A Disease in the Public Mind (42 page)

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At Arlington, Colonel Robert E. Lee's hopes sank as he watched passion replace reason across the South and the North. On April 17, a soldier leaped from a lathered horse with a message from General Scott. He wanted to see Colonel Lee in his office. The envelope also contained a letter from a cousin, John Lee, asking him to talk with Francis P. Blair. Colonel Lee had become friendly with Blair during a tour of duty in St. Louis, Missouri.

Even without that connection, the Colonel would have recognized Blair's name, as would anyone who worked for the federal government in the previous three decades. Blair was a mover and shaker of awesome dimensions. Under President Jackson, he had edited the
Congressional Globe
, the paper that everyone faintly interested in politics read to find out what the White
House was thinking. The
Globe
had been the mouthpiece of the Democratic Party for a decade.

When Senator Douglas repealed the Missouri Compromise in 1854, Blair became a Republican with undiminished political influence. He chaired the 1856 and 1860 Republican Conventions, where he was instrumental in Lincoln's nomination. Postmaster General Montgomery Blair was his son—and we can be sure that when he urged Fort Sumter's resupply, Lincoln considered the advice as coming from his father.

On April 18, 1861, Colonel Lee rode across the long bridge that linked Virginia to Washington, DC, and tied his horse in front of Montgomery Blair's house on Pennsylvania Avenue, opposite the building containing the State War and Navy Departments. It was an appropriate setting for one of the most crucial conversations in American history.

Waiting for him was balding seventy-year-old Francis Preston Blair. There is no record of the exact words, but we know that Blair, after the usual courtesies, grew solemn and told Lee that he had been authorized by President Lincoln to offer him command of the northern army that would assemble when the 75,000 volunteers reached Washington.

Here was a moment when history's direction hung on the loyalties and beliefs and emotions of a single man. If Robert E. Lee had accepted this offer, there is at least a possibility that Virginia would have refused to secede. Even if she seceded, Lee's prestige as a soldier, and his links through his father and his wife to George Washington, would have had an enormous impact on the legitimacy of the South's resistance. Northern newspapers would have trumpeted the significance of his decision. Divisive doubts would have been implanted in the souls of thousands of wavering southern unionists, especially in Virginia. The duration of the war—its very nature—might have changed.

As Robert E. Lee sat there trying to absorb this astounding offer, what did he think and feel? What did he remember? Almost certainly his first thought was John Brown. That madman's rant about the sin of slavery and the blood that was required to wash it away, the pikes he had been prepared to put into the hands of slaves, weapons that might have been thrust into the
bodies of Lee's daughters and wife, the letters in Brown's carpetbag linking him to wealthy northern backers. Could General Lee invade Virginia or any other southern state at the head of an army composed of men who believed John Brown was as divine as Jesus Christ? How would the orders of a southern-born general, a slave owner thanks to his wife, restrain such men?

Next perhaps came the memory of the way the abolitionists had smeared him in their newspapers in 1859—accused him of stripping a young black woman and personally lashing her. Did he want to fight for a government that had been elected, in part at least, by these fanatics? What would prevent them from smearing him all over again if he lost a battle or even a skirmish? The thought of their righteous arrogance filled him with loathing.

Finally might have come that now distant but still terrible memory of the way Nat Turner and his army of maddened black men had slaughtered men, women, and children only a few miles from Fortress Monroe. Would that happen again if his northern army routed the South's soldiers? Would there be times—even for a few hours—when slaves ran wild that way?

No, No, No. That was the word that whispered in Robert E. Lee's soul. He could never undertake such a task. He could not dismiss his anger at the way the abolitionists had reviled southern white men for so long. In sad, careful phrases, Colonel Lee thanked Francis Preston Blair and President Lincoln for this remarkable offer of command. But he could not accept it. He “could not take part in an invasion of the southern states.”

Blair refused to let him leave. They talked for another hour, with Blair trying to convince Lee of how much he could achieve as the army's commander. The politician portrayed himself as a sympathetic fellow Southerner. But he could not change Lee's mind. History, coinciding with so many personal memories, was simply too strong.

Lee finally escaped by promising to discuss the offer with General Scott. In his office, it did not take more than a glance for Lee to see that Scott was aware of what Blair had offered, and was hoping—even desperately hoping—that Lee had accepted. There was no need for small talk. Lee immediately told him what had been said, and his answer. “Lee,” the general said. “You have made the greatest mistake of your life. But I feared it would be so.”

Scott also could not let him go. He revealed his secret hope. An overwhelming federal force, with Lee as its leader, would intimidate the South into talking peace, without any need for a bloody offensive. Sadly, painfully, Lee demurred. He was sure that an invasion of Virginia would be necessary—and it was something he could not and would not lead.

Scott sighed and asked Lee if he intended to resign. For a moment Lee was mute. This was the decision that he had tried not to think about for weeks. It would mean the repudiation of thirty-four years of his life. He had hoped to keep his commission until Virginia voted to secede. But Scott reminded him that an officer could not remain on active duty after he turned down an assignment. “You should resign at once,” Scott said. “Your present attitude is equivocal.”
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Those words were a sad farewell from someone Lee admired more than any other man in his life, even his father. For a full minute the two men stood there, hands clasped, too moved to say a word. Then Lee turned and strode out of Scott's office, and out of the U.S. War Department, forever.

That night back in Arlington, Lee learned that Virginia militia, led by ex-Governor Henry Wise, had seized the arsenal at Harpers Ferry. The Virginia Convention had been in secret session since April 16. Three days later, on April 19, the historic date on which gunfire at Lexington had begun the American Revolution, newspapers reported that the convention had voted for secession.

