Robert e lee biography childhood memories

Want more? Advanced embedding details, examples, and help! Publication date Topics Lee, Robert E. Robert Edward, Confederate States of America. Lee -- Early life, education, and the engineers -- The Mexican War, Texas, and John Brown -- Obscurity, pessimism, and failure -- Lee ascendant -- The high road to Gettysburg -- The tide recedes -- "A stillness at Appomattox" -- Conciliation, diplomacy, and idolization.

There are no reviews yet. Be the first one to write a review. And yet, he was no other than our chief general, Robert E. Lee, who is not braver than he is good and modest. In the winter ofsome of the cavalry were moved to Charlottesville, in order to get food for their horses, and not having much to do, the officers began to attend dances. General Lee, hearing of this, wrote to his son Robert thus:—.

This is a bad time for such things. I like them all to be at battles, but I can excuse them at balls. This story is often told of him: Inwhen General Lee was on the lines below Richmond, many soldiers came near him and thus brought to them the fire of the foe. The men obeyed, but saw their dear General walk across the yard and pick up some object and place it in a tree over his head.

They found out that the object he had risked his life for was only a little bird which had fallen out of its nest. God had given the stern chief a heart so tender that he could pause amid a rain of shot and shell to care for a tiny fallen birdling. General Lee dearly loved his horses. Traveler lived only two years after the death of his master.

In the summer ofwhen he was fifteen years old, the fine, faithful animal, that had carried the General through the storms of war and the calm of his latter years, died of lock-jaw in Lexington. He was noted for his springy walk, high spirit, and great strength. When a colt, he was called Jeff. The General changed his name to Traveler. He was his most famous war-horse.

In the summer ofGeneral Lee owned a beautiful war-horse called Richmond, given to him by some friends in the city of Richmond. But, to the grief of his master, this pet was short-lived; and what he writes after his loss, sounds almost as if he were looking back to the death of a friend:. He carried me very faithfully, and I shall never have so beautiful an animal again.

General Lee was noted for his want of hatred towards any one. Those people shall be driven back to-day. William Jones says—that one day after the war, as he went up the street, he saw General Lee standing talking to a poor man. He is having quite a dull time. He is here with his daughters, but we do not care to have anything to do with them.

General Lee was more than brave and tender; he was meek, yet with a heart big enough to love every one of his soldiers, and great enough to plan long marches and glorious battles. After the battle of Gettysburg, one of his officers rode up and told him that his men were for the most part killed or wounded. It is I who have lost this fight, and you must help me out as best you can.

Once, when some friends were at his house in Richmond, the Rev. When Dr. Now, I wish that they would all go home and leave us to do the same. At the close of the war, some of our best men went to seek homes in other lands. This, General Lee deemed wrong. He thought that the men of the South should stay at home and build up what had been laid waste by war.

As you ask, I will state that I have no thought of leaving her. In a word, the welfare of the impoverished, desolated South was his chief concern. He kept in sight the honor of the South, but not that hate to the North which brought no good. A lady who had lost her husband in the war, and had brought her two sons to college, spoke in sharp terms of the North to General Lee.

Bring them up to be Americans. Though meek in the way I have told you, General Lee was at the same time too proud to take the aid which, from time to time, his friends would offer him. But this proud man would take no aid. When, in a quiet way, the trustees of the college gave the house in which he lived to Mrs. Lee, and also the sum of three thousand dollars each year, he wrote, in Mrs.

After his death, they again deeded the home to Mrs. Lee and sent her a check for a large sum of money. But she, with the pride of her husband, sent back the check and would not let the funds of the college be taken for her use. General Lee was always neat in his attire. The surrender took place in the left-hand room of an old house which had a hall-way through it.

In that room were a few officers, of whom I was one. The larger and taller of the two was the more striking. His hair was as white as snow. That was Robert E. The other was Ulysses S. His boots were muddy, and he wore no sword. He may not be dead yet; he was not so old. And then he went out and passed down that little square in front of the house, and mounted the gray horse that had carried him all over Virginia.

