jeb Stuart a severe blow if he could bring him to battle. On 9 May, Sheridan’s column, extending for 13 miles, began its ride. Severing communication lines was easy duty, Sheridan declared. Fighting a “cavalry duel” with Stuart would be a pleasure. Success accompanied the leisurely Federal advance. Outmanned Confederates guarding Beaver Dam Station fled after setting fire to 9,000 pounds of meat and 504,000 bread rations that would have sustained Robert E. Lee’s army for a month. Union troopers at last put the Virginia Central Railroad out of commission. Stuart had fought the Civil War with a degree of fatalism. He never expected to survive the struggle, nor did he want to live in a defeated South. On 12 May, Stuart was able to get 4,500 cavalry to confront more than twice that number of Federals. The two columns came together six miles north of Richmond at a dilapidated, abandoned stagecoach inn called Yellow Tavern. Stuart assumed a defensive

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Biography 73, no. 4 (October 1965): 474–84. Bragg, William Harris. “‘Our Joint Labor’: W. J. De Renne, Douglas Southall Freeman and Lee’s Dispatches, 1910–1915.” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 97, no. 1 (January 1989): 3–32. Crimmins, M. L., ed. “Colonel Robert E. Lee’s Report on Indian Combats in Texas.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 39, no. 1 (July 1935): 21–32. deButts, Robert E. L., Jr. “Lee in Love: Courtship and Correspondence in Antebellum Virginia.” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 115 (2007): 486–575. Jones, John William. Life and Letters of Robert Edward Lee, Soldier and Man. New York: Neale, 1906. ———. Personal Reminiscences, Anecdotes, and Letters of Gen. Robert E. Lee. New York: D. Appleton, 1874. Lattimore, Ralston B. The Story of Robert E. Lee, As Told in His Own Words and Those of His Contemporaries. Philadelphia: Eastern National Park and Monument Association, 1964. Lee, Robert Edward. The Daily Correspondence of Brevet Colonel Robert E. Lee, Superintendent, United States Military Academy, September 1, 1852 to March 24, 1855. U.S. Military Academy Occasional Papers #5. West Point, NY: United States Military Academy Press, 2003.

CONTENTS Introduction 161 Lee’s Writings 161 Lee Biographies 162 Personal Memoirs 165 Lieutenants and Opponents 167 Family and Friends 169 Military Studies 170 Inspirational Studies 172 Related Studies 172

INTRODUCTION This is the most comprehensive bibliography of printed works compiled to date on Robert E. Lee. The 382 entries have been organized under eight subheadings to make for easier research. “Lee’s Writings” contains every known source. Titles in the other categories, notably “Personal Memoirs,” were selected for relevance and quality. Room exists in the other sections for additions. The entries listed are the sources customarily cited in reliable works.

LEE’S WRITINGS Bean, W. G. “Memoranda of Conversations between Robert E. Lee and William Preston Johnston, May 7, 1868 and March 18, 1870.” Virginia Magazine of History and

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———. Lee’s Dispatches: Unpublished Letters of General Robert E. Lee, C.S.A., to Jefferson Davis and the War Department of the Confederate States of America, 1862– 65. Edited by Douglas Southall Freeman. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1915. ———. Letters of Robert E. Lee to Henry Kayser, 1838–1846. Edited by Isaac H. Lionberger and Stella M. Drumm. Columbia: Missouri Historical Society, 1936. ———. “Lieutenant Lee Reports to Captain Talcott on Fort Calhoun’s Construction on the Rip Raps.” Edited by George Green Shackelford. Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 60, no. 3 (July 1952): 487. ———. “A Robert E. Lee Letter to P. G. T. Beau­regard.” Maryland Historical Magazine 51, no. 3 (September 1956): 249–51. ———. “Some Personal Letters of Robert E. Lee, 1850–1858.” Edited by William D. Hoyt Jr. Journal of Southern History 12, no. 4 (1946): 557–70. ———. “To Markie”: The Letters of Robert E. Lee to Martha Custis Williams. Edited by Avery O. Craven. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1933. ———. “To Molly: Five Early Letters from Robert E. Lee to His Wife, 1832–1835.” Huntington Library Quarterly 15, no. 3 (May 1952): 257–76. ———. The Wartime Papers of R. E. Lee. Edited by Clifford Dowdey and Louis H. Manarin. Boston: Little, Brown, 1961. ———. The Wit and Wisdom of Robert E. Lee. Edited by Devereaux D. Cannon Jr. Gretna, LA: Pelican, 2008. Lee, Robert Edward, Jr. Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee. New York: Doubleday, Page, 1904. Pryor, Elizabeth Brown. “‘Thou Knowest Not the Time of Thy Visitation’: A Newly Discovered Letter Reveals Robert E. Lee’s Lonely Struggle with Disunion.” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 119 (2011): 276–96. Sibkey, Marilyn M. “Robert E. Lee to Albert Sidney Johnston, 1857.” Journal

of Southern History 29, no. 1 (February 1963): 100–107.

