but today we have a subject that's near and dear to virginians, of course, george washington parke custis, who was raised at mount vernon by and martha washington young wash would later mark the national landscape by building arlington house on the potomac. he was a poor student, but he emerged an agricultural reformer and a sought after federalist order. an author knew the first 15 presidents he wrote well-received theatrical works and produced paintings rich in historical detail in inheriting much of the vast custis fortune. he also the enslaver of more 200 people, the slow march towards their emancipation, a pivotal struggle of his life, particularly after his daughter's marriage. to robert ely. in 1831, charles clark's first full length biography, of course, just offers a 21st century reappraisal of a unique life that bridged the american revolution and the civil war. charles clark is a retired journalist and a native of arlington, virginia where he continues to write the weekly our man in arlington for the falls church news-press, march 2019. he retired as correspondent for government executive of media group. he previously worked as an editor and writer for the washington post, congressional quarterly, the national journal and time-life books. he's the author of several books including arlington county chronicles a hidden history of arlington county lost. arlington county and most frequently in the subject of today's talk, george parke custis, a rarefied life in america's first family. please give a warm vma hd. welcome to clark's. so i wanted to dedicate this talk to late sarah barr's, who was an important editor here on staff at the virginia historical society. she wrote three excellent articles on kansas that i cite the book and. in 2019. i contacted her father, who was the eminent national park service historian ed barr's, who lived near me in arlington and he confirmed to me that she had planned on doing a doctorate on justice and would have been the first full length work on him. so i just hope that she would approve of the journalistic effort that i made in the last few years. so kansas lived it. when i say as impactful, unique life, he knew the first 15 presidents. he was a networker and he attended every inauguration during his lifetime except for the very first. so his life, 1781 to 1857 is can be seen as a bridge between the american and the civil war. but he's less known today. his house was arlington house was taken over by robert e lee and the union army and became arlington cemetery. but custer shows up in every year. major on george washington and. robert e lee. it's usually kind of a cameo appearance, maybe a little bit cardboard. and there had been no such volume on him, although there are several on his sister nellie custer, who was also raised at mount vernon, but he built arlington house in. 1802 to 1818 on the banks of the potomac and congress officially named it two pieces of legislation 1955 and again in 72. i arlington house, the robert e lee memorial and it closed in 2017 and for renovations after they got a generous grant from david rubenstein to its presentation of slavery. and if you are up that way i highly recommend that you look at it it opened last summer and lee is still a big part of it, but he's downplayed a little bit the but the the over over examined lee who lived at full time at arlington house just a fraction of the years that custis lived there has also as you all have noted, been subjected to a 21st century demotion. so this presented opportunities. this book that i worked on to come out when it did. so here are george russian parke custis. his parents, john parke custis, known as jackie also raised at mount vernon. he is the son of martha washington from her first marriage and in the mid-seventies he marries calvert, who was descended from the lord baltimore line in suburban maryland, and they were married at mount airy, which is in upper marlboro, maryland. and this is where george washington parke custis was born. he was the fourth, the only boy out of four. and in 1781, this was during covid. so this place was closed. i had to sneak on to the property and get that photo. but nobody really minded. i think. so because. jackie dyes when custis, an infant, six months old, early november 17, 81, george washington parke custis and his sister nellie, the two youngest, are adopted by george and martha washington and raised at mount vernon. the two older girls stay with their mother and so that meant that custis was raised in a life of luxury which is exemplified by several of the portraits done by notable painters the day. this is a couple of samples and this is the most famous one which was took about seven years to actually complete but it shows about an eight year old washi as he was called by his family with his hand on a globe. and i like to interpret that as high hopes that george, martha washington had for him. he was doted on by martha washington and the young boy, george washington was more partial to his sister nellie, but this engraving was circulated. the young united states made washi as sort of a household name when he was aged eight or ten years old. now, why? she struggled as a student. he had a succession of tutors. if visit mount vernon today you'll see that this is the north garden house where none other than washington's personal secretary, tobias lear, would tutor him. he had he had some other famous famous and let's see i want to i think i went too far. so he was sent to some of very good schools starting out in philadelphia at at the school that was the precursor of university of pennsylvania. and then he went to princeton or college, new jersey, it was called, and he was kicked out of there for. complicated reasons and then he was sent to st john's in annapolis, where he had similar troubles focusing and pretended to. he was more interested in women in social life. so i tried in this and i did a lot of the research right in this building to assemble the best version of this. this is a famous exchange of letters between george washington and his step grandson about his poor study habits and also washington would correspond with the head masters of these schools and, he would correspond with other relatives woe is us. what can we do about? so i just want to read the quote from his infancy i have discovered an almost unconquered bold disposition to indolence and everything that did not tend to his amusements, and had exhorted him in the most parental and friendly manner, often to devote his time to more useful pursuits. let's see. i'm going backwards. pardon me, sir. so, washington comes home a little bit in disgrace. washington is what he would be called when he was a