Albert Mohler:
This is Thinking in Public, a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about frontline theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them. I’m Albert Mohler, your host and President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Dr. Allen C. Guelzo is the Director of the James Madison Program Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship, and he serves as a Senior Research Scholar in the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University.
Professor Guelzo is a distinguished American historian. One of his most recent books, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion, enjoyed eight weeks as a New York Times bestseller. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, and since that time, has authored numerous award-winning publications. He’s written for outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the journal, First Things. He was also nominated for a Grammy Award for the production of the Lincoln Douglas Debates for BBC Audio. Professor Guelzo’s scholarship has been primarily focused on the American Civil War, and his most recent book, Robert E. Lee: A Life, is the topic of our conversation today.
Professor Guelzo, welcome to Thinking in Public.
Allen Guelzo:
Well, it’s very good to be here with you again, Dr. Mohler.
Albert Mohler:
Well, it is always a privilege to have this kind of conversation. And once again, you have written a book that compels not only public attention, but our attention. And I’ve been looking forward to this conversation for some time. Tell me how this book came to be.
Allen Guelzo:
In 2013, I published a book about the Battle of Gettysburg, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion. And when that book was released, and I was casting around, what would be an interesting subject to take on next? And Robert E. Lee seemed, coming after a book on the Battle of Gettysburg, to be a logical nominee. And that had a particular attraction for me because any biography of Lee is not going to be, shall we say, conventional.
The question that was uppermost in my mind was, how do you write the biography of Robert E. Lee? How do you write the biography of the man who committed treason? And I don’t use the word lightly. It’s easy to write the biographies of some heroic people because what they do is, in the main, admirable, and you can recommend them to your readers. But Robert E. Lee, this is different. This is much more difficult. How do you write the biography of someone who it really is difficult to recommend, whose career is modeled with difficulties and problems, who is a complicated person, but not a complex person? And above all, someone who really commits a crime by raising his hand against his flag, against his constitution, his oath, against the country as a whole. How do you understand someone like that?
Well, I looked at these kinds of questions and thought, now here’s a challenge of serious dimensions. This should be interesting. A little bit like Mallory commenting about Mount Everest, why did you want to climb Mount Everest? Because it was there. Well, in a sense, Robert E. Lee presented something of the same challenge, presented something of the same challenge to me. And with that in view, I wanted to undertake this biography.
Now as it turned out, it actually became more of a challenge as time went on, because we went from 2013 and 2014, when I was originally designing the research project, through the 2017 Charlottesville riot. And then on from there, into the various kinds of confrontations, resulted in statue removals, statue topplings, and so on like that. And talking about Robert E. Lee actually became more difficult as time went on.
And finally, when the book was released in September of this year, there had actually been something of a question in my mind, which I put to my editor. And I said, “Is this really a good time for a biography of Robert E. Lee? Should this perhaps go into the freezer for a while?” And his response was encouraging. He said, “No, no, no. This is a very humane biography.” And he felt that it would do well. And he had talked to a number of people, they agreed, this is what we should do going forward. So, we did, and the book is there. And I hope, at least to some measure, it speaks for itself as a work of biography, and especially a work about difficult biography.
Albert Mohler:
Professor, I’d like to press on a couple of issues here. And I understand entirely the volatility of the biography of Robert E. Lee. Frankly, at almost any time in American history, except for that period in which, to be honest, in the early and mid-20th century in the United States, you had Lee on US postage stamps and some other very interesting developments. But no doubt, a very, very difficult biographical task.
But even before we get into Lee’s story, and I really look forward to that, you begin, as in this conversation, you asked a question, “How do you write the biography of someone who commits treason?” Since you began there, both in the book and in this conversation, I have to press that issue just a little bit out of curiosity and a sense of moral weight. Would you define treason?
Allen Guelzo:
Well, the Constitution does that task for me, at least in legal and constitutional terms. The Constitution says that treason is giving aid or comfort to the enemies of the United States and making war on the United States. And on both of those counts, it’s very difficult for me not to see Robert E. Lee as guilty in terms of what the Constitution describes. That means more than just throwing a heavyweight word around. My father was a career army officer, he took the oath. My son is an officer in the US Army, he took the oath.
I took the oath myself, not in the military, but when I joined the National Council for the Humanities. And so, I take that seriously. And when I look at how the Constitution defines treason, it’s very difficult for me to see the conduct of Robert E. Lee, something which does not, in fact, conform exactly to those two major points that the Constitution illuminates.
Albert Mohler:
Yes. The problem in American constitutional law and criminal procedure has been that treason is extremely difficult to prosecute. For one reason, because ‘enemies’ has been defined as ‘foreign powers’. And when it came to the Civil War, it was Lincoln himself who insisted that the South was not a foreign power, but a rebellious part of the United States. And I think you mention this actually in your book, going back to Aaron Burr, long before the Civil War, treason’s a very difficult crime to prosecute in the United States of America.
Allen Guelzo:
Oh, that’s true. And I think, with some deliberation on the part of the Constitutional Convention, because, look, most of the members of the Constitutional Convention had themselves lived with, as they said then, a halter around their necks. They themselves could, if the Revolution had turned out in a different direction, have found themselves guilty of treason. And in British jurisprudence, definitions of treason are much wider.
They include such things as misprision of treason, they include constructive treason. I won’t go into the legal weeds on those points, but it’s a much larger definition of treason. So, it’s not really too much of a surprise that the designers of the Constitution decided they wanted a very narrow definition of treason, and so it is. And that has made it difficult for treason to be proved in courts of law. Aaron Burr, of course, is one example. Although there’s lots of detail and technicalities that enter into what Burr did, what he was thinking of doing, what he was planning to do.
