Robert E. Lee In Texas

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ROBERT E. LEE IN TEXAS

BY

CARL COKE RISTER

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

DEDICATION 5

Preface 6

Illustrations 8

★ I ★ — America’s Very Best Soldier 9

★ II ★ — Lee’s Texas Home 18

★ III ★ — Reconnaissance 28

★ IV ★ — Along the Rio Grande 39

★ V ★ — From Pillar to Post 49

★ VI ★ — A Desert of Dullness 56

★ VII ★ — That Myth Cortinas 62

★ VIII ★ — A Rough Diplomatist 73

★ IX ★ — Camels and Comanches 80

★ X ★ — Farewell to Texas 94

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 105

Bibliography 106

1. Manuscripts 106

2. Federal Documents 107

3. Newspapers 107

4. Lee Biographies and Memoirs 107

5. Miscellaneous 108

Robert E. Lee in Texas 110

DEDICATION

TO MY FRIEND

Eugene C. Holman

WHO WAS REARED IN THAT PART OF TEXAS OVER WHICH LEE PROJECTED HIS COMANCHE CAMPAIGN OF 1856

Preface

FOR twenty-five months of the four turbulent years just before the Civil War, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Edward Lee saw service in Texas—at Camp Cooper, watching the federal government’s humanizing experiment with the wild Comanches; at San Antonio, commanding the Department of Texas; and at Fort Mason, headquarters of the Second Cavalry. Not only for the nation but for Lee were these critical years. To move from West Point, steeped in American military tradition, a setting of culture and refinement, to Camp Cooper on an Indian frontier, where isolation, rawness, inconvenience, deprivation, and even death were commonplaces, was indeed revolutionary. Lee had never before known primitive life, and to be catapulted into it now staggered his whole being. That he made the necessary adjustment and that on a lonely frontier he found peace, strength, and wisdom proved his qualities of greatness.

Three positive results came from Lee’s Texas services. First, he worked with, and for the most part commanded, the famous Second United States Cavalry, most of the officers of which a few years later became either Northern or Southern field commanders. To know these officers, their points of strength and points of weakness, their whims and caprices, and their likes and dislikes served him well in military crises. Second, he found the frontier so primitive that he must adjust himself to elemental circumstances, must adapt himself to outdoor life and adverse conditions such as he would meet on Civil War battle fields. And third, absence made his heart grow fonder of his family, his home, and Virginia. Lee loved the Union dearly, but when he was faced with the choice of remaining in it and serving as its military leader or of going with Virginia in secession, he felt compelled to defend Virginia, his family, and his home.

While camping in the silent wastes of Texas, while at San Antonio or at a border post, he had opportunity to consider his dilemma; and there is little doubt that these Texas experiences helped him to make his decision. They gave point to his wisdom and brought self-mastery, qualities which his junior officers admired and of which they stood in awe. When he came from the Texas wilderness to report to General Scott in Washington, he was prepared to assume the role of the South’s peerless leader.

The author feels grateful for services rendered him by others in the assembling of materials for this study. A grant-in-aid was given by the University of Oklahoma Faculty Research Committee for study in Washington, D. C. The staffs of the National Archives, the Library of Congress, the Texas State Library, the University of Texas Library, and the University of Oklahoma Library were courteous and helpful in making available bodies of manuscript and documentary and out-of-print materials. Mrs. Hanson Ely and Mrs. Hunter DeButts graciously consented that the author examine the restricted Lee family papers in the Division of Manuscripts, Library of Congress. Others who furnished materials or who gave expert advice were Harriet Smither, Austin, Texas; Henry Sayles, Jr., Abilene, Texas; Richard H. Shoemaker, Acting Librarian, Cyrus Hall McCormick Library, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia; C. L. Greenwood, Austin, Texas; Colonel M. L. Crimmins, San Antonio, Texas; and Dr. George Bolling Lee, New York City. The author feels particularly indebted to Douglas Southall Freeman, editor of the Richmond News Leader, not only for the wealth of detail and bibliography found in his definitive biography of Lee but also for his encouraging advice.

