Re-Enactors World

Shared by Allen Farley
Ministering to the Civil War Re-enacting Community Since 1984
Celebrating over 20 Years of Ministry

After the War Between the States, Gen. Robert E. Lee
accepted the presidency of a struggling college in the
remote Shenandoah Valley village of Lexington, Va. The
war had crippled Virginia's economy and, along with it, the
prospects of Washington College. The school's buildings and
library had suffered extensive damage and pillaging during
Union Gen. David Hunter's raid in June 1864. Only four of
the school's professors remained, and the student body had
dwindled to 40 young men. Though the school's rich history
included an endowment of stock by George Washington, its
outlook seemed rather dismal.
But Lee was accustomed to lost causes. He already had
rejected an offer to be vice chancellor of the University of
the South at Sewanee, Tenn., and had also spurned
suggestions that he consider a position at the University of
Virginia.
In a letter to Washington College's board of trustees,
accepting their offer, Lee wrote: "I pray I may be spared to
accomplish something for the benefit of mankind and the
honor of God." It seemed as though Lee felt a kindred spirit
to the broken-down college in the sleepy little village.
They had much in common.
After Lee accepted the position in Lexington, an English
nobleman offered him a job with an annual salary of $50,000
— substantially more than the $1,500 Lee was to be paid by
Washington College. Lee rejected the offer and, with his
ever-present spirit of self-denial, humbly replied: "I
cannot leave my present position. I have a self-imposed
task. I have led the young men of the South in battle. I
must now teach their sons to discharge their duty in life."
This self-denial had already led Lee to make one of the
most famous self-sacrificing decisions in history. After
President Lincoln offered Lee the command of the Union
forces on the eve of the war, Lee spent much of the night of
April 19, 1861, in prayer. The fruit of Lee's prayers was
his rejection of Lincoln's offer. As Pulitzer Prize-winning
author Douglas Southall Freeman would write, "It was the
decision Lee was born to make."
But now, the war was over and Lee's desire to teach the
Southern sons of his day "to discharge their duty in life"
consumed the final years of the South's best-known icon.
Lee's commitment to the young men under his charge was so
intense that he was, at times, visibly moved.
On one occasion, upon leaving a chapel prayer service, a
friend noticed that something was troubling Lee. The friend
inquired if there was anything wrong. Lee replied, "I was
thinking of my responsibility to Almighty God for these
hundreds of young men."
On another occasion, the Rev. Dr. James L. Kirkpatrick,
professor of moral philosophy at the college, told of a
similar incident regarding Lee's concern for his young men:
"We had been conversing for some time respecting the
religious welfare of the students. General Lee's feelings
soon became so intense that for a time his utterance was
choked; but, recovering himself, with his eyes overflowed
with tears, his lips quivering with emotion and both hands
raised, he exclaimed: 'Oh Doctor! If I could only know that
all the young men in the college were good Christians, I
should have nothing more to desire."
Lee's efforts had a dramatic impact upon the student
body of Washington College, and his influence has echoed
through subsequent generations. One of Lee's former
students, C.W. Hedger, wrote: "Of all men I have ever
known, I think General R.E. Lee by far the greatest example
as a soldier, a citizen ... and a Christian gentleman. As
President, he displayed distinguished ability, showing his
greatness of soul not only by refusing many far more
lucrative positions that he might be of more benefit to the
rising generation, but also by his interest in all the
students, financing some of them through college, and
looking after the physical, mental, moral, and spiritual
welfare."
Lee's word among his students was law. Rarely did a young
man summoned to his office find occasion to return. One
student wrote that Lee's "personal and professional
sublimity drew them unanimously and grappled their souls
with hooks of steel."
So respected and revered was his character and influence
that many spoke of Lee as they would their own father and
said they would rather have died than disappoint him. Lee's
influence was so profound that it once enabled him to quell
a vengeful mob and prevent a lynching.
A popular young student had gotten into an argument with
a black man in Lexington, and the student was shot. As the
news spread, a brother of the wounded youth rounded up 400
students and captured the black man. The mob dragged the
accused with a rope around his neck to the courthouse square
for a public hanging. Local authorities tried in vain to
reason with the would-be executioners.
As the scene spiraled out of control, Lee suddenly appeared.
An immediate hush fell over the assembled crowd. Stepping
into the midst of the impassioned body of students, Lee
calmly but authoritatively said, "Young gentlemen, let the
law take its course." The situation was instantly defused,
and the life of the man was saved. Even after Lee's death
in 1870, his influence on the lives he had touched
continued. The Rev. C.C. Brown, also a former student of
Lee's, would write:
"I went often to his grave beneath the chapel to look
upon it and reflect upon his greatness; and to this day,
after fifty years have passed, I can say from a grateful
heart, I am glad I was able to look upon the form of Robert
E. Lee and to hear the sound of his living voice."
Lee's impact reached far beyond Washington College —
even earning praise from U.S. presidents.
"It is a notable thing that we see when we look back to
men of this sort. ... In the midst of that crimson field
stands this gentle figure, — a man whom you remember not
as a man who loved war, but as a man moved by all the high
impulses of gentle kindness, a man whom men did not fear,
but loved; a man in whom everybody who approached him marked
singular gentleness, singular sweetness, singular modesty,
— none of the pomp of the soldier, but all the simplicity
of the gentleman," President Wilson wrote.
Due to the sheer force and strength of Lee's Christian
character, he was able to attain that most elusive of life's
accomplishments — the respect and admiration of even his
enemies. Upon receipt of Lee's desire to surrender, Gen.
Ulysses S. Grant would write:
"My own feelings, which had been quite jubilant on
receipt of Lee's letter, were sad and depressed. I felt like
anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who
had fought so long and so valiantly and had suffered so much
for a cause."
And, as he was retreating from Gettysburg, Lee and his
staff rode past a wounded Union soldier. As they passed, the
man raised a defiant fist in the air and shouted, "Hurrah
for the Union." Lee reined in his horse and slowly
dismounted. The soldier was sure Lee meant to kill him. But
as the defeated warrior approached, the wounded man noted "a
sad expression upon his face." Lee knelt down, grasped his
enemy's hand firmly, looked him in the eye and said, "My
son, I hope you will soon be well." Speechless and
overcome with the power of such a gesture of humility and
compassion, the humbled soldier would later write, "As soon
as the General had left me, I cried myself to sleep there
upon the bloody ground."
Despite politically correct efforts to rob our nation's
young men of Lee's influence, his inspiration continues to
this day. Each year, thousands of tourists visit Lee Chapel
on the campus of Washington and Lee University in Lexington,
and Lee remains one of the most respected and honored
figures in American history. Judge John Brockenbrough's
words announcing Lee's appointment as president of
Washington College remain relevant today:
"Let the young men of this country, North as well as
South, be wise, and profit not less by his precepts than by
his great example."