In the post-Civil War era, the white South created the image of Robert E. Lee as the consummate military commander of the war. Ignoring the facts of a bitter defeat, former Confederate Gen. John B. Gordon said in 1870, “Lee could not be beaten: Overpowered … he might be, but never defeated” and “Lee was never really beaten. Lee could not be beaten.” Former Confederate Gen. Jubal Early said in 1872 that Lee’s army was “never conquered in battle but surrendered because he had no longer an army to give battle. His army had been gradually worn down by the combined agencies of numbers, steam power, railroads, mechanism, and all the resources of physical science.”

Albert T. Bledsoe, editor of the Southern Review magazine, said that Lee’s military genius was “unsurpassed in the annals of war.” Southerners asserted Lee was the war’s greatest military commander because his four victories in 1862 and 1863 and his skillful parrying of Grant’s attacks in 1864.

This image continued well into the 20th century, much of it driven by Douglass Southall Freeman, Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer. In 1929, former North Carolina Gov. Angus McLean, at the dedication of the North Carolina Memorial said, “Lee did not really fail” and that “he was at his most triumphant” when his army was at its greatest peril at Gettysburg.

Even as late as 1960s, some Southerners only grudgingly admitted defeat. At the dedication of the Georgia State Memorial at Gettysburg, Gov. S. Ernest Vandiver said, “the battle was a draw tactically but a strategic Northern success.”

Not only was Lee declared the Civil War’s greatest military commander, but also faultless as a man. Some former Confederates held up Lee’s character as “spotless.” In 1875, John Esten Cooke, in the Personal Character of General Lee, described “his personal beauty, simplicity, naturalness, and virtue.” Southern writers extolled his complete dedication to duty and his love of family and children. They cited his connection by marriage to George Washington’s family, his father’s Revolutionary War record and wrote of his agonizing choice to resign his U.S. Army commission when Virginia seceded as proof that Lee loved the Union. At the end of the war, when urged by subordinates to sanction a guerilla war, Lee refused. Some even compared his surrender at Appomattox to Christ at Gethsemane. The Rev. Randolph McKim said shortly after the war that Lee “was infused with a Christ-like spirit of self sacrifice” and the “sign of the Cross was upon his life.” Southern writers cited instances where Lee opposed secession before the war, personally disliked slavery and urged reconciliation and harmony after the war. By 1910, Lee had become a secular saint in the states of the old Confederacy. His birthday became a holiday in many Southern states. Southern homes, businesses, public buildings and schools displayed prints and pictures of Lee. New Orleans and Richmond dedicated Lee monuments amid elaborate ceremonies in the 1890s, with tens of thousands attending.

First a symbol of sectional pride, by 1900 Lee became a national hero reflecting the growing mood of national reconciliation pervading the country after the Spanish-American War. President Theodore Roosevelt said Lee was a “matter of pride to all our countrymen.” In 1902, prominent historian Charles Francis Adams, great-grandson and grandson of former presidents John and John Quincy Adams, called Lee a nationalist whose postwar conduct helped heal the wounds and reconcile the sections.

Former Confederate officer John Warwick Daniel all but deified Lee’s image by declaring that Seminary Ridge was “the mount of Lee’s transfiguration, where, sublimating all earthly instincts, the Divinity in his bosom shone translucent through the man, and his spirit rose up into the God-like.” Amid great pomp and ceremony, the Virginia State Memorial was dedicated on June 8, 1917, on Seminary Ridge—Lee‘s “mount of transfiguration”—at the center point of the Confederate line. Anne Carter Lee, Lee’s granddaughter, unveiled the memorial.

Sculpted by F.W Sievers, the Virginia Memorial rises 41 feet and features a statue of stoic, calm and dignified Lee seated on his horse, Traveller, gazing over the field toward the mythical “High Water Mark of Confederacy,” the great postwar “what if” for the doomed Confederacy. Lee’s statue towers above a group of Virginia soldiers signifying Lee’s preeminent status, not only as the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, but chief among all in Confederate Valhalla.

Virginia’s Gov. Henry Carter Stuart dedicatory address praised Lee “who, by the majesty of his character, the perfection of his manhood, and the glory of his genius, represents and embodies all that Virginia and her sister Southern States can or need vouchsafe to the country and the world as the supreme example of their convictions and principles. He was the consummate flower of a unique civilization. Lee gave to the Commonwealth and the South his noble ambitions, his fortunes, and his strength … who lived a life on the highest plane and in the rarest and most exulted atmosphere of thought and motive to which humanity may attain.”

Lee’s iconic stature remained fixed well into the late 20th century. At the Virginia State Memorial rededication in 1987, former Virginia Gov. Mills E. Godwin said, “we rededicate this Virginia Memorial to the memory of Robert E. Lee. We find to no one’s surprise that the stature of this great American patriot has grown with the passing of each of the
116 years since his death.”

Ironically, it is at Gettysburg that Lee’s iconic image is so dominating. Virginia did not erect a Lee statue on the Seven Days, Second Manassas or Fredericksburg battlefields. Even at Chancellorsville, where Lee achieved his greatest victory, there is no monument. Perhaps Gettysburg is the best place to honor Lee’s preeminent position as the Confederacy’s defining symbol facing defeat with dignity and stoicism. There are far worse images.

Jim Martin serves as a licensed battlefield guide at Gettysburg. These guides are independent contractors licensed and supervised by the National Park Service as historical interpreters of the Battle of Gettysburg. To book a battlefield tour, call the Gettysburg Foundation at 877-874-2478 or 717-334-2436.

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