Engaged fatherhood seems to be a popular get-out-of-jail-free card in history, whether applied to Lee or famous historical incompetents such as Charles I and Nicholas II.
There are several anecdotes about U.S. Grant as a doting father playing with his sons. I'm too lazy to go to my books on the one I most remember, but he would come home from work (I think this was in Galena, shortly before the war) and one of his boys would challenge him, and Grant would say something like "I am a peaceable man, but I will not back down to you!" and then the two of them would be wrestling on the floor. Might have been a better choice for a Father's Day article, but we all know that in the popular media, Lee tends t trump Grant. We almost have to remind folks about who surrendered to whom at Appomattox.
Robert E. Lee spent much of his fatherhood on the road. As near as I can tell he was based officially at Fort Mason in the Texas Hill Country north and west of Austin from 1856 to 1861, but spent more time in San Antonio with his wife and family except when he was down on the Rio Grande at Fort Brown in Brownsville pursuing the Mexican outlaw Juan Cortina while curbing the excesses of the Texas Rangers.
Engaged fatherhood seems to be a popular get-out-of-jail-free card in history, whether applied to Lee or famous historical incompetents such as Charles I and Nicholas II.
There are several anecdotes about U.S. Grant as a doting father playing with his sons. I'm too lazy to go to my books on the one I most remember, but he would come home from work (I think this was in Galena, shortly before the war) and one of his boys would challenge him, and Grant would say something like "I am a peaceable man, but I will not back down to you!" and then the two of them would be wrestling on the floor. Might have been a better choice for a Father's Day article, but we all know that in the popular media, Lee tends t trump Grant. We almost have to remind folks about who surrendered to whom at Appomattox.
It was on the front steps of their first house in Galena. Went there a couple of years ago and remembered that story.
Robert E. Lee spent much of his fatherhood on the road. As near as I can tell he was based officially at Fort Mason in the Texas Hill Country north and west of Austin from 1856 to 1861, but spent more time in San Antonio with his wife and family except when he was down on the Rio Grande at Fort Brown in Brownsville pursuing the Mexican outlaw Juan Cortina while curbing the excesses of the Texas Rangers.
He did indeed. I suspect that he valued his time with family that much more.
And then Lee was happy to break up families, separating mothers and fathers from their children, when he sold the enslaved at Arlington House.