Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers Part 4

That was Grant.

IMPORTANT DATES IN GRANT'S LIFE

1822. April 27. Ulysses Simpson Grant born.

1839. Received appointment to U. S. Military Academy, West Point.

1843. Graduated.

1845. Went as second-lieutenant to join Taylor's forces in Mexico.

1848. Brevetted captain for gallantry.

1848. Married Julia T. Dent.

1854. Resigned his army commission.

1861. Re-entered army at outbreak of Civil War. Commissioned colonel, then brigadier-general.

1863. Made major-general.

1864. Given supreme command of the Union forces, with rank of lieutenant-general.

1866. The grade of general created for first time, and conferred on him.

1868. Elected President.

1885. July 23. Died at Mt. McGregor, New York.

LEE

THE LEADER OF A LOST CAUSE

A gray-haired college president sat talking kindly with a young soph.o.m.ore who had fallen behind in his studies.

"My boy," he said, "you must study if you would succeed. Only patience and industry will prevent your failure here and your failure in after life."

"But, General, you failed," replied the soph.o.m.ore with an amazing impertinence.

"I hope that you may be more fortunate than I," was the quiet answer.

Literature contains nothing finer than that by way of the retort courteous.

The speaker was Robert E. Lee--the time not many months after the surrender of the Southern army. Many were there to brand him as a "failure," just as this thoughtless soph.o.m.ore had done, and to all such critics his reply was silence. In the seclusion of a small Virginia college he lived and worked, keeping sedulously out of public affairs, writing and saying nothing about his campaigns. He left to history the final verdict, which has found him, not a failure, but one of the most brilliant soldiers of this or any land.

In Lee's early life and ancestry his nearest parallel is Washington.

These two greatest Virginians were born within a few miles of each other, in Westmoreland County. Lee was born just seventy-five years after Washington, (January 19, 1807) and like him was descended of famous lineage. His father, Light Horse Harry Lee, fought by the side of Washington in the Revolutionary War; and it was he who in a memorial address on the great leader coined the immortal phrase: "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."

Still another ancestor, Richard Henry Lee, had been born many years earlier in the same old mansion where Robert Edward Lee first saw the light of day. Richard Lee it was, who was a boyhood friend and confidant of George Washington; and who later became one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

It is not strange, therefore, to find that the career of the first great Virginian profoundly influenced the second. "One familiar with the life of Lee," says Thomas Nelson Page, "cannot help noting the strong resemblance of his character in its strength, its poise, its rounded completeness, to that of Washington; or fail to mark what influence the life of Washington had on the life of Lee. The stamp appears upon it from his boyhood, and grows more plain as his years progress."

The old homestead in which Lee was born deserves some notice on its own account. It was built by Thomas Lee, a grandson of Richard Lee, the emigrant who came to Virginia about the time that Charles I was losing both his crown and his head. While Charles II was still in exile, this same Thomas Lee offered the king a haven in Virginia, which was not accepted.

The original brick structure was destroyed by fire, but the house was rebuilt on the same site during the time of Queen Anne, and it is said that she aided in its reconstruction. This was the ancestral home of the Lees for several generations.

Robert E. Lee, though naturally proud of his lineage, never showed great interest in the family tree. He never had the time or the inclination to study genealogy, and always said that he knew nothing of it beyond the fact that Colonel Richard Lee had come to America during the reign of Charles I. Upon having a family seal and crest made, he apologized for the seeming parade by saying, "I have thought, perhaps foolishly enough, that it might as well be right as wrong." Later, however, when approached on the subject of publishing a family history, he wrote: "I am very much obliged to Mr. ---- for the trouble he has taken in relation to the Lee genealogy. I have no desire to have it published, and do not think it would afford sufficient interest beyond the immediate family to pay for the expense. I think the money had better be appropriated to relieve the poor."

