Robert E. Lee: 1865-1870

By Alan Berenson, CCWRT

Presentation to CCWRT on 19 March 2009, Summarized by Dan Bauer, Photos by Shane Gamble.

©Cincinnati CWRT, 2009

Alan Berenson stepped up to our podium and delivered an account of the life of Robert E. Lee starting from the war's end and ending with Lee's death in 1870. The presentation included a slide show of approximately 30 images.

Immediately following the war, a weary Lee returned to a rented house in Richmond and, much to his dismay, was greeted by a cheering crowd. Among the hundreds of callers who stopped by to visit during his two month stay in Richmond was Matthew Brady who on April 16th, 1865 took his famous photos of Lee along with Lee's son, Custis. Another visitor was Tom Cook, a reporter from the N.Y. Herald who conducted perhaps the only postwar interview of Lee. Mr. Berenson's talk included accounts of a few of Lee's other visitors. It was during Lee's stay in Richmond that he applied for a pardon in the hopes of regaining citizenship. Although Lee was indicted of treason by a Federal judge, the charge was never acted upon.

Lee had a desire to escape city life and take up farming. In July of 1865 he accepted an offer from a rich widow to live in a farmhouse 50 miles west of Richmond. A month after he made this move, he received an offer to serve as the president of the financially strapped Washington College in Lexington, Virginia. Although the salary would be only $1,500 a year and included use of the president's house, Lee accepted. Lee, his wife Mary, and their three unmarried daughters, Mary, Agnes, and Mildred moved into their new home in Lexington. Lee's other three children were sons, Custis, who had become a professor at VMI, Rooney and Bobby who had taken possession of farms each had inherited from their grandfather, George Washington Custis.

From October 2, 1865 until his death five years later, Lee transformed Washington College from a small, undistinguished school with an enrollment of only 15 students to one with a modern curriculum and an enrollment of 400 students. In addition to being president, Lee was also dean of students, advisor to them and the faculty and chief fund raiser. As the school's finances prospered, Lee's salary was doubled to $3,000 in 1868. A new president's home was built for Lee and completed in 1869. Lee kept a close eye on each student's progress and had the faculty send him weekly reports on them. He also imposed a simple concept of honor - "We have but one rule, and it is that every student is a gentleman."

Included in Lee's daily routine was a 7:45 AM service in the college chapel which was newly constructed at Lee's urging in 1868. Attendance by the students was strongly recommended, but not required. Lee would then be at his office from 8:00 AM to 2:00 PM when he would walk home, have the main meal of the day, a short nap and then ride on Traveler to various sites around Lexington.

Mr. Berenson gave an account of Lee's position on secession and states rights which was followed by an examination of whether Lee was a racist. Judging by today's standards, Lee would be considered a racist. In the winter of 1866, Lee was asked to testify before the Joint Congressional Committee on Reconstruction in Washington. Mr. Berenson read an extended excerpt of an exchange between Lee and Senator Howard of Michigan. In his two hours of testimony, Lee expressed support for President Andrew Johnson's plans for quick restoration of the former Confederate states. Lee forthrightly opposed allowing blacks to vote. Said Lee, "My own opinion is that, at this time, they [black Southerners] cannot vote intelligently, and that giving them the [vote] would lead to a great deal of demagoguism, and lead to embarrassments in various ways." In 1868, Lee signed onto a letter along with several other former prominent southern leaders drafted by Alexander Stuart attesting to the south's acceptance of the consequences of its military defeat, that secession and slavery were dead, that the south valued its freed negroes, but they were considered less than fully qualified to vote. The letter was intended to be a response to the radical Republicans and an endorsement for the Democratic Party's presidential candidate Horatio Seymour over Lee's old foe Republican Ulysses S. Grant.

With the signs of physical decline readily apparent, Lee, upon the advice of his physicians, embarked on his longest vacation in March of 1870. Traveling with his daughter Agnes, Lee made his first visit to the grave of his second daughter, Anne. Anne had died in 1862 and was buried in Warrenton, NC. Lee and Agnes went on to visit Augusta, Savannah, Jacksonville, Norfolk, and the Shirley Plantation, his mother's old home. The tour generated unprecedented throngs wherever he stopped.

He came home even more tired than before he left, and despite treatment, rest, and visits to the springs, his condition did not improve materially. On the evening of September 28, 1870, Lee had been going about his work routinely when he went in to dine with his family. He sat down to the table and attempted to say grace, as was his habit, but this time words failed him. Lee had suffered an apparent stroke that left him without the ability to speak. Over the next few days Lee seemed to drift in and out of consciousness and paralysis. On October 12, 1870, Robert E. Lee died from the effects of pneumonia, a complication following the stroke.

On October 15th, a long funeral cortege was formed at the president's house and paraded through Lexington and back to the chapel. Although the chapel was overflowing, the service was short and simple and without eulogy. His coffin was placed in a crypt beneath the chapel where his body remains today. To honor Lee, the college was renamed Washington and Lee College.

Lee's application for citizenship, which had been made in 1865, had been misfiled by Secretary of State Seward. In 1975, a resolution to posthumously restore Lee's full rights of citizenship was passed in Congress and signed by President Ford.

Larry Hanneken, Northern Kentucky CWRT, attended the meeting and graciously brought several artifacts of interest to the group, including a lock of Lee's hair.