And of course, you have to add into that, the animus of John Marshall for Thomas Jefferson. So, there’s a story just in its own right. But it is true that we have, over the decades, found it very difficult to pin the definition of treason in a very secure way. This is, for instance, why John Brown—when John Brown was captured after his famous raid on Harpers Ferry, he was tried and found guilty of treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia.
And the reason for that was because there was an anxiety on the part of the Buchanan administration that they might not be able to convict Brown under federal jurisdiction. So, they, in effect, turned him over to the Commonwealth of Virginia for Virginia authorities, because the state definition or the state Constitution gave them a good deal more on the way of latitude.
Today, when we prosecute people, we tend not to prosecute people for treason per se. Most of the cases that we would tend to identify as cases concerning treason, have usually been prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act.
And that, of course, is defining what is going on, in cases, for instance, like the Rosenberg’s. As a matter of espionage and under the terms of the 1917 statute, there’s a good deal more room for the prosecution to move and you’re also not limited by that definition, that enemies would necessarily mean a foreign power.
Albert Mohler:
Right. And just a couple of interesting points here. You went to the American founders and the revolutionaries, and that’s where I was going to go to say that, under a different set of historical circumstances, someone would say it would be just as difficult to write a biography of George Washington since he did commit treason and very clearly knew he was committing treason against the king. And the second point I want to make is, is that my best understanding of the treason charges that would have been brought against the founders was that treason was not invoked until the Declaration of Independence and the taking up of alarms. Because refusing to pay taxes was not treason, denying the power of Parliament was not treason, but denying the sovereignty of King George III, that was treason.
Allen Guelzo:
That was treason. And there were many artful ways of defining the defiance of royal sovereignty as treason, short even of a Declaration of Independence. What is interesting in Lee’s case is that he is actually indicted for treason in May of 1865 by federal court operating in Norfolk, Virginia, but he’s never actually brought to trial. And the reason for that is that there are some practical impediments to actually trying Lee for treason, not the least of which was the threat made by Ulysses Simpson Grant.
Grant, of course, had received the surrender of Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House, and part of that arrangement was Grant’s paroling of all of Lee’s army, including Lee himself. When Lee found out about the treason indictment, he wrote to Grant and said, “Oh, I thought there was a parole that was operating here.” Grant took this to President Johnson. And when Johnson insisted on pressing the indictment, Grant’s response was, “If you override the parole that was granted to Lee and to his men, I will resign as General in Chief of the army.” Johnson couldn’t afford that politically, so Johnson begins to back off.
And there are a few other extenuating circumstances as well. But the bottom line is Lee never comes to trial and Johnson himself grants a sweeping amnesty on Christmas Day 1868, as he’s heading out the door as President. That pretty well lifts the threat of a treason indictment hanging over Lee’s head.
Albert Mohler:
Well, you began there and you go back to the issue, of course, of treason and potential consequences for General Lee after the war as you conclude your book. But I want to go back now and let’s pick up two giant questions. One is the narrative of Robert E. Lee, which is a fascinating story unto itself, even had the Civil War never happened. But the other is the historical context. And I guess I want to ask you to begin there. This remarkable historical context in which you have the Lee family of Virginia and a family of just tremendous consequence that would be a part of American history, had Robert E. Lee never existed.
Allen Guelzo:
Well, the Lee’s, of course, were in, so to speak, at the creation, at the very beginnings of the Virginia colony. And for three or four generations, they are constantly increasing in wealth and their political influence, largely because Thomas Lee, we’re talking now the third generation of Lee’s in Virginia, establishes an alliance with the Fairfax family. And the Fairfaxes were the ones who own the great Fairfax Proprietary, which included all of the Northern Neck of Virginia, and extended even all the way to the Shenandoah Valley.
The Lee’s have acquired quite a position of influence and they use that in the time of the Revolution. There were four Lee brothers who were major figures in the Revolution. Richard Henry Lee and Francis Lightfoot Lee were both members of the Continental Congress. And Richard Henry Lee, of course, is the one who puts onto the table the motion for independence in May of 1776, which, of course, was what’s going to result in the independence vote, and then Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence.
But that, in a sense, marks the high point, the apex of the Lee family’s influence in the revolutionary generation. What we need to track in terms of Robert E. Lee is what comes next, and that is Lee’s father, Light-Horse Harry Lee. Harry Lee was a member of one of the cadet branches of the Lee family, but he does extremely well during the Revolution as a Commander of Cavalry. And he becomes one of these young men whom George Washington virtually adopts as a member of his family.
And with that, in view, Light-Horse Harry Lee becomes a famous and celebrated officer involved in the Revolution. But after the revolution, the talents that he had as a soldier tended to stop right there, and he tried to create a fortune for himself in real estate speculation. Almost all of his speculations, almost all of his business enterprises collapsed in failure. So much so, that when Robert Lee is really only six years old, Light-Horse Harry Lee, fleeing his creditors, fleeing political opposition, takes off for the West Indies, and young Robert never sees him again. And I think that leaves quite an aching hole in the young life of Robert Edward Lee. It creates a vacuum in his life that, in some respects, he never entirely fills.
Albert Mohler:
And it’s a moral gap. It’s not just the physical absence of a father, but of a father who had been a man of greatness, of a family of greatness, a man who had been the Governor of Virginia, which to Lee, it has to be for the entirety of his life, such a massively important position of statesmanship. But then to end in moral dissipation and in financial disrepute, Robert E. Lee forges an understanding of personal character for himself and for those who would surround him, largely as the way of trying to overcome the lack of character he saw in his own father.
