Near Richmond 3 June, ’621
Mr 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 ExcD 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
