ROBERT E. LEE AND HIS CHILDREN
by
VIRGINIA LOUISE LEE
A.B., 1957, THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Columbian College of The George Washington University in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts.
February 1960
Thesis directed by Wood Gray, Ph.D.
PREFACE
My original intention for this thesis was to develop an integrated study of the children of Robert E. Lee, but preliminary research revealed such a scarcity of material on the subject that reluctantly the idea had to be abandoned. Curiosity concerning the Lee children remained high, however, and I also discovered that almost as much as he is revered as a Christian, the world in general honors Robert E. Lee as an ideal father, yet very little has been done to pursue exclusively those elements in his background, both remote and immediate, which made him so.
Uniting my curiosity with this lack I have endeavored to delineate the circumstances of his heritage and his childhood that may have shaped his later attitudes as a parent, and to follow the course of his adult life as it materially affected his attitudes and his actions toward his children.
The fact that other important consequences of his life may have been likewise the result of these same influences does not come within the purview of this paper; others better qualified than I have dealt adequately and at great length with those phases of his career.
Biographical treatment has been necessary in order to encompass the scope of influences that made him the man and father he was and to provide the background against which to observe those influences in action throughout his life. Without this background we would be unable to place him in proper perspective to his children or to realize just how greatly Robert E. Lee, in his role as a father, as in other things, triumphed over misfortune.
In attempting to picture him as a father, inevitably something must be revealed of the children he was father to. It is the aim of this thesis to remind that Robert E. Lee was basically a man like other men and very human indeed, and simultaneously to recreate, insofar as available material permits, his three sons and four daughters so that each one becomes clearly distinguishable as an individual, with a distinct and unique personality of his own.
It is my hope also that in thus picturing a man whose favorite dish was “smothered chicken,” and who wrote his daughter that his room “wasn't big enough to swing a cat in,” who had the humor to call his naval officer brother “my darling Rose,” and to tell his “Precious Life that “I saw cats as is cats,” the Marble Model will be broken enough to reveal not feet of clay but the warm, human, tender being that was the essence of Robert E. Lee.
Among those who helped make this study possible are Miss Elizabeth McPherson of the Manuscript Division, and Mr. Allen Ledwith of the Newspaper Division, Library of Congress. Miss Georgia Cowan of the District of Columbia Main Library was of much assistance, as was Miss Shirley Williams of the Alexandria Library where the Virginiana donated to it by the late archivist of the Lee family, Cazenove G. Lee, Jr., was of immeasurable aid to me. The secretary of Christ Church, the clerk in the Clerk of Court's Office, and members of the staff of the Alexandria Gazette, all of Alexandria, were most kind and helpful. I am indebted also to members of the staff of the Confederate Museum, members of the staff of the Virginia Historical Society, especially Mr. Howson Cole, Curator of Manuscripts, and members of the staff of the Virginia State Library, particularly Mr. William Harrison, Photo Librarian of that institution, all of Richmond, Virginia, who gave such prompt and friendly attention to the solving of several problems incidental to this research. Mr. Houston Howell, editor of the Lexington Gazette, and the Clerk of the Rockbridge County Court, Lexington, gave generously of their time and effort, and Mrs. William Cabell Flournoy, custodian of the Lee Chapel, Lexington, was most enthusiastic and encouraging. Mrs. Hunter deButts, daughter of Captain Robert E. Lee, very graciously answered some questions.
Virginia L. Lee
Alexandria, Virginia
2 January 1960
Robert E. Lee and His Children Virginia Louise Lee
Notes
[Chapter 1]
1. Edmund Jennings Lee, Lee of Virginia (Philadelphia: E. J. Lee, 1895), p. 412; Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee, Vol. I (New York, London: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1934), pp. 11–12.
2. Ibid.
3. F. W. Alexander, Stratford Hall and the Lees Connected with its History (hereinafter referred to a Stratford Hall) (Oak Grove, Virginia: privately printed, 1912), p. 168. At this time there were only two older brothers, Charles and Sydney (called Smith), and an older sister, Anne Kinloch, but a second sister, Catherine Mildred, was born in 1811 in Alexandria.