Allen Guelzo:
Well, I think that the failures of Light-Horse Harry Lee cast quite a serious shadow over the Lee family reputation. And Robert, I think, in some respects more than any of his siblings, he had two older brothers, he had three sisters. But Robert, more than any of his siblings, seems to have taken it upon himself to redeem the reputation of the Lee family. And that generates in Robert a really strong streak of perfectionism, as though a kind of perfective redemption was his responsibility in life.
I mean, as an adolescent, as a young man he grows up in Alexandria, really as his mother’s son. He does all the work managing the house, he manages the money, he takes care of the horses, he drives the carriage with his mother in it. He is so vital to the operation of that household that when he announces that he’s going to go to West Point, his mother’s response is to say, “How can I do without Robert? Robert is both daughter and son to me.”
But to West Point he goes. And once again, the perfectionism stands out as a characteristic of him. He graduates from West Point Class of 1829 with not a single demerit attached to his name. And that still stands in West Point lore as one of the more remarkable student careers that the United States Military Academy has ever seen from its cadets.
Albert Mohler:
Right. You do a very good job of setting out something that I think the average American just doesn’t think about and probably just never knew about. And that is the fact that West Point was more of a finishing school for engineers than it was a school of sophisticated military strategy. And Robert E. Lee really didn’t emerge from West Point as any expert on the military. He emerged as an engineer.
Allen Guelzo:
And this, in large, measure was what West Point prided itself upon. Because the most important shaper of the West Point legacy, it’s CommonDoc, it’s Superintendent, Sylvanus Thayer, really modeled West Point after the École Polytechnique in Paris. This was the French school for training engineers. And part of this is also generated by the fact that Americans do not expect that they are going to need a military that’s deeply acquainted with strategy and tactics. Because, after all, a republic is not supposed to be a political entity that goes looking for conquest. Republics are supposed to be dedicated, unlike monarchies, to peace. So, what you want in a military is, quite frankly, not much more than a constabulary. And that, in large measure’s, what the United States military is to grow Civil War.
And you want people who can build fortifications, who will act on the defensive. And what West Point is very good at doing is treating people who build fortifications—engineers. Of course, they also build roads, they build canals, they build highways, they build wards. But above all, what they are, are engineers. And those who graduated the top of the class in West Point are the ones who are tagged for commissioning into the engineers. Robert E. Lee graduates second in his class. He’s only a few strokes behind the person who finished first, and who remembers who finished first in Lee’s class, we all think about Lee. He gets the commission into the Corps of Engineers. And that is where he spends almost all of his military career thereafter in the US Army.
Albert Mohler:
And he really saw himself as an engineer and, in a way, that’s a parable of his life. And at least some of his engineering work remains standing in the United States.
Allen Guelzo:
There are some, yes. There are some … well, shall we call them monuments to Robert E. Lee’s engineering skill. His first assignment out of West Point was for the construction of what became Fort Pulaski in Georgia. He was also commissioned to begin the construction of Fort Carroll in Baltimore Harbor—construction which, by the way, was never finished. Ford Carroll is still sitting there in Baltimore Harbor in pretty much the same condition that it was left when Lee was reassigned as Superintendent of West Point.
He also undertook a multi-year project, reconstructing the riverfront of St. Louis in order to keep St. Louis from winding up as another inland town in Missouri because of the vagaries of the Mississippi River. These are all very complicated projects. They fall under the category of what we call ‘coastal engineering’. And coastal engineering is one of the most demanding aspects of civil engineering, simply because there are so many factors to take into account. So, you might say that St. Louis today is the city that it is because of Robert E. Lee, at least partly. And there are still physical monuments that Lee had a hand in constructing in Georgia and in Maryland.
Albert Mohler:
Now we have two stories that fork out from here. One of them is the story of Lee eventually learning to take military command, and the second would be the seismic shifts in the landscape of the United States headed towards division and war.
Allen Guelzo:
Yeah. For Lee, his career as an engineer looked like it was going to be pretty well dedicated to constructing things, especially constructing fortifications. He not only undertakes the projects that I described before, but he also serves as the post engineer at Fort Hamilton on the Narrows, guarding the harbor of New York City. In fact, Fort Hamilton is still there. It’s the last army installation left in the five boroughs of New York City. Lee was the Staff Engineer there and was responsible for some six years in constructing and reconstructing, building and rebuilding at Fort Hamilton.
But that meant that his promotion, and his prospects for promotion, were extremely slow. And when the Mexican War breaks out in 1846, he can’t help but look upon that as an opportunity. So, he wants very badly to have a chance to be a part of that war. And at first, he is assigned to active duty in Mexico, but it’s as an engineer.
It’s not until he’s reassigned to the staff of Winfield Scott and Scott’s great invasion of Mexico, all the way from the coast of Veracruz up to Mexico City—one of the great military campaigns in the 19th century, I should say—that Lee comes to the attention of Scott as more than just an engineer. And Scott comes to rely on Lee almost as his Chief Reconnaissance Officer. Lee becomes Winfield Scott’s right-hand man. And Winfield Scott said years after the Mexican that all of the plaudits that he won in that campaign really rested on the work of Robert E. Lee. In fact, he would later say that if he was himself on his deathbed and the President of the United States asked him, “Who should be your successor?”, Scott’s reply was, “Let it be Robert E. Lee.”
But that’s a brief moment. When the Mexican War is over, he goes back to engineering tasks, he goes back to becoming the Superintendent at West Point. And by the time he has finished the three years that he spends at West Point as Superintendent, he is frustrated enough that when he’s offered a commission, not in the engineers, but in a newly formed regiment of United States Cavalry, the Second United States Cavalry, he accepts the commission as Lieutenant Colonel. Because otherwise, his prospects for reaching that kind of break at any time before decrepitude …
Albert Mohler:
That was a brevet rank, right?
