Constructing the Cause, Bridging the Divide: Lee's Tomb at Washington's College

Abstract

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] As Robert E. Lee lay dying on morning of October 12, 1870, some 16,000 Union soldiers moldered in their graves outside front doors of Arlington House. The Lees' beloved family home had been passed down to them from George Washington Parke Custis, popularly known as the child of Mount Vernon because he was George Washington's only (adopted) son. Custis had built estate to be a memorial to first president and a repository of his belongings. In this spectacular and historic home on banks of Potomac River, G. W. and Mary Fitzhugh Custis reared their only surviving child, Mary Anna Randolph Custis. In June 1831, Mary Anna stood in family parlor at Arlington and married a dashing young army officer by name of Robert Edward Lee. And for next thirty years Lees called Arlington House home. Yet in 1861, Union troops who commandeered property were far less concerned about plantation's storied connection to George Washington than they were its status as family home of Lees. As a gesture of spite towards man who crowned his career by deserting his flag at moment of his country's sorest need, Union Army began using grounds immediately surrounding house as a military cemetery. When Lee surrendered at Appomattox, there were already 1,800 Union dead from First Manassas buried in his wife's rose garden. (1) Unable ever to return home, Lees became comfortable refugees in Lexington, Virginia. The general had accepted presidency of Washington College in 1865. The college trustees built a new home for Lee Family on edge of campus, and general and his wife lived there for remainder of their days. Yet home never belonged to Lees; they were never more than permanent guests. Had his life followed trajectory it appeared to be on in, say, 1858, Lee would have grown old at Arlington House, surrounded by relics of Washington's life. He would have died there and been buried there in same earth that shrouded remains of his in-laws. There he would have been forever linked with his illustrious kin. But Robert E. Lee died 150 miles away from Arlington House. Interment in its grounds, now filled with Union dead, was impossible. To his immediate family, and perhaps even more so to white population of South that considered him pater patriae of Confederacy, federal government's final insult kept Lee from assuming his rightful resting place and therefore his rightful place in history and legend: in lineage, in word and deed, only right and true heir to Washington. Something would have to be done. The deeply personal troubles of Lee Family in October 1870 were in some way a microcosm of hardships faced by their culture at large. Former Confederates, especially those of Lee's socio-economic background, knew all too well constant struggle between humiliating realities of defeat and unquenchable desire to vindicate their history. This dichotomy was perhaps best summed up by Father Abram Ryan, priest and poet laureate of Confederacy. Ryan often told a favorite story about a visit to his brother's home in Virginia in years following war. Early one morning, while passing through family's dining room, he found his young niece standing before a painting of Crucifixion. He picked up small girl and asked her if she could identify wicked men who were crucifying their Savior. Much to his chagrin child instantly replied, Oh yes, I know, and informed him that, in fact, it was the Yankees who were responsible for deed. (2) Ryan's repeated telling of such a tale, and more importantly child's response at center of it, indicates extent to which former Confederates were engaged in cultural transformation of meaning of their defeat. Martial defeat quickly gave way to what Richmond Daily Examiner editor Edward Pollard celebrated as a war of ideas. …