December 4, 2024 • 9 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Allen Guelzo, author of Robert E. Lee: A Life, tells the story of one of the most consequential and controversial generals in American history—and why he might have had the most success at the end of his life at the university that still bears his name. We'd like to thank the folks at the Bill of Rights Institute for allowing us to use this audio—originally part of their 'Scholar Talks' series on YouTube.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. Up next, a
short history of one of the most consequential and controversial
figures in American history, Robert E. Lee. Doctor Alan Gelzo,
author of Robert E. Lee A Life, is here to
tell the story of the Confederates, of the Confederacy's most
(00:32):
powerful general. Let's get into the story. Take it away,
doctor Gelso Robert E.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Lee, just to give you the basic skeleton outline, was
born in eighteen oh seven at Stratford Hall on the
Northern Neck of Virginia, which had been the ancestral home
of many of the Lee family, a family which had
roots in Virginia back into the seventeenth century. He attends
West Point. He is class of eighteen twenty nine graduates
(00:58):
second in his class. When I say second, he missed
graduating first really by a couple of digits. It was
like one of those batting average contests where you have
to take it out to the fourth digit to determine
who the winner is. And is posted to the elite
Corps of Engineers and spends a good deal of the
(01:18):
rest of his professional life in the Army's Corps of
Engineers doing really corp of engineering things He mainly is
devoted to fortification construction, and as a specialty within that
Coastal fortification is something of a specialty within that kind
of engineering, which requires a great deal of imagination. And
(01:40):
it has to be said that Lee was a very
good engineer and a very dedicated engineer. He also was
a very frustrated engineer, because promotion in the army as
a whole and in the corp of engineers was sclerotic,
to say the least. The great advantage of army employment
was that it was guaranteed and secure. The downside was
(02:03):
that it was slow, and Lee experiences this and it's
a source of great frustration. He would like to move up.
When the Mexican War comes, he sees this as an
opportunity and he grabs it. He's sent off on one
engineering assignment, which doesn't look terribly promising, but then he
is seconded to the staff of Winfield Scott. Winfield Scott
(02:24):
is about to mount one of the most adventurous, amphibious
expeditions in American military history, and that is the Joint
Army Navy landing at Vera, Cruz on the eastern coast
of Mexico. Lee is immediately ticketed by Scott as an
up and coming person and becomes a major part of
(02:47):
Scott's staff as a major assistance to Scott in the
capture of Vera Cruz Accompany. Scott's invasion of Mexico passed
the Battle at Sara Gordo up to the Battle around
Mexico City, which eventually end in the surrender of Mexico
City and the end of the Mexican War with the
Treaty of Guadalupe Hitdalgo. All through it, Lee is very
(03:10):
much Winfield Scott's right hand man, and Scott would later
say years later that all of the plaudits he Scott
won in the Mexican War were really due to the
advice that he garnered from Robert E. Lee. But the
war is over, Lee goes back to doing coastal and
fortification with corp of Engineers. Is not terribly exciting, and
(03:32):
in fact it gets if anything, it gets worse, because
in eighteen fifty two he's assigned to become superintendent of
West Point. Now that I know that sounds glamorous on
the surface of it, in eighteen fifty two, it wasn't.
At this point, West Point is still very much a
corp of Engineering school, which means that even though Lee
(03:52):
is the superintendent, he has virtually no discretion about what
to do. He is micromanaged for three years by the
chief Engineer in Washington, DC, and finally, at the end
of it, he is only too happy to grab an
opportunity to transfer out of the corp of Engineers and
accept a commission as lieutenant colonel of the second Cavalry
(04:15):
in Texas. Texas is not what you would call in
those days an ideal posting. It gives you an idea
of some degree of his frustration that he's willing to
accept this. But off to Texas he goes as lieutenant
colonel of the second Cavalry, and there he really does
nothing more than chase commanches and various outlaws around the
(04:39):
countryside to no very particular purpose. He never really fires
a shot and anger himself. It is not until eighteen
sixty one the things begin to warm up. In eighteen
sixty one, he's recalled to Washington by Winfield Scott, ostensibly
to help rewrite the army regulations, but really Scott wants
(04:59):
him in Washington because the country is splitting apart. Seven
southern states have seceded from the Union, there is a
possibility of conflict. Scott wants Lee in Washington because Scott's
feeling is that if anyone should take command of federal
forces in dealing with secession, it should be Robert E. Lee.
