Loyalty, Honor, and Family – Understanding Lee’s Decision

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Robert E Lee’s decision to turn down the opportunity to lead Union forces in an invasion of the “Cotton States” and to remain loyal to his home state and the South, despite opposing slavery and being a Unionist, is very difficult for people in the context of today’s society to understand. It also provides a very personal example of the cultural differences between the North and South and is one of the main subjects of Robert E Lee at War by Civil War and Napoleonic scholar and author Scott Bowden that is summarized in following paragraphs.

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Lee was a career military man who had gained notoriety during the Mexican American war whose most recent assignments prior to the events leading to his resignation from the Army were in Texas. His professional mentor was Winfield Scott, who was to later come up with the “Anaconda” strategy the Union Army deployed to strangle the Confederacy.  Scott said of Lee in a report on the Mexican War; “ I am impelled to make special mention of the services of Captain R. E. Lee Engineers.  This officer, greatly distinguished at the siege of Vera Cruz, was again indefatigable during the operation in reconnaissance, as daring as laborious, and of the greatest value. Nor was he less conspicuous in planting batteries, and in conducting columns to their stations under the heavy fire of the enemy.” (1 p. 42)

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Lee returned to Arlington in October of 1857 following the death of his father-in-law, George Washington Parke Custis.  It had been two years since he had seen his family and only two of seven children remained at the home (Rob 14 and Mildred 11) while his wife, Mary Custis Lee, while being his same age, was largely crippled with rheumatoid arthritis. His leave was cut short on October 17th when he was called to the War Department and put in charge of responding the John Browns ill planned attack on the Harpers Ferry Armory. Lee took charge of 90 Marines, developed an attack plan, and quickly neutralized Brown and his followers with no harm coming to his 13 hostages. (1 pp. 36-37)

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Lee returned to Texas in January of 1860 shortly after his 53rd birthday to fight the Comanche and Bandits. He was troubled by the growing sectional conflict and wrote in a letter home that “wisdom and patriotism” would prevail and avert secession but opposed force to maintain the Union writing, “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.” (1 p. 40)  After Lincoln was elected in November of 1860 Texas aligned with the cotton states with the Bonnie Blue flag replacing the American flag in most places. Lee wrote of the secession movement in January of 1861 that is was “folly, selfishness and short-sightedness” that would lead to a “fearful calamity”.  He said that if the Union was dissolved he would “go back in sorrow to my people and share the misery of my native state… and save in defense will draw my sword on none.” (1 p. 40) In that Lee was still a Union officer at the time, he made his way back to Arlington as expeditiously and inconspicuously as possible. Upon return he had orders to report to General Scott. The two men met privately for three hours with second hand information recorded from Lt. Erasmus Keyes who was Scott’s military secretary and who was intermittently present. Both men believed the sectional conflict would be resolved quickly and Scott produced numerous correspondences between himself and Lincoln supporting this position.  He promised Lee a promotion to Colonel, appealing to personal ambition, to help revise army regulations and that he would not, for the time being, be placed on war orders. (1 p. 44)

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Lee then returned to Arlington to weigh the situation and assess developments.  The Virginia secession convention rejected a motion to leave the Union but agreed that they would not be a party to coercion on the part of the federal government to bring any Southern state back into the union against their will. Not long after Lincoln’s inaugural address, Lee received another offer.  This from the Confederate Secretary of War Leroy Pope Walker naming him Brigadier General (this was the highest rank at the time being offered by the Confederate congress) which he chose not to respond to. On March 28th he received and accepted a new position, signed by Abraham Lincoln, of colonel and commanding officer of the US 1st Calvary. He said to his wife’s cousin, “There is no sacrifice I am not ready to make for the preservation of the Union save that of honour.” (1 p. 44)

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During this time the new administration arrived at a policy of resupplying and not abandoning federal military installations in the Confederate areas and initiated an expedition to resupply Ft Sumter. Lincoln arrived at this policy over the objections of General Scott and other advisors and in doing this shifted the decision to start the war to the Confederacy. The confederates fired on Sumter before the resupply expedition arrived which was as Lincoln had planned. As opposed to tolerating a minor irritant, Jefferson Davis and the firebrands provided an incident to start a war that had tremendous public relations value to the Union. Some in Davis’s cabinet disagreed like Robert Toombs who told Davis, “Opening fire on the Federal garrison would be suicide…it is unnecessary, it puts us in the wrong, it is fatal.” (1 p. 45) Following this Lincoln issue a call for 75,000 men to “to suppress said combination” and “to cause the laws to be duly executed” which roughly translates to put down the rebellion and to collect taxes due. The Sumter incident generated a flood of enlistments and created a sort of war fever but forced the hands of the Border States and the upper South that didn’t want to be part of an invading force or to allow such a force to use their territories or resources. The Unionist majorities in these states quickly dissolved and Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia all declared for the Confederacy. Other states like Kentucky remained contested regions. Virginia started deliberation on April 16th.  Lee received two correspondences on the 17th, one from General Scott ordering to meet him the following day and one from his cousin John Lee requesting a meeting with political power broker Francis Preston Blair. He chose to meet with Blair before reporting to Scott acting on the assumption that Francis Lee was speaking for President Lincoln. (1 p. 46)

