Behind-the-ranks drama played out in mid-1863. Two Kentucky cavalrymen, William F. Corbin and Thomas J. McGraw, were caught in Kentucky recruiting for a new company. The district commander, Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside, quickly issued an order, stating that anyone caught recruiting “behind the lines” was to be treated as a spy and executed. Confederate officials in Richmond ordered the commander of Libby Prison to select two captured Federal officers to execute in retaliation. With word passing between the lines of the measure, Federal General in Chief Henry Hallack ordered two additional Confederate officers to be held, ready for execution, if the Confederates carried through with their plans. You can read more of this back story here and here.
One of the
Confederate officers selected for retaliatory measures was Robert E. Lee’s son,
Rooney Lee. William Henry Fitzhugh Lee, called Rooney by his family, was born
May 31, 1837, at Arlington, the third son of Robert and Mary Custis Lee. He
attended Harvard University, but withdrew before graduating, being commissioned
as a lieutenant in the 6th United States Infantry in 1857. He served
two years in Utah and California before resigning and farming at “White Hall,”
on the Virginia Peninsula.[1]
Rooney was commissioned a captain of cavalry in May 1861, rising to the rank of colonel, 9th Virginia Cavalry, by April 1862. He was extremely active in many of Stuart’s escapades, from the ride around McClellan, the Seven Days, and at Turner’s Gap in the Maryland Campaign. Twice, Stuart recommended Lee for promotion to brigadier general, a promotion which finally came in November 1862. Lee commanded a brigade composed of the 2nd North Carolina Cavalry, 9th, 10th, 13th, and 15th Virginia Cavalry. Lee battled Stoneman during the Chancellorsville campaign.
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| W.H.F. Lee |
While fighting on
June 9, 1863, at Brandy Station, Rooney was wounded in the thigh. Robert E. Lee
instructed that his son be taken to the Hill Mansion in Culpeper, when he visited
him that evening. The next day, Rooney was taken to Hickory Hill, the home of
his wife’s family, in Hanover County. Rob, Robert E. Lee’s youngest son, took
Rooney to Hickory Hill, where they were joined by their mother and two sisters.
Members of the 11th Pennsylvavia Cavalry paid Hickory Hill a visit
on June 26, capturing Rooney and incarcerating him at Fort Monroe the following
day.[2]
Rooney Lee’s
arrival at Fort Monroe coincided with the debate regarding retaliation for the
plight of the Kentucky Confederates. The names of two Federal captains
imprisoned at Libby Prison were drawn on July 6, and word passed to Lt. Col.
William H. Ludlow. Ludlow obviously informed his superior, for on July 12, he
recommended that two Confederate officers who were prisoners of war be selected
for retaliation if the two Federals were executed. On July 15, Henry Halleck
ordered Ludlow to “immediately place General W.H.F. Lee and another officer
selected by you not below the rank of captain, prisoner of war, in close
confinement and under strong guard, and that you notify Mr. R. Ould…that
if…Sawyer…and…Flinn… or any other officers or men in the service of the United
States not guilty of crimes punishable with death by the laws of war, shall be
executed by the enemy, the aforementioned prisoners will be hung in
retaliation.”[3]
Robert E. Lee
learned about his son’s capture on July 7, while on the way back from the
Gettysburg campaign.[4]
Word of the holding of Rooney Lee and another officer spread via newspapers. “Prominent
Rebel Officers Held as Hostages,” reported one Massachusetts paper. While the
newspaper had the wrong Lee – it was G.W.C. Lee and not Fitz Hugh Lee, the
paper reported that the officers “were removed from the McClellan hospital to
Fortress Monroe, and placed in a casemate under guard, and notice sent to the rebel
government that if they executed Capts. Sawyer and Flynn, whom they now have in
close confinement and under sentence in Richmond, that Gen. Lee and Capt.
Winder will be executed in retaliation.”[5]
The Daily
Richmond Whig reported that the execution of Lee and the other officer took
place, then “the black flag will be immediately raised in every army, and the
war will be horrible but short.”[6]
Tensions remained high through August. Ludlow still believed that Sawyer and Flinn
could be executed.[7]
Of course Robert E.
Lee and other members of his family, include Rooney’s wife Charlotte, were
worried about the wounded officer. On August 2, 1863, Lee wrote Mary that he
had heard that Rooney was up walking around on crutches. Charlotte was planning
to try to visit Rooney at Fort Monroe, but Lee counseled against it. “The only
way of accomplishing it is to get permission from Mr. Secretary Stanton in
Washington through Mr. [Robert] Ould to take the flag of truce boat to Old
Point. I do not think he would grant it in her case. It having been refused to
others, which they would not feel as much objection in obliging, & I
believe their permission is always coupled with the obligation to take the oath
of allegiance to the U.S.”[8]
Rooney’s
confinement at Fort Monroe brought problems for the officers in charge. Local
ladies weekly brought baskets of delicacies to Rooney.[9]
Brig. Gen. S.D. Meredith complained in November 1863 that Rooney needed to be
moved to some other “point where he will not be lionized as he is here. No
prisoner of ours, whatever his rank, receives such treatment in Richmond.” It
was recommended that Rooney be sent to Johnson’s Island, the same place where the
two Kentucky officers were executed. The order for Rooney’s move to Johnson’s
Island came on November 10. A day later, that order was changed and Rooney was
sent to Fort Lafayette in New York Harbor.[10]
Rooney’s wife, Charlotte
Wickham, was never well, especially after Rooney was kidnapped by the Federals
from her family’s home. Mary Chesnut, in her diary, recorded that Custis Lee,
another of Robert E. Lee’s sons, even “offered himself to the Yankees in place
of his brother, as he was a single man with no wife and children to be hurt by
his imprisonment . . . But the Yankees
preferred Rooney.”[11]
Charlotte died on December 26, 1863. Rooney was finally exchanged for Sawyer
and paroled in March 1864. He rejoined the cavalry of the Army of Northern
Virginia and was promoted to major general on April 23, 1864. When Wade
Hampton, who replaced Stuart, transferred to South Carolina, Rooney commanded
the Confederate cavalry south of the James River. Rooney Lee surrendered and
was paroled at Appomattox.
After the war,
Rooney returned to farming, later serving as president of the Virginia
Agricultural Society, then four years in the Virginia Senate, and several terms
in the United States House of Representatives. He died in 1891. Jeffry Wert
considered Rooney Lee “one of the finest generals in the cavalry corps of the
Army of Northern Virgina.”[12]
[1] Davis,
ed., The Confederate General, 4:65.
[2] Knight,
From Arlington to Appomattox, 281, 286.
[3] Official
Records, Series II, 6:118.
[4] Knight,
From Arlington to Appomattox, 296.
[5] The
Standard-Times, July 18, 1863.
[6] Richmond
Daily Whig, July 14, 1863.
[7] Official
Records, Series II, 6:219.
[8] Dowdey
and Manarin, Wartime Papers, 567.
[9] Pryor,
Reading the Man, 367.
[10] Official
Records, Series II, 6:484, 485, 495, 500.
[11] Woodward,
ed., Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, 450.
[12] Davis,
ed., The Confederate General, 4:67.
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