The Man Who Would Not Be Washington: Robert E. Lee’s Civil War and His Decision That Changed American History by Jonathan Horn (review)

Perhaps no figure in Civil War history, or indeed American history, is more a bundle of contradictions than Robert E. Lee. Lee was a slaveholder who had strong misgivings about the institution. During the war he tried to emancipate his slaves, but during the campaign in Pennsylvania on the road to Gettysburg he ordered free blacks sent south into slavery. He was a vocal opponent of secession, but after his home state of Virginia voted to leave the Union he quickly turned his back on the nation he had sworn to defend and led troops in the killing of fellow Americans. Lee was hailed as the most able general of the era by both sides—he refused an offer from the Lincoln administration to take command of the U.S. forces—but his frontal attack on the Union line on the third day of Gettysburg, better known as Pickett’s Charge, was at least questionable and at worst inept and foolhardy.

Jonathan Horn’s new biography of Robert E. Lee examines his life in the context of his tangled relationship with George Washington, which began before his birth and continued after his death. As the title implies, Lee was under pressure to live up to the example of Washington: to be, in effect, his reincarnation. Robert was the youngest son of “Light Horse” Harry Lee, one of Washington’s most trusted generals in the Revolution, best known to history as the author of the words “first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen,” delivered in a eulogy for Washington. The Washington and Lee families had a complicated relationship of marriage, geography, business, heritage, and expectations for Robert. He eventually married the daughter of George Washington’s adopted son. While leading American forces in Mexico, Lee’s father-in-law announced he was giving one of Washington’s swords to the heroic captain. John Brown took Lewis Washington, the president’s great-grandnephew, hostage in the attempted revolt at Harpers Ferry—which Marines put down, under the command of Robert E. Lee.

Lee’s most powerful connection to Washington was the Arlington estate. The gift of his father-in-law to his daughter, Arlington overlooked Washington, D.C. Arlington was second only to Mount Vernon as repository of Washington relics. As the southern states left the Union, protecting the house and grounds with its slaves weighed heavily on Lee. He also thought about Washington’s words in his farewell address and other writings, as well as two contemporary biographies, one written by his late father-in-law. At one point, Lee rationalized his decision by comparing his actions to Washington’s. Just as Washington served the British during the French and Indian War before leading the Revolution, Lee had served the United States in the Mexican War before defecting to the rebels. Generations of southern apologists notwithstanding, Washington always served America, and Lee committed the textbook definition of treason: for that reason alone Lee would not and never could be George Washington.

After the war, an impoverished, homeless Lee refused more lucrative offers and instead became the president of Washington College in Virginia. After his death in 1870, the college was renamed Washington and Lee. Many interpreted the renaming as marking as a union of equals, but others saw it as a contrast between ultimate success and ultimate failure as a military, political, and moral leader.

By design, Horn’s book is a limited biography of Lee. Whole chapters of Lee’s life, for example his engineering work on the Mississippi, receive only a sentence or two. But his central point, the Washington-Lee dynamic, is well researched and thoroughly developed. Whether Horn has made his case convincingly is for each reader to decide. There is no doubt, however...