LEE BIOGRAPHIES Alexander, Bevin. Robert E. Lee’s Civil War. Holbrook, MA: Adams Media Cooperative, 1998. Alexander, Holmes M. Washington and Lee: A Study in the Will to Win. Boston: Western Islands, 1966. Anderson, Archer. Robert E. Lee: An Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Monument to General Robert Edward Lee at Richmond, Virginia, May 29, 1890. Richmond: W. E. Jones, 1890. Anderson, Nancy Scott, and Dwight Anderson. The Generals—Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. New York: Knopf, 1988. Blount, Roy. Robert E. Lee. New York: Viking, 2003. Bond, Christiana. Memoirs of General Robert E. Lee. Baltimore: Norman Remington, 1926. Bradford, Gamaliel, Jr. Lee the American. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1912. Brock, Robert Alonzo B., ed. Robert Edward Lee: Soldier, Citizen, and Christian Patriot. Richmond, VA: B. F. Johnson, 1897. Brooks, William Elizabeth. Lee of Virginia: A Biography. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1932. Bruce, Philip Alexander. Robert E. Lee. Philadelphia: G. W. Jacobs, 1907. Carmichael, Peter S., ed. Audacity Personified: The Generalship of General Robert E. Lee. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004. Casdorph, Paul D. Lee and Jackson: Confederate Chieftains. New York: Paragon House, 1992. Ceremonies Connected with the Inauguration of the Mausoleum and the Unveiling of the Recumbent Figure of Robert Edward Lee, at Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia, June 28, 1883. Lynchburg, VA: J. P. Bell, 1883. Collier, Melinda, and John M. Coski. The Museum of the Confederacy’s Robert E. Lee Collection. Richmond, VA: Museum of the Confederacy, 1999.

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Connelly, Thomas Lawrence. The Marble Man: Robert E. Lee and His Image. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977. Cooke, John Esten. A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee. New York: D. Appleton, 1871. ———. Robert E. Lee. Edited by Harold B. Simpson. Hillsboro, TX: Hill Junior College Press, 1966. Davis, Burke. Gray Fox: Robert E. Lee and the Civil War. New York: Rinehart, 1956. Davis, Jefferson. “Robert E. Lee.” North American Review 150, no. 398 (January 1890): 55–61. Davis, William C. The Confederate Generals. 6 vols. Harrisburg, PA: National Historical Society, 1991. ———. Crucible of Command; Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee—The War They Fought, The Peace They Forged. New York: Di Capo Press, 2014. Dederer, John Morgan. “The Origins of Robert E. Lee’s Bold Leadership.” Military Affairs 49, no. 3 (July 1985): 17–20. ———. “Robert E. Lee’s First Visit to His Father’s Grave: Re-evaluating Well-Known Historical Documents.” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 102, no. 1 (January 1994): 73–84. Dodd, William E. Lincoln or Lee: Comparison and Contrast of the Two Greatest Leaders in the War between the States. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1964. Dowdey, Clifford. Lee. Boston: Little, Brown, 1965. Drumm, Stella M. “Robert E. Lee and the Improvement of the Mississippi River.” Missouri Historical Society Collections 6, no. 2 (February 1929): 157–71. Earle, Peter. Robert E. Lee. New York: Saturday Review Press, 1973. Eicher, David J. Robert E. Lee: A Life Portrait. Dallas: Taylor, 1997. Fellman, Michael. The Making of Robert E. Lee. New York: Random House, 2000. Fishwick, Marshall W. Lee after the War. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1963. ———. Robert E. Lee: Churchman. Roanoke: Episcopal Diocese of Southwestern Virginia, n.d.

Flood, Charles Bracelen. Lee: The Last Years. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. Freeman, Douglas Southall. R. E. Lee: A Biography. 4 vols. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934–1935. “Funeral of Mrs. G. W. P. Custis and Death of General Lee.” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 35, no. 1 (January 1929): 22–26. Gaines, Francis Pendleton. Lee: The Final Achievement (1865–1870). New York: Southern Society of New York, n.d. Gallagher, Gary W. Lee the Soldier. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996. Graves, Charles A. The Forged Letter of General Robert E. Lee. Richmond: Virginia State Bar Association, 1914. Grimsley, Mark. “Robert E. Lee: The Life and Career of the Master General.” Civil War Times Illustrated 24, no. 7 (November 1985): special issue. Harper, M. A. For the Love of Robert E. Lee: A Novel. New York: Soho, 1992. Harwell, Richard B. The Death of Lee: Southern Collegian, October 15, 1870. Atlanta: Emory University Library, 1955. Hopkins, Donald A. Robert E. Lee in War and Peace: The Photographic History of a Confederate and American Icon. El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie, 2013. Horn, Jonathan. The Man Who Would Not Be Washington: Robert E. Lee’s Civil War and His Decision That Changed America. New York: Scribner, 2015. Horn, Stanley F. The Robert E. Lee Reader. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1949. Korda, Michael. Clouds of Glory: The Life and Legend of Robert E. Lee. New York: Harper Perennial, 2014. Lee, Cazenove Gardner, Jr. Lee Chronicle. New York: New York University Press, 1957. Lee, Edmund Jennings. Lee of Virginia, 1642– 1892. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1972. Lee, Fitzhugh. General Lee. New York: D. Appleton, 1898. Lee Monument and Centennial & Memorial Day Observances, May 27, 1990. Richmond: Richmond Discoveries, 1990.

