"William Mack Lee" (June 12 1835-?)

Body servant and minister,was born a slave at Stafford House,on the Potmac River in Westmoreland County,Virginia.The names of his parents are not known,shortly after the death of his mother he was taken to the Arlington Heights,Virginia, home of Robert Edward Lee,later to command the Confederate army of northern Virginia during the Civil War.William married in 1855,his brief autobiography does not mention the name of his wife,who died in 1910,nor the names of his eight daughters,the youngest of whom was born in 1875.The couple also had twenty-one grandchildren and,and as of 1918,eight great-grandchildren.William does not state precisely when he began serving "Marse Robert," iwhom he describes as "one of the greatest men in the world," but his autobiography notes,erroneously,that Robert freed all of his slaves "ten years before the war"In December 1862, just three days before the U.S. president Abraham Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation,General Lee did emancipate around two hundred slaves belonging to his father-in-law,who had died in 1857 and had left instructions in his will for the manumission of all of his slaves within five years. Since none of these slaves bore the surname Lee,it is probable that William was not among those emancipated in 1862.He  then, was most likely still a slave at the outbreak of hostilities in 1861 when at age twenty-six he set off for the front as Robert's cook and body servant.William remained by the general's side throughout the war,including at both battles of Bull Run (Manassas).He was also with General Lee on April 9 1865 at Apomattox,Virginia. William's autography,written-or perhaps dictated-in 1918,his eighty-third year,devotes more space to the Confederate generals and politicians whom he served during the war than to his own experience of the conflict.The short pamphlet includes a list of thirty prominent Confederates for whom he cooked and notes that Robert cried upon hearing of the loss of General Thomas "Stonewall Jackson.who had been mistakenly killed by his own troops. William himself received wounds to his head and hip in 1863 when a Union shell exploded near the general's tent just William was bringing him his horse, Traveler. A newspaper article appended to William autobiography also reveals the only time that "Marse Robert ever scolded me"in the four years that William serve him as William told the story in 1918,the general reprimanded him on July 3 1863 at Petersburg, Virginia, for catching,killing, and cooking with butter and bread stuffing Little Nellie, a black hen that had reliably produced eggs for than two years at the front.William had feared that his meager supplies of flannel cakes,tea,and lemonade would be insufficient for gentlemen like generals Lee, Stonewall Jackson,Wade Hampton,and George Pickett.Robert William recalled,told him that he was a" fool to kill de [hen] whut lay de golden egg. Hit made Marse Robert sad ter think of anything bein' killed,qhedder 'twas one of his soljers or his little black hen"This story may have some basis in fact,it is likely that William embellished it.For one thing,the date, July 3 1863,which William claimed to"remembah... jes lak it was yestidy"is almost certainly incorrect. Stonewall had been dead for nearly two months by that date,at which time Robert and George were engaged in the third day of fighting at Gettysburg. Given that William was in his mid-eighties when he told this tale, he may simply have misremembered it.It may also be more than a simple coincidence that the exact date of his master's greatest military reversal up to that point remained in William's memory. On that day General Lee accepted full responsibility for his tactical failures at Gettysburg,which historians now view as the decisive turning point in the Civil War.Little Nellie may have died on that day,thousands of Robert's troops certainly did,and with them died the hopes of the Confederacy.William was probably far too politic to point that out southern white reporters,who in 1918 viewed him as "a negro of the old type,distinguished looking [and] polite in manner." Published sources about William views are limited to his brief autobiography,it is certainly possible that his expressed love for his master and for the Confederacy was sincere. A minority of African-American slaves and free people of color living in the South during the Civil War did,in fact express loyalty to the Confederacy at the time,though their number is less than claimed by many modern-day apologists for the cause.William's chief reason for publishing his autobiography in 1918 is instructive.At that time he was attempting to secure funds for the completion of a Baptist church that he established near Norfolk,Virginia.Indeed,he devoted many decades of services to the black Baptist Church than to General Robert Lee. William had begun to preach two years before the war,and he furthered his education by attending one of the many church-funded schools established in Virginia. The funds for his schooling were bequeathed by Robert,for whom William continued to work until the general died in 1870.William "studied hard at the letter" As a man approaching middle age, he found school difficult.He regretted that he did not enjoy the advantages of younger African-Americans,who had benefited from the expansion of public education by Reconstruction-era state governments and from the missionary efforts of former abolitionists who established church schools for the southern freedmen.William, as ever, did not provoke his intended white southern conservative readership by pointing out these facts. Instead, he preferred to tell them that "obedience to God is service to man"Ordained as a minister in Washington, D.C.,in July 1881,he helped raise the $3,000 needed to established the Third Baptist Church,Northwest.Over twenty years he increased the size of his pastorate from 20 to 500 members,and he helped found another church in the District of Columbia that boasted an additional two hundred members after only two years.To these he added a church near Baltimore,Maryland,whose congregation rose to more than 350,and in 1912 he began to raise the $5,000 necessary to establish a store-front church in Churchland,near Norfolk,Virginia.By preaching in eight-four counties throughout Virginia and the Carolinas, he managed to raise $5,000 of the funds needed for his Churchland pastorate between 1912 & 1915.It was in search of the final $500 for the Churchland building that Rev.Lee traveled to Bedford, Virginia,where he announced his intention to publish a short memoir of his Civil War experiences with Robert E.Lee and others. It was a skillful business stroke, since southern white- and indeed northern white-interests in the military campaigns of the Civil War had never been greater.Southern whites were often disdainful of the Rev.Lee when he first approached them,limping, his threadbare cap doffed, appealing for funds for church.doffed,appealing for funds for his church.Things changed,when they heard the old man's limp was caused by a yankee bullet and when they learned of his closeness to the most revered Confederate war hero. According to one white newspaper report,William would ask them, "Ain't gwine ter turn away Ole Marse Robert's nigger, is yer?" Invariably the former Confederates, or more likely the sons of former Confederates,could not.They listened to his tales;some even made a contribution to his church.Whether Rev.Lee was quite as obsequious in his pursuit of funds as this account suggests is unclear.He clearly had other powers of persuasion,given his success in raising,chiefly from African-American sources,money for several churches and given his successful organizations in the District of Columbia,Virginia,and Pennsylvania.He may have genuinely believed,as he states in his memoir,that "if we colored people want to get along well with the white people,we must show our behavior to respect and be obedient to them.