Welcome to Talk With History.

I'm your host, Scott, here with my wife and historian, Jen.

Hello.

On this podcast, we give you insights to our history inspired

world travels, YouTube channel journey, and examine history

through deeper conversations with the curious, the explorers, and

the history lovers out there.

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Today's episode takes us south to the beautiful town of Lexington,

Virginia, in the historic campus of Washington and Lee University.

But, this isn't your typical college campus tour.

We're heading to a place steeped in controversy in Civil War

history, the Lee Chapel, where Confederate General Robert E.

Lee himself is buried.

Lee, a complex and fascinating figure, remains a powerful symbol for many.

Love him or loathe him, his story is undeniably woven into

the fabric of American history.

Join us as we explore the Lee Chapel.

Delve into Lee's life and legacy and unpack the ongoing debate

surrounding this confederate icon.

All right, Jen.

So this, this was one of those graves that we made the effort to get out to

go see because I mean, you can't, in American history, the kind of giants

of history, whether controversial or not, don't get too much bigger.

Yeah, when we talk about the Civil War, and it's still a huge subject

today, I even get people who don't like me to use the term Civil War.

They want to hear war between states.

And you'll find that depicted on a lot of things.

It's even still on the Iwo Jima Memorial, says the war between the states.

So when you're talking about the leaders of And that moment in history, it's always

Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Grant, and Lee.

And it's, it's one of those things that we try to do, and I will

both of us on the back for this because we do our best to give context to the

historical events of the historical figures that we're covering Either in

a video or on a podcast, and that is a very tricky thing to do without appearing

to lean one way or the other on a ton of topic, but context is so important.

Now, this is a relatively simple event that you and I did.

We went and visited the graveside of someone well known, but there's so much

context surrounding him that There's been many books written about, Robert E.

Lee.

Well, I think the issue that people have, and I'm just conjuring this, is if

you try to give any positive annotations about something that was so controversial

and negative, that you're looking as if you condoned that person's entire history.

actions and their resume, and that's not true.

If you look at a sculptor or a painting and you say that's a well

done painting or that's a well done sculptor even if it's of a controversial

figure, you're not saying that you agree with that figure and every

historic action that figure ever took.

And so that's where the issue.

lies is, as a historian, we have to, we have to point out the truth.

We have to point out the facts.

So if you're pointing to, in this instance, Robert E.

Lee's grave and the sculpture of him on top of it, and it is well done.

It's a great depiction of him.

It's very human like it does look like he's sleeping.

But if you point out that it's a well done sculpture, people will

jump on when you must like Robert E.

Lee.

And that's not true.

And it wouldn't, it wouldn't matter if it was true or not.

Historically, it doesn't matter if I like Robert E.

Lee.

What matters is I'm pointing out that the sculpture is well done.

And that is a fact.

And so to Those are the things that are hard for historians and we try,

we try to just give you all the facts and the context of what is happening,

when it's happening, who is making it, why it looks the way it does, and then

you can decide how you feel about it.

My feeling about it should have no bearing on how you feel about something.

My feelings about something As a historian should just be like, I want to make sure

you have all the information out there.

That's primary sourced period.

It shouldn't matter what side those sources come from.

It's just you have it all at your disposal to make your decisions.

And so when we talk about controversial figures, Robert E.

Lee is one of them.

His Embeddedness in American history and American culture cannot be removed.

And so we are going to give him his due diligence and his due part and

talk about him and tell you the facts of the end of his life and the after

his his life after the civil war and we'll talk to a little bit of before

the Civil War because it has an impact on what he ends up after the Civil War.

But we're gonna, we're gonna tell the truth about all of it.

And that's where we went and visited.

Yeah.

So this was part of our kind of larger trip last October, right?

We had done some Western Virginia history, some Hatfields McCoys, which was very fun.

If you're listening to this, we have a past episode podcast episode on the

Hatfield McCoys locations that we visited.

So I encourage you to go back and listen to that.

But we were driving back home.

to, to Norfolk and we went through Lexington to Washington Lee University.

you have to realize Lexington, Virginia is very Western Virginia.

It's not anything we ever hit driving up and down to D.

C.

It's not like going to Richmond.

Richmond was easier to hit.

Lexington was one of those oh, that's pretty out there.

So the only way we really, visited, and we only visited this one time, was on our

way back from being in eastern Kentucky.

Lexington, Virginia is a very historic town.

VMI is there, which was our first time visiting the VMI campus.

It was very cool.

We also visited the graves of Stonewall Jackson.

Stonewall Jackson's house is there.

