I have done a little research on Mosby and the Lee/Pickett controversy that supposedly occurred in Richmond, Virginia, in March 1870. I must be honest and say that my motives were to prove Mosby a liar. Anyway, following are a few notes on what I found. There may be some mistakes here, but very few if any. Some information may also be repeated. Hope it proves interesting for you.
Individuals mentioned or involved in the "Mosby Scandal"
1. General Robert E. Lee: Former commander of the Army of Northern Virginia; president of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia; arrived in Richmond with daughter Agnes on March 25, 1870, to begin his 'tour' of the South. While in the city, Lee would consult with doctors about a heart condition.
2. General George E. Pickett: Former division commander under Lee; was living with his family at the Exchange and Ballard Hotel when Lee visited Richmond in 1870.
3. Colonel John S. Mosby: Former commander of the 43rd Battalion of Virginia Cavalry; was in town lobbying for the selection of his friend and former law partner, James Keith, to a seat on the Circuit Court. Was at the hotel awaiting news about Keith's nomination when he met the Lees.
4. Miss K. C. Stiles: Friend of the General and his daughter, Agnes; niece of Joseph Stiles, who was best friends with Robert E. Lee while attending West Point and until his death in the 1830's; involved with Confederate woman's organizations after the war; vice-regent of the Georgia Room at the Confederate Museum in Richmond.
5. Professor Charles Venable: former member of Lee's staff during the war; Professor at University of Virginia in 1892 when he informed Mosby of Pickett's "arrest".
6. Eppa Hunton, Jr.: Son of General Hunton; well known attorney in Richmond in 1911; received two letters from Mosby concerning the Lee-Pickett incident, and apparently wrote at least one to Mosby during the period in question.
7. General Eppa Hunton: former brigade commander under Pickett; was surprised to learn over 25 years after the war, about Pickett's "dismissal" prior to the surrender at Appomattox; was informed by Mosby on his (Mosby's) return from his Charlottesville meeting with Venable in 1892. Hunton had Fitzhugh Lee seek confirmation of Mosby claims from Walter Taylor in 1903.
8. Colonel Walter Taylor: Former member of Lee's war-time staff; residing in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1903; confirmed the order for Pickett's dismissal, but was unable to say order was delivered.
9. Dr. Elzy: personal friend and physician of Pickett during the war; claims to have been with Pickett during retreat and denied that the general was ever placed under arrest or dismissed.
10. Dr. Blair Burwell: Brother-in-law of General Pickett, and former surgeon of the 8th Virginia; claimed to have been with Pickett from Five Forks to the surrender; and that Pickett was in command of his division the entire time – he was not dismissed from command.
11. Paul Venable: brother of Professor Venable; claimed to have been told, some years before his brother's death, of Pickett's arrest. Note from Venable to Mosby placed in Times-Dispatch by Mosby as an answer to Dr. Elzy.
12. Agnes Lee: Daughter of General Lee; traveled with her father on his Southern tour; was in Richmond at the time Lee and Pickett met; K. C. Stiles claimed Agnes was at the meeting that took place between Lee and Pickett; on the first leg of the tour, she wrote Mrs. Lee from North Carolina that she had seen Kitty Stiles in Richmond before she and her father left that city.
13. Joseph Bryan: served with Mosby during the war; publisher of the Richmond "Times", and upon merger with the "Richmond Dispatch" in 1903, the "Times-Dispatch", until his death when the newspaper was taken over by his son; Mosby's 1898 and 1911 articles appeared in the Bryan's paper; much other Mosby news and many articles penned by the ex-colonel appeared in these publications over the years. The anti-Pickett letters of 1894 also found their way into Bryan's publication.
14. Judge James Keith: Friend and one-time law partner of Mosby; served in 2nd Va. Cav. during the war; brother served under Mosby; Mosby claimed Keith was at the hotel on the day Lee left for his trip south. Keith was also friends with General Eppa Hunton.
15. General Fitzhugh Lee: former commander of division of cavalry in ANV; nephew of General Lee; was at Five Forks with Pickett; was one of the participants of the infamous "shad-bake"; when told about Mosby's claims of Pickett's dismissal by General Hunton in 1903, Lee did not believe it; wrote Walter Taylor for confirmation; disliked by Mosby.
