The Last Words, The Farewell Addresses of Union and Confederate Commanders to Their Men at the End of the War Between the States, by Michael R. Bradley – A Summary, Part Five, GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE, General Orders, No. 9, Address to the Army of Northern Virginia, CSA, April 10, 1865

A Summary of

The Last Words

The Farewell Addresses of Union and Confederate Commanders to Their Men at the End of the War Between the States

by Michael R. Bradley

Part Five

General Robert E. Lee
General Orders, No. 9
Address to the Army of Northern Virginia, CSA
April 10, 1865

General Robert E. Lee, actual picture during the war, fall, 1864, on Traveller, Petersburg, VA.

Hd. Qrs. Army of N. Va.
General Orders
No. 9

After four years of arduous service marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources.

I need not tell the brave survivors of so many hard fought battles, who have remained steadfast to the last, that I have consented to this result from no distrust of them; but feeling that valor and devotion could accomplish nothing that could compensate for the loss that must have attended the continuance of the contest, I determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose past services have endeared them to their countrymen.

By the terms of the agreement, officers and men can return to their homes and remain until exchanged. You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed; and I earnestly pray that a Merciful God will extend to you His blessing and protection. With an unceasing admiration of your constancy and devotion to your Country, and a grateful remembrance of your kind and generous consideration for myself, I bid you all an affectionate farewell.

R.E. Lee, Genl.¹

 

ROBERT EDWARD LEE TOOK COMMAND of the Confederate army defending Richmond in the spring of 1862 following the wounding of Joseph E. Johnston at the Battle of Fair Oaks. Almost immediately, Lee changed the name of his command to the Army of Northern Virginia, and, as such, it would win enduring fame as a staunch military organization. Within a few weeks the men of the ANVa, as it was styled in dispatches, formed a personal bond with their commanding officer, a bond more intense than that shared by the soldiers of any other command with their leader.

The confidence of the soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia in their general was unbounded. If Lee“Marse Robert” was their affectionate nickname for himsaid “do this,” they did it without question, confident that their well-being and the success of their cause required it.

Lee was a realist and had told the Confederate government many months before that if the struggle became a siege of Petersburg and Richmond, the war would be lost. The South simply did not have the resources to win a protracted fight of that nature. Still, Lee and his men endured, looking for any opening to avoid the seemingly inevitable.

On April 9, 1865, the inevitable became reality. Following a brief exchange of notes, Lee met with Ulysses S. Grant, commander of all U.S. forces, at the house of Wilmer McLean at Appomattox Court House and signed the terms of surrender, which ended the existence of the Army of Northern Virginia. That same night Lee instructed his adjutant, Colonel Charles Marshall, to write an order to the army bidding them farewell. The address written by Marshall reflects the grace and style of writing produced by a classical education as well as the directness expected in a military communication.

On the morning of April 10, the weather was rainy and a constant stream of visitors to Lee’s headquarters tent prevented Marshall from concentrating on his task. About ten o’clock, Lee ordered Marshall to get into Lee’s personal ambulance so he could work without interruption. When the first draft, in pencil, was finished, it was taken to Lee who struck out an entire paragraph, made one or two other minor changes, and then instructed Marshall to have it copied in ink with copies going to all Corps commanders. These were all signed in person by Lee and then issued to the appropriate officers. During the day many people made their own copies and brought them to Lee and he signed many of them.

The “original” of General Orders, No. 9 was the pencil draft which Lee amended and it was most certainly destroyed when the copies in ink were made. There is no record of the contents of the paragraph Lee edited out of Marshall’s first draft but one may assume Lee thought it might encourage continued bitter feeling. President John F. Kennedy admired Lee for that sentiment when he wrote:

[A]s a New Englander, I recognize that the South is still the land of Washington, who made our Nation – of Jefferson, who shaped its direction – and of Robert E. Lee who, after gallant failure, urged those who had followed him in bravery to reunite America in purpose and courage.²

“General Orders, No. 9” became a regular part of the meetings of the United Confederate Veterans, especially those “Bivouacs,” as the local groups were styled, made up of veterans of the Army of Northern Virginia. A hundred years later, at the time of the Civil War Centennial, a direct descendant of Robert E. Lee made a recording of the farewell address. This recording was released at Appomattox on April 10, 1965.

In the opening decades of the twenty-first century, the character and reputation of Lee have come under attack. It has been alleged that Lee lost the war for the South because he was too aggressive, losing lives in attacks instead of husbanding his numbers. Such criticism ignores the military realities of the situation. It may sound wise to remain on the defensive until one’s opponent makes a mistake and only then attack. But, what if one’s opponent does not make a major mistake that would allow for a successful attack? The point to be defended will be lost. Joseph Johnston used the “passive-aggressive” model in the Atlanta Campaign and every reader of the history of the war knows how that ended. Lee had little choice but to aggressively make his openings.