And then, I would say they share a border, VMI and Washington and Lee University.

It's like they're right beside each other.

So we couldn't, we, to visit Lee's grave, he's buried on the campus

of Washington and Lee University.

Washington, I didn't realize how long Washington and

Lee University has been around now.

Obviously it wasn't always Washington and Lee University.

It started off as just Washington University.

It's a private, private liberal arts college in Lexington, Virginia.

It was established in 1749 as Augusta Academy.

It's one of the oldest institutions.

institutions of higher learning in the United States.

They eventually were name it after George Washington and that's where it got its

name, Washington University and had that name for a very long time until Robert E.

Lee comes to be president of the school, and it's even after Lee's death that

they add the Lee to become Washington and Lee University, but it goes by

Augusta Academy until 1776, then it's Liberty Hall Academy to 1796, and then

it's In 1796 before Washington's death it becomes Washington Academy until

the war of 1812, then it's Washington College at, at, at 1813 until 1870 when

it becomes Washington and Lee University.

it's, it's pretty wild to me because right.

As someone like myself, I went to the Naval Academy, that's been

around for quite some time, 1845, 1850, . The West Point has been

around, a few years longer than that.

This is like a hundred years.

Before both of those were founded so it was it was pretty incredible

to go beautiful campus But we went there with kind of one goal in mind

and that was to go visit robert e lee's I guess really his crypt.

Is that what you would call it?

Yeah, definitely his family crypt.

So in the fall of 1865, the financially ruined former general

of the Confederacy, Robert E.

Lee, was offered several business opportunities, but instead

he chose to accept to become Washington College's president.

And he stated that he chose that to become the college's president

because he had a desire to train young men to do their duty.

And during his tenure, he established the first journalism course.

He added engineering courses, a business school, a law school.

I think we remember his office was in the downstairs of the chapel.

He met with every student at the time who were male to be good gentlemen,

He said they had no strict rules, but that was really the one guideline

Now one of the things that you also brought up during the video Was part

of the reason he accepted this position was he couldn't go back to arlington

Yes, so let's, we talked about that in another video and I think

it's important that people understand this Arlington National Cemetery.

is originally Robert E.

Lee's home.

His plantation Arlington house was his house where he lived with

his wife, Mary Ann Custis Lee.

And if you hear the name Custis, it's because she is a descendant of

George Washington Custis who is a, a descendant of George Washington's

adopted children from his wife, Martha Custis, her first husband's Custis.

They had two children together when George marries her.

And I want it understood he married her and he owns everything

the Custis family owned.

The Custis don't hold on to any property after they are

married to George Washington.

It doesn't work that way in colonial

It goes to the husband

goes to the man.

It doesn't stay in some kind of trust fund for the Custis family.

Now what George Washington did is he recognized the land

that came with the children.

He knows what land was their father's land.

So he makes sure that their inheritance includes their father's land.

I think he, he is, I mean, it probably just happened via

the marriage, but I think he was.

intentional about, some sort of formalization of his

adoption Of of the children

Well, the thing is so people ask that sometimes at Mount

Vernon, did he adopt the children?

And the truth is he doesn't have to formally adopt the

children like we do today.

That doesn't happen.

It was just it was just part of it was part of the whole package Right.

It's part of the

When you marry, you're adopting the children.

Now what he did do is he recognizes them as his lineage, as his descendants.

What I was inferring earlier was he was intentional later about saying, again,

recognizing that they are his children.

And so people will they've argued, right, we've made some reels, Instagram

reels that got, pretty big because people weren't aware of this lineage.

And so when you say, Hey, Robert E.

Lee lived in Arlington, everybody thinks wait, I thought that

was George Washington's land.

Well, it was, but that's because he married a descendant,

And so people get what, what happens is people use the

law of today and try to push it on colonial law and it wasn't the same.

So today you do have to formally adopt children today, children who come

from a different descendant and might have some, some inheritance from that.

keep that inheritance usually, even if they do have a stepfather

or stepmother, that inheritance can be protected under that shot.

That's not the same in colonial times.

So when Martha Washington marries George Washington, George Washington

owns everything that Martha Washington brings into the marriage, which was

everything that her first husband owned, which included the land

that is now Arlington National

Yeah.

And I just want to, because you mentioned that in the video, I

think it's again, important context.

That is part of the reason that Robert E.

Lee And I think the reason he then accepts this position down at the

University is because he can't go home to Arlington because Arlington has is

now owned essentially by I think it was still the government like Secretary of

War still had the deed or something like

So what happens is eventually George Washington's descendant,

his, his great, great His great grandson will build Arlington house.