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Blair had been authorized by the President and empowered by the Secretary of War Simon Cameron to ask Lee if he would accept command of the federal invasion force that was being rapidly assembled which also included another promotion. Lee turned down the offer giving this account; “After listening to his remarks, I declined the offer he made to me to take command of the army that was to be brought into the field, stating candidly and as courteously as I could, that thought I opposed secession, and deprecating war, I could take no part in an invasion of the Southern States.” (1 p. 47) Blair’s accounting of the meeting was essentially the same adding that Lee said if he owned all the slaves in the South he would gladly give them away to avoid war but he would not draw his sword on his native state. After leaving the Blair home he went directly to General Scott, who was Lee’s friend, mentor, and with whom he had developed “something of a father-son relationship”.  Scott understood Lee’s position, although disagreeing with it, and suggested that Lee resign “at once”. Quoting Scott Bowden, “Lee’s view of honor would not allow him to lead an invading army that would make war on his family, relatives, friends, and fellow Southerners” (1 p. 48). The following day, April 19th Lee learned that the Virginia delegates had voter by a margin of 2 to 1 to secede and, although a popular vote was needed to ratify the decision, he knew the  matter was at this point resolved and on April 20th wrote a letter of resignation and explanation to General Scott.

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Later that night a messenger arrived with a message from Virginia governor John Letcher who wanted to see him the next day. He was to be offered command of Virginia’s forces. As he rode away from Arlington, he would never return. In a modern context where patriotism and loyalty to the modern nation state has been seen and taught as a duty just below or equal to religious faith, or perhaps part of one’s religious faith, this is all difficult to understand but the primary political loyalty of the time period was to the state as an independent and autonomous political unit and even that was below loyalty to God and family or clan.  Author Bowden summarized Lee’s decision and the dominant in the Southern states at the time as follows:

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“Understandably, it is difficult for some Americans generations removed from these events, to empathize with Lee’s decision, or to the context how the moral weight of the phrase “save that of honor” dictated Lee’s course.  In 19th century society, honor for many – was inextricably linked with family connections, public reputation, and a keen desire to avoid shame.  As mentioned, Lee believed his honor meant never raising his sword against his family and the kinsmen of his state, even if his decision risked his and his family’s personal welfare. To Lee, family represented his primary allegiance, and the place his family called their “native country” was Virginia.  Engaging in a war against one’s own family was a violation of a fundamental law as old as recorded history.  Indeed, from before the time that Tacitus wrote Germania, the commandment that family defense was inextricably linked to one’s honor provided underpinning to the cardinal principal that helped drive the states of the upper South out of the Union.  After all, most Southerners had more kinsmen in the so-called “Cotton States” than in the North.  Furthermore, Lee’s view was rooted in the American Ideals of Jeffersonian democracy and the interpretation of the vital importance of personal liberties, tied to the sovereignty of the states that had brought the federal government into existence. For Lee, honor would not allow him to coerce other Southerners, even thought he disagreed with them on their decision to secede. “  (1 p. 52)

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 Before leaving this subject, there are a few ancillary points that merit mentioning:

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Lee never bought or sold slaves but he did wind up managing app 200 slaves after the death of his father-in-law (2). He became responsible for a plantation that was largely unmanaged and was sliding into bankruptcy and managed the plantation as a business for five years before the portions of the Arlington estate were sold off in 1862 to meet the final requirements of the Custis estate to free the slaves.

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While Lee opposed slavery citing it as a “moral and political evil”, he was by no means a modern civil rights hero. His views on race were similar to those of Lincoln, although generally not stated as callously, and even leftists’ heroes’ naturalist John Muir or abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe. (3) The Lee family did free several of the Arlington slaves before he took control of the estate and they taught others how to read. 

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Winfield Scott was also a Virginian who chose a different path. For this he suffered social ostracism. Scott’s decision to side with the Union may have been influenced by his hatred of Jefferson Davis stating that there was “contamination in his touch” and that “If secession was the holiest cause that tongue or sword of mortal ever lost or rained, he would ruin it.” (1 p. 53)

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Bibliography

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1. Bowden, Scott. Robert E. Lee at War - Volume One: Tragic Secessionist. s.l. : Military History Press, 2012. 978-0-09853572-2-1.

2. Klugewicz, Stephen M. Abbeville Institute. Abbeville Institute. [Online] June 13, 2019. https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/ten-things-you-dont-know-about-robert-e-lee/.

3. McClanahan, Brion. Abbeville Institute. Abbeville Institute. [Online] August 29, 2018. https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/robert-e-lee-vs-twitter-historians/.