16. Colonel Edmund Berkeley: Friend of General Hunton; former colonel of the 8th Virginia in Hunton's brigade; inveterate Pickett hater; wrote Mosby in 1911 two (possibly only one) letters concerning Pickett's whereabouts at the battle of Gettysburg; one of these letters made it's way into the hands, via Mosby, of Hunton, Jr., where it caused some consternation for the Richmond attorney, and into the pages of the "Times-Dispatch" in April, 1911, also via Mosby, in answer to Blair Burwell; Mosby claimed never to have corresponded with Berkeley before.
17. Colonel Kirkwood Otey: former colonel of the 11th Virginia, Kemper's brigade; Pickett hater; wrote unfavorably about Pickett in the "Times" during the latter part of 1894; had been convicted by court marshal for drunkenness while on duty in April 1863, wounded at Gettysburg, July 3, 1863.
Known accounts relating to a Lee/Pickett meeting in Richmond, March 1870
1. The Times", Richmond, Va., Sunday, March 13, 1898
Former colonel John S. Mosby's first known published account of the 1870 meeting between generals Lee and Pickett was part of an article entitled "First Meeting of Lee and Mosby" that appeared in the Sunday edition of the "The Times" of Richmond, Va., on March 13, 1898. At the time of its writing, Mosby was in California working as an attorney for the Southern Pacific Railroad. His sober account of the meeting was confined to a single paragraph - thirteen sentences - in which he described the generals' personal relations at the close of the war as being "very unfriendly", the atmosphere at their only post-war meeting as being "non-cordial", and their conversation being "commonplace and formal" with a "feeling of constraint" on the part of both men.
2a. Letter to Judge James Keith, January 27, 1906
A second account of the generals' meeting was an expanded version of the 1898 story that was included in a letter initially penned by Mosby in 1906, to friend and former law-partner Judge James Keith. Apparently written while Mosby was working on his book "Stuart's Cavalry in the Gettysburg Campaign", the vast majority of this letter is taken up with a defense of Stuart's actions prior to that battle, which makes the inclusion of the Lee – Pickett incident seem somewhat incongruous. Though only four paragraphs of the nine and one-half pages (as eventually printed) are given over to the events of 1870, they are, perhaps, given greater prominence by their being,the first four paragraphs of the letter.
In this version Mosby explains that he was in Richmond in 1870 awaiting news on the nomination of Keith for circuit court judge, and after a curt congratulatory sentence to the judge on his re-election, immediately plunges into recounting his meeting with Lee in 1870, Pickett's outburst after his meeting with Lee, and his (Mosby's) belief that Gettysburg was not the cause of Pickett's anger toward Lee. He then goes on to recount his 1892 conversation with professor Venable from whom he learned about Pickett's "arrest" during the retreat after Sailor's Creek.
The circumstances surrounding the publication of this version of the Lee-Pickett meeting are somewhat curious since it was included in Mosby's personal correspondence to Judge Keith. However, in 1908 it eventually made it's way into volume 43 of the "Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States" two years after being written. The reason for the letter's appearance in the journal is understandable - a review questioning certain claims made by Mosby in his recently published defense of JEB Stuart had appeared in a previous issue of the journal. Mosby, being Mosby, used his letter to Judge Keith as a rebuttal of the journal's review. But if mention of the incident of 1870 seems out of place in Mosby's original personal correspondence to Judge Keith, how much more questionable does it seem when included in correspondence to a military journal, concerning a topic to which it, the 1870 incident, had absolutely no connection what-so-ever?
3a. "Munsey's Magazine", April 1911, and the "Times-Dispatch", Richmond, Va., Tuesday March 21, 1911
The best known of Mosby's accounts concerning the March 1870 meeting was actually an extract from a longer article entitled "Personal Recollections of General Lee" that was originally published in the April 1911 issue of Munsey's Magazine. Although in some circles it may have had a dubious reputation for including pictures of "half-dressed women and undressed statuary", Munsey's was a well known and popular monthly publication, with a circulation of over half a million readers by 1906. By 1911 however, Munsey's was beginning to see a sharp decline in it's readership.
The scheduled delivery for the magazine, to newsstands, was set for the 20th of each month; the April issue would therefore have been available to Richmond readers on the 20th of March, the day before the Mosby extract was reprinted in the "Times-Dispatch".
