On Hallowed Ground by Robert M Poole Read Free Book Online Page B

of troops encamped around
    it, the change of officers, & c., the want of fuel, shelter, & c., & all the dire necessities of war, it is vain to think of
    its being in a habitable condition. I fear too books, furniture, & the relics of Mount Vernon will be gone. It is better to
    make up our minds to a general loss. They cannot take away the remembrances of the spot, & the memories of those that to us
    rendered it sacred. That will remain to us as long as life will last, & that we can preserve. 60
    Twice in this period of his exile, Lee broached the idea of buying Stratford Hall, his birthplace and boyhood home on Virginia’s
Northern Neck, to replace the loss of Arlington. But he soon dropped that idea, and after this flurry of holiday letters,
Lee rarely mentioned either home for the remainder of the war. He was resigned, perhaps, to the new reality. Certainly he
had greater troubles to occupy him as 1862 commenced and the nation got down to the real business of fighting.
    Gen. George McClellan amassed troops for his Peninsula Campaign against Richmond, while Union forces began to menace the coastal
defenses around Charleston and Savannah. Lee scurried in to defend the coast, recruiting local volunteers, and building up
fortifications at strategic points along the shore. “Our works are not yet finished,” he reported to the Confederate adjutant
from Savannah in January. “Their progress is slow. Guns are required for their armament, & I have not received as many troops
from South Carolina & Georgia as I at first expected.” He pleaded for more troops and guns. 61
    While this drama unfolded in South Carolina, Lee received news about the disposition of his father-in-law’s estate, unsettled
since George Washington Custis’s death in 1857. A Virginia court had finally examined the estate’s papers and ordered Lee to disburse the unpaid
balance of his daughters’ legacies and to emancipate slaves from the Arlington, Romancock, and White House estates by the
end of 1862. Lee had planned to sell Smith Island on the Atlantic coast to raise money for the legacies, but shortly after
the war broke out, Union forces had seized that strategically important property, just as they had the Arlington Heights.
“No sales of land can now be made,” an exasperated Lee wrote Mary in January 1862. “The enemy is in possession of Smiths Isd.,
& what I am to do with the negroes I do not know.” Their liberation would have to wait. 62
    Meanwhile, two of those family slaves continued to travel with the Rebel general. They were Perry Parks, a young Arlington
servant who acted as Lee’s launderer and valet, and a cook known only as Meredith—most probably Henry Meredith or one of his
children from the White House estate. In newsy letters to the family, Lee mentioned both men, conveyed their regards, and
reported on their health. And as cold weather approached, he diplomatically informed Mrs. Lee that he had given his servants
the new socks she had knitted for him. “As I found Perry in desperate need, I bestowed a couple of pairs on him, as a present
from you,” he wrote. “The others I have put in my trunk and suppose they will fall to the lot of Meredith … Meredith will
have no one near to supply him but me, & will naturally expect that attention.” 63
    Back at Arlington, some of the slaves had difficulty adjusting to the presence of so many troops on the old farm, and to the
inevitable onset of age. Arlington’s elderly coachman Daniel had grown feeble and short of breath; the gardener Ephraim suffered
from typhoid fever; 64 Selina Gray was reported to be worn out and forlorn. 65 Others simply drifted away to take their chances in Washington or lands beyond.
    Their masters were gone, to be sure, but the slaves remaining at Arlington lived in a peculiar limbo, like the thousands of
largely illiterate field hands displaced by fighting or escaped from their masters in the opening stages of war. Slaves from