Letter to His Son

In “Letter to His Son,” the readers get to see a side of General Robert E. Lee that most do not ever consider about him. While he is known for his military leadership in the Civil War on the Confederacy’s side, many do not know that he expressed such reluctance to secede from the Union as he does in this letter to his son about the state of the country at that time. This is the reason why his letter is also very Realist, in that he does not express fanciful dreams as a Romantic would, but instead he talks about issues current to the time that the letter was written that involve not only the writer and receiver of the letter, but everyone in the country. In the letter, Lee writes on page 385 of the GlencoeLiterature book, “Still, a Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets, and in which strife and civil war are to take the place of brotherly love and kindness, has no charm for me.”

Of course, everyone knows that Lee was a famous general from the Civil War, which was about to rock the country at the time this letter was written in 1861. The Civil War was the bloodiest war to its date in American history, and it ended up effecting everyone in the nation in some way or another, a phenomenon known as “total war” (Dictionary.com). This makes the topic of it something extremely relevant, and whenever something is relevant and discussed in a logical fashion, it is also Realist.

Robert E. Lee was also himself an icon of Realism up until his fame hit him. He was just a soldier before the Civil War, which was a normal occupation that many people could relate to because either they themselves were soldiers or they were the wives, mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, brothers, sisters, or friends of a soldier. He also would turn out to be well-respected because of the fact that he fought in the war, and all of these things make him, in turn, a hero of Realism.

But truly his views expressed in his letter to his son also make him Realist because they were probably views shared by more than just him in the South and North alike. While the two areas did in fact disagree on a number of things, such as states’ rights, slavery, and tariffs, there were probably a great amount of people who did not want to see the country torn in half over such issues because an agreeable solution could not be found. After all, back then, patriotic sentiment probably ran much higher than it may today, so people would want to keep their great country together instead of ripping her at the seams. Because of this majority fact, the views that Robert E. Lee expresses in his letter, found in such quotes as, “How [George Washington’s] spirit would be grieved could he see the wreck of his mighty labors!”, are not just singular views, but the views of a nation facing a major crisis, and that is what makes the letter a piece of Realist literature (Lee 385).

Works Cited

Lee, Robert E. "Letter to His Son." GlencoeLiterature. Ed. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill, 2009. 385. Print.

"Total War." Dictionary.com. Web. 16 Feb. 2011. .