Was Robert E. Lee a Whig?

    For some Confederate military commanders, their pre-war political lives are easy to follow. Kentuckian John C. Breckinridge served in the United States House, United State Senate, and as Vice President of the United States, all while a member of the Democratic Party. He was a Confederate major general. North Carolinian Zebulon Baird Vance was a member of the Whig Party, and following that party’s demise in 1854, a member of the American Party or Know-Nothings, while serving in the U.S. House starting in 1858. He was colonel of the 26^th North Carolina. Richard L. T. Beale was a pre-war Democrat in the US House prior to the becoming a Confederate brigadier general; Georgian Howell Cobb was the U.S. Treasury Secretary under James Buchanan, and later a Confederate major general; another Georgian, Lucius J. Gartrell, served in the US House before becoming a Confederate brigadier general.

   Back to the question: how would Robert E. Lee have voted in an election? There is a good chance that Lee never voted in a national election. His father, Light Horse Harry Lee, lost all his property.  His mother’s will stipulated that the property she owned be sold, with the proceeds divided up between Robert and his two brothers.[1] It seems that Robert E. Lee never owned any physical piece of land.[2] After his graduation from West Point and the death of his mother, Lee moved from assignment to assignment. He was stationed at Cockspur Island, South Carolina; Fort Monroe, Virginia; Washington, D.C.; St. Louis, Missouri; Brooklyn, New York; Baltimore, Maryland; West Point, New York; and Texas. Lee married Mary Ann Custis in 1831. While the family traveled with Lee at times, living at various posts, Mary Ann spent the majority of her time at Arlington, the home of her father. After her father, George Washington Parke Custis, the grandson of Martha Washington, died in 1857, Lee became executor of his will, but not the owner of Arlington. Instead, it remained in the hands of Mary Ann for her lifetime, and was then transferred to her oldest son, George Washington Custis Lee.

 Virginia’s 1850 Constitution stated that every white male, at least twenty-one years old, and who had been a resident of the state for two years, and had lived in a Virginia county, town, or city for the preceding twelve months, could vote. However, “no person in the military, naval or marine service of the United States shall be deemed a resident of this State by reason of being stationed therein.” If other state Constitutions held the same requirements for residency, and disqualified military personnel from obtaining residency, then Lee would have been ineligible to vote in local, national, or state elections. Since Arlington House, where Lee resided when not stationed elsewhere, was in the District of Columbia, he might have voted for the mayor, councilmen, or aldermen.[3]

   If Lee had voted, which way, politically, would he have leaned? That is great question. As already mentioned, Lee was the son of famed Revolutionary War commander Light Horse Harry Lee. It was Lee who eulogized George Washington (to a crowd of 4,000 at Washington’s funeral) “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” Lee was friends with Alexander Hamilton. It was Hamilton who asked Lee to serve on Washington’s staff as an aide de camp. Of course, Lee said no, wanting to serve with the dragoons. Lee was critical of Hamilton’s funding of the National debt. He saw potential devastation with Jefferson’s rise to power. Lee went on to serve in the U.S. House, the Virginia House of Delegates, and as the governor of Virginia as a Federalist. When Washington tapped Lee to command the troops to put down the Whiskey Rebellion, Jefferson’s friends in Virginia used it as an excuse to root him out of the governor’s chair.[4]

   The Federalist party was defeated by the Democratic-Republican Party in the 1800 election, becoming a minority party centered in the New England area. The party favored national banks, a strong army and navy, and a national government over a state government (centralization). They were typically anti-war and opposed to slavery. They gradually faded from the scene after running their last presidential candidate during the 1816 election. The Whig Party, founded in 1833, featured some of the same goals: a strong national bank, protective tariffs, federal subsidies for infrastructure construction, and a weak executive and powerful Congress. Some stalwarts of the party included Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, William Henry Harrison, and Zachary Taylor. The Whig Party dissolved in 1856. The membership scattered, joining the Republican Party, American Party, Opposition Party, and Constitutional Party, with some former Whigs embracing the Democratic Party.

   Lee gives a few glimpses of his politics in his surviving letters. We know that Lee idolized Washington. He spent much time at Arlington, surrounded by Washington relics, and even married someone with the strongest ties to Washington.[5] While a cadet at West Point, Lee borrowed books on the works Alexander Hamilton. The second volume contained The Federalist, a volume he checked out several times.[6] Writing from St. Louis in August 1838, he told a cousin in Alexandria that “The elections are all over, the ‘Van-ites’ have carried the day in the State, although the Whigs in this district carried their entire ticket, and you will have the pleasure of hearing the great expunger again thunder from his place in the Seante against banks, bribery, and corruption.”[7] Lee, although earning high praise for his service in the Mexican-American War, wrote that “It is true that we have bullied [Mexico]. For that I am ashamed.”[8] The latter views were synonymous with the Whig Party, which was opposed to the war with Mexico.

   It was not that Lee was opposed to voting and participating in the election process. Writing to James Longstreet in October 1867, Lee told his old war horse that “I am of the opinion that all who can should vote for the most intelligent, honest, and conscientious men eligible for office, irrespective of former party opinions, who will endeavor to make the new constitutions and the laws passed under them as beneficial as possible to the true interests, prosperity, and liberty of all classes and conditions of the people.”[9]

   Unlike many of the other Confederate generals and politicians, Lee did not regain his voting rights in his lifetime. It was not until August 5, 1976, that Lee was restored to the “Full rights of citizenship” by President Gerald R. Ford. So the question remains: what would have been Lee’s party affiliation had he been casting votes?                                                                                                                                          

 

[1] Freeman, R.E. Lee, 92.

[2] Connelly, The Marble Man, 7.

[3] http://www.virginiaplaces.org/government/voteproperty.html

[4] Royster, Light-Horse Harry Lee and the Legacy of the American Revolution, 25, 107, 112, 134.

[5] see McCaslin, Lee in the Shadow of Washington.

[6] Freeman, R.E. Lee, 1:72.

[7] Fitzhugh Lee, General Lee, 29-30.

[8] Fitzhugh Lee, General Lee, 43.

[9] Lee, Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee, 269.