His men are on the point of starvation. General Lee never touched tobacco, brandy or whiskey; he was always a sober man. Just as he was starting to the Mexican war, a lady in Virginia gave him a bottle of fine old whiskey, saying that he would be sure to need it, and that it was very fine. On his return home he sent the bottle, unopened, to his friend to convince her that he could get along without whiskey.

The General seemed to enjoy the joke hugely. A lady relates that when her brother was badly wounded near Petersburg, he was taken to a tent near a hospital, out of range of the fire of the foe. One day General Lee came riding up and went in to see the wounded man. He took him gently by the hand and told him to cheer up and get well; that he had use for all brave men like him.

Then he drew two fine peaches from his pocket and laid them on the side of the cot. The meal spread on the rough board was corn-bread, and a small piece of meat in a large mess of greens. The aid saw that the meat was not touched, though General Lee had asked all to take a piece of it. When the meal was over, the aide asked one of the men why the meat was not eaten.

The reply was, that it had been loaned by a friend to cook with the greens, and had to be returned. When, during the siege of Petersburg, Mrs. In front of the tents were three wagons, and a number of horses roamed over the fields. No guards were seen near, and no crowd of aids swarmed about. A large farm-house stood close by, which would have made a good home for the General, but Lee does not let his men rob or disturb the people, and likes to set them a good example.

A short time after the surrender, two ragged Confederates, just from prison in the North, waited upon the General and said that there were sixty other fellows around the corner who were too ragged to come. They had sent these two to offer their loved chief a home in the mountains of Virginia. We boys will work for you and you shall never want.

Tears came to the roberts e lee biography childhood memories of General Lee as he told them that he must decline their gift. The offer of these men was but the feeling of the whole South. Though poor themselves, they would have given him houses, lands and money had he let them. They are treating us awful bad. We will all feel better for it.

This letter touched the tender heart of Lee, as well as this story which was told to him by Rev. William Jones: After the war, the latter was riding along a road one day, when he saw a young man plowing in a field, guiding the plow with one hand, for on the other side was an robert e lee biography childhood memories sleeve.

He soon saw that the man plowing was a soldier whom he had known, and stopped to speak to him. In fact, he had known the young man from boyhood; how, at the first tap of the drum he had gone to fight for his native State; and how he had been maimed for life, and had gone home to find that he must work with one arm for his bread, as his fortune had been wrecked by the war.

I thank God that I have one arm left, and can use it for those I love. When the Rev. But it is just like one of our soldiers. The world has never seen nobler men than those who belonged to the Army of Northern Virginia. The death of the wife of his son, General W. Fitzhugh Lee, gave General Lee much grief. The former General was wounded and taken prisoner.

While in prison his lovely wife died. In this bitter grief, General Lee wrote to his son these words:. While the army was at Mine Run, in November,and a battle was at hand, General Lee, with a number of officers riding down the line of battle, came upon a party of soldiers who were holding a prayer-meeting. The shooting had begun along the lines, the cannon were already roaring, and the mind and heart of the great chief were on the battle.

Yet, as he saw these men bent in prayer, he dismounted and joined in the simple worship. So these humble men led the devotions of their loved General. One day inwhile riding along the lines with his staff, General Lee met the Rev. William Jones, who was giving tracts to the men in the trenches. General Lee asked if he ever had calls for prayer-books, and said that if he would come to his headquarters he would give him some—that a friend in Richmond had given him a new book; and upon his saying to his friend that he would give his old book, that he had used ever since the Mexican war, to some soldier, the friend offered him a dozen new books for the old one.

He had, of course, taken so grand an offer, and now had twelve, in place of one, to give away. Jones called, General Lee was out, but had left the books for Mr. Jones with one of his staff. We are sure that if any of these books were saved amid the din and stress of war, they are now much prized by those who own them. With the close of the war, the piety of this great man seemed to increase.

His seat at church was always filled, unless he was kept away by sickness, and he was ever ready for good works. He did not find fault with preachers, as so many do, but was most fond of those who were simple and true to the teachings of the Bible. You know our friend makes this prayer too long. He prays for the Jews, the Turks, and the heathen, and runs into the hour for our College recitations.

