A genteman and his thank-you note
From the Richmond Daily Dispatch January 13, 1862:
Letter from Gen. Lee.
Charleston. S. C., Dec. 16, 1861.
Mr. G. B. Stacy, Richmond.–Dear Sir:
I received your Mattress just as I was leaving Richmond, and have not yet had an opportunity of testing it in field, but from its convenient construction, economy of space, &c., I have no doubt but that it will be found a valuable article of camp equipage. Begging your acceptance of my thanks,
I am reply, your obd’t serv’t,
ja 11–1w* R. E. Lee
After an inauspicious beginning during the war Robert E. Lee was
… sent to organize the coastal defenses along the Carolina and Georgia seaboard, appointed commander, “Department of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida” on November 5, 1861. Between then and the fall of Fort Pulaski, April 11, 1862, he put in place a defense of Savannah that proved successful in blocking Federal advance on Savannah. Confederate fort and naval gunnery dictated night time movement and construction by the besiegers. Federal preparations required four months. In those four months, Lee developed a defense in depth. Behind Fort Pulaski on the Savannah River, Fort Jackson was improved, and two additional batteries covered river approaches. In the face of the Union superiority in naval, artillery and infantry deployment, Lee was able to block any Federal advance on Savannah, and at the same time, well-trained Georgia troops were released in time to meet McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign. The City of Savannah would not fall until Sherman’s approach from the interior at the end of 1864.
