Today in 1887, the Oshkosh Daily Northwestern out of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, published a piece that denied a rumor that General Lee and his family were impoverished after the Civil War ended. The short article, reprinted below, offers a quote by then-Governor of Virginia and General Lee’s nephew, Fitzhugh Lee. If you do any research on this article, you might learn that the General Adam Badeau, who is accused of spreading the rumor in the story below, was also consul-general at Havana from May 1882 until April 1884. He then resigned because he was not permitted by the state department to substantiate charges of corruption of which he accused its administration.
Ironiclly, Fitzhugh Lee took that assignment in Havana in 1896.
The statement of Gen. Adam Badeau, published in a New York paper, to the effect that Gen. Robert E. Lee and his family, upon the former’s return home here, after the surrender of the confederate army at Appomattox, were fed for a time by the federal commissary, has attracted considerable attention here. Gov. Fitzhugh Lee, nephew of Gen. Robert E. Lee, after carefully reading Gen. Badeau’s statement, said. “It is al! wrong. Gen. Badeau has been drawing largely upon his imagination or the imagination of somebody else, When Gen. Lee returned from Appomattox court house he found his family living in Richmond in the house which he had left them. While not living in aflluence they were not lacking in the necessaries of life. Shortly after his return the people of Richmond and elsewhere vied with each other in sending to Gen. Lee everything requisite for the comfort of himself and family, presuming that, having been in the field he was not able to provide for them as comfortably as he would like. “Indeed,” continued the governor, “it was known that the upper passages of Gen. Lee’s house were filled with barrels of flour, meat and other things that had been sent, because there was no other place to put them. Gen. Lee directed his servants to distribute these things to the poor in the neighborhood.