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Long, A. L. Memoirs of Robert E. Lee. New York: J. M. Stoddart, 1886. Marrin, Albert. Robert E. Lee and the Civil War. New York: Atheneum, 1994. Mason, Emily V. Popular Life of General Robert E. Lee. Baltimore: John Murphy, 1872. Maurice, Frederick Barton. Robert E. Lee: The Soldier. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1925. McCabe, James D. Life and Campaigns of General Robert E. Lee. New York: Blalock, 1867. McCaslin, Richard. Lee in the Shadow of Washington. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001. McCormick, S. S. “Robert E. Lee as College President: The Recollections of a Student.” The Outlook 56 (July 1897): 3–18. Meredith, Roy. The Face of Robert E. Lee in Life and Legend. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1947. Miers, Earl Schenck. Robert E. Lee: A Great Life in Brief. New York: Knopf, 1956. Moger, Allen W. “Letters to General Lee after the War.” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 64, no. 1 (January 1956): 30–69. Monsell, Helen Albee. Robert E. Lee: Boy of Old Virginia. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1960. Nolan, Alan T. Lee Reconsidered: General Robert E. Lee and Civil War History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. Page, Thomas Nelson. Robert E. Lee, The South­ erner. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1908. Pendleton, William G. The Character of Robert Edward Lee. Winchester, VA: Farmers and Merchants National Bank, 1962. Preston, Walter Creigh. Lee, West Point and Lexington. Yellow Springs, OH: Antioch Press, 1934. Pryor, Elizabeth Brown. Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee through His Private Letters. New York: Viking, 2007. Pryor, Mrs. Roger A., et al. General Robert E. Lee: Soldier, Citizen, and Christian Patriot. Richmond, VA: Royal Publishing, 1897. Rhodes, Charles D. Robert E. Lee: The West Pointer. Richmond, VA: Garrett & Massie, 1932.

Riley, Franklin L. General Lee after Appomattox. New York: Macmillan, 1922. Rister, Carl Coke. Robert E. Lee in Texas. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1946. Robert, Joseph C. “Lee the Farmer.” Journal of Southern History 3, no. 4 (November 1937): 422–40. Robert Edward Lee: Ceremonies at the Unveiling of the Statue of General Lee, Old House of Delegates, Tuesday, January 19, 1932. Richmond, VA: Richmond Division of Purchasing and Printing, 1932. Robertson, James I., Jr. Robert E. Lee: Virginia Soldier, American Citizen. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2005. Roland, Charles P. Reflections on Lee. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 1995. Rozearm Marvin P., et al. “Robert E. Lee’s Stroke.” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 98, no. 3 (October 1960): 291–308. Sanborn, Margaret. Robert E. Lee: The Complete Man, 1861–1870. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1967. ———. Robert E. Lee: A Portrait, 1807–1861. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1966. Shepherd, Henry E. Life of Robert Edward Lee. New York: Neale, 1906. Smith, Gene Edward. Lee. New York: Norton, 1995. ———. Lee and Grant: A Dual Biography. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984. ———. Robert E. Lee: An Album. New York: Norton, 2000. Stern, Philip Van Doren. Robert E. Lee, The Man and the Soldier: A Pictorial Biography. New York: McGraw, 1963. Taylor, John M. Duty Faithfully Performed: Robert E. Lee and His Critics. Dulles, VA: Brassey’s, 1999. Thomas, Emory M. Robert E. Lee: An Album. New York: Norton, 2000. ———. Robert E. Lee: A Biography. New York: Norton, 1995. Thompson, J. Anderson, and Carlos Michael Santos. “The Mystery in the Coffin: Another View of Lee’s Visit to His Father’s Grave.” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 103, no. 1 (January 1995): 75–94.

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Varon, Elizabeth R. Appomattox: Victory, Defeat, and Freedom at the End of the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. White, Henry A. Robert E. Lee and the Southern Confederacy, 1867–1870. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1902. Wilson, Woodrow. Robert E. Lee: An Interpretation. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1924. Winston, Robert W. Robert E. Lee: A Biography. New York: William Morrow, 1934. Young, James C. Marse Robert: Knight of the Confederacy. New York: Grossett & Dunlap, 1931.

Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014. Chamberlayne, John Hampden. Ham Chamberlayne—Virginian: Letters and Papers of an Artillery Officer in the War for Southern Independence. Edited by C. G. Chamberlayne. Richmond, VA: Dietz, 1932. Chesnut, Mary Boykin. Mary Chesnut’s Civil War. Edited by C. Vann Woodward. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981. Chester, Samuel Hall. Memories of Four-Score Years. Richmond, VA: Presbyterian Committee of Publications, 1934. Church, Albert E. Personal Reminiscences of the Military Academy from 1824 to 1831. New York: United States Military Academy, 1879. Confederate Veteran [magazine]. 40 vols. Nashville, TN: S. Cunningham, 1893–1932. Cooke, John Esten. Outlines from the Outpost. Edited by Richard Harwell. Chicago: R. R. Donnelley, 1961. ———. Wearing of the Gray: Being Personal Portraits, Scenes and Adventures of the War. New York: E. B. Treat, 1867. DeLeon, T. C. Belles, Beaux and Brains of the 60s. New York: G. W. Dillingham, 1907. Ellis, Edward S. The Camp Fires of General Lee, from the Peninsula to Appomattox Court-House. Philadelphia: Henry Harrison, 1886. Fremantle, Arthur J. L. Three Months in the Southern States, April–June, 1863. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1863. French, Samuel Bassett. Centennial Tales: Memoirs of Colonel “Chester” S. Bassett French, Extra Aide-de-Camp to Generals Lee and Jackson. New York: Carlton Press, 1962. Goode, John. Recollections of a Lifetime. New York: Neale, 1906. Goree, Thomas J. Longstreet’s Aide: The Civil War Letters of Major Thomas J. Goree. Edited by Thomas W. Cutrer. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995. Harrison, Mrs. Burton. Recollections Grave and Gay. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913. Hitchcock, Ethan Allen. Fifty Years in Camp and Field. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1909.

