By Jenna Faude
Robert E. Lee is well known as a military tactician, a symbol of the old Confederacy and, especially around Lexington, an education visionary. But little has been written about his religious beliefs.
Until now.
A former rector of R. E. Lee Memorial Episcopal Church in Lexington, the Rev. R. David Cox, has spent the last three years poring over Lee’s personal records and correspondence trying to find material about how Lee’s religious belief ultimately influenced his choices.
Cox’s interest began during his time as rector in Lexington. He used to watch the Lexington Carriage Company as the costumed tour guide driving the horse-drawn carriage stopped outside his office at the church. The guide would mention that R. E. Lee Memorial was the only Episcopal church not named after a saint.
The local joke was always, in answer to this, “What makes you think this one isn’t named for a saint?”
But Cox began to take the question seriously. “I’ve always been interested in this question, about the intersection of his faith and his actions,” Cox said.
Now Cox, a former Lexington City Council member, has completed the 16th chapter for a book focused on Lee’s religious faith that he hopes to publish this year. Washington and Lee history professor J. Holt Merchant said it unearths important new insights.
Cox decided to pursue his interest in Lee while serving as interim rector at Emmanuel Church in Richmond from 2002 to 2003. While there, Cox said he chose to live directly across the street from the Virginia Historical Society, which has the largest collection of Lee family papers.
“Toward the end of my time there I just started reading everything I could,” he said. “I went through and read all the letters, and in a sense I’ve been doing that ever since.”
Merchant said the material is “enormously promising” and it will provide the basis for a “really good book” when it is finished. He is helping Cox revise the manuscript.
“He’s discovered things that either nobody knew or that other biographers and commentators on Lee haven’t cared about,” Merchant said. “His argument is that you understand Lee by knowing that he is an early-Victorian, Protestant evangelical.”
Others agree that the research behind his book is substantial as Cox takes his findings to various audiences. He spoke to a group at R.E. Lee Memorial church earlier this year.
On March 13, Cox visited the Tredegar Society of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond. There, he unveiled the idea that Lee was driven by an older concept of God as “Providence.”
“The idea of Providence is basically that God is in his heaven and looking after the world,” Cox said to the crowd, which seemed to be captivated by his research. “And all is right with the world, even if it doesn’t seem that way to us. When bad things happen to good people, then we’ve got to look very closely as to why that is, because God is probably teaching us something.” The idea of Providence becomes especially important with the outcome of the Civil War.
Cox read many excerpts from letters that Lee wrote, mainly in correspondence with his family and his wife, Mary Anna Custis Lee. In one letter to a military friend, Lee wrote about the grief and pain that accompanies burying loved ones, but eventually said it was for the best.
“What he writes there is kind of frightening to us, because he says that [this death] was meant for good,” Cox said. “But it is this sense that he looks at events and when bad things happen he looks to see where the hand of God might be. And he also does this when good things happen.”
Cox said this underscores why Lee chose the way he did in the two great decisions of Lee’s life: Why did Lee side with the South? And why was he able to reconcile to peace and contribute to peace when so many others could not?
“Lee was against the war. He opposed secession. He opposed slavery. And yet we know the story,” Cox said. Lee inherited his father-in-law’s plantation, Arlington House, after his father-in-law’s death in 1857. Lee managed the slaves left by his father-in-law on the estate while he was living there.
Because of Lee’s reputation as a talented U.S. Army officer, Abraham Lincoln offered Lee the command of the Federal forces in 1861. Lee declined because he did not want to fight against his state of Virginia after it seceded. Lee was then offered command of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, accepted, and was commissioned as a general. Cox said Lee prayed that God would protect and direct him and he believed it was his duty to fight the war.
Cox did not need to spend much time with the Richmond crowd going over the events of the Civil War, and how it came out.
Cox quickly revealed his most interesting discovery dealing with this time in history: He found a letter describing a unique interaction Lee had with Marsena Patrick, a general in the Union volunteer forces. Patrick and Lee were acquaintances from their time together in the Mexican-American War, but after the Civil War, Patrick was in charge of food distribution for the Union Army in Richmond.
When Lee went to gather his family’s rations, he struck up a conversation with Patrick. Patrick referenced one of their conversations later in a letter to a biographer.
“Patrick, the only question on which we ever differed has been settled, and the Lord has decided against me,” Lee said, according to Patrick.
Cox said it was this specific phrase that solidified his belief in Lee’s guiding idea of Providence.
“In other words, he was not on the right side,” Cox told the Tredegar Society, a group of people with a passionate interest in the Civil War. “It was not the will of God for the South to win. So what do you do when you realize you have not been on the right side of God?”
The Richmond crowd responded by shaking their heads in wonder and disbelief, indicating they found this question interesting to contemplate.
“Today if we’re going to remember Robert E. Lee, I think what is most important and admirable were his actions after the war,” said Sean Kane, the Education Coordinator at the American Civil War Center, who heard Cox speak in Richmond. He said Cox’s clarity reinforced the idea that Lee’s work to reconcile the nation is more worthy of remembrance than his actions on the battlefield.
Cox said Lee decided to take a theological approach after the war, and eventually felt that God was drawing him to Washington College in Lexington. The college needed a prominent figure to take over the presidency, and Lee eventually decided to accept the position. Cox said Lee upheld his commitment to honor and loyalty while he served as the president of what after his death in 1870 would become Washington and Lee University.
According to an account by the Virginia Historical Society, Lee wrote to the trustees of Washington College that he believed “it is the duty of every citizen, in the present condition of the Country, to do all in his power to aid in the restoration of peace and harmony.”
Lee used his influence to cultivate the minds of young men at the college, hoping to bring people together after the nation was torn apart by the gruesome war.
Cox lives in a historic home on Lee Avenue. It is just two blocks from Lee’s beloved campus, the home and chapel built under Lee’s presidency there, and R. E. Lee Memorial Church, called Grace Church when Lee was its senior warden. Cox’s home belonged to William Nelson Pendleton, former rector of Grace Church and Lee’s chief of artillery. Lee presumably spent a lot of time in Cox’s home on church business or in social calls when Pendleton lived there.
Cox has an undergraduate degree in history from the University of Virginia, as well as three advanced degrees from Yale Divinity School and Graduate Theological Foundation associated with the University of Oxford. He currently is an adjunct professor at Southern Virginia University in Buena Vista.
Merchant said that because of Cox’s varied background, he has an unusual perspective as both an Episcopal priest and an amateur historian. Cox would agree that this set him up perfectly.
“The secular people didn’t have the religious background to look into the nature of his belief, but the religious people were just polishing his halo,” Cox said. “I’ve always had a foot in each door so I’ve been able to come at it from both angles.”
Cox is hoping to have his book published within the year. He said all publishing options remain on the table, yet he would prefer to publish locally.