Historical Highlight: “Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee”

Historical Highlight: “Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee”
A century-old book review by William Taylor Thom, Class of 1869

Sponsored by The Generals Redoubt

[The following highlight pulls from the first volume of the Alumni Magazine of Washington and Lee University, in November 1924. Author and alumnus William Thom recommends the revised edition of “Recollections,” originally published by Robert E. Lee’s youngest son in 1904. 

Critics of the early-twentieth century commended the book (available HERE) for its intimate look at both the life and character of Robert E. Lee. While modern scholars have been more skeptical, few books have held as fundamental a role in understanding Robert E. Lee.]

(A statue of Robert E. Lee stands next to his son’s recollections | SOURCE: The Spectator)

In accordance with your request I send you a few words on the reprint of Captain R. E. Lee’s “Recollections” of his father, General Robert E. Lee.

Last winter I learned that the “Recollections” was out of print. I at once wrote to Messrs. Doubleday, Page and Company, protesting against allowing a book so valuable to the moral health of the country to become inaccessible. 

After due consideration Doubleday and Company decided to issue a reprint, and the book will appear in the near future, at $5.00 a copy. In addition to the “Letters” already published (and still on the plates), it will contain an excellent introduction by Gamaliel Bradford, the author of “Lee, the American”, and some brief new material by myself. 

This new material consists of the official evidence from the files of the Office of the Chief of Engineers, U. S. Army, illustrated by a facsimile letter from General Lee, that his first assignment for service after leaving West Point was at Cockspur Island, later Fort Pulaski, Savannah, Georgia, and not at Hampton Roads, as given by all the biographers after whom I have read, except Miss Emily Mason and Madame Boissonnas; and, second, of reproductions of the two little drawings in India ink made by General Lee while on that assignment and preserved ever since in the same family — almost one hundred years.

That book ought to be in the hands and hearts of youth of the country from Maine to Texas and from Alaska to Florida, and of the old as well. 

So far as what is called “politics” is concerned, the book is a closed record of political and military defeat, followed by military surrender magnanimously granted by General Grant and manfully accepted by General Lee and by him unceasingly urged upon his people in all loyalty; that record is history. General Lee, the greatest warrior of our race, is also matter of history. 

General Lee, the man, the citizen, the spiritual leader, as friend, as husband, as father, as lover of little children, the greatest soul of the modern world and the most humble, is shown in his own letters in this volume as nowhere else. 

We who had the honor of being students under him at Washington College saw and knew something of this beautiful nature of the man; we felt (as the young do) much more than we saw; the whole world, reading these letters, may realize as we did under him that he lived what he taught — righteousness, service to man, service before God. 

It is the ardent hope of the writer that the alumni of Washington and Lee may buy this book for themselves and their own homes; that they may buy copies of it for the libraries of their country or city high schools and present them in honor of General Lee himself or of some follower of his, not to recall hate and strife but to follow his example and precept of duty to his fellow man through love for his fellow man.

Some of the alumni are already subscribing for extra copies in order to place them in these libraries. He who tries to walk in General Lee’s footsteps does well.