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Lee Starts On Western Tour
Many people who have heard of Lee did not know that he was not
always considered the greatest general of the Confederacy. On
this morning Lee started from Richmond to perform his first field
duty for the Confederacy. It was not an impressive departure. No
commissaries or quartermasters attended him. His only military
companions were Colonel Washington and Captain Taylor. He
had no more than two private attendants, Meredith, his cook, a
Negro from the •White House plantation, and Perry, another
Negro, who had been employed in the dining room at Arlington
and was now acting as Lee's body servant. Except for his horses,
his baggage was of the smallest proportions. The only recorded
part of it was a simple mess kit of tin. Many a brigadier, starting for
the front, had a far larger entourage and a more ostentatious
leave-taking. If any of the family came to see Lee off, it was
Custis, for Mrs. Lee, Robert, and the girls were visiting friends,
and Rooney's cavalry was in the Allegheny Mountains
He had no written instructions. As the President's confidential
military adviser, still in titular command of all the Confederate
forces in the Old Dominion, he was being sent to western Virginia,
where Garnett had fallen and where small, separate commands
were feebly struggling to prevent a Federal advance. His mission
was to co-ordinate rather than to command — not to direct
operations in person but to see if rivalries could not be
suppressed and united effort against the enemy assured. The
assumption that he was directly in command led the public to
expect great achievements of him, but the fact that immediate
charge of the troops was not entrusted to him by the President
made such achievements almost impossible. Authority and
responsibility were divided, with the usual disastrous results. So
much trouble could have been avoided if he had temporarily been
assigned to command the scattered units in western Virginia that
it is difficult to say why this was not done. Perhaps President
Davis did not wish Lee formally detached; perhaps he felt that
Lee's known tact could best be employed if he appeared on the
scene to counsel all the general officers in western Virginia and
not to supersede any of the touchy individuals who were
exercising semi-independent command in the mountains. The
Confederate authorities, in July, 1861, had not developed the
courage to deal bluntly with men of this stamp, but proceeded
cautiously in an effort to preserve the complete unity of the South.
In this instance the welfare of the forces was subordinated to the
ambitions of the leaders. It was to prove a costly concession to
pride.
From the hour he arrived at Staunton, however, Lee encountered
a state of affairs unlike anything he had ever seen in war. It was
not soldiery that Lee saw at Staunton; it was panic exhausted in
paralysis.
From Douglas Southall Freeman's Biography of Robert E. Lee.
Many people who have heard of Lee did not know that he was not
always considered the greatest general of the Confederacy. On
this morning Lee started from Richmond to perform his first field
duty for the Confederacy. It was not an impressive departure. No
commissaries or quartermasters attended him. His only military
companions were Colonel Washington and Captain Taylor. He
had no more than two private attendants, Meredith, his cook, a
Negro from the •White House plantation, and Perry, another
Negro, who had been employed in the dining room at Arlington
and was now acting as Lee's body servant. Except for his horses,
his baggage was of the smallest proportions. The only recorded
part of it was a simple mess kit of tin. Many a brigadier, starting for
the front, had a far larger entourage and a more ostentatious
leave-taking. If any of the family came to see Lee off, it was
Custis, for Mrs. Lee, Robert, and the girls were visiting friends,
and Rooney's cavalry was in the Allegheny Mountains
He had no written instructions. As the President's confidential
military adviser, still in titular command of all the Confederate
forces in the Old Dominion, he was being sent to western Virginia,
where Garnett had fallen and where small, separate commands
were feebly struggling to prevent a Federal advance. His mission
was to co-ordinate rather than to command — not to direct
operations in person but to see if rivalries could not be
suppressed and united effort against the enemy assured. The
assumption that he was directly in command led the public to
expect great achievements of him, but the fact that immediate
charge of the troops was not entrusted to him by the President
made such achievements almost impossible. Authority and
responsibility were divided, with the usual disastrous results. So
much trouble could have been avoided if he had temporarily been
assigned to command the scattered units in western Virginia that
it is difficult to say why this was not done. Perhaps President
Davis did not wish Lee formally detached; perhaps he felt that
Lee's known tact could best be employed if he appeared on the
scene to counsel all the general officers in western Virginia and
not to supersede any of the touchy individuals who were
exercising semi-independent command in the mountains. The
Confederate authorities, in July, 1861, had not developed the
courage to deal bluntly with men of this stamp, but proceeded
cautiously in an effort to preserve the complete unity of the South.
In this instance the welfare of the forces was subordinated to the
ambitions of the leaders. It was to prove a costly concession to
pride.
From the hour he arrived at Staunton, however, Lee encountered
a state of affairs unlike anything he had ever seen in war. It was
not soldiery that Lee saw at Staunton; it was panic exhausted in
paralysis.
From Douglas Southall Freeman's Biography of Robert E. Lee.