A Portrait in Letters (Newly Discovered Robert E. Lee)

The Washington Post ^ | July 12, 2007 | Peter Carlson

[RDTF]

Two old steamer trunks sit in the rare-book room at the Virginia Historical Society, looking worn and forlorn. The smaller one was once red but the paint has faded to a dull rust. The larger one is brown with a piece of tin patching a hole in the top. On one side, a name is stenciled: "M. LEE."

That's Mary Custis Lee, Gen. Robert E. Lee's adventurous eldest daughter. In 1917, she stored these wooden trunks in the "silver vault" in the basement of Burke & Herbert Bank & Trust in Alexandria. A year later, she died at the age of 83. Her trunks sat in a dusty corner of the vault for 84 years, unclaimed, until E. Hunt Burke, the bank's vice chairman, discovered them in 2002.

Burke called his high school classmate Rob E.L. deButts Jr., who is Robert E. Lee's great-great-grandson. Together, the two men descended into the vault. Burke carried a basket of old keys.

"The first one I pulled out was a perfect fit," he says.

The trunks were stuffed with Lee family papers -- a priceless cache of 4,000 letters, photographs and documents. DeButts carted them to the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond, which houses the world's largest collection of Lee papers. He spent a week there, sitting at a desk in the research library, reaching into Mary Custis Lee's trunks and picking out treasures and trash.

-snip-

[RDTF]

look pal, that wasn’t me, and you personally attacked my religeous beliefs. Enough already and get lost.

[Religion Moderator]

Knock it off!

[don-o]

bfl

I have a book of some of Lee's letters. Found in a store in Kennesaw, I believe. (Wildman's Trading Post? Does that ring a bell with anyone?)

I had it rebound and gave it to my daddy and when he died, Mama gave it back to me.

[khnyny]

LOL.

[Zionist Conspirator]

look pal, that wasn’t me, and you personally attacked my religeous beliefs. Enough already and get lost.

If I recall correctly, the exchange of posts between us was begun by you. I only got into this thing when some "palaeo" henotheist attacked morality. I did not respond to you, I responded to him. Then you chime in to tell me you're going to run me off this thread? What am I to assume but that you are also opposed to objective, universal morality?

And if your "chr*stianity" is purely utilitarian and culturally determined, then you don't have a religion to attack!

[GretchenM]

Just caught this at the source link:

“Correction to This Article
An earlier version of this article in print and on the Web incorrectly identified the subject as Mary Lee Custis.”

The article is about Mary Custis Lee.

[billbears]

So were the original chr*stian missionaries who converted your heathen ancestors

LOL, my ancestors on one side were French Huguenots. The original Calvinists.

Yep, you're a "palaeo" through and through. And that's not a compliment.

Good. A compliment coming from a nut would disturb me

The utilitarian (and ultimately secular) "civilizationist" defense of religion is an insult to everyone who actually believes in G-d.

Oh I believe in God alright (there's an 'o' in the middle of the word) but freedom under Christ doesn't require me to live under the law as you would desire. You want to set up a nation of religious law. And there's nothing in the Bible, the Constitution, nor any of the Framers (even that worthless bum Hamilton) that would advocate that.

[RDTF]

post 75 was clearly to me and any one can see that. I do hope you are thrilled that you have successfully ruined this enjoyable thread.

[Zionist Conspirator]

post 75 was clearly to me and any one can see that. I do hope you are thrilled that you have successfully ruined this enjoyable thread.

My original post (#37) was a direct response to the poster who attacked morality. I never posted a thing to you until you inserted yourself.

What a dishonest person you are. And you call yourself an admirer of General Lee?

[RDTF]

what year was it printed?

[TheInvisibleMan]

‘you mean the DU’

You are sooo right. However, most people will not venture there without protective garments.

Sadly, a few here wrap themselves in a ‘conservative’ guise to further their ‘darker’ unspoken views. These views are so transparent that the brighter members of the DBM easily pick up on them and paint the entire forum with this brush.

[Zionist Conspirator]

Oh I believe in God alright (there's an 'o' in the middle of the word) but freedom under Christ doesn't require me to live under the law as you would desire. You want to set up a nation of religious law. And there's nothing in the Bible, the Constitution, nor any of the Framers (even that worthless bum Hamilton) that would advocate that.

First of all, Alexander Hamilton was one of the Founding Fathers who wrote the Constitution (which Jefferson was not). He was also the principal author of the Federalist Papers, without which the Constitution would probably have never been adopted at all. Naturally the people who opposed the adoption of the Constitution advocated "strict constructionism" once they lost that fight! And I note your refusal to come to terms with the fact that George Washington was a Hamiltonian Federalist?

