"The Sweet & The Bitter": General Lee's Last Days

by Diana Loski

General Robert E. Lee (1807-1870)

(Library of Congress)

When the Confederates laid down their arms at Appomattox, Robert E. Lee was just fifty-eight years old. Considered in those days beyond middle-age, Lee nevertheless should have enjoyed many more years of life. The war had taken its toll upon the devoted Virginian, and its outcome affected him mentally and emotionally as well as with his physical hardships. “He was exhausted in body,” wrote his biographer Douglas Southall Freeman, “heavy of heart, and troubled for the future of the defeated Southern people.”¹

As a paroled prisoner of war, Lee was careful not to violate the law of the nation to which he had surrendered. On May 5, 1865, General Meade visited Lee, and persuaded him to take the oath of allegiance. Meade said that others would follow suit, helping the country to heal more quickly. Lee demurred, preferring to wait and see how the new President would treat the conquered South before he did so. The two generals parted amicably. Meade later remarked that he felt “really sad to think of his [Lee’s] position, his necessities, and the difficulties which surrounded him.”²

Because he lost his home at Arlington which was confiscated during the war, Lee was essentially homeless. In February 1866 Lee passed by his old home across the Potomac and gazed sadly at it for a period of time. He left, and never went back. Soon, an offer for employment came to him that he felt he could accept. It was the position of President of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia. It provided honorable employment and a home in which he and his family could live. He spent his remaining years there, rebuilding, repairing and expanding the college – and attempted to recover what was left of his life. He was invigorated by the influx of youth at the college and their visits to him. “You can work for Virginia,” he told them, “to build her up again…We failed but in the good Providence of God, apparent failure proves a blessing.” He often resigned his fate to being the will of God: “Knowing that our God mixes in the cup he gives us to drink in this World, the sweet and the bitter.” For Lee, most of his final years were filled with the latter.³

In the midst of what he perceived as failure was the painful memory of Gettysburg. Known even while the war continued as a pivotal point in the conflict, Lee’s most famous fight was still on the minds of many in the South, even years after the war had ended.

Lee came to Washington to testify before Congress in 1866. Congress wanted to determine if former Confederates were willing to pledge loyalty to the Union, if they were open to permitting the black vote, and if Reconstruction was viable so soon after Appomattox. The former commander testified for two days, promising that animosity among Virginians, at least, was minimal. In Washington, Lee was a celebrity, mobbed by crowds whenever he appeared in public. One Confederate veteran, who boldly gained access to Lee, asked him, “What was the reason you failed to gain the victory at Gettysburg?” Lee replied, “That would be a long story.” He refused to elaborate.⁴

As his heart disease grew more severe, with failing health and bearing up against the heavy burden at the cost of war, Lee made a final pilgrimage through the South. His visited the graves of his father, a Revolutionary War hero, and his beloved daughter, Anne, in Georgia; he visited President Grant at the White House, and made a trek to Shirley Plantation, the home of his youth. “It was the loved home of my mother,” Lee remembered, “and a spot where I have passed many happy days of my early life.” The general seemed markedly depressed upon his return home.⁵

Once he arrived back in Lexington, Lee spent most of the time remaining in partial seclusion, avoiding crowds as much as possible. Several publishers, from the deep South to New York, approached him to encourage a memoir, but he refused them all. Not only was he not up to the mammoth task, due to his weakened physical condition, but “the destruction, or loss, of all the returns from the army embarrasses me very much,” he said. “I think it wisest not to keep open the sores of war.”⁶

During his last years, however, Lee often talked about Gettysburg with his close friends. To Harry Heth, Lee insisted that invading Pennsylvania had been “a sound policy”, even though “mistakes had been made.” To Colonel William Allan, a Virginian who had served on the staff of Stonewall Jackson, Lee said he “found himself engaged with the Federal army unexpectedly and had to fight…[and that] victory would have been won if he could have gotten one decided, simultaneous attack on the whole line.” To Jubal Early, he wrote that it was “difficult” to explain Gettysburg and the war in general, “to get the world to understand the odds against which we fought.” To others, among them Professor White at Washington College, he confided, “If I had had [General] Jackson with me, so far as man can see, I should have won the Battle of Gettysburg.”⁷

Because Lee did not want to cast blame on any subordinate, at least publicly, for the loss at Gettysburg, and he did not wish to prolong the acrimony against what could have been, Lee remained silent and away from the public. He once confided to his wife that “At present the public mind is not prepared to receive the truth.” That truth, in part, was the knowledge he held and the guilt he felt for the terrible loss of human life, not just the men who fought under his command, but of all the suffering, loss, and waste caused by the war – a war he lost. Although the loss was not entirely up to him, Lee nevertheless felt that way. It was a terrible burden to carry.⁸