CARL COKE RISTER

Norman, Oklahoma

February 5, 1946

Illustrations

Lieutenant Robert E. Lee

Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee

Map of Lee’s journeys in Texas

Military Plaza, San Antonio

Drawing of Camp Cooper

General George H. Thomas

Brownsville, Texas

Officers’ Quarters, San Antonio

Nimitz Hotel, Fredericksburg, Texas

Drawing of Fort Mason

Arlington

★ I ★ — America’s Very Best Soldier

THROUGHOUT the day of April 9, 1856, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Edward Lee’s small train of seven wagons, escorted by a corporal and eight soldiers, had crawled northward, bouncing and jouncing over an uneven Texas frontier road, uphill and downhill, across creeks and ravines, and occasionally through post-oak flats carpeted with green grass and yellow splashes of the spring’s first primroses. Toward the close of day, the tired men crossed a mesquite tableland and approached a steep bluff overlooking the Clear Fork of the Brazos River, thirty-five miles above its junction with the Brazos. From this vantage point Lee saw before him a wide, level valley, through which flowed the meandering river. Gnarled mesquite trees, dwarfed and drought-blighted, chaparral, stunted hackberry, and prickly pear covered its grassy bottom, except along the river where tall and wide-spreading elm and pecan trees with tender green buds and new leaves furnished a pleasing backdrop. Chrome-and gray-streaked cliffs stood back on either side of the valley like medieval battlemented walls.

Brakes shrieked their protest as the heavily laden wagons slid down the steeply inclined road to the crossing of the clear-running stream. But the drivers urged their teams through the water and up the opposite bank. There ahead, in the upper part of the valley, gleamed white army tents, neatly arranged about a small parade ground.

This was Camp Cooper—named in honor of Adjutant General Samuel Cooper—a military camp, two miles above the agency of the Comanche reservation recently made possible by a Texas legislative grant and surveyed by Captain Randolph B. Marcy and Special Agent Robert S, Neighbors, representing the United States government. Here, at this secluded and remote place, the federal government proposed to teach these nomadic red men the ways of their white neighbors, under the strict watch of the near-by soldiers.

At last Lee had completed his journey from Fort Mason, 165 miles to the south. He had made a radical change in military command—from the superintendency of West Point, where he had most recently served with distinction and where, years before, he had received his military education, to the wild Texas frontier. This was the West, stripped of the glamour that it might have had for him when he made his first acquaintance with Texas during the war with Mexico.

Lee’s background was not such as to fit him ideally for border life. A Virginian, son of General Henry (Light Horse Harry) Lee and Ann Carter Lee, he had received his early training at Alexandria and had finished second in a class of forty-six at West Point. Then as an officer of the Corps of Engineers he had served with conspicuous success at Cockspur Island, in the Savannah River, Georgia; at Fort Monroe, Virginia; at Washington as assistant to the Chief of Engineers, Charles Gratiot; at St. Louis, where he had changed the channel of the Mississippi River; and at Fort Hamilton, New York, where he had been stationed when the Mexican War called him to Texas. His devotion to duty by this time had brought promotion from second lieutenant to captain.

Beyond these military experiences, one other event stands out during these early years as life-shaping for young Lee. On June 30, 1831, he married Mary Custis, daughter of George Washington Parke Custis, the adopted son of George Washington. Mary’s home, stately old Arlington, on Virginia Heights overlooking the broad, placid Potomac and Washington beyond, was aglow the night of the wedding. It had never before been the scene of a happier gathering, its widespread wings serving as open arms to welcome the guests. The massive but simple Doric columns of the broad portico graced the occasion with a classic air. The great halls and chambers, decorated with paintings of patriots and scenes of the Revolution, rang with laughter and music; and history and tradition breathed their legends upon a canvas softer than a dream of peace.