Much has been made of late that Lee owned slaves. That is not true. Lee was made the executor of the will of his father-in-law, George Washington Parke Custis, grandson of Martha Washington and step-grandson and adopted son of George Washington. Custis was the owner of the Arlington Estate, which he passed to his daughter, Mary Anna, wife of Robert E. Lee. Today, that estate is our nation’s most sacred burial ground: Arlington National Cemetery.

As executor,³ Lee was responsible for the settlement of Custis’s will, and among Custis’s possessions were slaves. The executor is not the owner of Custis’s property. Lee, like all responsible executors, carried out the stipulations of the will he was executing. These stipulations included the provision that all the Arlington slaves be set free within five years. Lee did this, completing the process in 1862. Lee had labeled slavery a moral problem in 1856 but he saw no ready solution to the matter. At any rate, being administrator of the will of his father-in-law does not make Lee the “owner” of his father-in-law’s slaves.

Lee has also been accused of fostering the rise of the “Myth of the Lost Cause” and is claimed to have begun this process in his farewell address. Although called a myth, there is a great deal of truth in the arguments presented under the name “Lost Cause.”

The “Lost Cause” argues that secession, not slavery, caused the war. This is true. If no Southern state had left the Union, who, in the North, would have called for a war to end slavery? The answer is obvious.

This so-called myth argues that the war was fought over States’ Rights, i.e., state sovereignty and supremacy over the Federal Government, which had been created as the agent of the states for certain highly limited purposes of government. This was the belief of the Founding Fathers and it is clearly proclaimed in the secession documents of the Southern States. Most foreigners such as Alexis de Tocqueville, Charles Dickens, and the British historian, Sir John Dalberg Acton,⁴ later Lord Acton, agreed. Acton wrote this to Lee a year-and-a-half after Appomattox:

Without presuming to decide the purely legal question, on which it seems evident to me from Madison’s and Hamilton’s papers that the Fathers of the Constitution were not agreed, I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy. . . . Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.⁵

Not surprisingly, States’ Rights had recently been upheld by the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott Case (1857) with respect to slavery.

The point at which Lee is accused specifically of fostering the Lost Cause position is “compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources.” A look at the 1860 census of the United States shows that Lee was right. The population of the nation in that year was 31,443,321. Of this number 22,000,000 (round figures) lived in the states which remained in the Union, 9,000,000 in the states which seceded. Of the 9,000,000 people in the South almost 4,000,000 were slaves. While the African American population gave strength to the Southern economy and war effort through its labor, it was not a major source of manpower for the armies although some free people of color became Confederate soldiers. The 5,000,000 white population was divided in its loyalties and a significant number of white Southerners joined the U.S. forces.

So, in critical manpower, it was over 22,000,000 white Northerners versus less than 5,000,000 white Southerners. Obviously, the South did face overwhelming numbers. This does not detract from the military accomplishments of the U.S. Army but it does show the “Lost Cause Myth” is no myth.

Lee also had a very clear grasp of the infrastructure which supported both armies. The 1860 census shows that 80% of the country’s manufacturing and most of the existing railroad mileage were in states that remained in the Union. The United States also had a stable monetary system based on bullion and a well-functioning government that had been in place for over 60 years. It had an army, navy, merchant marine fleet and relationships with most of the governments of the world.

The South had none of that. The South did not expect war when they seceded. They expected to go on peacefully in their new republic that derived its “just powers from the consent of the governed” as the Declaration of Independence established in 1776. When it became obvious that they were not going to be able to leave in peace, they had to start everything from scratch.

In addition to the North’s greater than four-to-one advantage in white population, it also had a pipeline to the wretched refuse of the world with which to feed Union armies continually. While 25% of the Union army were foreign-born immigrants, James McPherson points out that 30% of military age men in the Union states were foreign-born, thus the 25% in the Union army underrepresented the general foreign-born population in the North.⁶

This may be true but later in the war, when enlistments were low and a real problem for both sides, lavish financial inducements and bounties brought tens of thousands of foreigners into the Union army. All total, “a half-billion dollars” was spent by the North on bounties, and “the conscription-substitute-bounty system produced three-quarters of a million new men.” Many foreigners had come for the express purpose of “joining the army to cash in on bounties or substitute fees.”⁷

The South had no such pipeline of manpower at this critical hour with its money virtually worthless and its harbors bottled up by the Union blockade.

The ability to sustain an extended military effort as well as the population to do so, was heavily weighted toward the North. “Overwhelming numbers and resources” is a solid fact, not a myth.

Lee does not deal with the causes of the conflict directly in his farewell address, but, for him, the overriding issue was that of serving his home, his state. That was made clear in 1861 when, after being offered command of the U.S. Army by President Lincoln, he instead resigned and offered his services to Virginia.