(05:19):
The firing on Fort Sumter takes place, and indeed Abraham
Lincoln puts into process an invitation to Lee. It comes
through Old Francis Preston Blair, one of the great political
wire pullers of Washington. Blair sits down with Lee and
it basically says to Lee, President Lincoln would like you
to take command of the armies in the field. And
(05:40):
Lie says no, which is a great surprise. But Lee
explains it this way, I cannot raise my hand against
my native state. Now Virginia at that point had not
yet seceded, but it was hovering on the brink of
doing so. And Lee he says, I can't. I can't
(06:01):
do that. What Lee does, in fact, is not only
refuse that invitation. He then goes home and writes out
a letter of resignation from the army. And he might
have stopped right there, but at that same moment he
receives an invitation from the state authorities, the Virginia State
(06:21):
authorities in Richmond, to come there and help them oversee
the organization of state forces. And he agrees to do that,
so he goes to Richmond. He is commissioned as a
brigadier general of Virginia Forces. When Virginia joins the Confederacy,
he's made a general in the Confederate Army, and from
that point he takes off. He becomes General Lee. He
(06:45):
becomes the man who is the victor. In the Peninsula
Campaign of eighteen sixty two, Victor at Second Bull Run,
escapes near destruction at Antietam, Victor at Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg
near Victor at Gettysburg, fights things out against Ulysses Grant
in eighteen sixty four in the Overlin Campaign, undergoes the
(07:06):
Siege of Richmond and finally surrenders to Ulysses Grant at
Appomatics Courthouse on April ninth, eighteen sixty five. And that
is usually where people think the book end occurs in
Lee's life. Actually it's not, because he's offered, and it's
a very strange offer. He's made the offer by Washington
(07:27):
College in the Upper Shenandoah to become their president. It
was an act of desperation on their part. This was
a small college which had hardly had a pulse. The
surprising thing is that Lee accepts. He becomes president of Washington,
and to everybody's surprise, turns into a remarkably successful college president.
(07:47):
Completely revamps the curriculum he gets starts moving people away
from the traditional Greek and Latin classics curriculum to a
more vocationally oriented curriculum with engineering and journalism business. He
is enormously successful in raising money and in bulking up
the student body, to the point that by the time
(08:09):
of his death in eighteen seventy, he has made Washington
College an educational powerhouse on a par with the University
of Virginia. Those last five years of his life were
really the most successful years of his life, and curiously
he shocked one student, but he said, the great mistake
of my life was taking a military education. In other words,
I should have been doing something like this all of
(08:30):
my life. So Robert E. Lee, then, who had suffered
over the years increasingly from heart trouble heart attacks, finally
succumbs to a stroke and a heart attack and dies
on October twelfth, eighteen seventy and is buried there on
the campus of the college, which then renames itself as
Washington and Lee University.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
And a terrific job on the editing by our own
Monty Montgomery. And a special thanks to the Bill of
Rights Institute for allowing us to use this phenomen audio
which was originally a part of their Scholar Talk series.
And of course a special thanks to doctor Alan Gelzo
for all of his work on the Civil War and
that period. There's simply no one better the short history
(09:14):
of Robert E. Lee here on our American Stories
And we returned to our American stories. Up next, a
short history of one of the most consequential and controversial
figures in American history, Robert E. Lee. Doctor Alan Gelzo,
author of Robert E. Lee A Life, is here to
tell the story of the Confederates, of the Confederacy's most
(00:32):
powerful general. Let's get into the story. Take it away,
doctor Gelso Robert E.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Lee, just to give you the basic skeleton outline, was
born in eighteen oh seven at Stratford Hall on the
Northern Neck of Virginia, which had been the ancestral home
of many of the Lee family, a family which had
roots in Virginia back into the seventeenth century. He attends
West Point. He is class of eighteen twenty nine graduates
(00:58):
second in his class. When I say second, he missed
graduating first really by a couple of digits. It was
like one of those batting average contests where you have
to take it out to the fourth digit to determine
who the winner is. And is posted to the elite
Corps of Engineers and spends a good deal of the
(01:18):
rest of his professional life in the Army's Corps of
Engineers doing really corp of engineering things He mainly is
devoted to fortification construction, and as a specialty within that
Coastal fortification is something of a specialty within that kind
of engineering, which requires a great deal of imagination. And
(01:40):
it has to be said that Lee was a very
good engineer and a very dedicated engineer. He also was
a very frustrated engineer, because promotion in the army as
a whole and in the corp of engineers was sclerotic,
to say the least. The great advantage of army employment
was that it was guaranteed and secure. The downside was
(02:03):
that it was slow, and Lee experiences this and it's
a source of great frustration. He would like to move up.
When the Mexican War comes, he sees this as an
opportunity and he grabs it. He's sent off on one
engineering assignment, which doesn't look terribly promising, but then he
is seconded to the staff of Winfield Scott. Winfield Scott
(02:24):
is about to mount one of the most adventurous, amphibious
expeditions in American military history, and that is the Joint
Army Navy landing at Vera, Cruz on the eastern coast
of Mexico. Lee is immediately ticketed by Scott as an
up and coming person and becomes a major part of
(02:47):
Scott's staff as a major assistance to Scott in the
capture of Vera Cruz Accompany. Scott's invasion of Mexico passed
the Battle at Sara Gordo up to the Battle around
Mexico City, which eventually end in the surrender of Mexico
City and the end of the Mexican War with the
Treaty of Guadalupe Hitdalgo. All through it, Lee is very
(03:10):
much Winfield Scott's right hand man, and Scott would later
say years later that all of the plaudits he Scott
won in the Mexican War were really due to the
advice that he garnered from Robert E. Lee. But the
war is over, Lee goes back to doing coastal and
fortification with corp of Engineers. Is not terribly exciting, and
(03:32):
in fact it gets if anything, it gets worse, because
in eighteen fifty two he's assigned to become superintendent of
West Point. Now that I know that sounds glamorous on
the surface of it, in eighteen fifty two, it wasn't.