They inherit the land.

It, it, it is original land of the Custis family.

George Washington makes sure it gets passed down to those children.

They still have it.

They haven't lost it in any kind of financial ruin.

I always emphasize that.

they didn't win the Revolutionary War, that's one of the first things that would

have been taken from them was their land.

If not their lives, their land definitely would have.

So because they won the Revolutionary War, because George Washington preserves

his place in history, because he's the president, that land is preserved.

So it is inherited by the Custis children.

Arlington House will eventually be built by George Washington Custis.

And he leaves it to his daughter.

And she Mary's Robert E.

Lee and they are married in that house and that house becomes Robert E.

Lee's house because again, he's the man.

So when he marries her, her stuff, because his stuff, this is 18 hundreds still.

So things are still owned by men even though I think at this point you

could make an argument for her owning this, but because it's Robert E.

Lee's land and because the Civil War breaks out,

And to your point, he lost, so they took it from him.

yeah, well, they take it from him even before they, he lost, right?

So he leaves, she leaves after because the Union soldiers

come to commandeer the land.

It's right across the Potomac from Washington DC.

So they come and take the land.

Now, at first they just.

comedy of the house and the land.

But then it's General Postmaster Meggs, who, Meggs, who can't find

a place to bury more soldiers.

Alexandria National Cemetery gets filled up with soldiers and they go,

where can we bury more Civil War dead?

We need national cemeteries.

Where is some land available for national cemeteries?

Meggs, who went to school with Lee, mad at Lee things.

said I'm gonna bury him here

Yeah, Lee's a traitor to me.

And I'm going to make sure Lee never gets to come home to his home.

I'm going to start burying them in Lee's garden.

So that's where the first soldier is William Christensen is the first

soldier he's buried in Lee's garden.

it's funny because there's actually a picture I cut it in the video We've used

it before of a bunch of soldiers right Civil War soldiers at Arlington house and

the Arlington house kind of still looks the same Today, so again to your point,

you know had Let's play the what if game.

Had Lee not lost, he would have got most likely his land back.

He would have got Arlington House back, but he did lose.

So, so they, the government kept it and they, they used it for what it is.

And so again, he had no home to go home to.

home to go

And so when he was offered this position in Lexington, he takes

He takes it because not only does it become the president of Washington,

College, it comes with a house.

It comes with a house on campus where the president can live.

So this house at Washington and Lee University, the Lee house, is the

house that he will live in from the end of the Civil War to his death.

So it's the only other house he has after Arlington House, really,

the Civil War.

the Civil War.

So he comes down.

He's there for about five years and in that time he decides

to build University Chapel.

So University Chapel was constructed between 1867 and

1868 at the request of Robert E.

Lee.

And.

It is his son, George Washington Custis Lee, with details from an

architect of engineering from VMI and who helps build the chapel.

So the chapel is actually built by Lee's son and it was known

as College Chapel at the time.

And the centerpiece of the chapel now, even though it's like it plays a part

of a Christian church, I think they said that it's never really was a,

Yeah, you said in the video, it was always a chapel, but it

was never like an official church.

So there was no congregation that regularly came there.

So I assume if it's a chapel, it's held for occasional services

for those who want to use it on

exactly.

And there's two big portraits in there, one of George Washington and one Robert E.

Lee.

So, and the George Washington one is done by Gilbert Stewart, which, is the

famous painter of George Washington.

And then the other one of Lee was from 1866.

It's by Jay Reed.

And now it says in 2018, they replaced the portrait of George Washington.

by Charles Wilson Peale from the Washington Family Collections, which I

think maybe the Gilbert Washington one they wanted back in the National Archives.

So, so it was replaced, but it's still two of these huge paintings

of the two namesakes of the college.

And that's, that's what's in

Now it was interesting just behind the scenes.

So we're out there visiting Beautiful, it's fall right?

It was just absolutely gorgeous We just beat in kind of like what looked

like a large group of either students or high schoolers or something like

that kind of touring the campus but we beat him into the to the chapel, but

they actually, and I can understand why they asked us to leave a fair

amount of our stuff, at the front.

So, hey, I have, I always carry a pocket knife on me, right?

It's just I just leave it in my pocket.

I forget it's there.

And they asked Hey, can you leave that up front?

We'll watch it for you.

You can come back and get it because, and maybe this has happened in the past.

I'm just assuming, but they don't want people going in there.

Again, when you're going into the crypt, and we'll talk about the gallery

that's downstairs in his office when you're going into an area of such a

controversial figure, they probably want to beware of someone who might want to

do harm to these historical artifacts.

