Lee the educator committed to character

After the War Between the States, Gen. Robert E. Lee accepted the presidency of a struggling college in the remote Shenandoah Valley village of Lexington, Va.

The war had crippled Virginia’s economy and, along with it, the prospects of Washington College. The school’s buildings and library had suffered extensive damage and pillaging during Union Gen. David Hunter’s raid in June 1864. Only four of the school’s professors remained, and the student body had dwindled to 40 young men. Though the school’s rich history included an endowment of stock by George Washington, its outlook seemed rather dismal.

But Lee was accustomed to lost causes. He already had rejected an offer to be vice chancellor of the University of the South at Sewanee, Tenn., and had also spurned suggestions that he consider a position at the University of Virginia.

In a letter to Washington College’s board of trustees, accepting their offer, Lee wrote: “I pray I may be spared to accomplish something for the benefit of mankind and the honor of God.” It seemed as though Lee felt a kindred spirit to the broken-down college in the sleepy little village. They had much in common.

After Lee accepted the position in Lexington, an English nobleman offered him a job with an annual salary of $50,000 — substantially more than the $1,500 Lee was to be paid by Washington College. Lee rejected the offer and, with his ever-present spirit of self-denial, humbly replied: “I cannot leave my present position. I have a self-imposed task. I have led the young men of the South in battle. I must now teach their sons to discharge their duty in life.”

This self-denial had already led Lee to make one of the most famous self-sacrificing decisions in history. After President Lincoln offered Lee the command of the Union forces on the eve of the war, Lee spent much of the night of April 19, 1861, in prayer. The fruit of Lee’s prayers was his rejection of Lincoln’s offer. As Pulitzer Prize-winning author Douglas Southall Freeman would write, “It was the decision Lee was born to make.”

But now, the war was over and Lee’s desire to teach the Southern sons of his day “to discharge their duty in life” consumed the final years of the South’s best-known icon. Lee’s commitment to the young men under his charge was so intense that he was, at times, visibly moved.

On one occasion, upon leaving a chapel prayer service, a friend noticed that something was troubling Lee. The friend inquired if there was anything wrong. Lee replied, “I was thinking of my responsibility to Almighty God for these hundreds of young men.”

On another occasion, the Rev. Dr. James L. Kirkpatrick, professor of moral philosophy at the college, told of a similar incident regarding Lee’s concern for his young men:

“We had been conversing for some time respecting the religious welfare of the students. General Lee’s feelings soon became so intense that for a time his utterance was choked; but, recovering himself, with his eyes overflowed with tears, his lips quivering with emotion and both hands raised, he exclaimed: ‘Oh Doctor! If I could only know that all the young men in the college were good Christians, I should have nothing more to desire.”

Lee’s efforts had a dramatic impact upon the student body of Washington College, and his influence has echoed through subsequent generations. One of Lee’s former students, C.W. Hedger, wrote:

“Of all men I have ever known, I think General R.E. Lee by far the greatest example as a soldier, a citizen … and a Christian gentleman. As President, he displayed distinguished ability, showing his greatness of soul not only by refusing many far more lucrative positions that he might be of more benefit to the rising generation, but also by his interest in all the students, financing some of them through college, and looking after the physical, mental, moral, and spiritual welfare.”

Lee’s word among his students was law. Rarely did a young man summoned to his office find occasion to return. One student wrote that Lee’s “personal and professional sublimity drew them unanimously and grappled their souls with hooks of steel.”

So respected and revered was his character and influence that many spoke of Lee as they would their own father and said they would rather have died than disappoint him. Lee’s influence was so profound that it once enabled him to quell a vengeful mob and prevent a lynching.

A popular young student had gotten into an argument with a black man in Lexington, and the student was shot. As the news spread, a brother of the wounded youth rounded up 400 students and captured the black man. The mob dragged the accused with a rope around his neck to the courthouse square for a public hanging. Local authorities tried in vain to reason with the would-be executioners.

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