On the Trail of Grant and Lee | Page 6

the other,
for they came from widely separated parts of the kingdom and were
even more effectually divided by the walls of caste. There is no positive
proof that Mathew Grant (whose people probably came from Scotland)
was a Roundhead, but he was a man of humble origin who would
naturally have favored the Parliamentary or popular party, while
Richard Lee, whose ancestors had fought at Hastings and in the
Crusades, is known to have been an ardent Cavalier, devoted to the
King. But whether their opinions on politics differed or agreed, it was
apparently the conflict between the King and Parliament that drove
them from England. In any event they arrived in America at almost the
same moment; Grant reaching Massachusetts in 1630, the year after
King Charles dismissed his Parliament, and Lee visiting Virginia about

this time to prepare for his permanent residence in the Dominion which
began when actual hostilities opened in the mother land.
The trails of Grant and Lee, therefore, first approach each other from
out of the smoke of a civil war. This is a strangely significant fact, but
it might be regarded merely as a curious coincidence were it not for
other and stranger events which seem to suggest that the hand of Fate
was guiding the destinies of these two men.
Mathew Grant originally settled in Massachusetts but he soon moved to
Connecticut, where he became clerk of the town of Windsor and
official surveyor of the whole colony--a position which he held for
many years. Meanwhile Richard Lee became the Colonial Secretary
and a member of the King's Privy Council in Virginia, and
thenceforward the name of his family is closely associated with the
history of that colony.
Lee bore the title of colonel, but it was to statesmanship and not to
military achievements that he and his early descendants owed their
fame; while the family of Grant, the surveyor, sought glory at the
cannon's mouth, two of its members fighting and dying for their
country as officers in the French and Indian war of 1756. In that very
year, however, a military genius was born to the Virginia family in the
person of Harry Lee, whose brilliant cavalry exploits were to make him
known to history as "Light Horse Harry." But before his great career
began, the house of Grant was represented in the Revolution, for
Captain Noah Grant of Connecticut drew his sword in defense of the
colonies at the outbreak of hostilities, taking part in the battle of
Bunker Hill; and from that time forward he and "Light Horse Harry"
served in the Continental army under Washington until Cornwallis
surrendered at Yorktown.
Here the trails of the two families, AGAIN DRAWN TOGETHER BY
A CIVIL STRIFE, merge for an historic moment and then cross; that of
the Grants turning toward the West, and that of the Lees keeping within
the confines of Virginia.
It was in 1799 that Captain Noah Grant migrated to Ohio, and during
the same year Henry Lee delivered the memorial address upon the
death of Washington, coining the immortal phrase "first in war, first in
peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen."
Ulysses Grant, the Commander of the Union forces in the Civil War,

was the grandson of Captain Grant, who served with "Light Horse
Harry" Lee during the Revolution; and Robert Lee, the Confederate
General, was "Light Horse Harry's" son.
Thus, for the THIRD time in two and a half centuries, a civil conflict
between men of the English-speaking race blazed the trails of Grant
and Lee.


Chapter II

Washington and Lee
"Wakefield," Westmoreland County, Virginia, was the birthplace of
Washington, and at Stratford in the same county and state, only a few
miles from Wakefield, Robert Edward Lee was born on January 19,
1807. Seventy-five years had intervened between those events but,
except in the matter of population, Westmoreland County remained
much the same as it had been during Washington's youth. Indians, it is
true, no longer lurked in he surrounding forests or paddled the broad
Potomac in their frail canoes, but the life had much of the same
freedom and charm which had endeared it to Washington. All the
streams and woods and haunts which he had known and loved were
known and loved by Lee, not only for their own sake, but because they
were associated with the memory of the great Commander-in-Chief
who had been his father's dearest friend.
It would have been surprising, under such circumstances, if
Washington had not been Lee's hero, but he was more than a hero to
the boy. From his father's lips he had learned to know him, not merely
as a famous personage of history, but as a man and a leader of men.
Indeed, his influence and example