In this letter, dated July 13, 1864, Robert E. Lee refuses Richard S. Ewell‘s suggestion that Lee send a force of about 450 men to the Northern Neck to quell the unrest following the Draper Raid.
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Author: Robert E. Lee
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Letter from Robert E. Lee to Mary Randolph Custis Lee (April 18, 1841)
In this letter to his wife, Mary Randolph Custis Lee, dated April 18, 1841, Robert E. Lee exchanges discusses matters related their family, including whether to change the situation of an enslaved laborer named Robert who was on a Lewis family estate.
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Letter from Robert E. Lee to Mary Randolph Custis Lee (January 24, 1864)
In this letter to his wife, Mary Randolph Custis Lee, dated January 24, 1864, Robert E. Lee talks of family matters, the war, and ongoing issues regarding the estate of his father-in-law, George Washington Parke Custis.
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Letter from Robert E. Lee to Mary Randolph Custis Lee (December 27, 1856)
In this letter to his wife, Mary Randolph Custis Lee, dated December 27, 1856, Robert E. Lee expounds on the issue of slavery.
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Letter from Robert E. Lee to Mary Randolph Custis Lee (November 11, 1863)
In this letter to his wife, Mary Randolph Custis Lee, dated November 11, 1863, Robert E. Lee talks of family matters, the war, and ongoing issues regarding the estate of his father-in-law, George Washington Parke Custis.
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Letter from Robert E. Lee to Captain Wagner (May 4, 1868)
In this letter to a man identified only as Captain Wagner, Robert E. Lee, president of Washington College, writes that rumors of a potential lynching are groundless.
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Special Orders No. 191 by Robert E. Lee (1862)
On September 9, 1862, Robert E. Lee issued Special Orders No. 191. The document detailed how soldiers in the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia—in the midst of its first invasion of North—should behave, especially in relation to the people of Frederick, Maryland. Lee’s orders also detailed how Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson should remove about two-thirds of the army south to overtake the Union garrison at Harpers Ferry. A stray copy of these orders eventually fell into Union hands.
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Letter from Robert E. Lee to James A. Seddon (June 26, 1864)
In this letter, dated June 26, 1864, Robert E. Lee advises Secretary of War James A. Seddon that rather than send Confederate troops to the Northern Neck, the locals organize and defend themselves in the wake of the Draper raid.
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Col. R. E. Lee’s Report (October 19, 1859)
In this official report, dated October 19, 1859, and published in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography in 1902, Colonel Robert E. Lee describes his action to put down the raid on Harpers Ferry led by John Brown.
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“Proclamation to the People of Maryland” by Robert E. Lee (1862)
In a proclamation addressed “To the People of Maryland” and issued from Frederick, Maryland, on September 8, 1862, Confederate general Robert E. Lee justifies the Army of Northern Virginia‘s presence in the state, which had not seceded from the Union. Nine days later, Lee’s army was stopped at the Battle of Antietam.
