Special Edition: Letters from Robert E. Lee, Junior (April 23, 1862)
On April 23, 1862, eighteen-year-old Private Robert E. ‘Rob’ Lee, Jr. wrote a letter to his father General Robert E. Lee, who was serving as a military advisor to Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Richmond, Virginia. Unlike his two older brothers, Rob had eschewed a career in the military and was enrolled at the University of Virginia when the Civil War began. In April 1861, he joined the South Guards, an unofficial militia group organized at the University, and in March 1862, just days after the battle at Kernstown, he enlisted as a private in the First Company of the Rockbridge Artillery at Camp Buchanan. As one of the “new recruits,” Rob was assigned to guard duty during ‘Stonewall’ Jackson’s hasty retreat up the Shenandoah Valley in the wake of his defeat at Kernstown.
In becoming a member of the Rockbridge Artillery, Rob joined the esteemed military tradition of the Lee family, which traced its lineage back to Richard Lee I, who arrived in Jamestown in 1639. In addition to his father, Rob’s uncle Sydney Smith Lee was a Captain in the C.S. Navy and his cousin Fitzhugh, and two brothers G.W.C. ‘Custis’ and W.H.F. ‘Rooney’ served as officers in the C.S. Army. (In addition, his uncle Samuel Phillips Lee was a Captain in the U.S. Navy.) Of course, his most illustrious military ancestor was Henry Lee III, who earned the sobriquet ‘Light-Horse Harry Lee,’ for his actions during the Revolutionary War.
It was a difficult time for Rob, who had yet to see combat, to be joining ‘Stonewall’ Jackson’s small Valley Army. Not only has Jackson been forced to retreat nearly a hundred miles from his original position near Winchester, but the Conscription Act (which passed on April 16th) has also “dampened morale and increased desertion.”
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