In this program, I trace the history of General Lee's time as president of Washington College (now Washington & Lee University) from October 1865 until his death in October 1870. He spent his time rebuilding this small college, as he worked to bring the divided nation together.

1. Honoring President
Robert E. Lee
By William S. Connery

2. Every Republican candidate running for President
from 1868 until 1900 had been a Union officer in the
War Between the States, starting with …

3. Lieutenant General
U.S. Grant (1869-77)

4. Major General
Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-81)

5. Major General
James A. Garfield (1881)

6. Brigadier General
Benjamin Harrison (1889-93)

7. Brevet Major
William McKinley (1897-
1901)

8. If the Confederacy had won its independence, the
odds are that Robert E. Lee would have been
elected its Second President.

9. 9 April 1865
General Lee surrenders the Army of Northern
Virginia to General U.S, Grant at

10. The CSS Shenandoah was roaming the Pacific Ocean and
would destroy half of the New Bedford whaling fleet in the
Bering Sea in June 1865!

11. The only Confederate ship to circumnavigate the
globe, the Shenandoah would not haul down its flag
until docking in Liverpool in November 1865!

13. GENERAL ORDERS No. 9.
HDQRS. ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA, April 10, 1865
After four years of arduous service, marked by unsurpassed courage
and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield
to overwhelming numbers and resources. I need not tell the brave
survivors of so many hard-fought battles, who have remained steadfast
to the last, that I have consented to the result from no distrust of them.
But, feeling that valor and devotion could accomplish nothing that could
compensate for the loss that must have attended the continuance of the
contest, I determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose past
services have endeared them to their countrymen.
By the terms of the agreement officers and men can return to their
homes and remain until exchanged. You will take with you the
satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully
performed; and I earnestly pray that a merciful God will extend to you
his blessing and protection.
With an increasing admiration of your constancy and devotion to your
country, and a grateful remembrance of your kind and generous
considerations for myself, I bid you all an affectionate farewell.
R. E. Lee, General

14. Some of the destruction
Lee would have seen
coming into Richmond

15. Arlington House with
Invading Union troops

17. Agnes, Mildred and Mary Lee.
Lee’s surviving daughters.
None of them married.

18. General Lee’s residence at 707 E. Franklin
Street in Richmond

19. Four days after Easter Sunday, April 20,
1865, Mathew Brady paid a visit to
General Lee in Richmond.

20. Brady sent an assistant into the house
to speak with Mrs. Mary Lee.

21. This photograph is one of six
images that Mathew Brady took of
Robert E. Lee upon his arrival home

22. General Lee, flanked by his son (Custis) and adjutant
(Col. Walter Taylor)

23. Colonel Mosby’s last raid was
on April 10 in Fairfax County.

24. Channing Smith
Mosby Ranger

25. Capt. George Wise (here as member of Congress in 1891).
He had a difficult question for General Lee in 1865.

26. General and former Virginia Governor
Henry Wise. He was at first not pleased
with his nephew’s decision.

27. President Gerald Ford restored General Lee’s U.S.
citizenshipOn 5 August 1975 at Arlington. ”Although more
than a century late, I am delighted to sign this resolution
and to complete the full restoration of General Lee's
citizenship.”

29. Lexington Judge John Brockenbrough. With
$50 and a borrowed suit, he went from
Lexington to Derwent, to offer the presidency
of Washington College to Robert E. Lee.

30. Washington College of Lexington,
Virginia, as it appeared in 1865.

31. Washington College had not suffered
the fate of VMI because of its
connection to General Washington

33. General Wm. N. Pendleton, Episcopal minister before
and after the War. He wrote to Lee: “My hope that it
might accord with your views of duty & with your
tastes to accept the important trust.”

37. In a letter to Beauregard in October 1865, Lee compared his
recent situation as a ‘traitor’ to General Washington, who
originally fought in support of the British Empire and later fought
against it.

38. As a college president, one of Lee’s duties was to
raise funds. Cyrus McCormick, a son of Rockbridge
County, responded to Lee’s appeal to give financial
help to Washington College

39. Lee responded to Sir John that the South accepted the de
facto results of the War and the extinction of slavery, but
felt that an overly powerful Federal Government would
prove to be “aggressive abroad and despotic at home.”