Allen Guelzo:
Lieutenant Colonel was actually the real thing.
Albert Mohler:
Was it? Okay.
Allen Guelzo:
The other promotions he had had were, coming out of the Mexican War, were honorary. They were brevet promotions. And one thing which makes the transfer from the engineers to Second Cavalry attractive to Lee is the fact that this is a real rank.
Albert Mohler:
The real one, yeah.
Allen Guelzo:
Yeah, at rank commission as Lieutenant Colonel.
Albert Mohler:
In many ways, the great moral turning point in your biography, and you could say, one of the great moral turning points in American history, is when, under the threat of succession, Lee is asked to take command of the Army of Virginia. And you deal, as you must, and you deal very well, with this enormous struggle in the nation, but you don’t present it as an enormous struggle within Robert E. Lee. In other words, Lee turns out to be a Virginian, much more than an American.
Allen Guelzo:
Well, that, at least, was the oppression Lee wanted to convey to people. He said frequently that he could not draw his sword against his native state, which is an interesting comment when you step back from it and look at it because, yes, Robert E. Lee was born in Virginia. He’s born at Stratford Hall on the Northern Neck, on the Potomac River. But he moves with his family very early on to Alexandria. And Alexandria, at that point, is not Virginia. Alexandria is then part of the District of Columbia, that section along the Potomac on the Virginia side, was not retroceded to Virginia until the 1830s when Robert E. Lee had moved on.
So, Lee grows up in the District of Columbia. And from there, of course, he goes to West Point, which, the last time I checked, was New York. And from there he goes to Georgia. He spends some time at Fortress Monroe in Virginia. But then he moves on to St. Louis. He spends a number of years in St. Louis doing the work on the riverfront.
From there, he goes to Fort Hamilton, in New York, again, spent six years there. From there to the Mexican War. Back from there to Maryland for the construction of Fort Carroll, then back to West Point as Superintendent, then to Texas. So, the peculiar truth is that Robert E. Lee really does not spend most of his life in Virginia. He spends it in other places. And he’s spending it on army assignments. So, what really is going on when he is talking about, “Well, I can’t draw my sword against my native state”?
Well, I think there’s really two things. One is the fact that for Lee, Virginia is not so much a geographical location. What Virginia represents are family connections, because Robert E. Lee has an extraordinary network into which he is born, into which he is related. His mother was a Carter, and he’s related through the Carter’s. He’s related to the Fitz-Hughs. When Robert E. Lee was growing up in Alexandria, I’ve often said that growing up there, if he had thrown a brick down the street in Alexandria, he would have had a relative. He has something like 80 first cousins. And that network of family was really what Virginia meant to him. And yet, having said that, that’s only one part of it because there were a number of Lee’s who did not, in fact, side with the Confederacy. So, it’s not automatic.
I think the other consideration that enters into Lee’s calculation here is Arlington. When we think about Arlington, we think the National Cemetery and that big Doric columned house on the hill. Well, that Doric columned house was originally the property of George Washington Parke Custis. Lee marries into the Custis family. He marries old Custis’ only child, Mary Custis. And although Lee himself never owns Arlington, even though it’s sometimes referred to as Robert E. Lee’s own, Robert E. Lee never owns Arlington.
Nevertheless, he feels this obligation to preserve the Arlington property for his children. In other words, he is going to make sure that he doesn’t do the kind of thing that his father did to him.
And protecting Arlington, making a decision about taking command of the Union armies, or siding with Virginia, or siding with the Confederacy, I really think that Arlington has a large part to play in that decision making.
Albert Mohler:
Now, Arlington is largely maintained by slave labor.
Allen Guelzo:
Yes, 190 slaves were owned by the Custis family.
Albert Mohler:
And Lee’s position, you might say, an articulated position, was not ardently proslavery. But he also did not see it as an evil he would oppose.
Allen Guelzo:
This is the conundrum at the heart of Robert E. Lee. Robert E. Lee is not a significant slave owner. He inherits one slave family from his mother’s estate, but beyond that, he doesn’t own slaves in his own name. Now, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t benefit from the slave system, because when he is, in fact, in residence at Arlington, he’s benefiting from the Custis family slaves. So, even though they’re not in his name, he still is participating and benefiting from the system. Yet at the same time, he says very candidly, so that first time he actually makes a comment on the subject, so 1856, in writing to his wife, he says, “Slavery is a moral and political evil in any country.” And you read that and you think, okay, you got it right. What are you going to do about it? And the answer is, nothing.
His conclusion in that letter was, well, we really can’t do anything about slavery, it’s going to have to get worked out in God’s own time. Look how long it took to Christianize Europe. Well, it’s going to take a similar length of time before we’re able to finally let go of slavery and we finally move to a position where we don’t require slavery in our economy, and where we can all agree to reprobate slavery. It’s just going to take a lot of time. And in the meanwhile, slavery is actually, as he puts it, more of a problem for white owners than it is for the black slaves themselves. And, you read that second part, and you think, what? How do you make this happen? How do you look at slavery, recognize that it is a violation of natural right, it’s a violation of natural law, how do you look at that and then look away?
And yet, I think, theologically, we can understand that what we’re looking at is one of the great failures of human nature itself, that we are quite capable. And St. Paul makes this very clear—we are quite capable at looking at what is right, knowing what is right, and then failing to do it, doing the opposite. The stoics saw that. Euripides talks about seeing the good, doing the evil.
What we’re looking at is a failure of human nature in Robert E. Lee, and it is a failure. And I don’t think that you can quite squirm away from it the way some people try to do by saying, “Well, Lee did think that slavery was wrong.” All right, yes. It’s one thing to say that it’s wrong, but you have to do something about that. And it was the doing something that he baulked at.