4. Cazenove G. Lee, Lee Chronicle (New York: New York University Press, 1957), pp. 89–90.
5. Henry Lee, Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department of the United States (hereinafter referred to as Memoirs) (New York: University Publishing Co., 1869), p. 11; Robert W. Winston, Robert E. Lee (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1934), pp. 3–4, for a romanticized version of Lee loyalty to the crown, quoted from Sir Walter Scott's novel Woodstock; E. J. Lee, Lee of Virginia, p. 35; Burton J. Hendrick, The Lees of Virginia (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1935), p. 3.
6. Fitzhugh Lee, General Lee (New York & London: D. Appleton & Co., 1910), p. 3. There are conflicting claims as to the English origin of the Virginia Lees, but Fitzhugh Lee accepts Shropshire, citing the fact that Col. Richard Lee, the first of the family in Virginia, used the Shropshire coat of arms. General R. E. Lee, in his biography of his father prefaced to Henry Lee's Memoirs, also accepts Shropshire as the English seat of the Virginia Lees, see Henry Lee, op. cit., p. 11. Cf. C. G. Lee, Lee Chronicle, pp. 7–11; E. J. Lee, Lee of Virginia, pp. 33, 49. A more recent identification may be found in “Richard Lee, Emigrant,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, LXII (Jan. 1954), pp. 3–49.
7. Alexander, Stratford Hall, p. 28; C. G. Lee, Lee Chronicle, p. 19.
8. Ibid., p. 25, pp. 55–57; B. J. Hendrick, Lees of Virginia, p. 30, for an excellent sketch of the usually ignored John.
9. Ibid., genealogical table opposite p. 438; Alexander, Stratford Hall, p. 42; C. G. Lee, Lee Chronicle, p. 57; and E. J. Lee, Lee of Virginia, p. 103, all give Thomas as the fifth son, but F. Lee, General Lee, p. 5; J. William Jones, Life and Letters of Roebrt Edward Lee (hereinafter referred to as L and L) (New York & Washington: The Neale Publishing Co., 1906), p. 15; and A. L. Long, Memoirs of Robert E. Lee (hereinafter referred to as Memoirs) (New York & Philadelphia, etc.: J. M. Stoddard & Co., 1886), p. 19, all give Thomas as the fourth son, perhaps because the first son, John, died in infancy as similarly Freeman, R. E. Lee, Vol. I, p.12 cites R. E. Lee as Anne Carter Lee's fourth child despite the facsimile of the family Bible record opposite p. 12 which clearly shows that he was the fifth child, and that his oldest brother and the one discounted, Algernon Sidney Lee, lived to to be almost a year and a half old.
10. Alexander, Stratford Hall, pp. 62–63, has an excellent description of the home and grounds; C. G. Lee, Lee Chronicle, devotes two entire chapters to Stratford Hall, one on its builder, pp. 55–68, the other on its history, pp. 85–112.
11. Long, Memoirs, p. 139, R. E. Lee to daughters, 22 Nov. 1861.
12. Robert E. Lee, Jr., Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee (hereinafter referred to as Recollections) (New York: Garden City Pub. Co., 1924), p. 59, R. E. Lee to Mrs. R. E. Lee, 25 Dec. 1861.
13. E. J. Lee, Lee of Virginia, pp. 357–358, p. 361; Hendrick, Lees of Virginia, pp. 377–378.
14. Ibid.; Freeman, R. E. Lee, Vol. I, pp. 27–28.
15. Ibid., p. 26 (William Henry Harrison and Benjamin Harrison).
16. Thomas Boyd, Light-Horse Harry Lee (New York, London: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1931) is the most thorough coverage of his life.
17. Alexander, Stratford Hall, p. 151, for picture of this medal, also pp. 147–168 for short but highlighted biography of “Light-Horse Harry”; and E. J. Lee, Lee of Virginia, pp. 329–356, for medal and biography.
18. Boyd, Light-Horse Harry Lee, pp. 138–143; Freeman, R. E. Lee, Vol. I, pp. 4–5, for a penetrating analysis of this change.
19. Ibid., p. 13.
20. Charles Carter, “Will,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, XXII (Dec. 1914), 380–382.
21. Boyd, Light-Horse Harry Lee, pp. 325–326.
22. In 1913 his remains were removed to Lexington, Virginia, and reinterred in the vault in the Lee Chapel where his son Robert is buried, Freeman, R. E. Lee, Vol. I, p. 87. See Franklin L. Riley, General Robert E. Lee After Appomattox (New York: MacMillan Co., 1922), p. 229, and opposite p. 224 for picture of the mausoleum.
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