The most recommended in the two above sections are studies by William Davis, Clifford Dowdey, Douglas Freeman, Gary Gallagher, J. William Jones, Robert Lee Jr., Elizabeth Pryor, and Emory Thomas.

PERSONAL MEMOIRS Adams, Charles Francis. Charles Francis Adams, 1835–1915: An Autobiography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916. ———. Lee at Appomattox and Other Papers. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1903. Benham, Mary Louise Slocum. Reminiscences of Old Alexandria and Other Memories. Starkville, MS: privately printed, 1978. Blackford, Charles Minor. Letters from Lee’s Army. Compiled by Susan Leigh Blackford. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1947. Blackford, Susan Leigh. Memoirs of Life In and Out of the Army in Virginia. 2 vols. Lynchburg, VA: J. P. Bell, 1894. Blackford, W. W. War Years with Jeb Stuart. New York: Scribner’s, 1945. Bond, Christiana. Memories of General Robert E. Lee. Baltimore: Norman, Remington, 1926. Brinton, John H. Personal Memoirs of John H. Brinton, Major and Surgeon, U.S.V., 1861– 1865. New York: Neale, 1914. Carter, Thomas Henry. A Gunner in Lee’s Army: The Civil War Letters of Thomas Henry Carter. Edited by Graham T. Dozier.

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Hoole, William Stanley. Lawley Covers the Confederacy. Tuscaloosa, AL: Confederate Publishing, 1964. ———. Vizetelly Covers the Confederacy. Tuscaloosa, AL: Confederate Publishing, 1957. Howard, McHenry. Recollections of a Maryland Confederate Soldier and Staff Officer under Johnston, Jackson and Lee. Edited by James I. Robertson Jr. Dayton, OH: Morningside Bookshop, 1995. Hunter, Alexander. Johnny Reb and Billy Yank. New York: Neale, 1905. Hunton, Eppa. Autobiography of Eppa Hunton. Richmond, VA: William Byrd Press, 1933. Johnson, Robert U., and C. C. Buel, eds. Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. 4 vols. New York: Century, 1887–1888. Jones, Charles C. Reminiscences of the Last Days, Death and Burial of General Henry Lee. Albany, NY: Joel Munsell, 1870. Jones, John Beauchamp. A Rebel War’s Clerk Diary. Edited by James I. Robertson Jr. 2 vols. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2015. Kean, Robert G. H. Inside the Confederate Government: The Diary of Robert Garlick Hill Kean. Edited by Edward Younger. New York: Oxford University Press, 1957. Lee, George Taylor. “Reminiscences of General Robert E. Lee, 1865–68.” South Atlantic Quarterly 26, no. 3 (July 1927): 236–51. Leyburn, John. “An Interview with General Robert E. Lee.” Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine 30, no. 1 (May 1885): 166–67. Lomax, Elizabeth L. Letters from an Old Washington Diary. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1943. Marshall, Charles. An Aide-de-Camp of Lee. Edited by Frederick Maurice. Boston: Little, Brown, 1927. McAllister, Robert. The Civil War Letters of General Robert McAllister. Edited by James I. Robertson Jr. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1965. McClure, Alexander, comp. The Annals of the War: Written by Leading Participants North and South. Philadelphia: Times Publishing, 1879. McGuire, Judith Brockenbrough. Diary of a Southern Refugee during the War. Edited

by James I. Robertson Jr. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2014. Meade, George Gordon. The Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade. 2 vols. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1913. Newsome, Hampton, John Horn, and John G. Selby, eds. Civil War Talks: Further Reminiscences of George S. Bernard & His Fellow Veterans. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2012. Pepper, George W. Under Three Flags; or, The Story of My Life. Cincinnati: Curts & Jennings, 1899. Ranson, A. R. H. “General Lee As I Knew Him.” Harper’s Monthly Magazine 122, no. 729 (February 1911): 327–36. Ross, Fitzgerald. Cities and Camps of the Confederate States. Edited by Richard B. Harwell. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1958. Russell, William Howard. My Diary North and South. Boston: T. O. H. P. Burnham, 1863. Scheibert, Justus. Seven Months in Rebel States during the North American War, 1863. Edited by William Stanley Hoole. Tuscaloosa, AL: Confederate Publishing, 1958. Smith, E. Kirby. To Mexico with Scott: Letters of Captain E. Kirby Smith to His Wife. Edited by Emma Jerome Blackwood. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1917. Sorrel, G. Moxley. Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer. Edited by Bell Irvin Wiley. Jackson, TN: McCowat-Mercer Press, 1958. Southern Society Historical Papers. 52 vols. Richmond, VA: Southern Historical Society, 1876–1952. Stiles, Robert. Four Years under Marse Robert. Introduction by Robert K. Krick. Dayton, OH: Morningside Bookshop, 1980. Stuart, James Ewell Brown. The Letters of Major General J. E. B. Stuart. Edited by Adele H. Mitchell. Richmond, VA: StuartMosby Historical Society, 1990. Williams, Alphaeus S. From the Cannon’s Mouth: The Civil War Letters of General Alphaeus S. Williams. Edited by Milo M. Quaife. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1959.

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Wise, John S. The End of an Era. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1899. Wolseley, Viscount. The American Civil War: An English View. Edited by James A. Rawley. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1964. Worsham, John H. One of Jackson’s Foot Cavalry. Edited by James I. Robertson Jr. Jackson, TN: McCowat-Mercer Press, 1964.