little older by martha washington. but to be for clarity, i may still refer to him as washington. he was back at mount vernon and kind of biding his time and george washington as the war with france threatened 1798, the war that never actually came came to be washington, george washington, and wrote to secretary of war james mchenry to secure a rank for his step grandson. he tried to keep that a secret because i think washington would not approve of that. but tobias lear apparently spilled the beans and washington later asked mchenry to raise the rank from cornet to lieutenant. but washington writes, it is not my desire to ask this as a favor. i never nor never will solicit anything for myself or connections. but then washington to write to his factor in philadelphia clement biddle to to purchase fancy uniforms and weaponry for the young wash. so at age 20. while she is an aristocrat. you know the park and the customs names for much of the 18th century were far more prominent than the washington name before that changed and, he knew that he would inherit a huge part of the estate martha washington left her death in 1802. washington's death in 1799, and that included about 200 enslaved persons. so as an adult, the the young custis i say he he reached high he just he recovered he displayed enough vision to create arlington house on a choice hill on the virginia side of the new capital city. and he would never really become a great man say he he tried once for elective office but i think he came fourth in a local race in alexandria county and he had a few minor appointments besides the cornet in the army. he chair of the alexandria on retrocession in the 1840s when they seceded from the district and he was a justice of the peace in alexandria county for many years. so i call him an aristocrat, but he was one who was acquainted with the figures in early in the early 19th century america, in an era when he honor and reputation or paramount. so he created arlington house. it was built with enslaved and paid labor took about six years and it was designed by a british architect, george hatfield, who had worked on the u.s. capitol and who did a couple other buildings in the district of columbia. that's done the greek revival style. at first, augustus had planned to name it. it was it was in honor of the father of the country, the patri george washington. he wanted to call it mount washington, but he gave up on that pretty early. think there were some other properties with that name. so he chose arlington, which was the custis family on the eastern shore here and when he moved in, he carried him lots of relics from mount vernon that he had both inherited and also purchased at auctions. and they included silver and china, the ban on witch washington died and books that had belonged to martha washington. now george washington's books went to the bush. rod. and there was also a fine art paintings. and of course, this has now being stored on in cabins and on the banks of the potomac in all kinds of inclement weather. so you can imagine the risks being taken. but as the family in may and making custer's hosted elegant parties at arlington house he held friendly sheep shearing competition urns with neighbors among them john mason, son of george mason, a nearby island that is today called roosevelt island, kansas. wood so hundreds of acres to alexandria county land tillers and he would build an important gristmill here in arlington i'll talk about later so what was missing was the love of his life and he married molly fitzhugh who she had grown up in fredericksburg, the chatham plantation, and then up in old town, alexandria on orinoco street and family property in fairfax county called. ravensworth was also a part of her child hood and she brought with her to they were married in july of 1804 and i was able to obtain marriage bond. i had get two permissions for this the library of virginia as well as the current arlington county clerk. and that was funny. it was easy, but i had to go through the motions. molly brought with her i'll call her molly because their daughter, they're both named mary of the daughters mary the future, mary custis lee. so i want to make it clear who i'm referring. so molly brought with her a good relations with. her cousin, william mead, who became later the bishop of virginia. he was active in the reform of the episcopal church and he was also with his cousin and others active in the american colonization society and but mead was always grateful to arlington house because he had visited it as an undergraduate when he was at princeton, and he was still studying law. and it was his to arlington house where he saw various books that had belonged to george washington, that he and martha washington, he decided he want to become a clergyman. now, the custis couple had molly gave birth to four children, but one survived. that would be mary. meanwhile, custis embarks on a career of some people have called him the first preservation office, but he was monument builder. a monument improver and in 1815 he took a steamship or schooner down, i should say, two revolutionary war veterans down to pope's creek on the potomac, which was the site of wakefield plantation in 1732, where george washington was born. and they rolled out a stone with some from the locals. and this was later called the stone to commemorate washington. now, custis as as an individual where his i say his first more famous relatives were handsome soft spoken and duty driven. custis was short, big nosed, verbose paunchy and playful. in other words, approachable. his in their later introduction to his memoirs, wrote mr. custis was of medium height, well formed his complexion fair poor and somewhat florid. his eyes light and expressive, great kindliness of nature, his voice for rich and melodious, his deportment graceful and winning his courtesy to strangers extremely cordial, and his affection for his friends, warm and abiding. now he possessed this mellifluous voice that in an age before microphone tones could enthrall hundreds in a room or a public square, often on george washington's birthday, he endorsed for president. he liked military heroes such as andrew jackson and zachary taylor. but he was tiresome. and he had critics among the jefferson who but he weighed in as an essayist and orator on the top tier issues of the first half of the 19th century, which included domestic economic independence, farming, innovation, collapse of his beloved federalist, the advent, the steamship and the railroad. protection of the rights of irish catholic immigrants. and the first federal benefits for war veterans. he advise and entertained countless influential guests at arlington