40. Lord Acton: “Power tends to
corrupt. Absolute power
corrupts absolutely.”

41. In 1868, the Herald recommended Robert E. Lee as Democrat
Candidate for U.S. President! “For this soldier baffled our greater
Northern armies for four years; and when opposed by Grant was
only worn down by that solid strategy of stupidity that
accomplishes its object by mere weight.”

42. Grant and Colfax was the Republican
ticket for 1868. They beat …

43. … Horatio Seymour, who had been
governor of New York and F.P. Blair,
Jr., who had been a Union general.
Blair’s father …

44. … Francis Preston Blair, Sr., had offered
Lee the leadership of the U.S. Army in
April, 1861, which Lee had refused.

45. On May 1 1869 two Presidents met at the
White House: U.S. Grant and R.E. Lee.

46. One of the last known
Photographs of

47. Agnes Lee accompanied her
father on his trip through the
South – March, April 1870

48. Colonel Mosby, a few years after the War. He met Lee
in Richmond in March 1870 and later wrote, “the
general was pale and haggard, and did not look like the
Apollo I had known in the Army.’

49. The Mosby House in Warrenton.
The Gray Ghost’s home after the War. His
wife Pauline died in the upper-right room.

50. General Pickett asked John Mosby to escort him to see President Lee
in March 1870. The meeting was short and strained. Afterwards he said
to Mosby “that man had my division slaughtered at Gettysburg.” To
which Mosby replied, “Well, it made you immortal!”

51. Anne Lee was the only Lee child to die during
the War. Her father called her “the purest and
best” of his children.

52. As President Lee headed south, an
unknown telegrapher tapped out four
words: “General Lee Is Aboard”!

53. Lee launched himself toward
the South as a tourist.
He would be welcomed
almost as a god.

54. In Augusta, Lee spent hours in line at the Planter’s
Hotel greeting guests. This young man wriggled
through the crowd and stood for hours next to Lee.

56. Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston
together in Savannah GA in April 1865

58. On September 28, 1870, Lee suffered a stroke. He died two weeks later,
shortly after 9 a.m. on October 12, 1870, from the effects of pneumonia.
According to one account, his last words on the day of his death, were "Tell Hill
he must come up. Strike the tent", but this is debatable because of conflicting
accounts and because Lee's stroke had resulted in aphasia, possibly rendering
him unable to speak. His office has been kept the way he left it.

59. Some of ‘Stonewall’ Jackson’s final words
were: “Order A.P. Hill to prepare for action!
Pass the infantry to the front!”
Likewise, on his deathbed, Lee said, “Tell Hill
he must come up!”

60. Crowds of mourners gather outside the
newly opened Lee Chapel for Lee’s
funeral in October 1870.

61. "Recumbent Statue" of Robert E. Lee asleep on the
battlefield, by Edward Valentine. Located in the Lee Chapel
in Lexington, VA, it is often mistakenly thought to be a tomb
or sarcophagus, but Lee is actually buried underneath the
chapel.

63. Kappa Alpha Fraternity established at Washington
College. Founded to create a lifetime experience,
which centers on reverence to God, duty, honor,
character and gentlemanly conduct as inspired by
Robert E. Lee.

64. G.W. Custis Lee became President of Washington
College after the death of his father . It was renamed
Washington and Lee University.

65. Coat of Arms for Washington & Lee University. It
combines the CoA of the Washington and Lee Families.

66. “From deep conviction I simply say this: a nation of men of Lee’s caliber would
be unconquerable in spirit and soul. Indeed, to the degree that present-day
American youth will strive to emulate his rare qualities, including his devotion to
this land as revealed in his painstaking efforts to help heal the nation’s wounds
once the bitter struggle was over, we, in our own time of danger in a divided
world, will be strengthened and our love of freedom sustained.
“Such are the reasons that I proudly display the picture of this great American
in my office.”
President D.D. Eisenhower – Aug. 2 1960

67. “Do your duty in all things. You cannot do
more, you should never wish to do less.”