Disunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded.
The Union retreat was a Confederate victory, but a personal loss for Lee: his wife?s family had owned the White House for generations. In fact, her great-grandmother, Martha, married her second husband ? George Washington ? either at or near the plantation.
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The irony of the Union destroying a home so closely associated with its founding president was hardly lost on Southern commanders. ?The conflagration raged fearfully at the White House during the entire night, while explosions of shells rent the air,? wrote the Confederate cavalry commander Jeb Stuart, who discovered the charred remains the next day. ?An opportunity was here offered for observing the deceitfulness of the enemy?s pretended reverence for everything associated with the name of Washington, for the dwelling-house was burned to the ground, and not a vestige left except what told of desolation and vandalism.?
But the episode was more than an opportunity for pointing out alleged Union hypocrisy. It revealed the close and complex relationships among Tidewater families and how those bonds frayed as the country moved from its founding to its near-dissolution during the Civil War ? and the central role that the Lees played in that drama.
Connections to Washington ran down both sides of the Lees? family tree. On one side, Robert E. Lee?s father, Henry ?Light-Horse Harry? Lee, served under Washington during the Revolution and later famously eulogized his commander as ?first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen.? On the other side, Lee?s father-in-law, George Washington Parke Custis, was Washington?s step-grandson and had grown up under his care at Mount Vernon, the president?s estate along the Potomac River.
Not far upriver from Mount Vernon, on the hills across from the nation?s capital, Custis later modeled his own home at Arlington as a temple, complete with pediment and portico, and dedicated it to Washington?s memory. At the start of the war, Lee lived in the mansion with his wife in rooms filled with china and furnishings once belonging to the first president.
After Lee cast his fate with the South, Union troops seized Arlington in May 1861. ?As to our old home, if not destroyed, it will be difficult ever to be recognized,? Lee wrote his wife. ?I fear too books, furniture, & the relics of Mount Vernon will be gone.?
Now a refugee, his wife, Mary Custis Lee, mourned for Arlington as she wandered from home to home across Virginia?s countryside. By Christmas, she arrived at the White House plantation, which her second son, the Confederate cavalry officer William Henry Fitzhugh ?Rooney? Lee, had inherited. ?The farm is lovely, the land lying level near the river & breaking into beautiful hills as you go back inland,? wrote a younger son, who joined for the holiday.
But the war followed Mary Custis Lee to this serene setting. As McClellan sailed his army southward for the spring Peninsula Campaign, her husband recognized that the White House occupied a strategic position on the Pamunkey River. Should they select that route, he warned her in early April, ?their whole army &c. will land at the White House.?
When Mary Custis Lee finally consented to leave, she left a note on the door for the soon-to-be occupiers. ?Northern soldiers, who profess to reverence Washington, forbear to desecrate the house of his first married life, the property of his wife, now owned by her descendants,? she wrote, even though a newer house had long ago replaced the original. Nevertheless, the Northern soldiers who camped near the White House respected Mary Custis Lee?s wishes. Instead of looting it, officers stationed sentries to protect it. Newspapers including The New York Times carried a story about how one officer scribbled a response below Mary Custis Lee?s note. ?Lady: A Northern officer has protected your property in sight of the enemy, and at the request of your overseer,? it read.
At the same time, reports of another sort trickled into Washington. While the White House plantation went protected, wounded and sick soldiers allegedly went neglected in nearby tents. According to one rumor, thirsty convalescents had to pay for water by the glass because Union officers would not let them drink from the plantation?s spring. ?Very urgent complaints are being made from various quarters respecting the protection afforded to the Rebel General Lee?s property, called the ?White House,? instead of using it as a hospital for the care of wounded soldiers,? Secretary of War Edwin Stanton wrote McClellan.
The ever-prickly McClellan could not let these ?malicious? myths go unchallenged. ?The White House of the rebel Gen Lee referred to is a small frame building of six rooms ? [that] would not accommodate more than 30 patients,? he wrote Stanton on June 7. ?I have given special directions to protect the property of the White House from any unnecessary injury or destruction because it was once the property of Gen Washington & I cannot believe that you will regard this a cause for rebuke or censure.?
But censure many did. During a June 16 debate in Congress, representatives lambasted McClellan?s decision to protect the house in the name of the former president as just another example of his ?cowardly policy of conciliation? toward traitors. ?It would be more honor to his memory if it were used for the sick and wounded soldiers who are battling in defense of the Union for which he suffered so much,? New York Congressman Charles Sedgwick said.
Ultimately the controversy over the White House on the Pamunkey reached the White House on the Potomac. During a dramatic meeting, one witness recalled President Abraham Lincoln explaining how Lee?s wife had extracted a promise from McClellan to protect the house. ?He doesn?t want to break the promise he has made, and I will break it for him,? Lincoln said as he reversed McClellan?s order.
The change of policy came too late to help the wounded. Shortly afterward, evacuations from the White House began. As boats departed down the Pamunkey on June 28, orders went out to torch public property left behind but not the private house. In the confusion, the distinction was lost. ?The White House mansion was burned by an incendiary ? not by any order,? wrote a Union officer who witnessed the scene.
One of the first Confederates to see the destruction was the heir to the house, Rooney Lee, who rode in Stuart?s cavalry. ?At the head of his troopers, in the quiet of a summer evening with the enemy fled, and only a distant, random gun heard, he surveyed the widespread havoc and smoking piles with which the demon of war and desolation had covered the scene,? a fellow soldier remembered years afterward.
Mary Custis Lee had lost Arlington, and now the White House, too. ?Unfortunately we left all the furniture there, not supposing such an act of vandalism could be committed on a place sacred as having been the early home of Washington in wedded life with my Grandmother,? she wrote a friend. ?I trust I may live to see the day of retribution.?
That day never came for Mary Custis Lee. But perhaps for a moment, her husband remembered the words that he had penned to a daughter after losing Arlington: ?You see what a poor sinner I am, and how unworthy to possess what was given me; for that reason it has been taken away.?
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Sources: Douglas Southall Freeman, ?R. E. Lee: A Biography,? Vol. 2; The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies; Arthur Gray, ?The White House ? Washington?s Marriage Place,? in ?The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography,? Vol. 42, No. 3; Malcolm Hart Harris, ?Old New Kent County: Some Account of The Planters, Plantations, and Places in New Kent County,? Vol. 1; Murray H. Nelligan, ?Old Arlington: The Story of the Lee Mansion National Memorial?; Clifford Dowdey and Louis H. Manarin, eds. ?The Wartime Papers of Robert E. Lee?; DeButts-Ely Collection of Lee Family Papers, Library of Congress; The New York Times, May 23, 1862; Stephen W. Sears, ed. ?The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan: Selected Correspondence, 1860-1865?; ?Congressional Globe,? 37th Congress, 2nd Session; Horace Green, ?Lincoln Breaks McClellan?s Promise,? ?The Century,? Vol. 81; G. W. Beale, ?A Lieutenant of Cavalry in Lee?s Army?; Mackay-McQueen Family Papers, National Society Colonial Dames of America, Georgia Historical Society, Savannah; J. William Jones, ?Life and Letters of Robert Edward Lee: Soldier and Man.?
Jonathan Horn was a speechwriter and special assistant for President George W. Bush. He is working on a book about Robert E. Lee.
Source: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/29/white-house-on-the-pamunkey/
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