Lee may have grown increasingly conservative and suspicious of central authority in the former United States by 1860, but as a Confederate faced with the necessities of survival, he was reverting to the federalism of his father. As he said in 1861, so he felt now still. Their only objective was independence. Everything they had depended on victory, and every interest must yield to that imperative.150 They must disenthrall themselves and mobilize every asset they had, or soon they would have none to mobilize. Issues of state sovereignty paled in the face of annihilation. If he had to intrude beyond his bounds into the political and social world, he might do so. They had until the summer of 1863 to commit or evaporate.151
11
TWO RIVERS TO CROSS
ON THE LAST DAY of 1862 Lee issued a congratulatory order to his army thanking them for their victory “under the blessings of Almighty God,” though he also shared his opinion of its equivocal impact, telling them “the war is not yet ended.” Still, divine mercy had blessed them all year, giving him hope that “the same Almighty hand” would bring more victories.1 A few criticized Lee, saying he ought to have destroyed Burnside, one arguing that he should have hurled redhot rocks into the stream to prevent the enemy crossing, turning the Rappahannock into a stew of parboiled Yankees.2 His defenders replied that “we think Gen. Lee has pretty strong reasons both for what he does and fails to attempt.”3 One commentator averred that Lee, while “not possessing the first order of intellect, is endowed with rare judgment and equanimity, unerring sagacity, great self-control, and extraordinary powers of combination.” Other generals might be as intelligent, and perhaps even better fighters, but when it came to planning and conducting a campaign, no one could surpass him in “the qualities of a commander.”4
Confederates were trying to fit Lee into their popular culture. He was a hero, but that did not settle who they needed him to be. Anecdotes making him the avuncular bemused foil in episodes of camp humor gained no purchase in their imagination.5 Neither did humor come at the expense of soldiers, as when the general supposedly tested a boy on obedience by ordering him to about face and forward march away from Lee’s tent . . . and never said to halt.6 Neither did the idea of Lee in political life catch fire. On the eve of Fredericksburg, Virginian colonel Edmund W. Hubard proposed that people consider Lee for the governorship in 1863, but no one took up the cry.7
Confederates found encouragement in his faith. They expected God to favor them as Christians.8 The press commented often on Lee the “Christian man,” the “Christian gentleman,” the “Christian hero and patriot,” and just days after Fredericksburg, the “meek and humble christian.”9 The Southern Christian Advocate proclaimed that “he is not ashamed to acknowledge the hand of God in his successes,” and that Christians were gratified “to know that they have a man of prayer, and a servant of God, as leader to their armies.” His trust in Providence was an omen of success.10 Lee’s letters to bereaved families often became public, wherein by extolling the sacrifice and Christian virtues of the slain, he exhorted others to emulate their example. At Fredericksburg Generals Thomas R. R. Cobb of Georgia and Maxcy Gregg of South Carolina both fell. The unpopular Cobb had been an ardent critic of Lee for months. “Genl. Lee has not the first feeling of a gentleman,” Cobb complained back in July. “He is haughty and boorish and supercilious in his bearing and is particularly so to me.” That may have been because the supremely conceited amateur took it on himself to tell Lee how to run the army. He further complained that Lee got even by giving him “all the dirty and hard work” while the best assignments went to family like Rooney and Lee’s nephew Fitzhugh Lee.11 In fact, Lee had recently approved transferring Cobb’s command to Georgia in a move redolent of another problem solved.12 Still, on December 18, 1862, Lee wrote of Cobb’s “merits, his lofty intellect, his accomplishments, his professional fame, and above all, his true Christian character,” saying the name of this “Christian statesman and soldier” should be “a holy remembrance.”13 Yet at that same sitting, Lee wrote regarding Gregg to Governor Pickens in South Carolina. Absent was any reference to Christian virtues, but surely Lee knew that Gregg professed no religion, making it untoward to impose it on him in death.14 Lee would rarely act a hypocrite.
