Close to the corner of Jefferson Street and North Main Street in Lexington, Virginia, a steady trickle of tourists visits Lee Chapel from nine to five on Mondays through Saturdays and one to five on Sundays. To plan your Sunday visit, you can attend Robert E. Lee Memorial Episcopal Church’s “active and growing” worship service at 10:30 AM, walk one building over to the Hillel House Center for Jewish Life and E Café, order the “Hillel,” a bagel with lox, capers, cucumbers, and onions, mosey a block over to the Colonnade, one of the “University’s most picturesque figures and a national historic landmark,” sit down and enjoy the white pillars of Newcomb, Payne, Washington, and Robinson Hall, the Washington and Lee students reading, having a picnic or recap of the previous night’s festivities, the statue of Washington dressed in academic robes, the occasional VMI cadet running swiftly, the swamp white oak trees rustling softly with the Shenandoah Valley wind, and when you’ve had your fill of the Colonnade’s historic and natural beauty, it’ll be about time for the university’s bells and chapel’s clock to chime once for one o’clock.
Directly across from Washington Hall, the white doors of Lee Chapel will open with docents eager to answer any question regarding Lee Chapel, Robert E Lee, George Washington, the university, and the featured alumni. The chapel itself is quiet and has a slight aroma of old papers and manuscripts. The walls are white, the pews are white, and the soft maroon cushions on the white pews are weathered down by the bottoms of community attendees during numerous commencement speeches, addresses, and lectures given by former presidents and guest speakers. Your assigned correspondent has listened to Wilson Miller, current president of the Executive Committee, indoctrinate the incoming freshmen about the utterly severe consequences of not abiding to the Honor System, which was inspired by Robert E. Lee’s attempt to relax faculty supervision of students’ actions. Each incoming class stands from the white pews and leaves the white chapel to sign the White Book, where they pledge to submit to the university’s values of integrity and shared trust. At the same time, your correspondent has contributed to the weathering of the musty purple cushions by listening to former President Kenneth P. Ruscio’s dreams for the class of 2020 that we recognize the university’s “difficult, yet undeniable history” and work to make the school’s history inclusive for all ethnic and social groups.
The current white walls, however, seem to contradict Ruscio’s earnest and hopeful message to his students. The knowledgeable docents will immediately point out to you the number of memorial plaques of Washington and Lee alumni who drowned. Livingston Waddell Houston, for example, drowned in North River, Virginia, on August 2nd, 1886. His friend donated memorial chimes and the chapel clock in 1948. The ghosts of other drowned alumni can rest easily in their graves, for every W&L student is now required to pass a swimming proficiency test, or he or she must then take PE 101, Fundamental Swimming. Yet there are other alumni honored in plaques in Lee Chapel that arguably accomplished more in life than those whose lives were taken by Virginia’s unkind waters. The docents will try to walk you past the large plaque of William McCutchan Morrison, W&L graduate of 1887 and Presbyterian Theological Seminary graduate of 1892, who “carried the gospel to darkest Africa.” The “tablet” on the chapel wall is placed by fellow students “in commemoration of … his holy life-work, his heroic bravery and his splendid accomplishment, and to keep alive in name and thought one of our greatest alumni as an inspiration to coming generations of students” (italics added).
Your exceedingly concerned correspondent finds the W&L alumni’s long journey into the heart of “darkest Africa” to be a real-life enactment of Marlow and Kurtz’s journey in Heart of Darkness. Is it bizarre that Morrison is heralded for bringing the ‘light’ of Christianity to the ‘primitive’ tribes of the Congo? Should he be commemorated for his “holy life-work” of forcefully converting tribal peoples as he views as “the personification of satanic savagery” to Christianity? Are his efforts at all enlightened or Christian? Before his long journey into the heart of darkness, he wrote in his journal:
O God, pour out Thy Spirit upon Darkest Africa, and may the long night be broken and may the brightness of the Sun of Righteousness soon illuminate that benighted land.