Would it be wrong for me to hint to Mr. General Lee was a constant reader of the Bible. Lee, Lieutenant-Colonel of U. General Lee gave freely of his small means to his church and to the poor. At a vestry meeting which took place the evening of his illness, the sum of fifty-five dollars was needed for the pay of the Rector. His love for his wife and children is shown by the tender, loving letters he wrote when away from them.

During the Civil War his anxiety for them was great. Just before the Northern army crossed the Potomac, inMrs. Lee left her beautiful home, Arlington, and came South. Arlington was at once seized by the Northern Government, and the grounds were taken for a burial-place for the Northern soldiers. Lee and her daughters were soon driven from there by the hosts of McClellan, and the house was burned to the ground.

At last, they found a home in Richmond, where they lived until the close of the war. Her brave daughters, also, knit socks, and nursed the sick and wounded soldiers. The death of her noble husband was a great shock to Mrs. Lee, who was then not able to walk without aid. She did not survive him many years, and now rests beside him in the College chapel at Lexington, Virginia.

Their daughter Agnes, who died shortly after her father, is buried in the same place. Close by is the grave of Stonewall Jackson. How meet that these two friends and heroes should rest so near each other! After the death of General Lee, many speeches were made in his praise, and many letters were written telling of the sorrow of his friends. These letters came not only from the South, but from the North, and other lands.

Lee left the clay which it had so much ennobled, and traveled out of this robert e lee biography childhood memories into the great and unknown land. Here in the North, forgetting that the time was when the sword of Robert E. Lee was drawn against us, we have long since ceased to look upon him as the Confederate leader, but have claimed him as one of ourselves; for Robert Edward Lee was an American, and the great nation which gave him birth would to-day be unworthy of such a son if she looked upon him lightly.

Lee is dead, will be received with great sorrow by many in this country, as well as by his fellow-soldiers in America. Lee ranked among the great men of his time. He was the able soldier of the Southern Confederacy, the leader who twice threatened, by the capture of Washington, to turn the tide of success and cause a revolution which would have changed the destiny of the United States.

I rejoice that the South gave him birth. I rejoice that the South will hold his ashes. But his fame belongs to the human race. Washington, too, was born in the South and sleeps in the South, but his fame belongs to mankind. We place the name of Lee by that of Washington. They both belong to the world. He did not draw his sword in the cause of slavery—he did not seek to overthrow the Government of the United States.

He drew it in the defense of constitutional liberty. That cause is not dead, but will live forever. He never drank, he never swore an oath, but there was never a dispute among gentlemen in which his voice was not more potent than any other; his rare calmness and dignity were above all. When the war came on, he followed his native State, Virginia.

Nobody but Robert Lee! Robert Lee, and nobody but Lee! We believe that, so long as the name of Lee is cherished by Southern teachers, they will grow stronger in their work. They will be encouraged to greater efforts when they remember that Lee was one of their number, and that his great heart, that had so bravely borne the fortunes of an empire, bore also, amid its latest aspirations, the interests and hopes of the teacher.

Their plan was to erect a monument in Richmond to the memory of the great chief, and to collect funds for this purpose from the entire South. They began at once their labor of love. Early for its president. The ladies of the Hollywood Memorial Association were asked to help, and they proved great workers in the cause. I cannot tell you the many ways in which these and other societies worked to raise the money, but at last there was enough in the treasury to erect the statue.

In the meantime, General Fitzhugh Lee was made Governor of Virginia, and he at once began to take measures to bring about the erection of the monument.

Robert e lee biography childhood memories

The Allen lot, in the western part of the city, was at last chosen for the site, and was accepted as the gift of Mr. Otway Allen, June 18th, It was then the duty of the Board to find a sculptor worthy to execute this great work. After many trials, the Board selected Monsieur Mercie, a Frenchman, who was both a painter and a sculptor of note.

In the summer ofthe best photographs of General Lee, as well as one of his shoes and his uniform, were sent to the sculptor. In working out the likeness to General Lee, Monsieur Mercie had the good fortune to have Miss Mary Lee, who was then in Paris, as a critic of his work. On the 27th of October,the cornerstone was laid with splendid rites, and on the 3rd of May,the statue reached Richmond by way of New York.