Like I said, whether or not your feelings are about these things, they

are still For everyone to see and they are still for everyone to learn from So

if you're feeling they get your part to take something away from that It really

is not fair to everybody else who could be learning something from this and

being able to see something from this.

And that, as a museum professional, we always talk about your role in

preserving the past is your job is to preserve it for future generations.

Your job is to, it's not to make judgments on it.

Your job is just to keep it.

and the best condition you can for future generations.

That's your job.

You're a custodian of it.

And so whether or not what somebody wants to see when they see it or how they

feel when they see it is not up to you.

It's the fact that they can see it.

See it and they can, it's there for them to learn from.

So what is behind, after you walk in the chapel and what is

behind basically the, the wall,

stage.

Kind

the stage is this huge statue called, it's called the

recumbent statue of Robert E.

Lee asleep on the battlefield.

And it's a, it's basically a white statue of Lee looking like he's

asleep on a bed in his uniform, his uniform from the civil war.

It was by Edward Valentine, who Valentine did a lot of these controversial

I mean, he must have been relatively well known at the time because

his name's kind of attached, right?

He, like you said, he's done a fair amount of statues of in that era.

So he must have been relatively well known.

I mean, he's good at what he does.

I mean,

I mean, it looks very lifelike.

If you want to see what Robert Lee probably looked like in full figure,

that's it looks like a sleeping person.

And, but Valentine did Stonewall Jackson statue, he did busts of Jefferson

Davis, he did other Lee statues that were removed have since been removed,

like ones that were in Richmond, ones that were in the Capitol building and

so he made a lot of these busts and statues of these controversial figures.

And people often mistake it as like a sarcophagus because

it looks like a sarcophagus.

It does.

Cause it's on this kind of brick rectangular

Yeah, and it's in a room that you can you'll see in our video, like

you can walk around it, you can walk 360 completely around it, there's

stuff on the walls, I think quotes from Lee and different kinds of things.

And so it's very much like you can walk around this statue and

it looks like the size of a body.

So it looks like a coffin.

life size.

fit right underneath it.

But it's not a sarcophagus.

He's not buried inside of it.

He's buried in the crypt below.

So it really is just a statue of Robert E Lee asleep on the battlefield.

That's all on the first floor.

Yeah.

And then you actually go down into where the, the crypt, the kind of the family.

Crypt, I'll call it actually is

Yeah, and that statue was dedicated in 1883.

So that's about 13 years after Lee has been dead.

And like he's buried in the crypt under stairs under the stairs.

So like you said, so if you go under the stairs, there's a crypt down there with

basically all the Lee family is down

it's a whole plot.

I mean his his wife I mean that you and we show some kind of good still

pictures if you want to go take a look

You're not allowed to take video down there.

So we took still pictures of it.

And so that I would say it's the bottom floor.

But when you walk up to the chapel from the side, that's like

You're yeah, you're walking out on the ground floor and then it goes

down So I guess you technically you're walking in on the second floor and then

you go down to the first but it's it's built on Kind of a hillside and so that's

where you walk down into the crypt area There's the crypt area and then there's

also like a gallery and even the full gallery wasn't even open You We got to

see part of it, but the full thing was

So I think it's going through some kind of transition.

As you can imagine, the gallery, I think at one point, there probably

was a lot more southern leaning.

And I think now they're going to try to tell a more well rounded story.

And so I think that's what is being done down there.

But the things that haven't changed is Lee's office was down there.

And so they have a recreation of what his office would have looked

like with the original furniture.

Yeah, I thought that was really

And they have recreations of the artifacts of letters

and things on his desk.

So what it would have looked like, which was dark, but

what it would look like today.

with Lee working in there.

And then, so in the crypt is General Lee is very like right in the middle.

Robert E.

Lee is right in the middle.

And then his wife, Mariana Custis Lee.

And then there's seven children, George Washington Custis Lee,

Mary Custis Lee, William Henry Lee, Ann Carter Lee, Robert E.

Lee Jr., Eleanor Agnes Lee, and Mildred Lee are there.

His parents are there.

Revolutionary War Major General Henry Lighthorse.

Lee and then his favorite horse, Traveler, is buried

right outside the chapel.

And so there's a door there, like a glass door, and right outside

is the grave site for Traveler.

And Traveler is the famous horse of Robert E.

Lee.

And so visitors will leave coins and apples and things.

Traveler outlives Lee, but not by much.

He steps on a nail, the horse, and gets septus and dies, I

think a year after Lee died.

honestly, it was interesting reading up on, on this relatively famous

historic horse, because apparently the horse was incredibly spirited,

not, wouldn't let anybody ride it.

