@panzade,
I agree with it. When Lee took up his post at Washington College (now Washington and Lee University), several (relatively) young former officers came voluntarily to act as his "military family" (which is how southern officers often referred to their military staff--a quixotic notion for a body of men whose purpose was to find the best way to slaughter their enemies). Among them was William Preston Johnston, whom Lee had invited to come to the college to be a professor (Johnston later acted as President of Lousiana State University and Tulane University). His father, Albert Sidney Johnston, had been considered the best of the southern soldiers in 1861, and his name was first on the promotion list to "full" general when the C S Congress authorized the rank--that made him the ranking general officer in the South. He died of a wound at Shiloh (a stupid, needless death, too, because none of his "military family" apparently thought of putting a tourniquet on his leg while someone found a surgeon--so Johnston bled to death).
That did not leave Lee the ranking general in the South, but it left him as the highest ranking southerner to retain his reputation (although at the of A. S. Johnston's death, many were still calling him "Granny" Lee or "the King of Spades" because he actually made white men dig trenches). After the war, the best candidate for genuine military hero from the South, Thomas Jackson, had been dead for almost two years. If for no other reason, Lee became the military hero of the South by default.
All of these young former officers wrote reminiscences of their conversations with Lee, but W. P. Johnston kept notes at the time, and became the accepted "authority" on Lee's oral "memoirs." Lee did not write any memoirs. The Lee version of events (as revealed truth from the scripture of W. P. Johnston) became the accepted version of events, the more so as Lee was considered an exemplary gentleman, who never spoke ill of anyone, even of his enemies. Johnston wrote a life of his father, but never one of Lee, and his notes on his conversastions with Lee were only seen by a handful of people before his death.
One of them was Jubal Early. Jubal Anderson Early had served throughout the war, and after the surrender of Lee and Joe Johnston, he fled to Texas, but found no coherent Confederate force, and so by way of Mexico and Cuba he finally settled in Toronto. After being pardoned by Andrew Johnson, he returned to Virginia, and the occasional practice of law. He was what was usually referred to as an "unreconstructed rebel," and an early proponent of the "Lost Cause" myth. In the terms of that myth, the hagiography of Lee was very important, and Early toured the South delivering the gospel to the veterans of the war and their families, eager to hear of their own excellence and nobility, even in defeat. Lee and Early had not actually gotten along well during the war, although Lee trusted Early in the military missions he gave him, and not unreasonably.
To assuage their shame, the veterans of the war in the South embraced the "Lost Cause" myth enthusiastically, and the image of the southern soldier as bold cavalier and
preux chevalier, with Lee as the most "
preux" of them all.
In this post earlier in this thread, i also looked at the Lost Cause myth and Lee's actual military performance. Douglas Southall Freeman was a journalist in Richmond, and in the 1930s (don't have the book to hand for an exact date), he wrote a paper which very accurately criticized the military performance of the South. The strategic defense with which the insistence of state governors that every inch of soil be defended meant that literally tens of thousands of regulars and militia sat out the war contributing nothing. One Federal staff officer writing just after the war stated that 15,000 regulars and militia alone sat on their hands in Florida throughout the war. Most state militias only became involved when the regular forces had been routed, and they were completely unable to deal with the veteran Federal troops who just brushed them aside, if they were smart enough to skedaddle--otherwise they were annihilated. When Sherman followed Hood south from Atlanta, and arrived in Milledgeville (then the capital of Georgia), they found about 40,000 stand of muskets and an equal number of new uniforms--at a time when so many veteran Confederate soldiers marched the roads in their bare feet and wearing rags. He also criticized the insistence on the tactical offensive, savagely attacking the Yankees wherever they found them in their territory. (See the earlier post for the mention of the book
Attack and Die.)
But that would never do, not in the South of the 1930s, and it especially wouldn't have done in the 1880s when Freeman was born, a son of a veteran of the Army of Northern Virginia. Freeman soon changed his tune, and he became the great modern biographer of Lee, with his four volume biography, followed by his three volume study,
Lee's Lieutenants. In much of the Old South, Lee's birthday was a state holiday. One spoke ill of him at one's peril.
As i said, in the earlier linked post i have given my criticisms of Lee as a commander. I also briefly referred to my belief that the war slightly unhinged him. He wore the rank ensigna of a colonel while on Confederate service, the highest rank which he had attained in the United States Army before resigning.
Note Lee's collar insignia, three stars. In Confederate service, that was the rank insignia of a colonel. Furthermore, he referred to the Federal troops, never as Federal troops (except in correspondence) nor as the United States army, but usually as "those people over there." More odd still was how he referred to the enemy officers. He would occasionally refer to the commander of the Army of the Potomac as "General," but he usually simply used their last name. He also referred to Federal generals by their rank in the "old army." When some matrons in Culpeper, Virginia complained that young women in the town had attended balls given by the Yankees when they had occupied the area, Lee replied that he thought it a harmless enough entertainment, and that "I know the Major, and he will have nothing but gentlemen around him." He was actually referring to an officer who was a Major General in Federal service. During the battle of Chancellorsville, a chaplain rode up to Lee's headquarters all in a lather to report that Federal troops had taken Fredericksburg and were driving on his flank. He replied: "I have just sent General McLaws (CS Major General Lafayette McLaws) to call on Major Sedgwick." Sedgwick had been a Major in the old army, but now held the rank of Major General.
During the Wilderness campaign, when Lee learned that James Longstreet had been wounded, he became distraught, and suddenly rode towad the firing line. Seeing Field's division, and the Texas brigade moving toward the sound of the guns on the Orange Plank Road, he took off his hat, waving it and shouting: "Hurrah for Texas, Hurrah for Texas, I will lead you, boys." This was very uncharacteristic, and the Texans stopped in the road and began shouting: "Lee to the rear, Lee to the rear." Several NCOs ran out the ranks and took the reins of Lee's horse, and lead him to the rear. I have no doubt in my mind that he contemplated suicide by combat.
Much of Lee's behavior in that war was very strange, quite apart from his poor to non-existent staff work, and i have become convinced that the war deeply affected his mind.
