Everyone who has had a task they have put off feels a great sense of satisfaction when that long-neglected duty is finished.  Completing a book which you have had on your shelf, and which you have always intended to read, but just hadn’t, for whatever reason, feels much the same way.  Thus I am gratified today to have finally completed reading Memoirs of Robert E. Lee, by A.L. Long.  I wish I had discovered the treasures that it contains much sooner. 

Long was certainly qualified to write something of Lee, having served as a General of Artillery in the Army of Virginia under Lee during the Civil War.  He was thus able to share a number of personal stories and insights which occasionally shed light on controversial events.  Most often “memoirs” refer to one’s own personal reflections in an autobiography, not a biography written by another, nonetheless there were many citations from Lee’s official and personal correspondence throughout the book, which served to lend it accuracy and insight. 

Some sections of the book seemed unduly tedious, such as the rendering of lengthy, detailed correspondence.  Although these are of certain value for documentation, they do not make for late-night reading!  Other sections were of dubious value to a work that purported to be a biography of Lee, including a chapter in which the author focused on a campaign in he himself had fought – but which shed little if any light on the life and travails of Lee!  It seems that a tad of the humility and self-abnegation that characterized Lee could have rubbed off on General Long!  Regardless, it did not spoil the incredible value of the book, which was full of insightful anecdotes and stories about the heroic general.

Indeed these stories were the great value of the book.  In Lee, we find a man who lived out some of the greatest Christian qualities: humility, self-sacrifice, personal conviction, generosity, forgiveness, meekness, and all that comprise a Christian gentleman.  I was brought nigh to tears at several points during my reading, under conviction that I am not so noble a man.  Thus I would say the greatest value of the book is personal – it inspires one to strive to imitate those godly qualities with which Lee was imbued.  These same anecdotes which are so personally touching will undoubtedly touch the lives of others, so I will be very surprised if my congregation does not hear several of these stories retold in sermons by their pastor on Sundays for weeks to come!  This would be the second utility of Long’s Memoirs of Robert E. Lee in my opinion. 

Perhaps your time would be best spent in reading some of those stories and quotes instead of wading through my paltry praises of them!  Following is but some of the harvest I have gathered from a tree laden with fruit.  I trust they will be well worth your perusal:

“Indeed, on more than one occasion he refused to promote officers addicted to intoxication, saying, ‘I cannot consent to place in the control of others one who cannot control himself.’”  This sounds like something right out of Paul’s pastoral qualifications in I Timothy 3!  (Lee’s wife reported to an acquaintance that Lee had brought back a bottle of brandy which had been sent with him for the Mexican war campaign, in case of sickness – unopened!)  (p.29)

“That Lee sacrificed much in this action [turning down the supreme command of the Northern Armies to fight for the principle of states’ rights in the South]  need scarcely be said … Not ‘What will be to me most profitable?’ but ‘what does duty command?’ was the question which forced itself upon his attention, and the instant he had decided upon this vital point, all lesser considerations dropped from his mind …”.  (p. 96)

After the failure of “Pickett’s Charge” at Gettysburg – due more to the delays and lack of support of his subordinates than Lee’s strategy, Pickett came to Lee almost sobbing.  “Lee listened with his face full of sympathy … and replied, ‘Never mind, General; all this has been my fault.  It is I who have lost this fight, and you must help me get out of it the best way you can.’”  Lee was not one to assign blame to others.  (p. 296)

I shared the following in a separate blog post, but it is one of my favorites and worth repeating.  A better example of what it means to bless those who curse you (Luke 6:38) I have never seen: “I was at the battle of Gettysburg myself, and an incident occurred there which largely changed my views of the Southern people.  I had been a most bitter anti-South man, and fought and cursed the Confederates desperately.  I could see nothing good in any of them.  The last day of the fight I was badly wounded.  A ball shattered my left leg.  I lay on the ground not far from Cemetery Ridge, and as General Lee ordered his retreat he and his officers rode near me.  As he came along I recognized him, and though faint from exposure and loss of blood, I raised up my hands, looked  Lee in the face, and shouted as loud as I could, ‘Hurrah for the Union!’  The general heard me, looked, stopped his horse, dismounted, and came toward me.  I confess that I at first thought he meant to kill me.  But as he came up he looked down at me with such a sad expression upon his face that all fear left me, and I wondered what he was about.  He extended his hand to me, and grasping mine firmly and looking right into my eyes, said, ‘My son, I hope you will soon be well.’   If I live a thousand years I shall never forget the expression on General Lee’s face.  There he was, defeated, retiring from a field that had cost him and his cause almost their last hope, and yet he stopped to say words like those to a wounded soldier of the opposition who had taunted him as he passed by!  As soon as the general had left me I cried myself to sleep there upon the bloody ground.” (p. 302)