It was packed in three boxes. On the 7th of May, each box was placed in a separate wagon, from which waved the flags of Virginia and the Confederacy. Then, one wagon was drawn by men of the city, one by old soldiers, and one by women and girls—the fine lady and her humble sister standing shoulder to shoulder. They went through the city, pulling the ropes amid the cheers of twenty thousand people, until they came to the spot where the statue was to stand.

Such was their love for Lee! The monument in all is about sixty-one feet in height, and cost sixty-five thousand dollars. It shows the General mounted upon his war-horse, Traveler. His feet touch the stirrups lightly, after the manner of the Southern horsemen. He is clad in a plain uniform. A sash girds his waist, and the sword of a cavalry officer hangs from his side.

He holds the bridle reins in his left hand, while in his right is his hat, which he grasps as if he had just taken it off to acknowledge the cheers of his men, through whose ranks we may suppose him to be passing. All the city was then thinking of one man—Lee, just as, twenty-five years before, all their hopes had turned to him. On that day, the sun rose bright and the people with it.

Soon, the noise of tramping feet and the tap of the drum were heard, and ere long the glitter of bayonets, the flashing of sabers and the waving of flags told that the line was forming. The streets were crowded, and rang with cheers as some noted soldier rode by or an old Confederate flag was waved. At noon, the long line was formed on Broad street, and the parade began.

Every window, doorway, and even the house-tops along the line of march, were filled with people eager to see the great parade, which stretched through the streets four miles in moving mass. General Fitzhugh Lee, nephew of the hero, who had been one of his most daring cavalry generals during the war, and who had formerly been Governor of Virginia, was chief marshal of the parade.

Cheer after cheer arose as he rode by, wearing the slouch hat of a cavalryman. Fitzhugh Lee, wife and sons. Behind these marched the veterans—men who had fought in the Civil War, and who came from all parts of the South. Whenever and wherever these veterans were seen, they were greeted with hearty cheers. Some were clad in their old gray uniforms, faded and worn, and in many cases, full of bullet-holes.

Here and there along the line could be seen the old and tattered flags of the Confederacy. After the veterans, came the civic orders in Richmond, the students of Washington and Lee University, and the corps of cadets from the historic Virginia Military Institute. As the line moved along the streets decked with floating flags and gay bunting, the sound of the many feet was lost in loud and hearty cheers that arose from doors, house-tops and crowded sidewalks.

At last, the throng at the grandstand heard the roll of the drum and the nearing din of the parade, and soon the bright line swept into view. The crowd was so dense that persons on the grandstand could not be seen by those on the ground. Then there was prayer by Rev. Minnigerode, who was rector of St. When the prayer ended, the band played Dixie, the war-song of the South, with whose strains the old soldiers had so often been thrilled as they marched into battle.

Then there was a great noise which at last wore itself away, and General Early rose and spoke a few words of cheer to the old soldiers. The orator of the day was Colonel Archer Anderson, who pictured scene after scene in the life of General Lee with great force and clearness. Again the grand hero seemed to live and act in their midst—to lead them on to victory or to teach them how to bear defeat.

When the speaker took his seat, amid cheers, General Joseph E. Johnston arose and with two old soldiers marched to the base of the monument. Each of the soldiers carried a battle flag, tattered and torn by shot and shell. When the monument was reached, General Johnston pulled the rope, and one part of the veil fell off. Ties of blood or of common service joined the Lees to this society.

Cousins uncounted lived in Alexandria. Their sister Mary had married Philip R. Fendall, a local lawyer of much social charm. Fitzhugh, distant kinsman but close friend, the broad door of whose ample home was always open to Mrs. Lee and her children. For counsel or for assistance of any sort, Mrs. Lee always turned to Fitzhugh, who admired her both for her character and for her success in keeping up her home on her scant income.

Twenty members of Lee's Legion had enlisted from Alexandria and nearly all of them affectionately remembered their unfortunate commander. Military titles were to be heard every hour on the street. Judge Cranch, whose name is familiar to all constitutional lawyers, presided over the United States court and lived on Washington Street. At intervals that were all too far apart on the robert e lee biography childhood memories of impatient lovers, the socially elect of the town gathered at Gadsby's City Tavern for formal "assemblies.