For another two days, Lee could not bring himself to resign. One of Arlington's slaves later recalled watching him walk up and down the mansion's porch, trying to make up his mind. “He didn't cahr [care] to go,” the black man said. Lee's daughter Agnes said that Arlington “felt as if there was a death in it.” They were watching a man whose heart was with the South while his head remained loyal to the North. There were so many ties forbidding that letter of resignation: Arlington itself, with its memorabilia of Washington and Mary Custis Lee's link to Mount Vernon; his father's legacy as the general who smashed the Whiskey Rebellion; his West Point oath committing him to Duty, Honor, Country.

Finally, Lee wrote a one-line letter of resignation and showed it to his wife. “Mary,” he said. “Your husband is no longer an officer in the U.S. Army.” The
letter went to Simon Cameron, the Secretary of War. With it Lee attached a note to General Scott. He begged his mentor and friend to understand his agonized struggle to decide whether “to separate myself from a service to which I have devoted all the best years of my life.”
¹¹

Forty percent of the West Point graduates from Virginia did not agree with Lee. They remained loyal to the Union. So did many members of the Lee family. Lee knew that his oldest son, Custis, disagreed with him. In one of the many letters he wrote to relatives, Lee asked his wife to tell Custis that he was free to make up his own mind. “If I have done wrong, let him do better.” Mary Custis voiced strong unionist sentiments almost to the day Lee resigned. Their son Rooney followed his father's lead, but he made no secret of his opinion that the southern people had “lost their senses.”
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Ultimately, there seems to be little doubt that the primary disease of the northern public mind—abolitionism—and the primary disease of the southern public mind—fear of a race war—made Robert E. Lee a reluctant secessionist.

CHAPTER 23

The End of Illusions

Lee's resignation was a shock to many people. His cousin, Orton Williams, who was on General Scott's staff, reported that the whole army was “in a stir over it.” Simon Cameron, the Secretary of War, wrote in a memorandum much later that Lee should have been arrested before he left General Scott's office. President Lincoln felt embarrassed. He knew the story of his offer to Lee would become public knowledge.

Three days later, former Colonel Lee departed by train for Richmond with Judge John Robertson, an advisor to Virginia's governor, John Letcher. Lee had met several of Robertson's associates in front of Christ Church in Alexandria, when he attended services there on the day after he resigned. Lee's daughter Agnes, watching the men converse, had no doubts about their topic. Her father's face showed “a mortal struggle, much more terrible than any known to the din of battle.” The men were telling Lee that Governor Letcher had invited him to Richmond to discuss Virginia's military needs and plans. Their conversation closed with Lee agreeing to meet Robertson in Alexandria for the trip.
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Agnes was not the only spectator of this conversation in front of Christ Church. Virtually the entire congregation watched from a discreet distance. The local paper had just published an editorial, urging the governor to consider Colonel Lee for a high post. “There is no man who would command more of the confidence of the people of Virginia than this distinguished officer,” the editor wrote. An acquaintance who saw Lee on the train said he was “the noblest looking man I had ever gazed upon—handsome beyond all men I had ever seen.” Unquestionably, Lee had the look of a leader. Just short of six feet tall, at fifty-four he still emanated physical vitality. His dark hair had only a few streaks of grey; his trim mustache was entirely black. At two stations on the trip to Richmond, Lee was forced to go to the rear platform of the train to acknowledge crowds of people calling his name and cheering when he appeared. Obviously many Virginians had been hoping even relying—on his help as the crisis with the North grew more ominous.
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At Richmond, Lee went directly to the capitol, where Governor Letcher awaited him. A baldheaded, bottle-nosed lawyer, Letcher had been a cautious unionist until Lincoln called for troops after Fort Sumter's bombardment. The governor probably told Lee that the vice president of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens of Georgia, had just arrived in Richmond to negotiate an alliance with Virginia. Letcher was a busy man and did not waste words. Would General Lee accept an appointment as “commander of the military and naval forces of Virginia, with the rank of major general?” he asked. The governor added that his advisory council had already recommended Lee for the post.

When Lee said yes, Governor Letcher sent his acceptance to the Virginia convention, which was still in session. The delegates approved the appointment unanimously. Former Colonel Robert E. Lee was now a major general in the army of a seceded state.
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Meanwhile, the first blood in the war had been spilled in an unlikely place: Baltimore. The Sixth Massachusetts Regiment arrived there on April 19. It was one of the three regiments that Bay State Governor John Andrew had
rushed to the capital to help fight the war he so eagerly welcomed. There was no direct rail service to Washington, DC; Baltimore had banned soot-spewing steam engines from its streets. There were five stations at which trains arrived from the west and north. The Bay State soldiers were on a Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad train, which arrived at the President Street station. Their cars were to be towed by horses through the city to the Camden Street station, where a Baltimore & Ohio engine would haul them to Washington.

The soldiers arrived fearing the worst. Baltimore was known as “Mob City,” with a tradition of civic unrest that went back to the War of 1812. Worsening matters was Maryland's hostility to the Republican Party. Lincoln had received only 3.6 percent of the vote in Baltimore and 2.6 percent in the state. On the previous day, over five hundred Pennsylvania militia had arrived at the Bolton Street Station and they were immediately confronted by an angry mob. They endured volleys of bottles, stones, and epithets as they marched through the city to the Mount Clare Station to embark on another line to Washington, DC.

Local police made little or no attempt to control the mob; they frequently laughed at the volunteers' discomfiture. The Keystone State's soldiers headed for Washington with several of their number painfully wounded by flying stones.

When the Massachusetts soldiers arrived at the President Street station, the pro-secessionist mob was far more organized. They had stockpiled rocks and bricks along the line of the march. Some people carried pistols. The mere mention of the word Massachusetts further inflamed everyone. These were the abolitionist Yankees who had started this war.