Albert Mohler:
Well, and then he ended up not only not doing something about it, but eventually becoming Supreme Commander of the regime which sought to perpetuate it.
Allen Guelzo:
What you find with Lee is, in making … I have to say, originally, I thought that in describing what Lee did in April of 1861, was going to be what I originally called ‘The decision’. In other words, it was a single moment. And the harder I pressed on it and the more I read of the varying counts of what went on, the more I realized it was really a series of decisions, a series of small steps that he takes. And each step that he takes brings him deeper and deeper, further and further into the orbit of the Confederacy, till he’s arrived at a point where it’s beyond return.
At first, what he believes he’s going to do is simply resign from the army and be a neutral. And then he’s visited by a delegation from Virginia, “Would you come to Richmond and give us advice about what to do?”, which he agrees to do. When he gets to Richmond, he’s presented with this commission, “You will take charge of Virginia volunteers,” which he agrees to do. And then some six weeks later, he’s commissioned into the Confederate Army, and he agrees to do that. Step by step, he finds himself roped further and further in.
What that underscores to me is that, first of all, will we call this decision by Lee really is a series of decisions. Secondly, what it also suggests is something I hinted at at the beginning. And that is what we’re dealing with, with Robert E. Lee, is someone who is a complicated character, but at the same time, not a complex character, not a deep character, not a thoughtful character, and someone who allows himself to be drawn into an arrangement that he was not entirely comfortable with. That suggests that we’re not really dealing with someone who has plumbed the full depths of his own culpability and his own responsibility for what he has done.
The curious thing is that all through the war, there’s hardly anybody in the South who is not an outright unionist, who was a sharper critic of the Confederate government, and its failures. And you read Lee’s letters and over and over again, and he’s almost hostile to the aspirations of the Confederates. And what you see in place after place, in discussion after discussion, is actually a good deal of uncertainty on the part of the most radical secessionists as to whether they can trust Robert E. Lee.
There’s a passage in the famous diary of Mary Chesnut, where she describes some of her fellow South Carolinians, expressing to her their doubts. “Robert E. Lee is not really one of us. Robert E. Lee is not really on board with the rest of us. We can’t trust Robert E. Lee.” That’s at the beginning of the war. You get to the last months of the war, when Lee actually comes out and advocates the emancipation and enlistment of black soldiers for the Confederacy, the Charleston Mercury goes berserk. They call Lee almost every name they can possibly get away with, that “Lee is nothing but an old Federalist, Lee is selling us out, Lee was never to be trusted.”
There were many people who looked at Robert E. Lee, and, yes, his soldiers looked on him with affection because he led them from victory to victory. But there are many others who were fundamentally very mistrustful about Robert E. Lee and his intentions and his real enthusiasm for the Confederate cause.
Albert Mohler:
As a boy growing up in the South and studying history of the Civil War and reading a great deal, the impression that a young person at that time would have gained is that Robert E. Lee was a military genius, that Ulysses S. Grant was a military fumbler, and that the best military mind in the United States was Robert E. Lee. He ends up being Supreme Commander of the Confederate armies by the end of the war.
I’ve read, I can’t say every, but just about every major history of the Civil War and every major biography or historical treatment of Lee. And the interesting thing is, is that after the Second World War, people are basically not claiming that Lee was a military genius, except in one central point. And obviously, a brilliant understanding on Lee’s part, that the Confederacy could not win a long war of endurance, it could only win a war of audacity. Is that a fair summary?
Allen Guelzo:
Oh, I think it’s entirely the way Lee saw things. Trying to draw an estimate of Robert E. Lee as a military commander has to be hedged around with a number of questions. One is the curious fact that Robert E. Lee never actually commands troops in action, until he takes charge of two companies of US Marines to suppress John Brown’s insurrection at Harpers Ferry in October of 1859.
He’s been in the army for 30 years, but he’s never actually commanded troops under fire. So, his emergence as a great military leader is, shall we say, somewhat delayed.
And even then, the first campaign he undertakes, as a Confederate General, is in the fall of 1861 in West Virginia. Well, what was then Western Virginia, but is now the State of West Virginia. It is not a campaign which reflects with great credibility on Lee—it’s a flop. And it would be very easy to come away from that and conclude that Robert E. Lee’s reputation was greatly exaggerated, or at least that was how some people felt.
Then, of course, he takes command on the peninsula after the wounding of Joseph Johnston at Fair Oaks. And at that moment, suddenly, a very different Robert E. Lee begins to take shape in people’s minds. This is the Lee who drives away the Union Army attempting to besiege Richmond. This is the Robert E. Lee whose army leap frogs up to see her mountain, to second bull run, achieves tremendous victories, attempts to launch an invasion of the North, which is cut short at Antietam because of the famous last orders. But then who attempts it once again in the summer of 1863 after winning two stunning victories at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville.
How then do you weigh Robert E. Lee as a thinker? I think you break it out three ways, because this is, and generally speaking, the way that you evaluate great military leaders. What kind of a strategist was he? In other words, what’s his big picture?
What kind of a tactician was he? In other words, how did he conduct affairs right on the battlefield itself? And third, what kind of an operational year was he in terms of keeping his army supplied, being able to guarantee that it can move expeditiously from one place to another?
Generally speaking, Robert E. Lee shines best as a strategist. He really did see what you were referring to, and that is the Confederacy didn’t have the wherewithal to go a long term, 15 round bout with the North. The North was simply going to outlast. Lee saw that. Lee understood that the Confederacy that was going to be successful, was going to have to win a quick sudden knockout, and do it on Northern soil. And that’s what he aims to do in 1862. That is what he aims to do at Gettysburg. That’s what lies behind that. Because he understood the Confederacy can’t go the distance.
