Lee's Decision

A soft knock at the door of his study caused Robert E Lee to lift his head from the desk, where he'd just finished writing to his sister, explaining why he could no longer remain an officer in the United States Army.

“Colonel Lee, may I enter?”

Lee stood, staring at the stranger standing at the door.

“Do I know you, sir?”

“You do not, sir. I wish to discuss your decision to resign your commission and place yourself at Virginia's service. “

“I have explained myself to President Lincoln’s envoy, Mr. Blair. I do not wish to entertain any further discussion on the matter.” Lee replied with courtesy.

“Colonel, you must hear me out. I believe I can give you reason to reconsider—and to destroy the letters you have just written to your sister, General Scott, and Secretary Cameron.”

Lee held up his hand, “You are a stranger who has invaded my home without my leave sir, I must ask you to depart now, before I have you removed.”

The stranger stepped into the study and closed the door behind him. “Colonel Lee, if you follow Virginia, this will no longer be your home.”

“Do you threaten me, sir?” Lee asked as he began to reach for the sword hanging on the rack close to his desk.

The stranger raised an empty hand. “I come in peace, Colonel. I only wish to make an argument to you that I hope will convince you to remain loyal to the Union.”

Lee shook his head. “I have made my decision, sir. I cannot bear arms against my home, my family and my state.”

The stranger also shook his head. “If you take up the cause of the Confederacy, sir, you will lose all three.”

The stranger swept his arm toward the chairs and the low table between them. “Allow me to explain, Colonel. I believe I can show you that the course you have chosen will devastate Virginia and bring ruin upon your name.”

Lee sat reluctantly, gesturing for the stranger to take a seat.

“You may proceed, sir.”

“Thank you, Colonel.”

“I have resigned my commission, sir. I am no longer a Colonel.”

“Your resignation has not yet been delivered to the Secretary of War, Colonel, please allow me to address you by your rank.”

Lee gracefully inclined his head. “As you wish.”

The stranger set his leather satchel on the floor next to his feet and began withdrawing maps, letters and a large book from its depths.

“Within two days, you will leave this house for Richmond.”

Lee's expression tightened.

“You will never see Arlington again.”

“You speak with certainty, sir.”

“Look at your home, Colonel. Look carefully. You are trying to save it, but on May twenty-fourth, Federal troops will cross the Potomac and occupy these grounds.”

“How can you possibly know that?”

“I know a great many things, Colonel, because for me, they’ve already happened.”

“Now you speak in riddles.”

The stranger smiled softly. “Not riddles, Colonel, history.”

Lee snorted. “You speak like a man escaped from an asylum.”

“I can offer proof to you Colonel. I have it all here on this table. I can tell you that your wife will be forced to flee this house and the federal government will turn it into a cemetery.”

“A cemetery?”

“Yes, sir.”

“For whom?”

The stranger looked toward the window.

“The men who die fighting you.”

Lee visibly recoiled.

The stranger slid a photograph across the table toward Lee.

“Look closely at this, Colonel, and tell me what you see.”

Lee picked up the photograph, marveling at the lightness of the paper.

“I was not aware that Mr. Brady and his contemporaries had perfected a new form of photography.”

“Not Mr. Brady, Colonel. But pray examine it.”

Lee angled the image toward the lamp. His eyes moved slowly across row after row of white stones, some bearing inscriptions so clear that he could make them out even in the lamplight. Then, in the background, he saw a familiar structure—the columns rising to the Greco-Roman pediment of the roof—and his breath caught in his throat.

“It’s… it’s Arlington House.”

“Yes, Colonel. In my day, it is also called the Robert E. Lee Memorial.”

Lee looked again at the photograph, his face paling.

“This cannot be. The dates upon these stones have not yet occurred.”

“For you, Colonel, that is true. For me, they lie far in the past.”

 Lee's breath hissed over his teeth.

“Why?” he asked quietly. “Why would the government turn my home into a burial ground?”

“Because within four years, Colonel, there will be more dead than this nation can easily comprehend.”

Lee placed the photograph carefully on the table.

“And you lay responsibility for that at my feet?”

“No, sir. The responsibility belongs to many men, North and South. I am not here to accuse you of starting this war.”

The stranger reached into the satchel and withdrew another photograph.

“I am here because you will become one of the men who determines how long it lasts.”

Lee said nothing.

The stranger placed the second photograph beside the first.

“This is Richmond.”

Lee leaned forward.