3b. Letter to the editor of the "Times-Dispatch", Richmond, Va., Saturday March 25, 1911
from Miss Katherine (Kitty) C. Stiles
Four days after the appearance of the Mosby extract, a letter from Miss K. C. Stiles was printed in the "Times-Dispatch", contradicting Mosby's recollection of the meeting in it's entirety.
In her letter Miss Stiles, who claimed to have witnessed the meeting, took issue not only with Mosby's portrayal of General Lee's demeanor, which she described as "cordial and dignified", but also with the setting of the meeting, which she claimed occurred in the parlor of the Ballard House rather than in Lee's Room. Miss Stiles reveals in her letter that the meeting took place on the same day that General Lee received the news from his doctors that he had only a short time to live. She also took Mosby to task for what she apparently considered a slight to Lee's generalship.
4. Letter to Eppa Hunton, Jr., March 25, 1911
Mosby was not long in responding to the unexpected threat against his credibility. On the same day the Stiles letter appeared he fired off a response, but not to the newspaper as one might expect. Instead, he wrote a defense of his claims to Eppa Hunton, Jr., a well known Richmond attorney and the son of General Eppa Hunton, former brigadier general in Pickett's division. "I said & I repeat", writes Mosby at one point, "that the meeting was cold & formal. Both were under constraint. We were not in the parlor as Miss Stubbs [sic] says but in Gen. Lee's room."
X. Missing Letter to John Mosby from Eppa Hunton, Jr., probably written on March 26 or 27, 1911
The existence of this letter can be inferred from Mosby's March 28 letter which is discussed below. While it says little about the actual Lee-Pickett meeting, it does throw light on Mosby's attitude toward Pickett and on his sensitivity about being questioned.
Eppa Hunton Jr. was obviously very concerned that Mosby would charge into the controversy surrounding Pickett's whereabouts at Gettysburg, and would somehow connect General Hunton with that scandal. The reason for this concern apparently lay in another piece of correspondence that seemingly was included with, but not mentioned in, Mosby's first letter – a letter to Mosby from Edmund Berkeley, former colonel of the 8th Virginia and virulent Pickett basher. (As will be discussed later, there is enough similarity between Mosby's description of this Berkeley letter and another Berkeley letter Mosby had reprinted in the "Times-Dispatch" in April 1911, that they could arguably be one and the same letter.)
5. Letter to Eppa Hunton, Jr., March 28, 1911
Mosby reassures Eppa Jr. that he has no intention of writing anything about Pickett and Gettysburg, and at one point seems put out that Hunton could even think that he, Mosby, would write anything connecting General Hunton with Pickett; "...as I had not referred to your father I can't understand why you should fear my mentioning him in connection with Pickett. I only sent you Col. Berkeley's letter as I thought his mention of your father wd [sic] please you."
He also professes indifference toward Pickett, and recalls General Hunton's uncomplimentary opinion of the Major-General. Mosby gives his reason for "mentioning" the meeting between Lee and Pickett as being an interest in what occurred between the two general at their only meeting after the war.
But Mosby's anger at being contradicted is not more apparent than when he speaks of Miss Stiles: "The ugly old maid says she found us in the room when she entered... Please tell her I wasn't running from her." Mosby writes at one point. "I never even saw in the Times Dispatch the item to wh [sic] the old maid refers..." From this it would seem that 1.) Eppa Jr. was acquainted with Miss Stiles, 2.) Mosby himself recalled, or was reminded by Mr. Hunton in the missing letter of March 26-27, of exactly who Miss Stiles was.
A Comparison
A comparison of the first three published accounts of the 1870 meeting between generals Lee and Pickett (1898, 1906-8, 1911) will reveal that all generally agree on the basic facts: Mosby's unexpected meeting of General Lee; the visit by Mosby to Lee's room; Lee's haggard appearance; the nature of their conversation; afterward meeting Pickett and returning to Lee's room; the unpleasant interview between Lee and Pickett; even the unfriendly personal relations between the two generals at the close of the war are mentioned.
Comparison and Coincidence?
Throughout the post-war years Mosby is known to have peddled his war stories to various newspapers around the country, even writing stories for his daughter Virginia Stuart Mosby, who worked as a correspondent for a newspaper syndicate. During this period Mosby's tale of bitterness and reproach was published a total of four times, with two of these articles (1898 and 1911) destined to appear, in the month of March, in Richmond, Virginia newspapers, that were owned by his friend and former war-time comrade Joseph Bryan. Bryan published the "Times", and later, with the merger of the "Times" and the "Dispatch" in 1903, the "Times-Dispatch". Bryan's son, John Stewart Bryan, was it's publisher in 1911.