Harry Lee, Robert's father, was not only a soldier, but also a man of letters. He loved the cla.s.sics, and has left memoirs written in spirited vein. He had reached middle life, however, before Robert was born, and pa.s.sed away when the boy was eleven. It was the mother's influence--and here again we have a parallel with Washington--which was paramount in the early days. She was a Carter, of an equally old and distinguished family, and is spoken of as an amiable and gracious lady.

When Robert was still a child, his family moved to Alexandria, and very shortly his father went away on a trip for his health, from which he never returned. Between the boy and his mother the ties became very close. He was devoted to her, and on her part she said, after he went away to school, "You have been both son and daughter to me."

Long afterward, Lee alludes to this period in a letter to his own son, by way of counsel: "A young gentleman who has read Virgil must surely be competent to take care of two ladies; for before I had advanced that far I was my mother's outdoor agent and confidential messenger."

Robert Lee obtained his first schooling at the old academy in Alexandria, then taught by a Mr. Leary, who remained always his good friend. Later he attended a better known school, conducted by a strict Quaker, Benjamin Hallowell--Brimstone Castle, the boys called it, solely on account of the color of the brick walls. Hallowell himself was rarely if ever brimstone in character, though he could be stern enough on occasion. He "thee'd" and "thou'd" in the most orthodox style, and decried all warfare. Despite his pacifist teaching, however, young Lee's earliest ambition was to become a soldier. It was in his blood.

He was fond of outdoor sports, especially hunting and horseback riding.

His lifelong fondness for horses brings to mind the same trait in Grant, his later antagonist. In his older days Lee would tell with enthusiasm how as a boy he had followed the hunt, not infrequently on foot, for hours over hill and valley without tiring. Again he wrote: "I know the pleasure of training a handsome horse. I enjoy it as much as any one." His famous steed, "Traveller," was known throughout the Army of Virginia, during the War, and the sight of him caused many an eye to grow moist as he followed riderless the remains of his beloved master to their last resting place.

At the Hallowell school, Lee chiefly excelled in mathematics, a study which was later to be of great value to him, in the engineers' corps of the army. Hallowell paid a tribute to his pupil after the latter became famous, saying: "He was a most exemplary student in every respect."

One could wish, however, that instead of such idle compliments, the schoolmaster had really searched his memory and given us some personal anecdotes of Lee at school. There is actually very little on record about his early life. He seems to have grown into an attractive and likeable boy, studious, somewhat reserved, and by no means remarkable.

One kinswoman writes:

"I have often said since he entered on his brilliant career that, although we all admired him for his remarkable beauty and attractive manners, I did not see anything in him that prepared me for his so far outstripping all his compeers."

Lee's older brother, Sydney, had already entered the navy, and Lee himself decided upon the army, as his choice of profession. At the age of eighteen he applied for a cadetship at the Military Academy at West Point, and received it direct from President Andrew Jackson himself.

There is a tradition that when Lee presented himself before the hero of New Orleans, that doughty Tennessean looked him over from head to foot, then pa.s.sed him on with the terse comment, "You'll do!"

And Robert Lee did. In college he made a record that shines to this day. He was given the coveted cadet adjutancy of his corps. He graduated second in a cla.s.s of forty-six. And he did not receive a single demerit during his entire college career--for rusty gun, or cap on the floor, or late at drill, or twisted belt,--or any of the hundred and one things that are the bane and stumbling block of the West Pointer's existence. Such a record seems almost too good to be true, and one is tempted to wish for at least one escapade to enliven the narrative!

Yet Lee was by no means a prig. Even his detractors of later years never accused him of that. He was popular with his fellows and fond of the give-and-take of the drill ground. His ability to make and hold friends was one of the outstanding traits of his whole life. His men who followed him through the "Lost Cause" fairly idolized him.