America: A Memoir by His Wife. 2 vols. New York: Bedford, 1890. Davis, William C. Breckinridge: Statesman, Soldier, Symbol. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1974. ———. Jefferson Davis: The Man and the Hour. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. DiNardo, R. L., and Alfred A. Nofi, eds. James Longstreet: The Man, The Soldier, The Controversy. Conshohocken, PA: Combined Publishers, 1998. Donald, David Herbert. Lincoln. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. Early, Jubal A. Autobiographical Sketch and Narrative of the War between the States. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1912. Eisenhower, John S. Agent of Destiny: The Life and Times of General Winfield Scott. New York: Free Press, 1997. Elliott, Joseph Cantey. Lieutenant General Richard Heron Anderson. Dayton, OH: Morningside House, 1985. Ewell, Richard S. The Letters of General Richard S. Ewell: Stonewall’s Successor. Edited by Donald C. Pfanz. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2012. Freeman, Douglas Southall. Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command. 3 vols. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942–1944. Gallagher, Gary W. “A Widow and Her Soldier: LaSalle Corbett Pickett as Author of the George E. Pickett Letters.” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 94, no. 3 (July 1986): 329–44. Gallagher, Gary W., and Joseph T. Glatthaar, eds. Leaders of the Lost Cause: New Perspectives on the Confederate High Command. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 2004. Gordon, Lesley J. General George E. Pickett in Life & Legend. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. Gorgas, Josiah. The Civil War Diary of General Josiah Gorgas. Edited by Frank E. Vandiver. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1947. Grant, Ulysses S. The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. 32 vols. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University, 1967–2012.

LIEUTENANTS AND OPPONENTS Alexander, Edward Porter. Fighting for the Confederacy. Edited by Gary W. Gallagher. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989. ———. Military Memoirs of a Confederate: A Critical Narration. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1907. Allardice, Bruce. More Generals in Gray. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995. Beauregard, P. Gustave T. With Beauregard in Mexico. Edited by T. Harry Williams. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1956. Boritt, Gabor S., ed. Jefferson Davis’s Generals. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Bridges, Hal. Lee’s Maverick General: Daniel Harvey Hill. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961. Carmichael, Peter S. Lee’s Young Artillerist: William R. J. Pegram. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995. Cisco, Walter Brian. Wade Hampton: Confederate Warrior, Conservative Statesman. Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 2004. Cleaves, Freeman. Meade of Gettysburg. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991. Davis, Jefferson. The Papers of Jefferson Davis. 14 vols. Edited by Lynda Laswell Crist. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971–2015. ———. Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. 2 vols. New York: D. Appleton, 1881. Davis, Varina Howell. Jefferson Davis, ExPresident of the Confederate States of

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Piston, William G. Lee’s Tarnished General: James Longstreet and His Place in Southern History. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987. Pollard, Edward A. Lee and His Lieutenants. Philadelphia: National Publishing Co., 1867. Robertson, James I., Jr. After the Civil War: The Heroes, Villains, Soldiers, and Civilians Who Changed America. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2015. ———. General A. P. Hill: The Story of a Confederate Warrior. New York: Random House, 1987. ———. Stonewall Jackson: The Man, The Soldier, The Legend. New York: Macmillan, 1997. Ronald, Charles P. Albert Sidney Johnston, Soldier of Three Republics. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964. Roman, Alfred. The Military Operations of General Beauregard in the War between the States. 2 vols. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1884. Scott, Winfield. Memoirs of Lieut.-General Scott, Written by Himself. 2 vols. New York: Sheldon, 1864. Sears, Stephen W. George McClellan: The Young Napoleon. New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1988. Settles, Thomas M. John Bankhead Magruder: A Military Appraisal. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006. Smith, Gene Edward. Grant. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Snow, William P. Southern Generals: Who They Are and What They Have Done. New York: C. B. Richardson, 1865. Symonds, Craig L. Joseph E. Johnston: A Civil War Biography. New York: W. W. Norton, 1992. Taylor, Walter H. Four Years with General Lee. New York: D. Appleton, 1877. ———. General Lee: His Campaigns in Virginia, 1861–1865, with Personal Reminiscences. Norfolk, VA: Nusbaum Book and News, 1906. ———. Lee’s Adjutant: The Wartime Letters of Colonel Walter Herron. Taylor, 1862–1865. Edited by R. Lockwood Tucker. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995.

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Thomas, Emory M. Bold Dragoon: The Life of J. E. B. Stuart. New York: Harper & Row, 1986. Welsh, Jack D. Medical Histories of Confederate Generals. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1995. ———. Medical Histories of Union Generals. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1996. Wert, Jeffrey D. General James Longstreet: The Confederacy’s Most Controversial Soldier: A Biography. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993. Williams, T. Harry. P. G. T. Beauregard: Napoleon in Gray. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1954. Woodward, Steven E. Davis and Lee at War. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995.