Tactically, it’s a different story, because Lee is not comfortable as a tactician. He likes to get his army to the battlefield and then let his principal lieutenants take charge of things. And so, long as he has really talented principal lieutenants, like Stonewall Jackson and James Longstreet, that works. Once Jackson has gone in 1863, once Longstreet is put out of action in 1864, Lee increasingly has to take more and more immediate tactical control. And it’s very clear he doesn’t like it. It’s not something he enjoys.
Logistically, Lee was so shy of tangling with politicians that in many respects, he declines to be aggressive in demanding the resources that his army needed from the Confederate government. So, if we have to weight Lee’s strengths as a military commander, strategy, I think certainly comes out on top; tactician, somewhat behind that; logistician, a little further still behind that. It’s principally as a strategist that I think Lee’s greatest strength shines.
Albert Mohler:
Just one quick question, because this is not the most important issue. But on the logistics, how much of that was Lee’s fault? And how much was that the fault of, a) a Confederacy that did not have the transportation or the industry of the North; or the failure of the Confederate government? Lee’s defenders would say those were the larger issues.
Allen Guelzo:
Well, there is a sense in which the infrastructure of the Confederacy was ill-equipped to handle the kind of responsibilities that the war thrust upon it. And yet you do see that, logistically speaking, the Confederacy probably had more resources than now it appears. For one thing, when you look at, let’s call it ordinance, in other words, supplies of ammunition for both artillery and infantry and weaponry for cavalry, the army of Northern Virginia never went shy. And that’s largely because the Chief of Confederate Ordinance, Josiah Gorgas, was very talented at making sure that the Confederacy kept its armies supplied with the basic wherewithal of armies, and that is weapons and ammunition. On the other hand, the Confederate departments for the Commissary and for Quartermasters were very, very poorly staffed and very, very poorly managed.
What role did Lee play in that? Lee could have demanded more. Lee could have gone and pounded on desks. Lee could have demanded that certain officers be fired. Lee could have gone to the Confederate Congress, leap frogging over the head of Jefferson Davis as President, and made demands there. And because he was General Lee, would anyone on the Confederate Congress have argued with him and told him he was out of place? I don’t think so. But Lee had developed, over the course of his career, real aversion to challenging the politicians. He had learned from what he had seen happen to other senior officers, that when you tangle with the politicians, they’d have six ways to Sunday—that’s as Chuck Schumer once said—six ways to Sunday of getting back in you. And that lesson made Lee pull the kinds of punches that probably would have been necessary to bring the other aspects of Confederate supply up to the level that Josiah Gorgas achieved as Chief of Ordinance.
Albert Mohler:
There are three other issues I really want to ask you about, and so I have to move quickly at these. But the surrender and the aftermath, what do we learn about Robert E. Lee in the surrender at the courthouse and then the aftermath?
Allen Guelzo:
Robert E. Lee goes to Appomattox Court House, in some respects, over the protestations of some of his officers. Some of his officers, principally, his Chief of Artillery, Edward Porter Alexander, proposed to Lee that the army of Northern Virginia should simply dissolve, take its weapons, head for the hills, and conduct a guerrilla war in the Appalachians. And the thought of that is enough to send cold chills down anybody’s spine. Because the idea of some 30,000 armed Confederates loose in the Appalachians conducting a kind of insurgent warfare could have prolonged the Civil War by who knows how.
There’s a cognate conflict in Russia in the Caucasus at almost the same time where the Imam Shamil conducts this 30-year long guerrilla war that stymies the Imperial Russian Army. This is where, incidentally, a number of Leo Tolstoy’s short stories have their origin because Tolstoy was a serving officer there. And the same thing could very easily have happened in the United States. Now, some things like this did, in fact, happen during reconstruction. The Ku Klux Klan, for instance, is a kind of insurgency. But imagine that multiplied out by the thousands.
But Lee refuses to listen to that. As far as he is concerned, he is going to go to Appomattox Court House, he’s going to meet with Grant, he’s going to surrender the army intact. And his argument is, look, we have lost this war. We need to recognize that fact. So, he goes to Grant, and to his gratification, Grant offers very generous terms. He offers parole, the entire army, send everybody home, no prisoner of war camps, no humiliating marches through Northern cities like a Roman triumph. It partly is because Lee did not realize that Grant, Grant was at the end of his logistical tether at Appomattox.
Albert Mohler:
Which explains how he was dressed.
Allen Guelzo:
Well, yes. I mean, Grant, in his memoirs, talks about his embarrassment at showing up in the surrender ceremony dressed in the ordinary uniform, mud splattered boots, and everything like that. And you scratch your head, and you think, well, didn’t he had the good sense to put on a dress uniform? Well, he would have, yes, except that his dress uniform was miles and miles and miles to the rear.
He has so far outstripped his supply lines that Grant, years later, would admit, if Lee had balked at the terms, then Grant would have had to have broken off the pursuit of Lee’s army. Because he had no supplies.
Albert Mohler:
He was past his line, so to speak.
Allen Guelzo:
Yeah. And Lee did not know that, but Grant did. And that is one reason why Grant basically offers Lee an offer he can’t refuse, and that is the parole of his army. That, in turn, intersects very nicely with Lee’s concern, that the army be surrendered in good order and that it would not degenerate into some hideous insurrectionary warfare in the mountains and in the forests.