But when Lee saw it, it's okay, that's going to be my, That's going to be my

horse and was, was quite fond of it.

I even read when I was making the video that, he had these whistles

that he would train traveler on.

And, and so it was, it was just interesting reading about this this, this

horse of someone as famous as Robert E.

Lee.

Well, it's interesting too, is a traveler.

He's looks like he's about 14 years old, and that's decently old for a horse.

But most of the time people don't bury horses.

That's a rare thing.

And if a horse dies, even famous horses, You usually don't bury the entire horse.

Usually you might bury the head.

I hate to sound graphic here.

And the rest of the horse is used for other purposes because it's a huge animal.

So for traveler to be buried is a big deal.

And like I said, it's very rare.

You hear of some horses being buried in their entirety.

Secretariat would be one of them, but it's just still rare for entire horse

It's rare, but to be honest, I'm not.

Too surprised that that happened at the time, because at the time Robert E.

Lee was so well known and so famous and revered in that part of the

country that kind of, he had that halo effect of everything else around him.

And that, part of his mystique, part of, the, the, the story

of him was his horse, right?

His horse was also famous.

And so, again, super rare but I'm not, I'm not too surprised

this happened down there.

Yeah.

And I, we will say before we even went, we had people tell us, Oh, they removed that.

They removed Lee's horse.

They removed it.

And we were like, Oh, well, we better get over there

They said they removed the marker, but we got over

there and there was like two

Yeah.

So nothing was removed.

Everything was the same.

So just so you know, it's there.

If you want to see our video, it's there.

The university chapel was officially renamed from Lee chapel on June 4th, 2021

by the university's board of trustees.

So it was.

Lee Chapel for a long time and then they renamed it in 2021 to University

Chapel and that's what you'll hear today.

And again, you can go in and visit, it's, it's free to tour it.

You can go behind to see the statue, go downstairs, see the crypt go see

his office and then the gallery.

Hopefully the gallery will be more up to date.

So you can visit, but that is, it's a place there for you.

It's right beside VMI.

So if you want it to look at VMI as well, it's very Gothic

like buildings over there at

Yeah.

Beautiful

but beautiful big campus.

But the other place we went is we walked up the hill to Lee house.

Yeah.

It might be less than a hundred yards from the chapel.

it's not very far.

And this is the house where Robert E.

Lee lived as he was president.

This is where his wife will live.

The family will live while he's president until his death.

that's where the presidents of the university today still live.

And so it's, it's a active house.

So we couldn't go inside of it.

And we tried to be respectful and not really film too

Yeah, like we didn't walk up to the porch and stand on the porch

and film right there on the porch.

We stayed off to the side because there is, there is a sign out front

that says private residence, no entry allowed or something like that.

So, it was cool, but that's where Robert E.

Lee lived from 1865 to 1870 , until his death.

It's neat to know that this was like Lee's house and to be able to see it.

And so it is within viewing distance of the chapel.

So when you think about after the civil war and Lexington and the

five years that Lee had after losing that great war this is his life.

was basically this campus.

I don't think he went far from here.

It was like my house to work in my office, back to my house.

And this was basically the last five years of his life.

His days were filled here.

So it was neat to see what happened to this man after.

such a tremendous loss to his career and to his life and to basically his

whole livelihood and basically his ancestry because they lost everything.

And so to be there and to see what happened there at the end

was a neat ending to American history and to see what happened.

in those later years after Reconstruction and the Civil War.

So it was cool to be there.

Yeah, again, it's it's one of those things that you know, obviously

Everybody's happy about the way things the way things turned out, but

we're still visiting these locations.

It's just different actually being there in the space Where these giants

of history spent their last days like we are walking the same path in the

same location that these You These huge historical figures did as well.

It was pretty cool

Well folks

that wraps up our visit to what used to be called Lee

Chapel, now University Chapel, and our exploration of Robert E.

Lee's legacy.

Lee's story is a complicated one filled with heroism, controversy,

and a whole lot of history.

Whether you see him as a brilliant strategist or a defender of a horrific

institution, there's no denying his lasting impact on the American narrative.

We hope this episode sparked some interesting conversations and maybe even

challenged some preconceived notions.

Remember, history is complicated, it needs context, it's full of shades of

gray, and Lee's story is a prime example.

Thank you for listening to the talk with history podcast and please reach out

to us at our website talkwithhistory.

com.

But more importantly, if you know someone else that might enjoy this

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We'll talk to you next time.

Thank you.