Editors conjured a tableaux of Lee anointed to lead them to freedom. When he visited the dying Bishop Meade, the press carried Meade’s supposed last words. “I have known you, General, from a boy, and have always loved you,” he said haltingly. Despite early reluctance to accept secession, Meade was now wholly committed to the “righteous cause,” and Lee must do his utmost in its service. “You are a Christian soldier,” he said. As Lee wept, Meade laid his hands on the general’s bowed head, enjoining him to “trust in God, and God will bless you.”15
Lee read the Southern Churchman every month. He contributed to support coleporteurs distributing Christian materials among the soldiers, averring that “the virtue and fidelity which should characterize a soldier can only be learned from the holy pages of the Bible.”16 A Methodist congregation gave him a life directorship in the Confederate States Bible Society, which he accepted gladly. God had given them victories and they owed “grateful acknowledgment of the presence and agency of a merciful Providence in our affairs,” he wrote in thanks. He blessed them with victories, and His was the glory. As he quoted loosely from Chronicles, his own words sounded almost like scripture, declaring that “true patriotism, no less than piety, demands that the prayers of the faithful should never cease to ascend to Him who saveth not by many or by few, but giveth the victory to whom He will.”17 After Fredericksburg editors reminded readers that Lee was “a professing and consistent Christian,” and that “with God above, and General Lee at their head, they feared nothing that man could do.”18 He might not sit at the Almighty’s right hand yet, but Confederates expected him to have a seat at the table.
Lee wavered between hope of success and uncertainty. “Should it please Him eventually to establish our independence & spare our lives, all will be well,” he told Mildred at Christmas.19 A day later he wrote Agnes that “a kind Providence” would look out for them, for “so much virtue will not be unregarded.”20 He was more tentative with Mary. “I wish I could be sufficiently thankful for all He has done for us, & felt that we deserved a continuance of the protection & guidance He had heretofore vouchsafed to us,” he wrote in March as a revival swept through his army’s ranks. “I know that in Him is our only salvation. He alone can give us peace & freedom & I humbly submit to His holy will.”21 Theirs was a just god who would make all right in the end. “To Him we must trust,” he told her, “& for that we must wait.”22 With campaigning weather’s approach in late April, he became impatient of the waiting, confessing, “I hope God in His own time will give us more substantial cause for rejoicing & thankfulness.”23
Visitors left him with impressions that enhanced the South’s image of Lee the kindly yet slightly aloof father of his army. An army doctor who saw him early in April came away impressed that “he is so noble a specimen of men,” tall, robust, handsome, “always polite and agreeable, and thinking less of himself than he ought to,” a man who thought of nothing “but the success of our cause.” The surgeon wished other Confederates would emulate the general’s humility to “arrive at his excellencies and not in boisterous exclamations like those the eccentric Stonewall Jackson elicits wherever he goes.”24 He eschewed pomp and comfort in favor of tents for himself and staff, surrounded by scattered baggage wagons sometimes captured from the foe, and no guard stood outside Lee’s tent, making him more approachable than lesser generals in his army and Grant’s.25 “He cares but little for appearances,” said another visitor. Regulations called for him to wear a blouse with three stars within a wreath on a standing collar, the insignia for all general officers, and yet he wore a mere brigadier’s blouse with the three unwreathed stars of a colonel on its inner lapels, which he turned down to conceal his proper insignia underneath.26
British journalist Francis Lawley fo
und him erect and healthy in figure, calm and stately in manner. Lee’s dark brown eyes directly met the gaze of visitors. He smiled little and laughed less, and spoke in a deep voice that was losing some of its musicality, with but little variety of tone or inflection. His thoughtful nature was evident, as was a sense that he deliberated long and hard before making decisions. Lee’s “childlike guilelessness” struck Lawley, who asserted that “it is very rare that a man of his age, conversant with important events, and thrown to the surface of mighty convulsions, retains the impress of a simple, ingenuous nature.” That only proved Lee’s mastery of guile to put people at ease, especially newspapermen, with whom he knew to be careful.27 Another British visitor, Major Garnet Wolseley, found that “when speaking of the Yankees, he neither evinced any bitterness or feeling, nor gave utterance to a single violent expression,” a pose at odds with the angry, even vengeful, Lee of his letters to family and officials in Richmond. It suited his purpose to be a man motivated by patriotism and not rancor. To all he attributed his victories to “the blessing of the Almighty,” and prayed for more.28