For several seconds, he could not understand what he was seeing. The buildings were familiar, but entire blocks had been reduced to blackened shells. Chimneys stood without houses around them. Streets he knew were buried beneath brick, timber and twisted iron.

“When?”

“April, 1865.”

Lee stared at the devastation.

“Four years?”

“Nearly to the day.”

“You expect me to believe this war will continue for four years?”

“I know that it does.”

Lee pushed himself back in the chair and regarded the stranger coldly.

“You have shown me photographs I cannot explain and made predictions any clever confidence man might construct from present circumstances. You have not shown me that I bring this destruction upon Virginia.”

“Fair enough.”

The stranger reached for the large book he had brought from the satchel and opened it to a page marked with a strip of ribbon.

He turned it around.

Lee looked down.

His own face stared back at him.

Older.

Bearded.

Hair a snowy white.

Dressed in a uniform he had never worn.

Beneath the image were words printed with a clarity unlike anything he had ever seen.

GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE

COMMANDER, ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA

Lee’s hand tightened against the arm of his chair.

“What is this?”

“Your future.”

“I have accepted no command.”

“Not yet.”

The stranger leaned forward.

“On the twenty-second of this month you will leave Arlington for Richmond. Governor Letcher will offer you command of Virginia’s military forces. You will accept. The following day you will appear before the convention and take command.”

Lee looked toward the letters on his desk.

“Those events have not occurred.”

“Exactly.”

For the first time, the stranger smiled.

“That is why I am here.”

Lee’s eyes returned to the book.

“And this Army of Northern Virginia?”

“You will take command of it in June of next year. You will become the Confederacy’s greatest field commander.”

Lee’s expression hardened.

“You speak as though I should be ashamed of serving Virginia well.”

“No, Colonel. I am telling you that you serve her so well that you help keep this war alive for four terrible years.”

The stranger unfolded a map across the table.

Virginia was covered with small black crosses.

Lee stared at them.

“What do these signify?”

“Battlefields.”

The stranger touched them one at a time.

“Manassas. Fredericksburg. Chancellorsville. The Wilderness. Spotsylvania. Cold Harbor. Petersburg.”

His finger stopped.

“And those are only some of the battles fought in Virginia.”

Lee studied the map in silence.

“You told Mr. Blair you could take no part in an invasion of the Southern states.”

Lee’s head snapped upward.

The stranger continued before he could speak.

“You believe that by refusing his offer you are protecting Virginia from war.”

He pushed the photograph of ruined Richmond across the table until it rested beneath Lee’s hand.

“You are not.”

Lee looked down at the shattered city.

“You are helping bring the war home.”

Silence filled the study.

At last Lee spoke.

“And what would you have me do?”

“What Mr. Blair asked you to do two days ago.”

Lee’s eyes narrowed.

“Command the Federal army?”

“Yes.”

“And invade Virginia.”

“No, Colonel.”

The stranger leaned across the table and tapped a finger against the photograph of Richmond.

“Save her.”

Lee rose abruptly and walked to the window.

For a long moment he stood with his hands clasped behind his back, staring across the dark grounds of Arlington toward the lights of Washington.

“You make it sound very simple.”

“There is nothing simple about what I am asking.”

“You ask me to raise my sword against my own people.”

“I am asking you to decide who your people are.”

Lee turned slowly.

The stranger immediately knew he had gone too far.

“Take care, sir.”

“I mean no insult.”

“Then choose your words with greater care.”

“Very well.”

The stranger stood.

“You wrote General Scott tonight that you could not raise your hand against your relatives, your children, and your home.”

Lee went completely still.

His eyes flicked toward the unfinished correspondence on the desk.

“You could not possibly know what I wrote.”

“I know because your letter survives.”

The stranger picked up the photograph of Arlington Cemetery.

“Your relatives will be scattered. Your children will live through four years of war. You will lose this home forever.”

He placed the photograph beside Lee’s letter.

“Colonel, everything you believe you are protecting by resigning tonight—you lose.”

Lee stared at the two pieces of paper.

One contained the decision he had made.

The other contained its consequence.

“And if I accept command of Mr. Lincoln’s army?”

The stranger hesitated.

Lee noticed.

“You do not know.”

“No, sir.”

“After all your certainty, you cannot tell me what happens?”

“I can tell you what happens if you send those letters.”

The stranger pointed toward them.

“I cannot tell you what happens if you tear them up.”

“Yet you ask me to gamble the lives of thousands upon something you cannot foresee.”

“No, Colonel.”

The stranger looked again at the ruined Richmond.

