The Training Ground Read Free Page A

preparing himself mentally for West Point by studying at a new boys’ school that had, coincidentally, just opened next door to the Lee home, and meeting the Marquis de Lafayette, the famed Frenchman and Revolutionary War hero who had once been a peer of Harry Lee’s and had called upon the late general’s widow during a triumphal return to America.
    On July 1, 1825, Robert Edward Lee reported to West Point. “His personal appearance surpassed in manly beauty that of any cadet in the corps,” said a fellow cadet effusively. “Though firm in his position and perfectly erect, he had none of the stiffness so often assumed by men who affect to be very strict in their ideas of what is military.” Here, along the Hudson, he had found himself.
    Lee blossomed at West Point. Not only did he excel in his academic subjects and display exemplary conduct, but he also grew fond of reading on concepts beyond the academy’s purview, devouring topics such as travel and philosophy in his spare time. His grasp of mathematics was so advanced that he was asked to serve as an assistant professor in that subject.
    Lee shared his time at West Point with other future generals and national leaders like Joseph E. Johnston, Jefferson Davis, and W. N. Pendleton, but none of them possessed Lee’s self-discipline and desire to compete for the top spot in his class. His own curiosity cost him that prize: though he dedicated his final year to studying and abandoned all pleasure reading, he fell short of his goal and finished second. Still, by all measures, his time at West Point had been magnificent.
    On July 10, 1829, less than two months after her son’s graduation, Ann Carter Lee passed away. A devastated Lee was at her side. Soon, though, another woman became prominent in his life, as Lee rekindled his relationship with an old friend from a distinguished family. Mary Anne Randolph Custis was a descendant of George Washington. Her family estate, Arlington, overlooked Alexandria. Lee had visited it often since childhood, for the Lees and the Custises were distant relations. Mary was twenty-one and frail, with a sharp nose, a quick smile, a habit of being late, and mousy blond hair that she parted in the middle and wore in ringlets down to the base of her neck. Their relationship steadily became more formal during the summer of 1829 — Lee, the dashing and earnest young lieutenant, and Mary, the socialite known for her kindness and good graces. They were married the following summer. Over the next fourteen years, they would have seven children.
    In the meantime, Lee’s career beckoned. He was often away from home, sent to build forts, embankments, wharves, locks, and other vital infrastructure in faraway outposts on the Georgia coast and the upper Mississippi and in closer locales such as New York Harbor. He wore the uniform of a soldier, but his daily duties were those of a highly trained engineer. This pattern would solidly define the next fifteen years of his life — a series of summer construction projects followed by winter journeys home to be with Mary and the children, who usually did not travel with their father.
    Lee was thorough in his work, careful in his dealings with his fellow officers, and in every way the opposite of his father, never associated in the least with scandal. But the peacetime army was no place for advancement, even for a man of his caliber. By the spring of 1844, almost a decade and a half after graduating, he was still just a captain.
    As luck would have it, Lee received orders to return to West Point at that time, assigned, along with several of his fellow officers, to spend two weeks helping to administer the cadets’ final exams. Among these officers was Major General Winfield Scott, commanding general of the army. The two got to know each other on a somewhat formal basis, and Scott came away with a favorable impression of Lee. This likely would have meant nothing at all, had hostilities between the United