By Sarah Becker War & Remembrance Conflict is often remembered by the men and women who cared: for the home front during war; for comrades and soldiers including burials, for the disabled and others. During the Revolutionary War Martha Washington successfully served as the public face of a women’s fund-raising campaign, a national campaign to provide soldiers with shirts. President George Washington, the country’s first commander-in-chief supported “a monument…to the American Revolution.” But for the love of a good woman, George Washington’s Mount Vernon might never have been saved. The restoration effort was born of a boat ride, specifically Alexandria-born South Carolinian Louisa Bird Cunningham’s 1853 Potomac River cruise. May we always remember George Washington, his military service and the Mount Vernon Ladies Association of the Union. “I was painfully distressed at the ruin and desolation of the home of [General George] Washington, and the thought passed through my mind,” Cunningham wrote her 37-year-old daughter Ann Pamela. “Why was it the women of this country did not try to keep it in repair, if the men could not do it?” The Dames of 1846 was established in Texas in 1901 in honor of the Soldiers of the War with Mexico. The Mexican War was West Point graduate Robert E. Lee’s first combat experience. “As the mothers, wives and daughters of the warriors of 1846, we believe that the time is over-ripe for us to commemorate the bravery and devotion of those men who repelled the invader,” Dames of 1846 Founder and National Commandant Mrs. Moore Murdock wrote in 1905. “The notable men and women of our early colonies have had their fortitude and heroism immortalized by the women [National Society Daughters of American Colonists] who trace their ancestry to gallant hands of pioneers in a New World,” Murdock continued. “The…
By Sarah Becker “Success in the Mexican War,” General Winfield Scott exclaimed, “was largely due to Robert E. Lee’s skill, valor and undaunted energy.” Robert E. Lee, the fifth child of Revolutionary War hero Henry “Light-horse Harry” Lee and his second wife Ann Hill Carter, was born January 19, 1807. Of noble descent, he spent his babyhood at Stratford Hall in Westmoreland County, Virginia. The family moved to Alexandria to escape financial reverses. Young Robert’s education included both the Alexandria Academy and Benjamin Hallowell’s school. Lee attended the latter briefly to study mathematics. He attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point because it was free. Lee’s decision to opt for a military career was sustained in part by his deceased father’s friendship with the Marquis de Lafayette, “an invaluable Revolutionary War ally.” In 1824 President James Monroe, also a Revolutionary War veteran, invited Lafayette to participate in a triumphal United States tour. General Lafayette, a Frenchman, arrived in New York in August 1824 and Robert E. Lee’s Alexandria Boyhood Home was among the acknowledged sites. “That [General Henry] Lee was a man of letters, a scholar who ripened under a truly classical sun, we have only to turn to his work on the southern war,” George Washington Parke Custis wrote, “his 1808 Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department of the United States.” Robert E. entered West Point in 1825; was listed as a “Distinguished Cadet,” and graduated second in his class in 1829. His rank: second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. His assignment: Georgia’s Ft. Pulaski. It was from Ft. Monroe that Lee courted his wife, Martha Washington’s great-granddaughter; George Washington Parke Custis’ daughter Mary Anna Randolph Custis. General George Washington died before Lee’s birth, but Robert E. valued his father and General Washington’s…