“I am asking you to gamble history against something I already know happens.”

“If you truly know what happens, then tell me.”

“On April ninth, 1865, at a place called Appomattox Court House, you surrender the Army of Northern Virginia to Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant.”

Lee frowned.

“Who?”

“Ulysses Grant. You crossed paths with him during the war with Mexico. He was a young lieutenant then.”

Lee searched his memory for a moment, then shook his head.

“I cannot place him.”

“I doubt he would be surprised. He remembers you far better than you remember him.”

“And this Lieutenant Grant defeats me?”

“He rises quickly once the war begins. Fort Donelson. Vicksburg. Chattanooga. By 1864, President Lincoln brings him east and places every Union army under his command.”

Lee’s expression remained thoughtful rather than offended.

“He sounds a formidable soldier.”

“He was.”

The stranger paused.

“Or is, Colonel. I confess that speaking of men who are alive in your time and long dead in mine takes some getting used to.”

Lee looked at the stranger. “How does he defeat me?”

“He understands that after every battle, regardless of which army holds the field, you cannot replace your losses in men and matériel as readily as he can.”

“So he grinds me down until there is nothing left?”

“Essentially, sir.”

The stranger paused.

“You will win battles against forces larger than your own. At times, brilliantly. But each victory will cost you men you cannot replace, horses you cannot replace, weapons and supplies that become increasingly difficult to obtain.”

Lee allowed himself a brief smile.

The stranger noticed and inclined his head.

“You will earn your reputation, Colonel. I will not deny you that. But too many of your tactical victories will purchase only temporary advantage while weakening the army you need to win the war.”

Lee nodded slowly. The soldier and engineer in him could not dispute the arithmetic.

“An army cannot campaign without food, horses, ammunition, and shoes. I require no lesson in that, sir.”

“No, Colonel. But you have never commanded an army whose enemy can replace in weeks or even days what you cannot replace at all.”

“Much like Napoleon in Russia.”

“Exactly, sir.”

Lee glanced again at the map. “Except Napoleon could retreat to France.”

The stranger’s expression hardened. “Your army will have nowhere left to go.”

Lee was silent for a long moment.

At last he looked toward the letters resting on his desk.

“Then I have made a terrible mistake.”

“If I do this, Virginia will call me a traitor.”

“Yes, sir.”

“My friends may curse my name.”

“Some will.”

“My own family may not forgive me.”

The stranger hesitated. “Perhaps.”

Lee looked again at the photograph of Arlington Cemetery.

“But Virginia survives?”

“I believe she has a far better chance.”

“I believed my duty to Virginia required me to leave the Army.”

He looked down at the photo of the ruined Richmond.

“Perhaps my duty to Virginia requires precisely the opposite.”

Lee picked up the letters and held them in his hand, weighing the consequences of the words contained within them. Then, he slowly walked over to the small fire burning on the grate and fed them into the flames, one by one.

The first letter curled in the fire, Cameron’s name disappearing beneath orange flame.

Lee fed Scott’s letter in after it.

“I pray you are right, sir.”

“So do I, Colonel.”

Lee watched the flames for another moment, then turned to face the stranger.

“How soon can Mr. Blair be reached?”

“That I cannot say, Colonel. But I believe a message can reach him before morning.”

Washington D.C. Present day.

The stranger stood in front of a statue, where the Lincoln memorial once stood in another time.

ROBERT E. LEE

GENERAL-IN-CHIEF, UNITED STATES ARMY

PRESERVER OF THE UNION

He smiled.

It had worked.

The rebellion had ended in less than two years. Hundreds of thousands of young men who had died in his history had instead gone home to their families. Cities that had burned survived. Farms had not been ruined. An entire generation had been spared.

He walked slowly around the monument, allowing himself, for the first time, to believe that he had done something good.

Then he noticed another memorial across the grounds.

It was enormous.

He had never seen it before.

Curious, he crossed the walkway and approached the wall of polished black stone. Thousands of names had been carved into its surface.

Above them was an inscription.

IN MEMORY OF THE DEAD

OF THE AMERICAN EMANCIPATION WAR

1887–1893

1,246,731 AMERICANS GAVE THEIR LIVES

SO THAT NO HUMAN BEING WOULD AGAIN

BE HELD AS PROPERTY IN THE UNITED STATES

The stranger stopped breathing.

His eyes moved over the endless columns of names.

Then to the dates.

Then back toward the statue of Robert E. Lee.

The war had ended early.

Too early.

“Oh, dear God,” he whispered.

“What have I done?”