Your correspondent now asks you to reconsider the Morrison “tablet,” the white pews and walls, the statue of “Recumbent Lee” in the altar portion of the chapel, President Ruscio’s dream, and what it means to be living in a benighted land. Benighted literally means to be overtaken by darkness, yet the closest synonym is unenlightened. From a common tourist perspective, the chapel may be enlightened because it honors Lee’s commitment to the university and to rebuilding the nation after the Civil War. Numerous weddings of W&L alumni also take place in Lee Chapel. In a letter to his wife, Lee also wrote that “slavery as an institution, is a moral and political evil in any country." On the other hand, Lee Chapel is a classic embodiment of the Lost Cause, and there are “tablets” of alumni praised for forcing their Christian religion on the tribal people in “darkest Africa,” which was never actually dark, and Robert E Lee, in the same letter to his wife, said that slavery was worse for white people than black people. Lee, a symbol of pride and dignity, wrote that “the painful discipline [of slavery] is necessary for their instruction as a race, and I hope it will prepare and lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known and ordered by a wise Merciful Providence” or God. So now, who or what institution is benighted? Your correspondent does not plan to answer this question yet wants you to acknowledge the bizarreness of this place and be aware of the different, conflicting frames of reference concerning Lee Chapel.
Although the deceased alumni and their problematic accomplishments are memorialized in tablets surrounding the outside pews, the main focus of the chapel is the altar of Lee himself lying in his grave. “Recumbent Lee” is depicted wearing his full military attire with sword in eternal sleep, and just below him are the spirits of his family members, literally. The family grave is one floor below with his wife, Mrs. Mary Curtis Lee, daughters, Eleanor Agnes Lee, Mildred Childe Lee, son, George Washington Custis Lee, father, Henry Lee, and other family members in caskets. Right next door, you can enter a gift shop and purchase a number of Lee Chapel accessories including but not limited to plush toys of Traveller, Lee’s beloved horse, the Lee Cow, the Lee Cats, a stuffed Martha Washington, framed prints, children and adult books about Robert E. Lee and George Washington, a selection of Lee-inspired dishes and silverware, hats, t-shirts, and other apparel. There’s even a t-shirt that lists Lee’s guiding principles, which are be honorable, do your duty, have integrity and character, be humble and less boastful, work for the common good, have fortitude and perseverance, be a good husband and father, do not be influenced by hearsay, to lead others you must control yourself, think positive, enjoy doing good, do your best, love truth, be a gentleman, cherish your children, be honest, and, last but not least, always do what is right.
There are some people, however, at Washington and Lee that would think of Lee as a bigot. Less than three years ago, Confederate flags hung near “Recumbent Lee." A group of black law students protested against the Confederate references in the university. Known as “the Committee,” they demanded that the flags be taken down in Lee Chapel, that the university bans Confederate reenactors and sympathizers on Lee-Jackson Day, that the undergraduate school cancels classes on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and that the university apologizes for the university’s connection to slavery and the “racist and dishonorable conduct of Robert E. Lee." So the rebel flags were taken down, and the undergraduate students have no classes during MLK Day, and every time a tourist asks why the recumbent statue of Robert E. Lee is dressed in his military uniform, the docent always replies, “That is a good question. Lee’s son did everything he could to make it so that Lee was honored for his commitment to the university and rebuilding the nation after the Civil War. You can see the walls around Lee are unadorned…”
It is important to note here that any opinion of Lee Chapel largely depends on how history is constructed and reconstructed. The docent deemphasizes Lee and university’s involvement in the Civil War, yet the front portion of Lee Chapel features the Book of Remembrance, a memorial of students and alumni who perished during the Civil War, and there’s the famous painting of Lee in his Confederate uniform at the front, and Washington and Lee’s athletic mascot is the General. In some eyes, Robert E. Lee abided by all of his guiding principles, but in others, Lee was dishonorable because he fought to maintain slavery. The docents, selecting only portions of Lee’s history, may continue the dialogue of the Lost Cause, adding that “everything about Lee was forward-thinking.” In other perspectives, however, Lee is a mixture of honor and dishonor. While Lost Cause proponents romanticize Lee and the purpose of the Civil War, they also highlight Lee’s earnest involvement in the future of his students at Washington College. All your correspondent urges you to do is fully acknowledge the complex and uncomfortable history of Lee and the University. Should “Recumbent Lee” be taken down along with the Confederate flags and other statues of Lee across the United States? Are spouses aware of the alumni heralded for bringing gospel to Darkest Africa when they get married in Lee Chapel?
As you finish your Sunday visit, your assigned correspondent hopes you can still appreciate the squirrels chasing each other up and down the swamp oak trees, the students packing up their lunches heading to study at Leyburn Library, the Colonnade’s red brick and white pillars, the occasional breeze from the surrounding Blue Ridge mountains, the continuing echo of the former president’s desire to “tell the history of Washington and Lee courageously and completely."
