Robert E. Lee’s decision to leave the U.S. Army and cast his lot with Virginia has inspired a great deal of examination. The most influential writer to grapple with this topic has been Douglas Southall Freeman, whose four-volume R.E. Lee: A Biography (1934-36) remains by far the most detailed reckoning of Lee’s life. Freeman described Lee’s decision in a chapter titled “The Answer He Was Born To Make,” which argued that anyone hoping to understand Lee need know only that Virginia always remained paramount in his thinking. This idea has made its way into the broader world of people interested in the Civil War, manifesting itself in such disparate places as the film Gods and Generals, which portrays Lee as preeminently a Virginian, and the work of historians who insist the Confederate commander’s strategic vision during the war suffered from a fixation on Virginia.
Lee’s loyalty to the Old Dominion is beyond question. In the critical period between April 19 and April 22, 1861, I believe it was the most important of his loyalties. Letters to Winfield Scott, his sister Anne and his brother Smith written on April 20, the day he resigned from the U.S. Army, emphasized that he could not retain a position that might require him to engage in coercion against his native state. Yet while devotion to Virginia likely explains Lee’s decision to resign and to accept command of the state’s forces two days later, other powerful allegiances must be considered in assessing his life and actions.
Lee undoubtedly possessed a strong loyalty to the United States. Indeed, some might think from his background that Unionism would have pointed the way toward a different “Answer He Was Born To Make.” His idol was George Washington, whose actions as general and president underscored a belief that the national whole transcended state and local interests.
Lee’s father, like Washington, was a Federalist. In 1798 Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee had opposed the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, with their strong support for state power, arguing that the Constitution was “entirely the act of the people” and not the state governments.
R.E. Lee himself had rendered notable service to the republic in Mexico and as an engineer and superintendent of West Point. He also opposed secession during the winter of 1860-61, affirming to his sister Anne a “devotion to the Union” and “feeling of loyalty and duty of an American citizen.” Earlier that year, in a letter to his son Rooney, he insisted that the framers meant for the Union to be perpetual and pronounced it “idle to talk of secession.” He lamented the possibility that Washington’s “noble deeds [would] be destroyed and that his precious advice and virtuous example so soon forgotten by his countrymen.”
Lee also had a strong sense of being part of the slaveholding South—a regional attachment too often overlooked. In letters and comments addressing his decision to resign from the army, he mentioned the South as well as Virginia. His political philosophy stood strikingly at odds with the virulent rhetoric of secessionist fireeaters, yet well before resigning he wrote to his son Custis that the “South, in my opinion, has been aggrieved by the acts of the North….I feel the aggression, and am willing to take every proper step for redress.”
Often portrayed as opposed to slavery, Lee in fact embraced the “peculiar institution” as the best means for ordering relations between the races and resented Northern attacks against the motives and character of slaveholders. “[T]here is no sacrifice I am not ready to make for the preservation of the Union,” he averred in January 1861, “save that of honour.” As a member of the slaveholding aristocracy of Virginia and the South, his sense of honor dictated that he stand with those of his blood, class and section. He hated the idea of disunion but rejected the idea of a country “that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets”—precisely the scenario he imagined in the wake of Abraham Lincoln’s call for 75,000 volunteers after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter.
Those who cling to the idea of Lee as preeminently devoted to his state must come to terms with a fourth important loyalty. Amid the stresses of war, Lee quickly and decisively adopted a national as opposed to a state-centered stance. His most important loyalty during the conflict was to the Confederate nation. From the opening of the conflict until the final scenes at Appomattox, he urged Confederate soldiers, politicians and civilians to set aside state and local prejudices in their struggle to establish a new nation. This stance is especially noteworthy from a man who described himself in an early postwar interview as “a firm and honest believer in the doctrine of State rights.”
Lee articulated his views about the relative importance of state and national concerns in a letter to Andrew G. Magrath, South Carolina’s secretary of state, in late December 1861. Though the war was only eight months old, Lee took the long view, turning his attention to the topic of subordinating state to nation. “The Confederate States have now but one great object in view, the successful issue of war and independence,” he explained to Magrath: “Everything worth their possessing depends on that. Everything should yield to its accomplishment.” During the ensuing years of war, Lee called for national conscription, supported government impressment of goods and enslaved labor, and otherwise betrayed a dominant national loyalty.
The full scale of the approaching war, and the demands it would make on the Confederate people, did not dominate Lee’s thinking when he penned his letter of resignation on April 20, 1861. Virginia, the slaveholding South and the pain of severing ties to a nation his father and other relatives had done a great deal to establish surely preoccupied him. But within a few weeks, his loyalties to Virginia and the slaveholding South began a transmutation into ardent Confederate purpose that marked the most important period of his life.
Originally published in the October 2011 issue of Civil War Times. To subscribe, click here.
