But after the fall of Fort Sumter, he once again returned to the army on the side of the Union. You have no idea what a horrible sight a battlefield is.”įollowing the Mexican War, Grant resigned his commission and tried his hand at farming and business. “I thought of you, my dear Custis, when the musket balls and grape were whistling over my head in a perfect shower. Following the battle, where he was brevetted major, Lee wrote to his son. He spent much of his time scouting territory, and he saw combat at the Battle of Cerro Gordo, where his skills as an engineer helped secure American victory. “No soldier could face either danger or responsibility more calmly than he.”ĭuring the war, Lee served on General Winfield Scott’s staff. “General Taylor was not an officer to trouble the administration much with his demands, but was inclined to do the best he could with the means given him. Grant’s schooling in leadership came from his mentor General Zachary Taylor. For Lee, by contrast, the Mexican War offered an immersion in strategy and field operations under varied conditions,” says New-York Historical Society curator Kathleen Hulser, who worked on the exhibition’s development. “To Grant, the Mexican War taught the importance of leadership, morale, and a well-fed and well-clothed army. “A military life had no charms for me, and I had not the faintest idea of staying in the army even if I should be graduated, which I did not expect,” wrote Grant.įor men of their generation, the Mexican War became the first place to test their mettle as soldiers. When he graduated in 1843, he was 21 out of a class of 39, his demerits sinking his standing. Grant, on the other hand, chafed at West Point’s rigors, while excelling in math and horsemanship. Lee “never ‘ran the sentinel post,’ did not go off the limits to the ‘Benny Havens’ of his day, or put ‘dummies’ in his bed to deceive the officer in charge as he made his inspection after taps,” according to his nephew Fitzhugh Lee. The army’s traditions of honor suited Lee, who graduated second in his class in 1829. The lack of family money to pay for a university education resulted in both men attending West Point. Adverse to the family business, Grant spent much of his time working the family’s farmland and developing his skills as a horseman. His father, Jesse Grant, was a tanner by trade. Grant’s early life on the Ohio frontier is a startling contrast. When Lee was a child, his father exiled himself to the West Indies following a brutal attack by a Baltimore mob in 1812. Henry Lee III was a Revolutionary War hero and a governor of Virginia, but his financial failings landed him in debtors’ prison. His father’s accomplishments and failures were both sources of pride and shame. Lee, the elder of the two by sixteen years, honor was everything. “It’s amazing to see them saying essentially the same thing about slavery, secession, and avoiding the war,” says Rasmussen.įor Robert E. They both owned slaves, both were against secession, and both believed that politicians let things get out of hand. The commonalities between the two men are striking. In the exhibition and the accompanying catalog, the curators use the generals’ words and those of their contemporaries to reintroduce the men. People have not been getting a true picture of either,” says Rasmussen. At the same time, Lee was given too much adulation and Grant too little-Grant’s reputation just plummeted. “Both men have been regionalized one was a hero and the other was a villain. “Lee and Grant,” a new NEH-funded traveling exhibition opening at the Virginia Historical Society on October 17, profiles the two men and attempts to reclaim them from the mystique that has distorted their history and legacy.Īccording to the show’s curators-William Rasmussen of the Virginia Historical Society and Robert Tilton, chairman of the English department at the University of Connecticut, Storrs-historical assessments of Lee and Grant have been influenced by parochialism and contemporary politics. But it was not the first time that their lives had intersected, nor would it be the last. The encounter, which became known as the Battle of the Wilderness, was the first time the generals fought against each other in the Civil War.
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