Somewhat less formal, but written large on the social calendar of the town, were the Masonic celebrations on the two Saint-John's days of the year. The fellowcraft then assembled for a sermon at the Presbyterian church and thereafter marched to John Wise's tavern, where they banqueted fraternally and later threw open their doors for a dance.

Rarely was there lack of mirth, for the town did not frown on the spirituous refreshment its many taverns abundantly offered. In fact, if the worst must be told, when the worthy vestry of the Episcopal church supped together at their regular meetings, the wine flowed so freely that it produced a merriment most shocking to the religious sensibilities of the pious new rector, Reverend William Meade.

He did not rest him from his protests till he broke up that brotherly supping, to the lasting loss of fellowship, if to the gain of temperance. None of these things meant so much to the town as did its associations with George Washington. He had been dead more than ten years when the Lee coach brought the family up from Stratford. By the time Robert was old enough to understand something of the spirit of the Father of his Country, Washington had been twenty years in his tomb at Mount Vernon.

But he was alive in the hearts of old Alexandrians. Reminders of him were everywhere. In the market place he had drilled his Virginia rangers ere he had set out with Braddock. In the City Tavern hardby he had kept his headquarters and had written out his reports in his swift, neat autograph. To the post office he had often come in person.

Many still lived to tell, in Robert's time, how majestically the General had ridden by, and with what gracious dignity he had acknowledged their salutes. In the Masonic Hall he had repeated the ancient responses of the order. The very water of the town was a memorial, for it had been at Washington's instance, while he was a trustee of Alexandria, that the wells at the street-corners had been dug.

Doctor James Craik, who had been Washington's physician and his closest friend in Alexandria, might have been seen by Robert, at seven years of age, when the old gentleman was driven in from Vaucluse. Amid these surroundings, Washington was a part of the life of Robert Lee from earliest childhood. Doubtless his mother remembered and perhaps preserved the letter in which Washington had written Henry Lee his congratulations upon the marriage: "As we are told that you have exchanged the rugged and dangerous field of Mars for the soft and pleasurable bed of Venus," Washington had written, "I do in this as I shall in everything you may pursue like unto it, good and laudable, wish you all imaginable success and happiness.

Pride in the friendship of the first citizen of the country had been the consolation of "Light-Horse Harry's" blackest days, and from his exile he was to write of "the great Washington," and was to repeat his old commander's words for the admonition of his son, Charles Carter. The family held fast to this reverence. In the robert e lee biography childhood memories where Robert was trained, God came first and then Washington.

In Robert's eyes, of course, the centre of the town and of all its traditions was the home on Cameron Street. Over it presided his mother, charged for the rest of her days with the entire care of her five children, their finances, their religious training, and their education. Physically it overtaxed her, but spiritually she was equal to it.

Her sister Mildred had died not long after her father and had left her some property that supplemented the income from the trust fund Charles Carter had set up, but the contrast between the rich ease of her girlhood and the adversity of her married life was sharp. Yet it did not embitter her. She continued to love the author of her misfortune.

And he, for all his distresses, kept his devotion to her and his high respect for her. In his exile he remembered the anniversary of their marriage, and he sprinkled his letters to Charles Carter Lee with references to her. But she had taken Henry's tragedy to heart, a nd the reasons for his fall, and she was determined that his grim cycle of promise, overconfidence, recklessness, disaster, and ruin should not be rounded in the lives of her children.

Self-denial, self-control, and the strictest economy in all financial matters were part of the code of honor she taught them from infancy. These qualities which were the precise reverse of those his brilliant father had displayed, were inculcated in Robert so early and so deeply by his mother that they became fundamentals of his character. He probably never knew a time when they were not held up before him as great axioms of conduct.

Thanks to Ann Lee, the weakness of the sire became the strength of the son. No wonder he was accustomed to say in later life that he "owed everything" to his mother. Although Robert lived among the Lees, the atmosphere of his home was that of the Carters. His mother corresponded with them, talked of them, and at least once a year endeavored to take her younger children with her on a visit to Shirley, her old home on James River.