A story which displays both Lee’s attention to detail, and his remarkable management ability follows:  “On one of his daily visits to the line at Petersburg, General Lee asked one of his officers who was riding with him if a work he had ordered to be completed was finished.  The officer replied, hesitatingly, that it was.  Lee then proposed to ride to the spot and inspect it.  On arriving there he found that the work had made little progress … Lee simply remarked, ‘We must give our personal attention to the lines’ and rode on.  While doing so he began to compliment his companion on the fine charger he rode … ‘A magnificent horse indeed … but not entirely safe for Mrs. ____ to ride.  He is entirely too spirited for a lady, and I would urge you by all means to take some of the mettle out of him before you suffer your wife to ride him again.  And by the way, General, I would suggest to you that the rough paths along these trenches would be admirable ground over which to tame him.’” (p. 388)

Lee also had a very dry sense of humor.  He used to jest with his men at dinner, and used humor to soften the most difficult of times.  Under great criticism from the press for his generalship, Lee remarked that the South had made a great mistake at the beginning of the war: “In the beginning we appointed all our worst generals to command the armies, and all our best generals to edit the newspapers …”.  (pp. 401-401)

“Said one (at the decision to surrender the Army of Virginia at the end of the war) ‘Oh General, what will history say of the surrender of the army in the field?’ He replied, ‘Yes, I know they will say hard things of us; they will not understand how we were overwhelmed by numbers.  But that is not the question, Colonel; the question is, Is it right to surrender this army?  If it is right, then I will take all the responsibility.’” (p. 422)

Of his impartiality: “On one occasion he spoke highly of an officer and remarked that he ought to be promoted.  Some surprise was expressed at this, and it was said that that particular officer had sometimes spoken disparagingly of him.  ‘I cannot help that’, said the general; ‘he is a good soldier, and would be useful in a higher position.’”  (p. 435)

In a letter to his son, who was a farmer: “A farmer’s motto should be ‘Toil and trust.’”  That’s a pretty good motto for pastors and Christian workers of all kinds: toil at the work, and trust the Lord for the results!  (p. 464)

“When a minister once denounced the North in terms of excessive bitterness, General Lee followed him to the door and said, ‘Doctor, there is a good old book which I read and you preach from which says, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.”  Do you think that your remarks this evening were quite in the spirit of that teaching?’  And he added, ‘I have fought against the people of the North because I believed they were seeking to wrest from the South her dearest rights, but I have never cherished toward them bitter or vindictive feelings, and have never seen the day when I did not pray for them.’” (p. 484-5)

When criticized for not making an attack that might have salvaged his reputation early in the war, General Stark said, “’But … your reputation was suffering, the press was denouncing you, your own State was losing confidence in you …’  At the remark a smile lighted up the sad face of General Lee, and his reply was worthy of him: ‘I could not afford to sacrifice the lives of five or six hundred of my people to silence public clamor.’” (p. 494)

Perhaps one of his best observations is this last one, in a note to Jefferson Davis after the defeat at Gettysburg: “We must expect reverses, even defeats.  They are sent to teach us wisdom and prudence, to call forth greater energies, and to prevent our falling into greater disasters.” (p. 496)  May we learn to see “reverses, even defeats” in this wise and godly manner.

This book was given to me by my Aunt Betty, upon the death of her husband, and my very-beloved uncle, Bill Porter.  He loved reading history, and my library has been much enriched by the donation of this and other books to me by my Aunt.  Thus the sentimentality of Memoirs of Robert E. Lee is much increased for me – both by the inspiration of the Christian gentleman of whom it testifies, and of the fostering, godly spirit of those who loved me, and entrusted this treasure into my hands.