Second, your ancestors would not have been Calvinists or chr*stians of any sort if at some point in the past some "trouble-making moralizers" hadn't told them that their traditional religious beliefs were objectively wrong and should be rejected in favor of what the missionaries saw as the true religion.

And third, your remarks about the law are so much nonsense. You yourself believe in law. John Calvin believed in the law. If you didnt' believe in G-d's Law, you wouldn't be opposed to "gay marriage." No, Calvinists believe in the Law and the obligation to live by it (John Calvin himself obligated even the "lost" to attend services, although he didn't permit them to participate in them); they just don't think it should have any bearing on what happens to you after you're dead. In essence you're bound by the law (as Calvinists conceive it) during life, after which you go are either saved or damned depending on whether or not you are among the elect. But you are certainly bound by G-d's Laws!

Abortion and "gay marriage" are wrong because they violate G-d's Laws, not because they are contrary to local custom! Do you think the British should have allowed hindus in nineteenth century India to burn widows after the death of their husbands? That was their local custom!

Unfortunately, "palaeos" seem to have the strange idea that they are anarchists and that "G-d's Law" is somehow the source of the perverse "morality" of Communists and liberals. It is not. That's like blaming Communism on millenarianism/messianism (you don't do that too, do you?). Liberals and Communists love law, all right, they just hate G-d, and therefore oppose His Laws. How can any conservative who believes in the almost unlimited human potential for evil believe that morality is a spontaneously developed "local custom" and that "law" can only coerce immorality?

The conservative coalition has some mighty disparate elements, but none so disparate as Fundamentalists and Civilizationists. And I have news for you--in the current South civilizationists are highly outnumbered by Fundamentalists, and I pray to G-d that will always be the case!

[billbears]

"He'd pull out a pile of her postcards and then he'd pull out something from the Colonial period and then he'd pull out letters from Robert E. Lee," says Lee Shepard, the society's senior archivist. "There was no rhyme or reason to it. She was the unofficial family historian, but she was also a bit of a pack rat."

I've got people like this in my own family. When my grandparents moved out of their house into a rest home unfortunately I wasn't there. I fear probably a lot of letters, etc. that could have added more to my family's history was tossed out like last week's paper.

But imagine, letters and memorabilia from literally two different eras. It's one thing to see them in a museum but that she kept them. Like a personal connection to the beginning.

[don-o]

what year was it printed?

I don't recall. Posting from work. I'll try to find it when I get home and post back.

[Billthedrill]

Living history. Incredible stuff. I'd have given a lot to be the guy to put the key in that lock and hear it click...whoa...

The real pleasure I get from reading that sort of period stuff - and I hope this doesn't sound petty - is that the people writing it were literate and for the most part that despite the hundred and a half years between, what you understand is precisely what they meant to express. I don't think you could say that about most modern newspapers, and those folks are paid to write that stuff.

Lee cutting his own stars off is an act rich in possible symbolisms and interpretations. Perhaps in one of those letters he mentions it, but what little I know of the character of this most private man suggests not.

[Non-Sequitur]

Lee’s view is historically accurate. Lincoln claimed it was a ‘victory’ for the simple reason he was desperate to offer up the Emancipation Proclamation.

Except for the part about being outnumbered two or three to one, or about being beaten. Lee was forced to retreat and return to Viginia. His goal of attracting Maryland recruits to his army was a failure. And most importantly it showed to the European powers that the Union was not on the verge of defeat, thus ending forever what slim hope of foreign recognition there had been. By all accounts Antietam wound up being a disaster for the confederacy.

[wideawake]

Thanks for pointing out that Hamilton's Federalists, defenders of the Constitution and of the new Federal government, as well as opponents of the French Revolution, were the original American conservatives.

And all attempts at Christian antinomianism founder on Paul's epistles.

[GretchenM]

Mary Custis Lee (found here)

Known as "Daughter" or "Sister" to her family, Mary spent her most of her life traveling around the country and later the world. During the out break of the Civil War she was at home. She helped to pack up and leave Arlington house the beloved home of her mother and her childhood. Mary managed to get herself stuck behind enemy lines for close to a year, which grieved her father sorely. She was independent and outspoken for a woman of her time. Mary never married but did have many suitors. The most famous of which is JEB Stuart. Even though nothing came of the romance while at West Point they remained good friends until his death in May of 1864.

[derllak]

You gotta wonder just how poor their health was, living into their 80’s.

[Smittie]

His military brillance, his character, his love of his country, Virginia are all unmentionables.

There's plenty of people here at FR who'll accuse you of being racist if you you mention any positive attributes of Lee as well. I'm just surprised to scroll down this far without someone flaming Lee & anyone who said any good thing about Lee.