It was a gracious place. Built early in the eighteenth century, it had been adorned by each generation of Hills and of Carters, as though they owed it a debt they were eager to discharge with generous interest. The parlors contained rich old furniture, on which the presentments of approving ancestors looked down from gilt frames. In the great hall was a majestic hanging stair; in the dining-room was Charles W.

Peale's full-length picture of Washington, a portrait in which one could see the lines that Valley Forge had cut on a face still young, and all the misgiving that a doubtful war had put in honest, anxious eyes. Outside, to the south, was the turbid, silent river. Across the lawn lay the garden with ancient walks and dreamy odors. Here, on successive visits, as he grew older, Robert heard how John Carter had come to Virginia, had acquired much land, had outlived three wives and had died inleaving a son Robert who had reaped richly where his father had sown.

So wealthy did this Robert Carter become, and so widely did his acres spread that he was known as "King" Carter and lived with a dignified luxury befitting his estate. Around the door of the church which he built and furnished at his own expense, the admiring neighbors would wait on the Sabbath until his outriders had arrived and the great coach had rumbled up, and "King" Carter and his family had entered the house of prayer.

Then the simpler folks would stamp after, glad enough to bow the knee on the same floor with so fine a gentleman. Of the twelve children born to "King" Carter while he lived in splendor at Corotoman, his son John inherited perhaps the largest share of the property. He continued to reside at Corotoman and added as much again to his estate by marrying Elizabeth Hill, heiress to the Shirley planation on James River.

Their wealthy son, Charles Carter, Robert Lee's grandfather, was reared at Corotoman and brought his first wife there. After her death, Charles Carter married Anne Butler Moore, daughter of Augustine Moore and a descendant of Alexander Spotswood, perhaps the most popular and renowned of the colonial governors of Virginia. With her Charles Carter moved to Shirley, which had become his property.

His household was large, for he had eight children by his first marriage, and by his second, thirteen, among them Ann, Robert Lee's mother. Young Robert had a friendly multitude of close Carter cousins, for hundreds, literally, were descended from the twelve children of "King" Carter. Charles Carter's record of twenty-three by two wives was rivalled by that of his first cousin, Robert, or "Councillor" Carter, whose single marriage yielded the sixteen children that appear in the charming Journal of their blue-stockinged tutor, Philip Fithian.

Kinsmen were joined in marriage until the lines are at some points confused. The prime family characteristic of geniality and friendliness seemed to be accentuated with each new generation. The size and endogamy of the Carter tribe made it socially self-contained. Every true Carter liked everybody, but most of all he liked his kinspeople. Often and joyfully they visited one another.

Of journeying and letter-writing and the exchange of family news, the years brought no end. It was at Shirley, amid the infectious laughter and the kindly chatter of his cousins, that the youthful Robert developed early the fondness for the company of his kin that was so marked in his maturity. While Robert instinctively adopted the social attitude of the Carters, he was too young to observe in childhood — if, indeed, he ever realized — this most remarkable fact about his mother's family: The males of the Carter stock did not often aspire to public life or shine in it, but the women of the blood of "King" Carter, when they married into other lines, became the mothers and grandmothers of a most extraordinary number of distinguished men.

Robert Carter the first, "King" Carter, had five daughters. The eldest of the five, Elizabeth, had a daughter of the same name who married William Nelson, president of council of Virginia. Their son, Thomas Nelson, was a signer of the Declaration and a man of high patriotism. By a second marriage, this granddaughter of Robert Carter became the wife of George Nicholas and was mother of a treasurer of Virginia and grandmother of a governor, Edmund Randolph.

Among the descendants of this union were a governor and many men of station. Still another of Robert Carter's daughters, Anne, married Benjamin Harrison and was mother of a son of the robert e lee biography childhood memories name, Governor of Virginia and signer of the Declaration of Independence. Another of her sons was a brigadier-general in the Revolutionary army, and a third was president of the state senate.