Fishwick, Marshall W. General Lee’s Photographer: The Life and Work of Michael Miley. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1954. “Funeral of Mrs. G. W. P. Custis and Death of General Lee.” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 35, no. 1 (January 1927): 22–26. Hendrick, Burton J. The Lees of Virginia: Biography of a Family. Boston: Little, Brown, 1935. Jones, Charles C. Reminiscences of the Last Days of the Death and Burial of General Henry Lee. Albany, NY: Joel Munsell, 1870. Lee, Eleanor Agnes. Growing Up in the 1850s: The Journal of Agnes Lee. Edited by Mary Custis deButts. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984. Lee, Mary Custis. “Mary Custis Lee’s Reminiscences of the War.” Edited by Robert E. L. deButts Jr. Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 109, no. 3 (Spring 2001): 301–25. Longacre, Edward G. Fitz Lee: A Military Biography of Major General Fitzhugh Lee, C. S. A. Cambridge, MA: Di Capo Press, 2005. Mainwaring, Richard D., and Harris D. Riley Jr. “The Lexington Physicians of General Robert E. Lee.” Southern Medical Journal 98, no. 8 (August 2005): 800–804. McDonald, Rose Mortimer Ellzey. Mrs. Robert E. Lee. Boston: Ginn, 1939. Nagel, Paul C. The Lees of Virginia: Seven Generations of an American Family. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Nichols, James L. General Fitzhugh Lee: A Biography. Lynchburg, VA: H. E. Howard, 1989. Perry, John. Lady of Arlington: The Life of Mrs. Robert E. Lee. Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers, 2001. Royster, Charles. Light-Horse Harry Lee and the Legacy of the American Revolution. New York: Knopf, 1981. Scott, Frances, and Anne Cipriana Webb. Who Is Markie? The Life of Martha Custis Williams Carter, Cousin and Confidante of Robert E. Lee. Westminster, MD: Heritage Books, 2007.

FAMILY AND FRIENDS Armes, Ethel. Stratford Hall: The Great House of the Lees. Richmond, VA: Garrett and Massie, 1936. Bostick, Douglas W. Memorializing Robert E. Lee: The Story of Lee Chapel. Charleston, SC: Jogging Board Press, 2005. Boyd, Thomas. Light-Horse Harry Lee. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1931. Buchanan, Paul. Stratford Hall and Other Agricultural Studies. Stratford, VA: Stratford Hall Plantation, 1998. Coulling, Mary P. The Lee Girls. WinstonSalem, NC: John F. Blair, 1987. Custis, George Washington Parke. Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington, with a Memoir of the Author by His Daughter. New York: Derby and Jackson, 1860. Daughtry, Mary Bandy. Gray Cavalier: The Life and Wars of Gen. W. H. F. “Rooney” Lee. Cambridge, MA: Di Capo Press, 2002. ———. “Robert E. Lee’s First Visit to His Father’s Grave,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 102, no. 1 (January 1974): 73–88. Dill, Alonzo T., and Mary Tyler Cheek. A Visit to Stratford and the Story of the Lees. Stratford, VA: Stratford Hall Plantation, 1986.

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Clark, Walter. Histories of the Several Regiments and Battalions from North Carolina in the Great War, 1861–’65. 5 vols. Raleigh, NC: U. M. Uzell, 1901. Codington, Edwin B. The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command. New York: Scribner’s, 1968. Coffman, Edward M. The Old Army: A Portrait of the American Army in Peacetime, 1784– 1898. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Connelly, Thomas L., and Archer Jones. The Politics of Command: Factions and Ideas in Confederate Strategy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982. Duncan, Richard R. Lee’s Endangered Left: The Civil War in Western Virginia, Spring, 1864. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998. Fuller, J. F. C. Grant & Lee: A Study in Personality and Generalship. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1957. Furguson, Ernest B. Chancellorsville, 1863: The Souls of the Brave. New York: Knopf, 1992. ———. Not War but Murder: Cold Harbor, 1864. New York: Knopf, 2000. Gallagher, Gary W., ed. The Antietam Campaign. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. ———, ed. Chancellorsville: The Battle and Its Aftermath. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986. ———. The Confederate War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. ———, ed. The Fredericksburg Campaign: Decision on the Rappahannock. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. ———. Lee and His Army in Confederate History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. ———. Lee and His Generals in War and Memory. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998. ———, ed. The Richmond Campaign of 1862: The Peninsula and the Seven Days. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. ———, ed. The Second Day at Gettysburg: Essays on Confederate and Union Leadership.

Stratford Hall Plantation and the Lees of Virginia. Stratford, VA: Stratford Hall Plantation, n.d. Templeman, Eleanor Lee. Virginia Homes of the Lees. Arlington, VA: Eleanor Lee Templeman, 1973. Thomason, J. Anderson, Jr., and Carlos Michael Santoe. “The Mystery of the Coffin: Another View of Lee’s Visit to His Father’s Grave.” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 103, no. 1 (January 1995): 75–94. Vogel, Susan Carter. “Mary Custis Lee Warns of the Consequences of War in October, 1914.” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 124, no. 3 (2016): 216–60. Zimmer, Anne Carter. The Robert E. Lee Family Cooking and Housekeeping Book. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

MILITARY STUDIES Allan, William. The Army of Northern Virginia in 1862. Introduction by Robert K. Krick. Dayton, OH: Morningside, 1984. Beringer, Richard E., Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, and William N. Still Jr. The Elements Of Confederate Defeat. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988. Brown, Kent Masterson. Retreat from Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics, and the Pennsylvania Campaign. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. Burne, Alfred H. Lee, Grant and Sherman: A Study in Leadership in the 1864–65 Campaign. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1939. [Caffey, Thomas E.] Battle-fields of the South, from Bull Run to Fredericksburg, with Sketches of Confederate Commanders, and Gossip of the Camps. New York: J. Bradburn, 1864. Campbell, Edward D. C., Jr. “The Fabric of Command: R. E. Lee, Confederate Insignia, and the Perceptions of Command.” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 98, no. 2 (April 1999): 261–90. Catton, Bruce. A Stillness at Appomattox. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1953.

