“Fitzhugh Lee Returns, and Returns”

D. W. Thompson, Fitzhugh Lee Returns, and Returns (Carlisle, PA: Hamilton Library Association, 1963).

D. W. Thompson’s essay discusses Confederate General Fitzhugh Lee’s connection with Carlisle, Pennsylvania. General Lee was stationed at Carlisle Barracks before the Civil War, returned as a Confederate general who shelled the town in the summer of 1863, and came back again in 1896 to speak at the Carlisle Indian School. As Thompson explains, Superintendent Richard Henry Pratt invited Lee and Union General Oliver Otis Howard “to show that North and South were united with East and West in a common life, hope, and allegiance.” Yet some Carlisle residents believed that Pratt should not have invited Lee. As an editorial in the Carlisle Herald argued, “it was a mistake not because [Lee] was a rebel but because he did a disgraceful and unsoldierly thing that can not be justified.” This essay also has several related documents, including transcripts of two letters that Lee wrote and excerpts from newspaper articles.

This essay has been posted online with permission from the Cumberland County Historical Society.