The 1911 version initially appeared in the April issue of Munsey's Magazine, and was scheduled to arrive on news stands on the 20st of March – the day before it showed up in the "Times-Dispatch". While it is possible, it seems somewhat curious that this article would find its way into the newspaper so quickly.
So with his connections to the publishing industry, and considering the speed with which the story found it's was into the "Times-Dispatch" - the day after it hit news stands - is it unreasonable to think that Mosby may have tipped someone off at the newspaper about his Munsey's article? Is Mosby being totally honest when he writes, "I never even saw in the Times Dispatch the item to wh [sic] the old maid refers but I infer that it copied my interview from Munsey."
A curious feature of Mosby's 1906 version (printed in 1908) is the polished nature of the writing – it almost reads like it was composed and written for publication rather than as a letter to a friend; a couple of passages show a marked similarity with passages that appear in the 1911 version of the story.
1906: "His face was haggard: he did not look like the Apollo I knew in the army."
1911: "The general was pale and haggard, and did not look like the Apollo I had known in the army."
1906: "...Pickett spoke very bitterly of Lee; called him 'that old man' - said that he had his division 'massacred' at Gettysburg."
1911: "He then spoke to me very bitterly of Lee, calling him, 'that old man.' 'He had my division massacred at Gettysburg,' Pickett said."
Finally, several facts appear only in the 1906 and 1911 versions: Pickett's outburst against Lee; Mosby's supposition about the root cause of Pickett's anger; his interview with Venable where he learned of Pickett's "arrest".
The Five Forks "affair"
In April of 1892, while visiting his son at the University of Virginia, Mosby met and had breakfast with a former member of general Lee's staff, Professor Charles Venable. It was during the meal, according to Mosby, that Venable related the story of Pickett's arrest shortly before the surrender at Appomattox. Just why the professor saw fit to make Mosby, of all people, privy to information that he, Venable, had seemingly kept under wraps for nearly thirty years is a mystery, but it was something Mosby would file away for future use.
After leaving Charlottesville for his home in Washington, D.C., Mosby stopped in Warrenton, Virginia, to pay a visit at the home of his friend General Eppa Hunton. There he repeated Venable's story to the dumbfounded Hunton, who, although expressing surprise at learning about the incident nearly 25 years after the war, did not believe it. It was not until 1903, when he had Fitzhugh Lee write to another of R.E. Lee's former staff, Colonel Walter Taylor (Professor Venable had died in 1900), that Hunton confirmed Mosby's claim. In his reply however, Taylor said nothing about Pickett's arrest, but instead stated that he wrote out the order for the major-general's dismissal "a few days before the surrender"; he could not say that it was ever delivered.
It is unclear from Hunton's 1904 autobiography if he was aware in April 1865 of difficulties in the relationship between Lee and Pickett, or if he arrived at that conclusion only after Mosby's revelation and Taylor's confirmation; but he did give two possible reason's for Pickett's being dismissed: 1.) his "reported" abuse and criticism of Lee for not surrendering; 2.) his poor performance at Five Forks and Sailors' Creek.
This is the way things stood until 1911 when Colonel Mosby, once again, unsheathed his mighty pen.
In that year Mosby wrote in his recollections that "some days before the surrender" Pickett was placed under arrest by order of General Lee; he "supposed" that the arrest was for the Five Forks "affair". It was this arrest, or so Mosby supposed, rather than the destruction of the Virginia division at Gettysburg, that lay behind Pickett's alleged outburst against Lee in 1870.
What reason would Mosby have for designating a battle involving some 30,000 men an affair? After an admittedly less than thorough search, I have found only one other instance in which he used that term in connection with a major battle. In his memoirs Mosby wrote about the "affair" at Fort Donelson, apparently in reference to the questionable manner by which the Confederate forces were surrendered.
For Mosby, the "affair" at Five Forks may have been a way of writing derisively about the battle and of the general who was in command at the time. However, it is also possible that the affair Mosby had in mind when he wrote those words in 1911 had nothing at all to do with the battle of Five Forks, but instead referred to another "affair" that took place that same day, an affair that was surely rumored to have occurred, but which was not substantiated publicly until 1887, when Colonel Thomas Rosser came forward to confirm the infamous "shad-bake".
