Historical Highlight: A Student Under General Lee

Historical Highlight: A Student Under General Lee

An aged alumnus looks back at the stern yet kindly leadership of President Robert E. Lee
Sponsored by The Generals Redoubt

(Charcoal sketch of President Robert E. Lee, April 2025. | SOURCE: Kamron M. Spivey)

[The following highlight features an alumnus describing his interactions with Robert E. Lee during his time as president of Washington College between 1865-1870. The account was initially published in the Chapel Hill Weekly on April 24, 1935, and has been republished here with slight reformatting. For those looking for more information regarding Robert E. Lee’s time in Lexington, The Generals Redoubt hosts tours of campus history.]

I was a student at Washington and Lee in 1867 and 1868.

On fine afternoons the General could frequently be seen riding on Traveller, his beautiful iron gray saddle horse, a present from a friend early in the War between the States and which he rode during the war.

Of course all Southern people know about Traveller, but all Southern people do not know how General Lee appeared on Traveller: that pleasure is reserved to but few, and they are old people. 

The General rode with the trained grace of a cavalry officer, and the assured seat of a boy acquired from earliest youth on a Southern plantation, that is the seat of a natural rider. Though it is 68 years since I saw him and his horse I see them just as plainly now as I did then.

In the General’s intercourse with the students no kinder or more sympathetic man ever lived, but he was as firm as he was kind. I remember a personal instance in the winter of ‘68.

It was very cold in Lexington and the [Maury] river nearby was frozen and in splendid skating condition. At least half the college boys were on the ice, and a great many of townspeople. I wanted to go of all things, but I did not want to out any of my classes for fear it would injure my term stand; therefore I decided to ask General Lee’s permission and then I would be all right.

However, when I made my application for leave to go he refused to give it, explaining very kindly that if he gave me permission he would have to give it to all who applied, and he could not interrupt college routine on account of skating. 

Now I was in a fix. If I had gone as the others did, without permission, I would have been on the same footing as they, but I had asked permission and been refused. And when my teachers sent in my report as absent, and I had to go and explain it, would he forget his refusal? Not a hope; he knew every man’s face in the college and called him by surname when he met him.

Well, after all I went skating, and had the biggest kind of day. But my conscience made me pay for it. “Now,” it said, “you have disobeyed General Lee for a little pleasure — aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

Well, I was, but that did not help matters. However, examinations came on and I was never called on to explain my absence, but I surely had some bad hours thinking over what the General would say to me, because I had heard of wild boys coming from his office in tears after he had talked to them in a kindly and fatherly manner, and I hankered after no such experience. 

General Lee occasionally walked around in the college while exercises were going on, and sometimes he would enter a recitation room while a class was reciting. The teacher would give him a book and he would pay strict attention to the matter on hand, but I never heard him ask a question of any boy.

I thought then and I think now that he was the finest example of a Southern Christian gentleman that America has ever produced. The boys — many of them were grown men who had served under him during the war — adored him and most of them tried to do what they thought would please him. 

I had only three personal contacts with General Lee; when I matriculated, when I got him to autograph a photograph for me, and when I was refused permission to go skating.