On the Trail of Grant and LeeHill, Frederick Trevor
History
On the Trail of Grant and Lee
Hill, Frederick Trevor
Grant, Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson), 1822-1885; Lee, Robert E. (Robert Edward), 1807-1870
Here the trails of the two families, AGAIN DRAWN TOGETHER BY A CIVIL
STRIFE, merge for an historic moment and then cross; that of the
Grants turning toward the West, and that of the Lees keeping within the
confines of Virginia.
It was in 1799 that Captain Noah Grant migrated to Ohio, and during the
same year Henry Lee delivered the memorial address upon the death of
Washington, coining the immortal phrase "first in war, first in peace
and first in the hearts of his countrymen."
Ulysses Grant, the Commander of the Union forces in the Civil War, was
the grandson of Captain Grant, who served with "Light Horse Harry" Lee
during the Revolution; and Robert Lee, the Confederate General, was
"Light Horse Harry's" son.
Thus, for the THIRD time in two and a half centuries, a civil conflict
between men of the English-speaking race blazed the trails of Grant and
Lee.
Chapter II. -- Washington and Lee
"Wakefield," Westmoreland County, Virginia, was the birthplace of
Washington, and at Stratford in the same county and state, only a few
miles from Wakefield, Robert Edward Lee was born on January 19, 1807.
Seventy-five years had intervened between those events but, except in
the matter of population, Westmoreland County remained much the same as
it had been during Washington's youth. Indians, it is true, no longer
lurked in he surrounding forests or paddled the broad Potomac in their
frail canoes, but the life had much of the same freedom and charm which
had endeared it to Washington. All the streams and woods and haunts
which he had known and loved were known and loved by Lee, not only for
their own sake, but because they were associated with the memory of the
great Commander-in-Chief who had been his father's dearest friend.
It would have been surprising, under such circumstances, if Washington
had not been Lee's hero, but he was more than a hero to the boy. From
his father's lips he had learned to know him, not merely as a famous
personage of history, but as a man and a leader of men. Indeed, his
influence and example were those of a living presence in the household
of "Light Horse Harry;" and thus to young Lee he early became the ideal
of manhood upon which, consciously or unconsciously, he molded his own
character and life. But quite apart from this, the careers of these two
great Virginians were astonishingly alike.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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