"General Lee's daughter kept his letters Ya'll read this" Topic

link

Oooooh that's really neat! Might make for some good reading.

On Sept. 23, 1862 -- a few days after Lee's army retreated to Virginia after an unsuccessful invasion of Maryland -- the general wrote to Mary on a piece of cheap blue paper. Now, nearly 144 years later, the words are barely legible. "We had two hard fought battles in Maryland and did not consider ourselves beaten as our enemies supposed," he wrote. "We were greatly outnumbered and opposed by double if not treble our strength and yet we repulsed all their attacks, held our ground and retired when it suited our convenience."

This, ironically, makes him sound a lot like McClellan.

Thank you for this, great article.

Very cool. I will read the rest of the article later today. I hope they mention that they are scanning the letters to preserve them before they actually preserve them in plastic or something.

Neat article. Mary Custiss sounded like a real firecracker.

"Ya'll"?!?!

Nashville, suh, ah do buhleeve y'all's a Yankee in disguise.

"Y'all" is spelled "y'all," not "ya'll."

This, ironically, makes him sound a lot like McClellan.

Hah! True. Except Lee actually was out outnumbered.

Maybe Pinkerton was being paid per reported Confederate.

I remember when these letters were discovered. It's astonishing to think the trunk sat at the bank for almost 150 years. The bank, Burke & Herbert, is still run by the Burke family so maybe it isn't as astonishing as one might believe.

Nice find and very interesting read, thank you for posting.

"Maybe Pinkerton was being paid per reported Confederate."

Perhaps. I recall reading that Pinkerton based his numbers on Confederate rations and somehow managed to over-estimate enemy numbers by a factor of 4.

Nashville, suh, ah do buhleeve y'all's a Yankee in disguise.

"Y'all" is spelled "y'all," not "ya'll."

Such an accusation! Perhaps he just fat-fingered it!

This puts me in mind of a couple Yankee stories.

Years back I called my buddy in North Carolina and his then 12-year old son answered the phone. I spoke to Brett for a while and then asked him to tell his parents their Yankee friend was on the phone. He said, "Vincent, you're not a Yankee." I had to inform him otherwise.

Back in 2003 my wife and I fled the Outer Banks of North Carolina to Chapel Hill, ahead of Hurricane Isabel. After trashing the coast, it came after us. We were in a Holiday Inn having breakfast the morning the storm hit. An elderly lady asked if she could share our table. We said of course. We talked about how lovely the area was. She said it was better before. Before what, we said? After a brief pause she said before all these damnyankees came down. I managed not to spray milk all over the table.

Yep, he fat-fingered it. He was typing on an iPhone, so I begged his pardon via PM.

Well you are right, I misspelled "y'all". Heaven's knows I know the difference . I was packed away to Augusta Military Academy founded by Private Roller who rode as a courier for General Fitzhugh Lee's command during the war. We dated girls who went to [JEB] Stuart Hall named for the General's Widow. My apartment in Richmond in college was near Lee's statue on Monument Avenue and in law school I lived on Ft. Sanders Hill in Knoxville. My law office in Nashville overlooks Fort Negley on the left and the statue of Sam Davis on the right next to the Capital which bristled with guns during the Union occupation. Less historical is the row of warehouses next to the river which were once official army houses of prostitution. I have no excuse.

See, I told you guys he was a scholar and a gentleman. :)

Brief detour off subject. Vtsaogames, please understand that the area around Chapel Hill which today is known as the Research Triangle was until fairly recently the heart of tobacco country. You can still easily find people in the area whose families got rich selling off farms that had been in the family for generations to be developed, but who still pine for the "olden days".

Still lots of tobacco barns in the area, too, but most of them are rapidly falling into disrepair, those that haven't collapsed already.