So, the two, actually, Grant and Lee actually serve each other’s purposes at Appomattox. And in that respect, what we have to say is that Robert E. Lee probably did his country … I mean, the entire country, not just the South, Robert E. Lee probably did the United States, as a whole, probably his best deed by the way he surrendered, because he surrendered in such a way as to bring finality to the Civil War.
Albert Mohler:
And it’s not just later reflection, because Lee didn’t offer that much later reflection, unlike Grant. But it’s at the time that Lee speaks openly about the fact that that is his purpose. It is his purpose that this horrifying war not degenerate into guerrilla warfare, but rather that the nation heal.
Allen Guelzo:
Yes, although I have to qualify that to a certain degree. Lee will resist attempts on the part of southerners after the war to glorify the Confederate cause by erecting monuments to the Confederacy. He will discourage people from actively stirring up the embers of enmity. Is this because Robert E. Lee is manifesting an unfathomable generosity of heart? Or is it because Lee recognized in very pragmatic terms, the South is lost and if we continue to show signs of resistance, it will go very hard for us? We can make reconstruction easier if we make all the appropriately cooperative noises.
So, there may be an element of both there, but I would not want to lose sight of the second. Because curiously, although during the war, Robert E. Lee is a very sharp critic of the Confederate government. And before the war, even in the weeks just before he makes his decision, he’s a very sharp critic of secession. He writes to one of his sons and says, quite frankly, “Let’s stop calling secession, secession. Let’s call it what it really is, its revolution.”
But after the war, in a sense, Robert E. Lee joins the Confederacy at last, and he begins to write letters defending the legitimacy of the Confederacy. He will appear before the Joint Congressional Committee on Reconstruction, defending what the decisions that were made at the time of secession. And there’s almost a sense in which he becomes more of a Confederate after the war than he was during the war. Part of that, I think, is his response to the suggestions about the treason indictment. He’s trying to put as much distance as you can between himself and that. But also, it’s the sense that he has not enthusiastically embraced reconstruction and reunion. He has pragmatically embraced it, but not more than that.
Albert Mohler:
I, of course, defer to you as the historian and biographer here. It is interesting to me that the questions of legal jurisdiction still apply in the sense that, when Lee is thinking of the Confederacy, after the fall of the Confederacy, he is something of necessity out to defend the fact that it was the legal order to which he was making deference and the lawful orders that he was obeying. He’s in a very difficult position, just in terms of legal jurisdiction here.
Allen Guelzo:
I don’t know if he’s really in all that difficult a position. Because, although he will plead afterwards that he is a citizen of Virginia and that Virginia had first call on his loyalty and services, it was not clear that that was the case. It was not clear because fundamentally, at least at that point, the Constitution does not give us a clear-cut definition of citizenship. The Constitution talks about citizenship in five places. Some of those places are about citizens of the states, and some of those places are about citizens of the United States.
But it never sorts out the relationship between the two. And it never actually defines that. We don’t actually get that definition in place until the 14th Amendment. So, yes, up to that point, Lee had some color of legality to plead that, well, I was in this situation and Virginia made this call on me and I was obliged to heed that. Yet at the same time, there were many Southerners in 1861, many southerners in 1861, who know very well that their primary loyalty is to the United States and they behave that way.
I think of someone like George Thomas. I think of someone like John Buford. I think of someone like John Gibbon. I mean, these were all prominent Northern officers, born in the South, families in the South, who could very easily made the same argument, but they didn’t. And when I look at Lee making that plea about, well, I had this first obligation to Virginia, I am dubious about how many people really believe that, really lived it out and practiced it, or for how many people that was really an argument of convenience.
Albert Mohler:
Well, I get that. We’re talking about two different things, I think. And by the way, you’re speaking to a Federalist.
Allen Guelzo:
Well, I’m also … You’re also speaking to a Yankee from Yankee land.
Albert Mohler:
I get that, but I am a Southern Federalist.
Allen Guelzo:
Well, I’m a Federalist too, but I’m a Federalist who recognizes that Federalism was about writing a constitution that very sharply limited the power of states and created a national government.
Albert Mohler:
Absolutely. We’re coming from the same political and constitutional page. But the point I’m making it that, when Lee speaks after the war, he is going to speak as an apologist for his rationale.
Allen Guelzo:
He has to. He has to.
Albert Mohler:
That’s the necessity of which I was speaking. I don’t think he was right. I think the Confederacy was a mass exercise in treason and a violation of the constitutional order. Nullification, secession, those are arguments incompatible with the constitutional order and with the ordered liberty of the United States of America.
Allen Guelzo:
And the other thing is that Lee himself understood that on the brink of the war and said very clearly, and said repeatedly, “Secession is revolution. I want to serve under no other flag except the Star-Spangled Banner.”
And then he turns around and makes, as I say, not one decision, but a series of decisions which, in fact, entangle him and involve him with the Confederacy. After the war, he’s going to issue rationalizations. And once again, what are we dealing with? Of course, we’re dealing with human nature. When you’ve made what you could call the great mistake of your life, what’s the instinct? The instinct is to say, “Well, really, it wasn’t, it was this other thing. And I did it because I was motivated a certain way.”
The curious thing is that in the last five years of his life, after Appomattox, when he’s the President of Washington College, he stuns one student at Washington College when he says to him, “The great mistake of my life was taking a military education.” And when you hear Robert E. Lee say something like that, that I’d think forces you to see in the light of that statement, the light of that regret, a great many keys to understanding, not only the decision he makes in 1861, but everything he has to say about it in subsequent years.
Albert Mohler:
I have to turn to another issue, and most biographies of Lee, basically, avoid this issue or write it without any theological understanding. You have that theological understanding. And when you write about Robert E. Lee, at several points in this biography, in terms of his own religious convictions, you put it in the context, not only of what we now know as the Episcopal Church in the United States, but also the fact that there was a division in that American Anglican context between the more evangelical wing, which really did mark Virginia, and much of the influence there in Virginia. But Lee was only awkwardly a part of the Episcopal Church. As you point out, he was not confirmed.
