'Robert E. Lee: A Life' offers chance to reflect on his stature

Memorial day was Monday. This is the proper time to reflect on our "honored dead," as Lincoln called the fallen at Gettysburg.

Any definition of patriotism has to start with love of country, followed by loyalty and sacrifice for one's homeland.

And a hero? Add leadership, courage and bravery.

These are the criteria for judging the life of Robert E. Lee. Award winning Civil War and Lincoln historian Allen Guelzo opens his 2022 biography, "Robert E. Lee: A Life," addressing the central issue of treason for one of the most iconic and central figures in American history.

Guelzo ends his 434 pages calling for compassion and mercy as "the most appropriate conclusion to the crime – and glory – of Robert E. Lee after all."

I disagree. Lee's life – and his decision to lead a war against the United States – is not limited to this individual. It is about betraying one's country, especially as a soldier. It is about dead American soldiers. And it is about the four million humans held in slavery in 1861. While there is a chapter, “An Indictment for Treason," Guelzo never discusses justice. He emphasizes the "serious constitutional, legal and practical obstacles in the path of a conviction," when in May 1865 Lee was indicted.

There was no trial, of course. General Ulysses S. Grant defended the paroles he gave out at Appomattox in April, a military decision to minimize the Rebel army fading into the hills and fighting a guerilla war.

Guelzo's history is evenhanded and sympathetic. Lee's family is one of the more remarkably dysfunctional families of the early republic. His father Henry, the war hero Light Horse Harry under George Washington, failed in land speculation and fatherhood. He left Virginia when Robert was six and never saw his family again, dying, in Georgia in 1818

Robert grew up to become a career soldier, committed first to his family and always focused on stability and security. He attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, became an engineer and did not get a single demerit. He graduated second in his class in 1829.

Here began his reputation for dignity, character and physical stature.

The next year he begins his relationship with Mary Anna Randolph Curis, whose father was step-grandson to George Washington. They marry and have seven children. Guelzo follows Lee’s appointments and slow promotions in a peacetime army. When the U.S. declares war on Mexico and invades, Lee is ordered to Texas. He becomes assigned to General Winfield Scott, the Army’s general in chief.

Scott employs Lee as a scout. As an engineer, he creates routes through wilderness terrain and is essential to victories at Cerro Gordo, Coyoacan and Mexico City. Scott later said, “his success was largely due to the skill, valor and undaunted energy of Robert E. Lee.”

The war exposed Lee to the wrangling and plotting of politicians. They disgusted and outraged him, from bullying a weaker country to the inquiry into Scott, a Whig and a threat to Democratic President James Polk. Lee would later critically judge Confederate political leadership.

But Scott’s military leadership taught Lee the criticalness of taking the offensive and the advantage of “keeping the initiative firmly within one’s own hands.” Grant also realized and employed that critical insight, to head into crisis and press forward through chaos.

Guezlo tracks Lee’s career through three years as commandant at West Point, out to Texas to fight Indians and then, in October 1859, in charge of federal forces to recapture the U.S. arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia from John Brown.

The next year Abraham Lincoln was elected president in a four-way race. In December South Carolina seceded. Six states followed by February 1861. On April 18 Lee was asked to take command of the United States Army. On April 19 Virginia seceded and Lee resigned, writing “Save in defense of my may native State, I never desire again to draw my sword.

Guezlo finds Lee aligned with “a political regime whose acknowledged purpose was the preservation of a system of chattel slavery that he knew to be an evil and for which he felt little affection and whose constitutional basis he dismissed as a fiction.”

Lee lived primarily in the north throughout his career. But his family and his wife’s were Virginia bred. First and last, family dominated Lee’s life and it was for his family that Lee committed to Virginia and the confederacy.

Lee’s military genius lay in his understanding that only by invading and gaining victories in the North would northern civilian support for the war collapse. In 1862 and 1863 Lee brought the Army of Northern Virginia to Antietam and then Gettysburg. But a combination of superior forces and inferior subordinate commanders prevented victory.

In August 1865 the surprise offer of the presidency of Washington College, in Lexington, Virginia was made and Lee accepted. That became his last stand and victory. He turned a small, struggling and insignificant institution around. But his health was not good. He probably had two heart attacks during the Civil War. In September 1870 he had a stroke and died Oct. 12, 1870. He was 63.