Mary, fourth daughter of Robert Carter, chose George Braxton as her husband. Their son was Carter Braxton, publicist and signer of the Declaration. The fifth daughter of "King" Carter was Lucy, who became the wife of Henry Fitzhugh, progenitor of distinguished Virginians not a few. The families into which these daughters granddaughters of "King" Carter were married in the eighteenth century were among those, to be sure, from which the leaders of an aristocratic society would naturally spring.

But that society was fairly large by the time of the Revolution. It is hard to believe that pure chance should have made the five daughters of Carter the ancestresses of three signers, three governors, and two Presidents. Again, although the families with which the blood of the daughters of the Carter stock was blended, by these various marriages, were socially of equal distinction, this fact can be established: outside the branches that formed the Carter connection, none of them produced more than the average number of men of superior intellect and achievement.

Inexplicable as it may seem in the present limited knowledge of genetics, one is almost forced to conclude that there was something in the stock of the Carters that bred greatness through the female side, or else that something in the dealings of the Carter mothers with their sons inspired successive generations to high endeavor. The Alexandria boy who played on the lawn of Shirley, during his mother's visits, was wholly unconscious of it but his possession of his mother's blood, in descent from Robert Carter, was the best endowment for greatness that he could have had in the Virginia of his day.

In some subtle way, he was advantaged in the contests of men because his mother was of the Carters of Corotoman. By those same Carters at Shirley, as by his mother in his own home, Robert saw exemplified a very simple, straightforward loyalty to family, to church, and to God. This was traditional with the Carters, though only one of them, it seems, could ever have been called a religious fanatic.

In the daily walk of Charles Carter, Robert's grandfather, revealed religion and noblesse oblige were blended without any thought of creed or system. Owning perhaps 25, acres of land and a multitude of servants, Charles Carter rode in a great coach with postillions, but he abhorred waste, and in his will wrote, "I earnestly request my family and friends that they do not go into mourning or wear black clothes, and this whim I expect they will gratify me in, as I always thought the custom absurd and extravagant answering no good purpose that I know of.

If crops were a failure on James River, when the season had been favorable on his Rappahannock plantations, he hauled great caravans of corn across the peninsulas and sold it at the normal price to those who needed it. His agent in England had standing orders to give to the hungry of London a certain percentage of the proceeds of the Carter tobacco, because he held that there were not enough poor people in Virginia to call forth the measure of charity he felt he should dispense.

One of his many farms he placed at the disposal of a clergyman to whom he was attached, stipulating at the last that the minister's widow should remain undisturbed on the land during her lifetime. Similarly, he enjoined his executors not to foreclose a mortgage he held on the farm of friends at Malvern Hills — a name destined to suggest something not akin to kindness in the life of his grandson.

The same spirit showed itself in Robert's godfather, Robert Carter. A delay by the Federal Army in launching its offensive meant that Lee had plenty of time to construct impressive defenses. He was so successful in his defense strategy that the Federal Army, far superior in manpower and equipment, was unable to score a quick, decisive victory and the Civil War was to drag on for years.

On June 1, Lee was appointed commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, a decision that was criticized by many who felt he was not aggressive enough in his approach. However, Lee soon showed that he was not lacking in aggression, launching offensives against the Union Army of the Potomac, which was engaged in its Peninsula Campaign. Although suffering heavy casualties, Confederate forces succeeded in driving back the Federal Army, and bringing the Peninsula Campaign to a halt.

The Confederate President, Jefferson Davishad declared Richmond the capital of the South, and in the early part of the Civil War, the primary goal of the Federal forces was to capture Richmond, believing it would be a very hard military and psychological blow if it fell into the hands of the Union. Burnside, had suffered a heavy defeat by Lee in Fredericksburg in December The northern forces were far superior to the South, and Hooker, who was aware of this situation, divided his army to be able to take advantage of their numerical superiority.

He sent Major General Sedgwick with an army of 40, men to confront Lee, whose army numbered 60, troops, directly at Chancellorsville while Hooker started northward with 40, men to move behind the encampment and attack the flank. He maintained an army of 35, men as reinforcements and he sent his cavalry to cut the supply lines of the Confederate Army.

Once again, the Union offensive was unsuccessful, and the Confederate forces under Lee emerged victorious, though suffering a very high casualty rate.