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Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1993. Glatthaar, Joseph T. General Lee’s Army from Victory to Collapse. New York: Free Press, 2008. ———. Soldiering in the Army of Northern Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011. Greene, A. Wilson. The Final Battles of the Petersburg Campaign. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2008. Griffith, Paddy. Battle Tactics of the Civil War. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989. Grimsley, Mark, and Brooks D. Simpson, eds. The Collapse of the Confederacy. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001. Hagerman, Edward. The American Civil War and Origins of Modern Warfare: Ideas, Organization, and Field Command. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988. Hall, Granville Davisson. Lee’s Invasion of Northwestern Virginia in 1861. Chicago: Mayer & Miller, 1911. Harsh, Joseph L. Confederate Tide Rising: Robert E. Lee and the Making of Southern Strategy, 1861–62. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1999. Henderson, G. F. R. The Science of War: A Collection of Essays and Lectures. London: Longmans, Green, 1905. Hennessy, John J. Return to Bull Run: The Campaign and Battle of Second Manassas. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993. Hess, Earl J. Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War: The Eastern Campaigns, 1861–1864. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. ———. In the Trenches of Petersburg: Field Fortifications & Confederate Defeat. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009. Jones, Archer. Civil War Command and Strategy: The Process of Victory and Defeat. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Jones, John William. Army of Northern Virginia: Memorial Volume. Richmond, VA: Randolph and English, 1880. Jones, R. Steven. The Right Hand of Command: Use & Disuse of Personal Staffs in

the Civil War. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 2000. Katcher, Philip. The Army of Robert E. Lee. London: Arms and Armour Press, 1994. Kegel, James A. North with Lee and Jackson: The Lost Story of Gettysburg. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 1996. Kinstan, Augus. Seven Days Battles, 1862: Lee’s Defense of Richmond. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004. Krick, Robert E. L. Staff Officers in Gray: A Biographical Register of the Staff Officers in the Army of Northern Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. Krick, Robert K. Stonewall at Cedar Mountain. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990. Livermore, Thomas L. Days and Events, 1860– 1866. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1920. Marvel, William. Lee’s Last Retreat: The Flight to Appomattox. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. McKinney, Tim. Robert E. Lee at Sewell Mountain: The West Virginia Campaign. Charleston, WV: Pictorial Histories, 1990. McWhiney, Grady, ed. Grant, Lee, Lincoln and the Radicals. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964. O’Reilly, Francis Augustus. The Fredericksburg Campaign: Winter War on the Rappahannock. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003. Palmer, Michael A. Lee Moves North: Robert E. Lee on the Offensive. New York: John Wiley’s Sons, 1998. Pappas, George S. To the Point: The United States Military Academy, 1802–1902. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993. Parat, Peter, ed. Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age. Prince­ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986. Reardon, Carol. Pickett’s Charge in Myth and Memory. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. Refuse, Ethan S. George Gordon Meade and the War in the East. Abilene, TX: McWhiney Foundation, 2003. Rhea, Gordon C. The Battle of the Wilderness, May 5–6, 1864. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994.

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———. The Battles for Spotsylvania and the Road to Yellow Tavern, May 7–12, 1864. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997. ———. Cold Harbor: Grant and Lee, May 25–June 3, 1864. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002. ———. To the North Anna River: Grant and Lee, May 13–25, 1864. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000. Sears, Stephen W. Chancellorsville. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995. ———. Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam. New Haven, CT: Ticknor & Fields, 1983. ———. To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1992. Skelton, William B. An American Profession of Arms: The Army Officer Corps, 1784–1861. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992. Swinton, William. Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac. New York: C. B. Richardson, 1866. Trudeau, Noah Andre. The Last Citadel: Petersburg, Virginia: June 1864–April 1865. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993. U.S. War Department, comp. War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. 128 vols. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1880–1902. Weigley, Russell F. Towards an American Army: Military Thought from Washington to Marshall. New York: Columbia University Press, 1962. Winders, Richard Bruce. Mr. Polk’s Army: The American Military Experience in the Mexican War. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1997. Wise, Jennings C. The Long Arm of Lee: The History of the Artillery of the Army of Northern Virginia, with a Brief Account of the Ordnance. 2 vols. Lynchburg, VA: J. P. Bell, 1915. Wood, W. J. Civil War Generalship: The Art of Command. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997.

Zinn, Jack B. R. E. Lee’s Cheat Mountain Campaign. Parsons, WV: McClain Printing, 1974.

INSPIRATIONAL STUDIES Clemmons, Robert T., ed. General Robert E. Lee—The Southern Diadem. Murfreesboro, TN: Military Order of the Stars and Bars, 1995. Cox, R. David. The Religious Life of Robert E. Lee. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerd­man, 2017. Crockett, H. W., III. Robert E. Lee on Leadership: Executive Lessons in Character, Courage, and Wisdom. Rocklin, CA: Forum, 1999. Gragg, Rod. A Commitment to Valor: A Character Portrait of Robert E. Lee. Nashville, TN: Rutledge Hill Press, 2001. Holton, Bill. Leadership Lessons of Robert E. Lee. New York: Gramercy Books, 1995. Jones, John William. Christ in the Camp; or, Religion in Lee’s Army. Richmond, VA: B. F. Johnson, 1887. Jorgensen, Jay, ed. “Marse Robert”: The Life and Leadership of Robert E. Lee. Avenel, NJ: Robert E. Lee Civil War Round Table, 2000. Kaltman, Al. The Genius of Robert E. Lee. Paramus, NJ: Prentice Hall Press, 2000. McKim, Randolph H. The Soul of Lee, By One of His Soldiers. New York: Longmans, Green, 1918. Reid, Brian Holden. Robert E. Lee: Icon for a Nation. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005. Steger, Curt. The Character & Faith of Robert E. Lee in His Own Words. Mt. Sterling, KY: Curt Steger, 2002. Wilkins, J. Steven. Call of Duty: The Sterling Nobility of Robert E. Lee. Nashville, TN: Cumberland House, 1997.