General Joseph E. Johnson, another Southern leader, was a cla.s.smate of his at West Point and gives us this description of him there. "We had the same intimate a.s.sociates, who thought, as I did, that no other youth or man so united the qualities that win warm friendship and command high respect. For he was full of sympathy and kindness, genial and fond of gay conversation, and even of fun, while his correctness of demeanor and attention to all duties, personal and official, and a dignity as much a part of himself as the elegance of his person, gave him a superiority that every one acknowledged in his heart. He was the only one of all the men I have known that could laugh at the faults and follies of his friends in such a manner as to make them ashamed without touching their affection for him."

Lee graduated from West Point with the Cla.s.s of '29, and the rank of second lieutenant of engineers. His first important move after leaving school was to choose for wife Mary Custis, daughter of George Washington Parke Custis of Arlington, the last branch of the Washington family. Here again the fates linked up the names of Washington and Lee. The two homes at Arlington and Mt. Vernon were only a few miles apart on the Potomac, and as a final link in the chain we find, years after, at the close of his life, Lee giving his last efforts to building up Washington College, which was to be known thereafter as Washington and Lee.

When Mary Custis became Mrs. Robert E. Lee there was some disparity in their fortunes. She was the heiress of the Custis estate, while he was drawing only the meager pay of a second lieutenant. But such was her pride and confidence in him, that she turned her back on money and decided to live on her husband's income. It was harsh training for a time, but it fitted her to become a real helpmeet for him; and in the rigorous days of the Civil War she was glad that she had learned early to "do without."

One of Lieutenant Lee's first a.s.signments in the engineering corps was the construction of harbor defenses in Hampton Roads. As he labored to make these as strong as possible, he little dreamed that it would be his problem, a quarter of a century later, to study how he might demolish them.

From Hampton Roads he was transferred to Washington, and made a.s.sistant to the chief engineer--an agreeable change as it brought him close to his wife's home. Mounted on a favorite steed he could easily "commute"

back and forth between office and home. On one occasion it is related that he invited a brother officer, Captain Macomb, out home for the night, and as the latter had no mount, Lee took him up behind himself, and down Pennsylvania Avenue they went, saluting other officers whom they encountered, with great glee. That was one time when a commutation ticket was good for two.

Five years after graduation he had worked up to a first lieutenancy, and two years more found him a captain. In 1835 he was appointed on a commission to fix the boundary line between Michigan and Ohio. A few months later he was detailed to make an important study of the Mississippi River and Valley with a view to determining how to prevent the annual overflows with their consequent damage to property. His researches were chiefly along the upper river at Illinois. It is said that while there he was struck with the enormous potential energy of the current, and reported that if a dam were constructed at a certain place, a great storehouse of power would be possible. This was long before the day of the dynamo, by which such power could be harnessed.

Many years later, however, his dream came true, at the place he had indicated,--the great power dam nearly a mile long blocking the "Father of Waters" for the first time in his tumultuous career, at Keokuk, Iowa.

Farther down stream, above St. Louis, he began a system of river improvements which aroused no little opposition among property owners.

The dispute that arose was one of the first things which brought the name of Robert E. Lee to public attention. But despite the short-sighted protests of some citizens of St. Louis, Lee went quietly ahead and carried the work through to the permanent betterment of the city. "I was sent here to do certain work, and I shall do it," was his terse comment.

When he had completed his work on the Mississippi, he was sent to New York to complete the harbor defenses at Fort Hamilton--down at the gateway of the city. He had been made captain of engineers by this time, and was looked upon as one of the ablest men in his line of work, in the army.

It was not long before his mettle was to be tested in actual warfare.

The trouble with Mexico which had been smouldering for several years at length burst into flame. After the first victories along the border under General Zach. Taylor, a campaign from the sea was undertaken, under General Winfield Scott, who landed at Vera Cruz. The purpose was to march overland to the capital, reducing the country as they went; and to make this possible the army engineers were in demand. They answered the call gladly, for the spirit of adventure ran high, and every army officer welcomed the chance to see active service.