At this point, West Point is still very much a
corp of Engineering school, which means that even though Lee
(03:52):
is the superintendent, he has virtually no discretion about what
to do. He is micromanaged for three years by the
chief Engineer in Washington, DC, and finally, at the end
of it, he is only too happy to grab an
opportunity to transfer out of the corp of Engineers and
accept a commission as lieutenant colonel of the second Cavalry
(04:15):
in Texas. Texas is not what you would call in
those days an ideal posting. It gives you an idea
of some degree of his frustration that he's willing to
accept this. But off to Texas he goes as lieutenant
colonel of the second Cavalry, and there he really does
nothing more than chase commanches and various outlaws around the
(04:39):
countryside to no very particular purpose. He never really fires
a shot and anger himself. It is not until eighteen
sixty one the things begin to warm up. In eighteen
sixty one, he's recalled to Washington by Winfield Scott, ostensibly
to help rewrite the army regulations, but really Scott wants
(04:59):
him in Washington because the country is splitting apart. Seven
southern states have seceded from the Union, there is a
possibility of conflict. Scott wants Lee in Washington because Scott's
feeling is that if anyone should take command of federal
forces in dealing with secession, it should be Robert E. Lee.
(05:19):
The firing on Fort Sumter takes place, and indeed Abraham
Lincoln puts into process an invitation to Lee. It comes
through Old Francis Preston Blair, one of the great political
wire pullers of Washington. Blair sits down with Lee and
it basically says to Lee, President Lincoln would like you
to take command of the armies in the field. And
(05:40):
Lie says no, which is a great surprise. But Lee
explains it this way, I cannot raise my hand against
my native state. Now Virginia at that point had not
yet seceded, but it was hovering on the brink of
doing so. And Lee he says, I can't. I can't
(06:01):
do that. What Lee does, in fact, is not only
refuse that invitation. He then goes home and writes out
a letter of resignation from the army. And he might
have stopped right there, but at that same moment he
receives an invitation from the state authorities, the Virginia State
(06:21):
authorities in Richmond, to come there and help them oversee
the organization of state forces. And he agrees to do that,
so he goes to Richmond. He is commissioned as a
brigadier general of Virginia Forces. When Virginia joins the Confederacy,
he's made a general in the Confederate Army, and from
that point he takes off. He becomes General Lee. He
(06:45):
becomes the man who is the victor. In the Peninsula
Campaign of eighteen sixty two, Victor at Second Bull Run,
escapes near destruction at Antietam, Victor at Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg
near Victor at Gettysburg, fights things out against Ulysses Grant
in eighteen sixty four in the Overlin Campaign, undergoes the
(07:06):
Siege of Richmond and finally surrenders to Ulysses Grant at
Appomatics Courthouse on April ninth, eighteen sixty five. And that
is usually where people think the book end occurs in
Lee's life. Actually it's not, because he's offered, and it's
a very strange offer. He's made the offer by Washington
(07:27):
College in the Upper Shenandoah to become their president. It
was an act of desperation on their part. This was
a small college which had hardly had a pulse. The
surprising thing is that Lee accepts. He becomes president of Washington,
and to everybody's surprise, turns into a remarkably successful college president.
(07:47):
Completely revamps the curriculum he gets starts moving people away
from the traditional Greek and Latin classics curriculum to a
more vocationally oriented curriculum with engineering and journalism business. He
is enormously successful in raising money and in bulking up
the student body, to the point that by the time
(08:09):
of his death in eighteen seventy, he has made Washington
College an educational powerhouse on a par with the University
of Virginia. Those last five years of his life were
really the most successful years of his life, and curiously
he shocked one student, but he said, the great mistake
of my life was taking a military education. In other words,
I should have been doing something like this all of
(08:30):
my life. So Robert E. Lee, then, who had suffered
over the years increasingly from heart trouble heart attacks, finally
succumbs to a stroke and a heart attack and dies
on October twelfth, eighteen seventy and is buried there on
the campus of the college, which then renames itself as
Washington and Lee University.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
And a terrific job on the editing by our own
Monty Montgomery. And a special thanks to the Bill of
Rights Institute for allowing us to use this phenomen audio
which was originally a part of their Scholar Talk series.
And of course a special thanks to doctor Alan Gelzo
for all of his work on the Civil War and
that period. There's simply no one better the short history
(09:14):
of Robert E. Lee here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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