Three weeks after Fredericksburg, rumor said that “General Lee contemplates a movement northward.”29 It was a feeling echoed in Washington, where Senator John C. Ten Eyck of New Jersey warned on the Senate floor that Lee might lead his army on the capital and invite them all to go home.30 Late in January a bizarre rumor briefly surfaced that Lee had gone to Washington as a penitent seeking Lincoln’s mercy.31 Thanks to nonsense like that, he told Mary that “I am overwhelmed with confusion when I hear of my name in the papers.”32
Yet there was some flame beneath the smoke. Early in February Lee pressed his commanders to collect stragglers and cancelled all furloughs. Visitors found him “very cheerful,” especially after yet another false rumor that France might grant recognition of Confederate independence, with military intervention to follow.33 After his series of successes, including Antietam, he felt enormous confidence in his men, however ragtag and unmilitary they looked. Granting his embarrassment over their appearance in front of foreign dignitaries, he told Lawley proudly that “there is only one attitude in which I should never be ashamed of your seeing my men, and that is when they are fighting.”34 Everyone expected them to be fighting again soon. That month as the combatants faced each other across the Rappahannock, one Confederate yelled to the other side that “we are all going back into the Union before long.” Mistaking his meaning, a Yankee voice replied, “Bully for you. When are you coming?” Amused that his foe had taken the bait, the rebel lad responded, “I don’t exactly know, but they say that General Lee is aiming to invade Pennsylvania next Spring.”35 Lee had said something must be done by June, and it looked like he was preparing to realize his own prophecy.
Lee daily expected the Federals to move again, and began to doubt that he could hold his position if they made a concerted effort. Yet he feared that falling back would risk losing the morale built by the recent victory.36 On the morning of January 9 he learned that elements of Burnside’s army had crossed upstream before dawn before being forced back later that day.37 He reasonably concluded that it was a probe to check fords the Yankees might use, but that was little from which to read Burnside’s intentions. Still, the alarm punctuated concern for the necessity to increase Southern armies. He wrote the secretary of war an open letter calling on the people to rally and if need be conscript “from very shame, those who will not heed the dictates of honor.”38
Lee was assembling a picture. The enemy was reinforced and had strengthened his supply line, meaning Burnside had no intention to withdraw, yet the Federals built no substantial winter quarters, signaling an intention not to remain in place through the winter. Lee learned that the enemy ordered people in the counties immediately across from him not to leave their homes, so they could report no Federal movements to the Confederates. The enemy newspapers Lee read were silent on army activity, meaning the Federals had clamped down on news leaks. “I have hoped from day to day to have been able to discover what is contemplated,” Lee told Davis on January 13, yet he gleaned only that Burnside planned a move before spring.39
Lee had to consider that Burnside might shift his army below the James River. Occasionally Lee tried to “read” enemy commanders, and believed that strategically the Yankees favored advancing on Richmond via North Carolina. He had expected that prior to Fredericksburg and, though mistaken then, he reconsidered it as an option now. In North Carolina Confederates were too weak to do anything but act on the defensive, yet he believed that the Federals were in the same condition. “It is as impossible for him to have a large operating army at every assailable point in our territory as it is for us to keep one to defend it,” he observed. “We must move our troops from point to point as required, & by close observation and accurate information the true point of attack can generally be ascertained.”40 If Burnside moved below the James, Lee would shift the bulk of his men to counter, sending the rest to clear the Shenandoah Valley to protect Richmond’s back door. Lee thought enemy operations in North Carolina were distractions aimed at drawing some of his own forces away from Burnside’s front, yet by mid-January he considered the threat sufficiently pressing that he briefly planned a trip to North Carolina.41
He resisted the idea of sending detachments from his army. Lee had worked hard at its organization, and the men were in the best condition ever, with morale high. “I think it very hazardous to divide this army,” he told the secretary of war, though he did suggest reassigning Daniel H. Hill to his native state to help with recruiting. Hill had been ill, and Lee thought him depressed. A return home might cheer him, and allow him to combat the nascent Unionism and anti-war sentiment then spreading in parts of the state.42 Lee did not say that Hill was becoming a problem. His headquarters had lost the order that gave McClellan Lee’s operational plans prior to Antietam, and since then Hill spoke critically of Lee’s management. Depression may have been a euphemism for an attitude Lee thought detrimental to morale. He found Hill’s temperament so “queer” that Lee never knew from one day to another what to expect. Regarding Hill’s constant fault finding, Lee further complained in private that Hill “croaked.”43 The situation in North Carolina gave him a pretext to remove another discordant element.