Douglas Southall Freeman says significantly that Lee married Arlington when he married Mary Custis. Indeed, both the young bride and her home helped direct his mental and spiritual growth in later years. Arlington bound his cultural love to the proud Washington heritage; and he shared with Mary the care and rearing of a large family: three sons (George Washington Custis, William Fitzhugh, and Robert Edward) and four daughters (Mary, Annie, Agnes, and Mildred). That he provided cultural and material advantages for them from a slender income proved that his genius did not lie wholly in the military field.

Dull routine plagued ambitious Lee while he was stationed at Fort Hamilton. He fretted, fumed, and fidgeted, hoping for a change and advancement. But occasionally he was in a happier mood. On January 14, 1846, he wrote Mary that he had kept his servants, Jim and Miss Leary, constantly moving, cleaning up, and he feared that he would wear them down. I do not know whether it was your departure or my somber phiz, he added, which brought Miss Leary out Sunday in a full suit of mourning. A black alpaca trimmed with crepe and a thick row of jet buttons on each sleeve, from the shoulder to the wrist, and three rows on the skirt, diverging from the waist to the hem; it was, however, surmounted by a dashing cap with gay ribbons.

From Fort Hamilton Lee watched with interest the rising tide of manifest destiny, the crest of which was soon to bear him to Texas. He saw the Democrats send the Tennessean, James K. Polk, to the White House in Washington on the militant slogans, Fifty-four forty or fight and Reannexation of Texas. Then he was stirred by the action of Congress annexing Texas by a joint resolution and by Mexico’s severance of diplomatic relations with the United States. Hastily England now agreed to accept the forty-ninth parallel as her Oregon boundary rather than risk a fight for Fifty-four forty. This, too, must have impressed Lee.

War, following a bitter quarrel between Mexico and the United States, brought Lee to Texas the first time. General Zachary Taylor’s army had clashed with Arista’s forces on May 8 and 9, 1846, at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, after which the Americans had crossed the Rio Grande and had occupied Matamoros and Monterrey. At the same time Brigadier General John E. Wool, whom Lee had formerly known in Virginia, was busy at San Antonio organizing a second army to aid Taylor. Lee’s fretting and fuming now ended, for he was sent to Texas to assist Wool. On the first available steamer he sailed via New Orleans for Port Lavaca, Texas, and from there rode on to San Antonio on September 21.

This was Lee’s first visit to San Antonio, a town of a few more than 2,000 inhabitants, yet drowsy in spite of its part in creating the lusty young republic. The battlescarred Alamo, where a decade earlier James Bowie and his brave Texans had been slaughtered by Santa Anna’s storming troops; the century-old San Fernando Church, with four older missions within easy walking distance; the flat-topped adobe shops and business houses and the Governor’s Palace; narrow and crooked streets, littered with refuse; and indolent Mexicans, lounging in doorways of jacales and adobe huts and attired in bell-bottom trousers, tight-fitting jackets, serapes, and sombreros—all Lee saw as an interesting past. Yet he found, too, that this drowsy air had been rudely jolted by the bustle and confusion of war. Smartly-dressed officers rode excitedly here and there, anxious to complete arrangements for the army’s march southward; and Wool’s train of 500 wagons moved to and fro between San Antonio and Lavaca, bringing up supplies.

Wool assigned Lee to an important role. He was to assist Captain William D, Fraser in collecting tools for road-and bridge-building and pontoons to throw across the Rio Grande. Then these engineers were to push on to improve the road over which the army would march to Eagle Pass. This assignment was no mean task, for Wool had assembled for the start an army of 2,829 men, more than 2,000 horses, and 1,112 wagons; and the road to be made ready was between 175 and 185 miles in length. Lee and Fraser, with a work crew, left the Alamo city on September 23 and performed their task so well that on November 9 Wool’s army reached the Rio Grande, about thirty miles south of what is now Eagle Pass. Here the two engineers put up their pontoons and made their bridge ready for the crossing. The Mexican troops guarding the passage retired without firing a shot.

From the river crossing Wool pushed on through mesquite and cactus flats and over rugged terrain, his men suffering