January 19 is the birthday of both Robert E. Lee and Edgar Allan Poe. Lee was born in 1807 at Stratford Hall, Westmoreland County, Virginia. He grew up in Alexandria, just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. Lee attended Eastern View in Fauquier County, and Alexandria Academy before entering West Point in 1825. Poe was born in 1809, two years later, in Boston, Massachusetts. His father abandoned his family in 1810 and his mother died the next year. Poe went to live with the Allan family in Richmond, Virginia. He was educated locally, attended the University of Virginia, dropped out after a year, enlisted in the U.S. Army, then found a substitute and quit the army, but then was appointed to West Point. Poe was admitted in 1830 and was later dismissed for disobedience.
Poe emerged as a
fiction writer in the 1830s, publishing works in various literary magazines and
newspapers. His first book was published in 1832, and he wrote numerous pieces
and books over the next twenty-plus years. On October 3, 1849, Poe was found in
Baltimore in a semiconscious state. He was taken to Washington Medical College,
where he died on October 7. His actual cause of death remains a mystery.
While at school,
Lee read a common list for those pursuing a classical education: Homer,
Longinus, Tacitus, and Cicero, along with “all the minor classics.”[1]
His time at West Point would have been full of military texts, but other books
as well. In 1828, between January 26 and May 24, he checked out fifty-two books
from the library, including books on seamanship and the works of Alexander
Hamilton, along with Rousseau’s Confessions.[2]
While superintendent at West Point, Lee returned to checking out books from the
library. Biographer Douglas Southall Freeman wrote that in those years, he read
“six works on geography . . . one on forestry, eight on architecture, five on
military law, two on non-military biography, one on French and Spanish grammar,
and fifteen on military biography, history, and the science of war.”[3]
Seven of those dealing with war were on Napoleon.
Lee on campaign,
during the war years, read constantly: letters, reports, enemy newspapers. Undoubtedly
he kept up his reading in the book of Common Prayer. Lee did mention once in a
letter to home that he was sending Mary a copy of Winfield Scott’s autobiography.
It was unclear if he had read it.[4]
Other details about what Lee might have read for leisure during the war are not
clear.
In 1865, Mrs.
Jackson sent Lee Dabney’s Life and Campaigns of Lieut. Gen. Thomas J.
Jackson. This was probably the only manuscript regarding the war that he
read and about which he had comments. “I am misrepresented at the battle of
Chancellorsville in proposing an attack in front, the first evening of our
arrival,” Lee wrote. “On the contrary I decided against it, and stated to
General Jackson, we must attack on our left as soon as practicable; and the necessary
movement of the troops began immediately. In consequence of a report received
about that time, from General Fitz Lee, describing the position of the Federal
army, and the roads which he held with his cavalry leading to its rear, General
Jackson, after some inquiry concerning the roads leading to the Furnace,
undertook to throw his command entirely in Hooker’s rear, which he accomplished
with equal skill and boldness…”[5]
Regarding Lee’s
post-war reading on the war, Doctor A.T. Bledsoe wrote Lee in 1867, asking for
Lee’s opinion of an article in The Southern Review on the battle of Chancellorsville.
Lee replied that he had not read the article, or any other books, “published on
either side since the termination of hostilities . . . I have as yet felt no
desire to revive my recollections of those events, and have been satisfied with
the knowledge I possessed of what transpired.” [6]
In the post-war
years, Philip Stanhope sent Lee a new translation of Homer’s Iliad.[7]
“That winter,” Robert E. Lee, Jr. wrote, “my father was accustomed to read aloud
in the long evenings to my mother and sisters.” A couple of years later, Professor
George Long sent Lee a second edition of one of Lee’s favorites, Thoughts of
the Emperor Marcus Aurelius.[8]
Of course, Lee did
eventually start to collect material for his own history of the war, one he
never finished.
Concerning the
Bible, one was sent to him by an admirer in 1867. Lee sent a reply, thanking
him for the gift, and adding that the Bible was “a book which supplies the
place of all others, and one that cannot be replaced by any other.”[9]
Probably the most important piece regarding the original question, did Lee ever read the works of Edgar Allan Poe, comes from a letter Lee wrote his daughter Mildred in December 1866. Lee writes: “I hope you will find time to read and improve your mind. Read history, works of truth, not novels and romances. Get correct views of life, and learn to see the world in its true light.”[10] In the end, we might conclude that Lee probably never read Poe.
[1] Freeman,
R.E. Lee, 1:36, 40.
[2] Freeman,
R.E. Lee, 1:71.
[3] Freeman,
R.E. Lee, 1:353.
[4] Freeman,
R.E. Lee, 3:527.
[5] Freeman,
R.E. Lee, 2:587.
[6] Freeman,
R.E. Lee, 2:588.
[7] Lee,
Recollections and Letters, 213.
[8] Lee,
Recollections and Letters, 215.
[9] Jones,
Personal Reminiscences, 114-15.
[10] Lee,
Recollections and Letters, 247-48.
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