In late September 1870, over five years after the guns of war had grown silent, a raging thunderstorm struck the town of Lexington. Lee forced himself to go out into the storm, walking across the campus to meet with others about funding for a new steeple for the college chapel. Lee predicted that the meeting would not go well, and he was correct. He walked home through the drenching rain. Exhausted, Lee, who was always punctual, arrived home late. His wife gently chided him for his tardiness. As he sat at the table for tea, he usually said grace before eating any meal, but he found that he could not speak. Mrs. Lee offered him a cup of tea, insisting that a sip would make him feel better, but the general could not take it. His family put him to bed and summoned the doctor. Diagnosed with a cerebral congestion, Lee remained bedfast for two weeks, hovering between life and death. Though he managed to speak a few times, most of those days were silent ones. Lee’s daughter, Mildred, commented that her father “would lay straight and motionless, gasping with that solemn, unutterable look into the flames we placed on the hearth…& the words seemed frozen in all our mouths. He was speechless, and so were we.”⁹

On October 8, 1870, Lee refused any nourishment or medicine. When his daughter Agnes urged him to take both, he waved away the spoon and weakly uttered, “It is no use.” His son, Custis, asked him to try and get better, but Lee shook his head, and silently pointed upward.¹⁰

As Lee lapsed into unconsciousness, his family kept the vigil. Three of his grown children, Rooney, Robert Jr. and Mary were away when they heard the news of their father’s dangerous condition. They attempted to reach home, but severe storms and flooded areas prevented them. Only Lee’s wife, Mary, his eldest son Custis, and daughters Mildred and Agnes were present during Lee’s last days. “His mind [was] wandering back to those dreadful battlefields,” daughter Mildred remembered. The family heard him say, “Strike the tent.” The next day, October 10, Lee regained consciousness but said nothing, unable to speak. He died quietly on the morning of October 12, at 9:30 a.m. He was 63 years old, but the toll of the war made him appear much older.¹¹

The consistent floods made obtaining a coffin difficult. Two days after Lee’s passing, a young man noticed a coffin floating near an island outside of town. Hastening to the spot, the coffin was procured. Lee was buried in it, in the chapel on the college grounds – the chapel that now bears his name. Interestingly, the man whose passing was lamented the most of his subordinates, Thomas J. Jackson, is also buried in Lexington, not far from the grave of his commander.¹²

Though Gettysburg appeared to be the bane of Lee’s life, causing the eventual demise of the Confederacy, General Lee had helped his Confederate brethren to overcome an even greater seemingly unsurmountable obstacle.

Though Abraham Lincoln is remembered, and rightly, for the salvation of the United States, there is another who deserves tribute for his own role in helping the nation to mend. Perhaps it was destiny that Robert E. Lee was the commander of the most famous of the Confederate armies, and the man to whom the populace in the South looked for guidance. His refusal to continue with guerilla warfare when faced with certain defeat at Appomattox, his silence to keep from perpetuating the wounds of war, and his gracious exhortations to help the South regain their standing in the new Union, did indeed help to bring the nation back together – just as General Meade had predicted. No other nation, before or since, has ever accomplished such a healing and renewal of union. That, in part, was Robert E. Lee’s contribution. And it cost him dearly, ending his life far sooner than it might have been.

Sources: Cleaves, Freeman. Meade of Gettysburg. Norman, OK: The University of Oklahoma Press, 1960. The Confederate Veteran, vol. XVI, 1908. Copy, Gettysburg National Military Park (hereafter GNMP). Freeman, Douglas Southall. R.E. Lee. Vols. III and IV. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1940, 1945. Freeman, Douglas Southall. “Morale in the Confederate Army.” Speech, given Oct. 26, 1939, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA. Copy, GNMP. Pryor, Elizabeth Brown. Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters. New York: Viking Press, 2007. Trudeau, Noah Andre. “Unwritten History: Why Didn’t Lee Write His Memoirs?” Civil War Times, August 2010.

End Notes: 

1. Freeman, Vol. IV, p. 188. 

2. Cleaves, p. 338. 

3. Freeman, Vol. IV, pp. 483, 257. 

4. Ibid., p. 250-251. 

5. Freeman, “Morale in the Confederate Army”, Copy GNMP. Although Lee’s father was originally buried on an island in Georgia, his remains are now next to his son’s at the Lee, Chapel in Lexington, Virginia. 

6. Trudeau, p. 57. Freeman, vol. IV, p. 483. 

7. Freeman, vol. III, pp. 160-161., vol. IV, p. 475. Trudeau, p.56. 

8. Trudeau, p. 56. 

9. Ibid. p. 463. A cerebral congestion is synonymous with a stroke, caused by high blood pressure  and too much fluid on the brain. 

10. Freeman, vol. IV, p. 490. 

11. Pryor, pp. 463-464. 

12. The Confederate Veteran, vol. XVI, p. 645.