Robert E. Lee, George Peabody, and Sectional Reunion

Abstract

In the Reconstruction years some of the few centers of Southern culture were the Springs of Virginia. At White Sulphur Springs in August, 1869, occurred the earliest gesture of friendliness the South made toward the North after the Civil War. Robert E. Lee and George Peabody were the chief actors in this drama. Lee, Virginian and West-Pointer, had chosen to lead the Confederate Army in war. Peabody, Northern-born banker with many Southern friends, had supported the Union financially. Now, after the war and in their old age, both men had turned to the reviving power of education. Spurning many lucrative business offers, Lee had preferred to become president in 1865 of impoverished Washington College in Lexington, Virginia. Disdaining a life of extravagance his wealth made possible, Peabody had climaxed his career by creating a multimillion dollar education fund for the defeated Southern and Southwestern states. For Lee at sixty-two this was next to the last summer of life; for Peabody at seventyfour it was the very last summer of life. It was by pure coincidence that Peabody, Lee, and eight other former Confederate generals and several prominent educators gathered at the Old White Sulphur Springs that summer. Peabody had arrived from Massachusetts by way of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore on July 23, about two weeks before Lee. Peabody was very feeble, crippled with rheumatism so that he could hardly walk, and suffering badly