RELATED STUDIES Ambrose, Stephen E. Duty, Honor, Country: A History of West Point. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1966. Andrews, J. Cutler. The South Reports the Civil War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970.

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Ayers, Edward L., and John C. Willis, eds. The Edge of the South: Life in Nineteenth Century Virginia. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991. Beard, Augusta Blanche. “Arlington and Mount Vernon, 1856.” Edited by Clayton Torrence. Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 57, no. 2 (April 1949): 140–75. Bollet, Alfred Jay. Civil War Medicine—Challenges and Triumphs. Tucson, AZ: Galen Press, 2002. Carter, Dan T. When the War Was Over: The Failure of Self-Reconstruction in the South, 1865–67. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985. Crenshaw, Ollinger. General Lee’s College. New York: Random House, 1969. Current, Richard, et al., eds. Encyclopedia of the Confederacy. 4 vols. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993. Davis, William C. The Cause Lost: Myths and Realities of the Confederacy. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996. ———. The Image of War. 6 volumes. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981–1984. Dorris, Jonathan Truman. Pardon and Amnesty under Lincoln and Johnson. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1953. Driver, Robert J., Jr. Lexington and Rockbridge County in the Civil War. Lynchburg, VA: H. E. Howard, 1989. Greene, A. Wilson. Civil War Petersburg: Confederate City in the Crucible of War. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2006. Johannsen, Robert W. To the Hall of Montezuma. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Jordan, Ervin L., Jr. Black Confederates and Afro-American Yankees in Civil War Virginia. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995. Kundahl, George G. Alexandria Goes to War: Beyond Robert E. Lee. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004. Lowe, Richard. Republicans and Reconstruction in Virginia, 1856–1870. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991.

Macrae, David. The Americans at Home: Pen-and-ink Sketches of American Men, Manners, and Institutions. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1870. Massey, Mary Elizabeth. Bonnet Brigade. New York: Knopf, 1966. McMurry, Richard M. Two Great Rebel Armies. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989. McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. McWhiney, Grady, and Perry E. Jamieson. Attack or Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1982. Morrison, James L., Jr. “The Best School in the World”: The Pre-Civil War Years. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1986. Neely, Mark E., Jr., ed. The Confederate Image: Prints of the Lost Cause. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987. Potter, David M. The Impending Crisis, 1848– 1861. New York: Harper & Row, 1976. Power, J. Tracy. Lee’s Miserables: Life in the Army of Northern Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. Pusey, William W. The Uninterrupted Dream: The Educational Program at Washington College (Washington and Lee University), 1850–1880. Lexington, VA: Liberty Hall Press, 1975. Scott, Anne Firor. The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics, 1830–1936. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970. Scott, George C. “Notes on a Visit to Robert E. Lee.” Holiday, November/December 1982, 11–14. Shanks, Henry T. The Secession Movement in Virginia, 1847–1861. Richmond, VA: Garrett & Massie, 1934. Shattuck, Gardiner H., Jr. A Shield and a Hiding Place: The Religious Life of the Civil War Armies. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987. Smith, William Francis, and T. Michael Miller. A Seaport Saga: Portrait of Old Alexandria, Virginia. Norfolk, VA: Donning, 1989. Thomas, Emory M. The Confederate Nation, 1861–1865. New York: Harper & Row, 1979.

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Ticknor, George. “West Point in 1826.” Annual Reunion of the Association of Graduates at West Point. West Point, NY: United States Military Academy Press, 1886. Vandiver, Frank E. Rebel Brass: The Confederate Command System. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1956. Wagner, Margaret E., et al., eds. Library of Congress Civil War Desk Reference. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002. Wallenstein, Peter, and Bertram Wyatt-Brown, eds. Virginia’s Civil War. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2005. Waugh, John C. Surviving the Confederacy: Rebellion, Ruin, and Recovery—Roger and Sara Pryor during the Civil War. New York: Harcourt, 2002.

Weigley, Russell F. History of the United States Army: Military Thought from Washington to Marshall. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. Weinart, Richard P., Jr., and Colonel Robert Arthur. Defender of the Chesapeake: The Story of Fort Monroe. Annapolis, MD: Leeward Publications, 1978. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Johnny Reb. Introduction by James I. Robertson Jr. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008. Wilson, Charles R. Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865–1920. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980. Wyatt-Brown, Bertram. Southern Honor. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.

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About the Author

sesquicentennial period, he became father of the state’s new official song, “Our Great Virginia.” Robertson holds a PhD from Emory University and honorary doctorates from Randolph-Macon College and Shenandoah University. When not speaking across the nation or involved with television documentaries, he and his wife, Betty, are at home in Colonial Beach, Virginia, on the P ­ otomac River.

James I. Robertson Jr. was executive director of the U.S. Civil War Centennial Commission and worked closely with presidents Kennedy and Johnson in marking the national commemoration of the war. He was also an active member of the Virginia Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission, which led America’s remembrance of the 150th anniversary of the nation-making struggle. During the

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