General Robert E. Lee to Jefferson Davis, June 3, 1862

Near Richmond 3 June, ’62¹

M^r President

I am extremely grateful for your kind offer of your fine horse & feel most sensibly the consideration & thoughtfulness that prompted it. But I really do not require one at this time & would infinitely prefer your retaining him & allow me to enjoy the sense of your kindness & to call for him when I am in want. My gray has calmed down amazingly,² gave me a very pleasant ride all day yesterday & I enjoyed his gaits much. My other horses³ are improving & will soon I hope be ready for service. So I really with my present riding would not know what to do with more. They would not have sufficient exercise & be uncomfortable to me & themselves.

With a full sense & appreciation of your kindness & great gratitude for your friendship, I must again beg to be allowed to ask you to keep the horse in your service.⁴

With sentiments of profound respect & esteem

I am your obliged & humble servt

R. E. Lee

His Exc^D President Davis

_______________

¹ This letter was written on the second day after General Lee assumed command of the army defending Richmond. When General Joseph E. Johnston was wounded on the afternoon of May 31, 1862, Major-General Gustavus W. Smith, as second in command, took charge of field operations and directed the movements of the army until he was informed, on June 1, at 2 P.M., that General Lee had been appointed (Smith's report, O. R., 13, 1, 992). In General Lee's personal orders from the President, delivered the same day occurs this passage: “[It] is necessary to interfere temporarily with the duties to which you were assigned in connection with the general service, but only so far as to make you available for command in the field of a particular army” (Davis to Lee, O. R., 13, 3, 568). In taking the field the same afternoon (Alexander, Military Memoirs, 89), General Lee faced a situation which was very trying in at least two respects.  He did not possess the confidence of the army nor was the immediate outlook favorable. His previous service in the Confederate army had been limited to a single campaign in Western Virginia, to coast-defence work at Charleston and to duty as military adviser to the President. His qualities were, accordingly, practically unknown to many of his officers; he was accounted a “staff officer” and, as Longstreet points out, “officers of the line are not apt to look to the staff in choosing leaders of soldiers, either in tactics or strategy” (From Manassas, etc., 112). Many of his division commanders received with “misgivings” the President's choice (Longstreet, loc. cit.) and young Alexander doubted that Lee possessed “audacity” (op. cit., 110-11). The army, moreover, was embarrassed by the engagements of May 30-June 1; the weather was unspeakably depressing and stubbornly wet. Worse still, a Federal army of almost 100,000 men was thrown in an arc around the Confederate capital, with its outposts within six miles of the city. McClellan's forces rested on Beaver Dam Creek, extended in a southeasterly direction to the Chickahominy, crossed that stream at New Bridge and ran toward the South as far as White Oak Swamp. By sheer good fortune, McClellan had been able to throw sufficient troops across the river to meet the first Confederate attack and had managed to keep bridges over the swollen stream, across which he could send more men. The battle of Seven Pines, fought on three successive days by three different Confederate commanders, was a draw at best and its close, when General Lee reached the field, left the opposing armies in relatively the same positions they had occupied.

² “My gray” was Traveller, best beloved of Lee's chargers. Traveller had been bought in Western Virginia from the Broun family in the winter of 1861. He was an iron gray “with black points — mane and tail very dark — sixteen hands high and five years old” (Lee, Recollections, 82) and was renowned for his powers of endurance. If not properly exercised, he easily became restless, but in normal times, was “quiet and sensible” and “afraid of nothing” (Lee, loc. cit.). General Lee was very fond of the horse and wrote in a feeling manner of the animal's faithful service. It should be added, however, that R. E. Lee, Jr., trying the horse in 1862, gained a most unfavorable opinion of the gaits of his father's pet.

³ General Lee's other mounts were Grace Darling, Richmond, Brown Roan, Ajax and Lucy Long. Two of these died under hard work and two others had to be put aside.

⁴ It was characteristic of General Lee never to accept a favor he could not promptly return.

SOURCE: Wymberley Jones De Renne, Editor, Lee's Dispatches: Unpublished Letters of General Robert E. Lee, C. S. A., to Jefferson Davis and the War Department of the Confederate States of America 1862-65, p. 3-5