Mosby's cryptic reference to the Five Forks "affair" must have been intentional, as any clear reference to the "shad-bake" would have raised questions Mosby could not, or perhaps did not wish to have answered. Why did Thomas Rosser and Fitzhugh Lee, both of whom were eating fish with Pickett that day, escape censure for their actions? Why were Generals Anderson and Bushrod Johnson, neither of whom were even near Five Forks on April first, relieved of their commands at the same time as Pickett? Had the "shad-bake" been mentioned specifically, Mosby's supposition concerning Pickett's arrest and his anger toward Lee could have been proven false. So, whether intentional or not, the consequences of Mosby's ambiguous phraseology was to gloss over the importance of the battle that signaled the end of the Confederacy, and to reiterate for the reader, just who was (or was not) in command at the time and who was therefore responsible for the disaster at Five Forks.
It is possible that rumors of the clandestine repast began floating through the army quickly enough for Lee to have heard them by April 6, but then the question arises as to whether Lee would have relieved only one of the offending officers, and that on the basis of army rumor?
So I would suggest that by 1906 Mosby had based his supposition about Pickett's post-war anger on two known pieces of information: the 1887 revelation of the Five Forks "shad-bake", at which Pickett was only one of several participants, and the conversation held at the University of Virginia with Professor Venable, in the spring of 1892. And we cannot forget his friendship with General Eppa Hunton.
It is impossible to say just how much of Mosby's dislike for Pickett was a result of his conversations with General Hunton over the years, but it is probably safe to say that he heard enough which, when taken with the opinions of other Pickett detractors, resulted in a resentment against the former major general that Mosby professed not to harbor. He claimed that a former member of Lee's staff told General Hunton that "Lee ought to have had Pickett shot", although he doesn't explain why. He also wrote that he had heard Hunton speak "in an uncomplimentary manner" of Pickett, a claim that was corroborated by Hunton himself with, among other things, his critical assessment of Pickett's behavior at Gettysburg and his belief that Pickett was never the same after his marriage to LaSalle Corbel. And yet there is some evidence that Hunton tried to at least be judicious in his opinion of Pickett, stating that he had had the utmost confidence in Pickett's gallantry prior to his marriage. And even as late as 1911, his son Eppa, Jr., seems to have believed that his father was "very fond" of Pickett. This idea however, was bluntly contradicted by Mosby in his March 28 letter.
Arrivals and Departures
Determining an accurate time-line of events from the different Mosby accounts is made problematical by Mosby himself, as no one of his accounts agrees in every respect with the other three.
The known facts concerning Lee's arrival in and departure from Richmond may be had from Lee and Agnes themselves, and are as follows:
1. Lee arrived in Richmond with his daughter Agnes on Friday, March 25, 1870.
2. Lee wrote his wife on Sunday, March 27, stating that because of the bad weather he had not gone out; he had consulted with two doctors, in his room, on Saturday (the 26th), and was awaiting their return today (27th).
Writing her mother from North Carolina, Agnes Lee says that she and her father left Richmond at 2:00 P.M. on Monday the 28th.
Mosby's different accounts, while falling within the known parameters of Lee's visit,
1898: "A few months before his death I met him (Lee) at a hotel in Richmond just as he arrived on his way South for the benefit of his health." This apparently places the date of Mosby's meeting the Lees on Friday the 25th, the day of their arrival in Richmond.
1906: In his letter to judge Keith, Mosby pinpoints the day of the Lee-Pickett interview by writing: "A book recently published by his son has a letter written by him that day." The book referred to, "Recollections and Letters or General Robert E. Lee", does in fact contain a letter written by Lee, to Mrs. Lee, while he was in Richmond, and is dated March 27, 1870 – a Sunday; but it makes no mention of either Mosby or Pickett. Mosby also makes plain that the events in question occurred on the day that judge Keith was nominated for circuit court judge. The nominating process began on Friday the 25th; the elections were over by Tuesday the 29th. (There are indications that the Virginia General Assembly did, at times, conduct business on weekends.)
1911: In his first response to Miss Stiles, Mosby wrote to Eppa Hunton, Jr. that the interview between Lee and Pickett occurred on March 8, 1870 – a Tuesday; disputing her version of where the meeting took place Mosby told Hunton, "Now the parties I have named were the only persons in the room. Gen. Lee & Miss Agnes had just come [to Richmond]".
Bringing the