Robert E. Lee - The 1850s

The 1850s

The 1850s were a difficult time for Lee, with his long absences from home, the increasing disability of his wife, and his often morbid concern with his personal failures.

In 1852, Lee was appointed Superintendent of the Military Academy at West Point; he was reluctant to enter what he called a "snake pit", but the War Department insisted and he obeyed. His wife occasionally came to visit. During his three years at West Point, Brevet Colonel Robert E. Lee improved the buildings and courses and spent much time with the cadets. Lee's oldest son, George Washington Custis Lee, attended West Point during his tenure. Custis Lee graduated in 1854, first in his class.

Lee was enormously relieved to receive a long-awaited promotion as second-in-command of the Second Cavalry regiment in Texas in 1855. It meant leaving the Engineering Corps and its sequence of staff jobs for the combat command he truly wanted. He served under Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston at Camp Cooper, Texas; their mission was to protect settlers from attacks by the Apache and the Comanche.

The death in 1857 of his father-in-law, George Washington Parke Custis, created a serious crisis, as Lee had to assume the main burden of executing the will. The Custis estate was in disarray, with vast landholdings and hundreds of slaves balanced against massive debts. The plantations had been poorly managed and were losing money. Lee took several leaves of absence from the army and became a planter and eventually straightened out the estate. On June 24, 1859, Lee was accused by the New York Tribune of having three runaway slaves whipped and of personally whipping a female slave, Mary Norris. One of the captured slaves, Wesley Norris, confirmed the account in an 1866 interview printed in the National Anti-Slavery Standard, though he denied Lee personally whipped Mary Norris. Lee did not respond to the attack until 1866, claiming in a letter the accusation was not true. The Custis will called for emancipating the slaves within five years, but state law required they be funded in a livelihood outside Virginia, and that was impossible until the debts were paid off. They were all emancipated by 1862, within the five years specified.