The Private Thoughts of a Southern Icon
Lee's Real Feelings about the Confederacy and Slavery
What happened after that?
Lee was considered a hard taskmaster. He also started hiring slaves to other families, sending them away, and breaking up families that had been together on the estate for generations. The slaves resented him, were terrified they would never be freed, and they lost all respect for him. There were many runaways, and at one point several slaves jumped him, claiming they were as free as he. Lee ordered these men to be severely whipped. He also petitioned the court to extend their servitude, but the court ruled against him and Lee did grant them their freedom on Jan. 1, 1863—ironically, the same day that Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation went into effect.
In another departure from the conventional portrait of Lee, you show him agonizing over joining the Confederacy.
Lee's decision to go with Virginia was not inevitable at all. It was very wrenching, and we trivialize it if we say, as some biographers have, that it's a no-brainer, that it was the choice he was born to make. To put it in some context, Gen. Winfield Scott remained with the Union, and he was from Virginia, and so did two fifths of all West Pointers from Virginia. Lee himself said he held on to his letter resigning from the U.S. Army for a whole day before he sent it because it was so painful. The description of Lee at home pacing and weeping and praying, trying to decide what to do is almost a Shakespearean moment.
Yet two days later, Lee accepted the offer to lead Virginia's forces.
Lee's explanation was, "I could not raise my hand against my home and my family." The irony is that many of his friends and family members sided with the North, including his sister, whom he never saw again. Her son and two of his closest cousins fought for the North. So either way, Lee would fight against members of his family, and that's why it was an impossible decision.
After the war, how did he feel about his decisions?
Lee was devastated. He was never able to give a candid assessment of his own role in the war—where he was wrong or could have done things differently—because it was too overwhelming. Outwardly, Lee conducted himself with great dignity and was a model of how to endure the unendurable and to stay in Virginia—even though his wife has lost her home, he has lost a huge number of relatives, and he has not a penny to his name. But beneath the facade, we see some explosive feelings inside. I found scraps of paper, unfinished essays, letters to cousins in Europe with quite a lot of bitterness and anger, which is not the way he has been perceived. He's a disappointed, heartsick man in old age. And it's tragic because he is an appealing figure in so many ways.
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