The idea that soldiers on both sides saw themselves fighting to defend their homes is born out by James M. McPherson in For Cause & Comrades: Why Men Fought In The Civil War. McPherson concludes that slavery was not the issue that caused most men to fight. Protection of home was.⁸

Lee’s farewell address acknowledges the great love Lee’s men had for their leader, and it shows the love and respect Lee had for his men. They were ready to continue the war despite the odds.

The address is poignant. It reflects the character of the man who issued it, a man who was strong but humble and who thought “duty” the most sublime word in the English language.

Like President Kennedy, President Dwight D. Eisenhower had great respect for Gen. Lee and appreciated his efforts to bind up the nation’s wounds after its bloodiest war. On August 9, 1960, Eisenhower answered an angry letter from a New York dentist, Dr. Leon W. Scott, who had written eight days earlier and questioned why he kept a picture of Gen. Lee in his White House office.

Dr. Scott wrote:

I do not understand how any American can include Robert E. Lee as a person to be emulated, and why the President of the United States of America should do so is certainly beyond me.

The most outstanding thing that Robert E. Lee did, was to devote his best efforts to the destruction of the United States Government, and I am sure that you do not say that a person who tries to destroy our Government is worthy of being held as one of our heroes.⁹

President Eisenhower wrote:

Dear Dr. Scott:

Respecting your August 1 inquiry calling attention to my often expressed admiration for General Robert E. Lee, I would say, first, that we need to understand that at the time of the War between the States the issue of secession had remained unresolved for more than 70 years. Men of probity, character, public standing and unquestioned loyalty, both North and South, had disagreed over this issue as a matter of principle from the day our Constitution was adopted.

General Robert E. Lee was, in my estimation, one of the supremely gifted men produced by our Nation. He believed unswervingly in the Constitutional validity of his cause which until 1865 was still an arguable question in America; he was a poised and inspiring leader, true to the high trust reposed in him by millions of his fellow citizens; he was thoughtful yet demanding of his officers and men, forbearing with captured enemies but ingenious, unrelenting and personally courageous in battle, and never disheartened by a reverse or obstacle. Through all his many trials, he remained selfless almost to a fault and unfailing in his faith in God. Taken altogether, he was noble as a leader and as a man, and unsullied as I read the pages of our history.

From deep conviction, I simply say this: a nation of men of Lee’s caliber would be unconquerable in spirit and soul. Indeed, to the degree that present-day American youth will strive to emulate his rare qualities, including his devotion to this land as revealed in his painstaking efforts to help heal the Nation’s wounds once the bitter struggle was over, will be strengthened and our love of freedom sustained.

Such are the reasons that I proudly display the picture of this great American on my office wall.

Sincerely,
Dwight D. Eisenhower¹⁰

 

Next Week:

A Summary of

The Last Words

The Farewell Addresses of Union and Confederate Commanders to Their Men at the End of the War Between the States

by Michael R. Bradley

Part Six

A Critical Look at
General Ulysses S. Grant
Address to the Soldiers of the Armies of the United States, USA
June 2, 1865

 

NOTES:

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¹ Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee: A Biography, 4 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936), Vol. 4, 154-55.

² John F. Kennedy, Speech of Senator John F. Kennedy, Raleigh, NC, September 17, 1960, Coliseum Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/speech-senator-john-f-kennedy-raleigh-nc-coliseum, accessed 5/3/2020.

³ According to FindLaw, the world’s leader in online legal information for consumers and small businesses, here’s what the executor of a will does: “By definition, an executor is entrusted with the large responsibility of making sure a person’s last wishes are granted with regard to the disposition of their property and possessions. / When it boils down to essentials, an executor of a will is responsible for making sure that any debts and creditors that the deceased had are paid off, and that any remaining money or property is distributed according to their wishes.” See https://estate.findlaw.com/estate-administration/what-does-an-executor-do.html, accessed May 10, 2020.

⁴ John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, 1st Baron Acton (born 1834, died 1902), is perhaps best known for the aphorism “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” See his biography at https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Emerich-Edward-Dalberg-Acton-1st-Baron-Acton, accessed May 3, 2020.

⁵ John Dalberg Acton to Gen. Robert E. Lee, November 4, 1866, The Acton-Lee Correspondence, https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/09/no_author/famed-libertarian-writes-robert-e-lee, accessed May 3, 2020.

⁶ James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 606.

⁷ McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 600-606.

⁸ McPherson, For Cause & Comrades, 6.

⁹ Dwight D. Eisenhower in Defense of Robert E. Lee, August 10, 2014, Mathew W. Lively, https://www.civilwarprofiles.com/dwight-d-eisenhower-in-defense-of-robert-e-lee/, accessed 5-3-20.

¹⁰ Dwight D. Eisenhower letter, August 9, 1960, to Leon W. Scott, in “Dwight D. Eisenhower in Defense of Robert E. Lee,” August 10, 2014, Mathew W. Lively, https://www.civilwarprofiles.com/dwight-d-eisenhower-in-defense-of-robert-e-lee/, accessed 5-3-20.