By January 19 he believed the Army of the Potomac was about to advance in his front and cancelled plans to send reinforcements south.44 The next day he concluded that the enemy would cross the Rappahannock upstream. Burnside could move down the river and strike Lee’s left flank, or he could send one detachment to hold Lee in place while marching the main army farther south and east to cut Lee’s rail and road links with Richmond; then he could either move on the capital or turn north to hit Lee with his back to the river, or both. Lee prudently sent cavalry to the upper fords to slow any enemy advance and give him time to react.45
The winter turned angry when a cold wind blew in, and then a heavy rain that scarcely let up for three days. It stopped Burnside in his tracks in a miserable affair soon dubbed the “Mud March.” On January 23 Lee still believed that even as Burnside was shifting men toward the upper fords he was also pulling back to his camps.46 Learning that Burnside went to Washington to consult with Lincoln, Lee expected him to return with a new plan commencing as soon as early February.47 In fact, Lincoln replaced Burnside with Major General Joseph Hooker.
Consequently, Lee would face his fourth Union commander in eight months. The same imperatives that forced him on the defensive in the last battle still commanded him. Numbers and the nature of their positions gave the initiative to the enemy, and he could only wait and watch, and react. “Genl Hooker is obliged to do something,” he told daughter Agnes. “I do not know what it will be.” The Federals demonstrated on the other side of the river, threatening a ford here or there, then pulled back, to do the same the next day. Lee called it “the Chinese game”: an effort to spread alarm and confusion. It gave some entertainment to his men, who often jeered at the moving Yankees across the river,
but fear that any one of these feints might be real kept Lee in a foul mood. Despite his reserve and self-control, he never mastered his temper as well as Grant. “I am so cross now that I am not worth seeing,” he grumbled to his daughter, and so busy that “I cannot be relied on for anything.”48 That was frustration at being unable to seize the offensive.49
Learning that Hooker had sent a corps by water to Hampton Roads, Lee considered that the rest of the Army of the Potomac would seek another field of maneuver. Again he thought of North Carolina, his repeated concern there suggesting that it might be what he would have done himself.50 Then he concluded that Hooker might hold him here to prevent his sending reinforcements to the Carolinas, where Wilmington and Charleston might be the real targets. He ordered Longstreet to take two divisions south, ready to reinforce North Carolina just in case, as well as to gather much-needed pork and other commissary and quartermaster stores.51 “I owe Mr. F[ighting] J[oe] Hooker no thanks for keeping me here in this state of expectancy,” Lee complained to Mary. “He ought to have made up his mind long ago.” Unable to get scouts through Union lines, Lee had to wait on the enemy to act before he could react, a posture that ill suited him.52 Hooker might stay in his camps through the rest of the winter.53 Still, Lee believed Hooker’s best option was to wait for better weather, then push his corps at Hampton Roads toward Richmond to draw Lee back to protect the capital, and then move his main army across the river and take the road to Richmond. Laconically, Lee told Custis, “Must defeat it.”54
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