Allen Guelzo:
Well, he was confirmed, but it was late in life.
Albert Mohler:
Not confirmed as an adolescent, yes. Let’s put it that way, yes.
Allen Guelzo:
Right. He does it in conjunction with two of his daughters and he does it after the death of his very pious mother-in-law.
And there’s almost a sense in which this decision to finally be confirmed is bound up again with family connections, the influence of family, the good example that he wants to set as opposed to the dreadful example set by his father. So, even then, there were uncertainties about Robert E. Lee.
And on the subject of religion, Robert E. Lee is not a person who is hugely forthcoming. I think it’s safe to say that Lee was a fairly straightforward, conventional, low church Virginia Episcopalian. Is he more than that? In the years after Lee’s death, when many Southerners were dedicated to creating almost a cult of Robert E. Lee, that Robert E. Lee was the man who could do no wrong, Robert E. Lee was the epitome of a lost cause. Along with that, there was a real effort to sanctify Lee and try to make Lee into the great Christian hero.
And I think that those efforts, first of all, more times than not, tend to be based upon secondary or hearsay observations, what they claim they heard Lee say at various points. But also, they tend to have a certain element of wishful thinking too. Robert E. Lee is simply not hugely forthcoming on the subject, and that in itself tells us a few things. For one thing, he never makes what you could call a profound statement of faith in the historic Jesus Christ. We just don’t have that from Robert E. Lee.
Again, there are some people who claim, “Oh, Lee said this to me. Oh, Lee said that to me.” But as far as something that gives us an incontrovertible basis on which to make a judgment about Lee’s religion, that’s just not there. If anything, what you get from time to time are statements about Lee, about the difficulty of belief, how unsure he is of acceptance by God. I think in some respects, it’s very typical of the experience of the fatherless. Because those who have lost a father very early in life, before the onset of adolescence, historically, over and over again, the examples are there, of people like that who really have a very difficult time grasping the idea of God as their Father.
And I think that is one of the sub themes in Lee’s life. He is willing to give notional consent to low church, evangelical Virginia, Episcopalians. He can’t bring himself to do more. And I think that even delaying confirmation as long as he did, that, in itself, speaks volumes to us about Lee’s own uncertainties concerning his acceptance with God.
Albert Mohler:
Well, again, you’re theologically trained, and you understand what’s at stake there. And I have to look at this not only as an evangelical, but as a Baptist, a conversionist. And so, I look at this and recognize this is the conundrum that we face in so many historical personages who are so huge on the canvas of history. In their own words, it is very difficult to know exactly what their theological convictions were or were not. But I think it’s also very safe to say that Lee clearly had an understanding of the existence of God as a moral truth and of providence as the shaping force of history.
Allen Guelzo:
Yes, I think that’s safe to say. Although, again, remember, what we’re talking about is a definition of God that’s in very general terms.
Albert Mohler:
I spoke of it in very general terms.
Allen Guelzo:
Right. Very general terms. Yes.
Albert Mohler:
Yes. Professor Guelzo, you come to the end and render a verdict, and the verdict is no prosecution. So, just with the minutes fleeting here, how do you write everything you wrote, and I say this, knowing how you’re going to answer in one sense, but this is the verdict of the nation, at least it has been. And now even as Lee is very much under fire and his statues are coming down, that’s being extended to the founders, the very same logic. But you come down and say, no prosecution, that’s the right verdict of history.
Allen Guelzo:
I do that because, I suppose, in one sense, I would not make a very good hangman. In another sense, I’m also acutely conscious that I am a sinner, and I do not wish to have the full burden of those sins judged against me. What I crave from God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is redemption, justification, forgiveness. And if that is what I want, then I think I have an obligation as much as is reasonably possible to extend that to others, even to Robert E. Lee. I think if you could present me with some cases, there may be some cases where I would balk.
But in Lee’s case, there are enough complications, there is enough sorrow, that alongside the will to judge Lee—and I do judge him pretty serious—alongside the will to judge Lee, I feel also a theological obligation to compassion as well. And I think that compassion and will have to walk together.
When we stand before the throne of judgement, God will not say to us, “Oh, that was nothing, that was of no account.” That’s not really compassion. What God will say to us is, “I do not see you. What I see are the merits of My Son who is standing in your place.” That’s the voice that I want to hear, because that’s the voice which will allow me to say, “Abba Father.” If that is how I crave to appear before God when I come to give an account, then I need to exercise some of that myself in making historical reckonings. And that is what I try to do with Lee. I’m hopeful enough. But that is what I’ve tried to do with Robert E. Lee in this book as well.
Albert Mohler:
Professor Guelzo, at this point, I simply have to say I’ve never quite reached this point in conversation with an author. I simply have to say it would be wrong to continue the conversation beyond that very clear confession of Christ and we resign everything to Him, including the burden of history, which is, I say to an historian I so greatly admire, a burden too great for any of us alone to carry.
Allen Guelzo:
Yes, yes.
Albert Mohler:
Professor Guelzo, thank you so much for joining me for Thinking in Public.
Allen Guelzo:
Thank you, Dr. Mohler. It’s been a pleasure to talk to you.
Albert Mohler:
Many thanks to my guest, Allen Guelzo, for thinking with me today. If you enjoyed today’s episode of Thinking in Public, you will find more than 150 of these conversations at albertmohler.com under the tab Thinking in Public. For more information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com. Thank you for joining me for Thinking in Public.
Until next time, keep thinking.