house. now, when the declared war on england in 1812, he opposed that, as did the federalists in general. but by the time 1814 rolled around, the british were attacking washington. custis declared himself, ready to fight, and he participated in the battle of bladensburg, suburban maryland. and he accepted no, no pay his farm were acknowledged nationally in the field. and today the u.s. agriculture department on its website has a little notation about custer's contributions. he experimented with sheep breeding to boost the domestic to compete with the merino sheep. now, custis inheritance included that the two major plantations on the monkey river, the one on the left is the white house, which has ties to the custer's family and to george washington and martha, where they were married there. and the roman it was called originally, it was later to roman coke and you got to keep in mind that the profits from parke custis businesses were derived from these two plantation house down on the poor monkey less. so at arlington house where much, much of the work was done just to grow for the family and the gardening. so there were about 60 enslaved persons at arlington house, but about 130, 140 between roman coke and and the white house. this is an example of a ledger that the caretaker would report to customs on or and it would it's difficult for modern people to to handle it and interpret it but it's the livestock would be on the same pages as the enslaved human beings and there would be progress reports on which the enslaved were ill, what their ages were. but customs is really not a talented business manager. even his own daughter admitted that he's a lot of the correspondence can show him begging banks for loan forgiveness. a big turning point then in his life was. when lafayette made his famous grand tour of the united in 1824 and 1825, lafayette had remembered kansas when he was just a three or three year old boy and during that tour, there was a famous dinner at arlington house, which i used to open the book. but custer's travel with lafayette, and they went to mount vernon and fort mchenry, yorktown and. they would debate the slavery. and by the by this time custer's was active in the american colonization society, whose mission to recruit free blacks and have them deported to which the country became liberia, and later, lafayette was an abolitionist. so custis would spend day with lafayette, and then he would come at night and write notes. and he eventually turned these into 16, published essays. they were called conversations of lafayette. they talked about a lot of those big issues of the day and was really the beginning of his career as. a journalist and memoir and the editor who helped him get a lot of these published is william seton was editor of the proud jefferson national intelligencer. but he was also a more general and he later became the district of columbia mayor. the biggest red letter date in kansas. custer's life in middle age be the 1831 wedding of the army officer robert e lee and his daughter his only daughter, mary custis lee. now, they had known each other since they were children. they had probably played together and mary would recall having seen a teenage lee during that visit from lafayette actually in uniform and, alexandria and. so they had their wedding in the parlor at arlington house. cousins was initially reluctant to give his consent to the marriage because he didn't really want his daughter in a military life. but that's what happened. and they would be transferred around the country and didn't spend much time at arlington houses as a normal marriage would. it would have allowed. the other interesting thing is that lee's home, as it is called, an in alexandria, which by the way, is on the market right now for two or $3 million. it's been a private hands, but it was not just lee's boy. it was lee's boyhood home because his father light horse, harry lee, who custis also knew and wrote about, was renting from william fitzhugh custis. his father in law. so molly and george russian parke custis were married in this house, but they don't really bother to put that on the plaques because it's so overtaken as lee's boyhood home. now another example of custer's responsibility for curating george washington's memory is that in 1836, he worked with president andrew jackson and some others to arrange for a free burial and rehabilitation of the grave of mary ball. washington the mother of george washington and her grave had fallen into disrepair down in fredericksburg. so he packed up the the tent that george washington had used, revolutionary war battles, which has enslaved valet philip lee was responsible for pitching and they tried transport it down on the water to fredericksburg. and 15,000 people gathered in what today is the historic district or fredericksburg, right near ken kenmore mansion. the then owner of kenmore plantation, a man named samuel gordon, had paid for a much more substantive monument. martha mary ball, washington so that's a picture of the way it looks. if you go there today. and this is the famous battlefield tent. there are actually several to it. but this is one you can see in the museum of the american revolution in philadelphia. but there's another component of it in yorktown battle field. and it was stored many years at the u.s. patent office. washington, george washington wrote in letters about how he worried that even though he loved to set it for military picnics and things on washington's birthday, it was in danger being damaged due to wear and tear. locally. that is, if you're in northern virginia and as i. kostis was had a high impact role in. building the grist and sawmill. well that's on columbia pike in arlington and this is an engraving from the civil war when the union troops marched right by it but it gives you a good idea of how large it was it was manned by enslaved persons and it was burned down during war. and it was later, john barcroft built a bigger mill on that same site site. but cassius was also active in the building of alexandria canal. he had to sell some of his land to the entrepreneurs for that and a private estate project called jackson city. which president andrew jackson was persuaded to lay the cornerstone. but it was really kind of a luxury home development on the potomac next to what today is the 14th street bridge. but it was it pretty much failed in the 1830s and forties and became kind of a high crime area in latter 19th century. cost us all. so he takes a famous trip. more on the monument building in 1845. got lots of coverage and newspapers all over the northeast where he up to bunker hill and lexington and concord and he was he's a little upset that he didn't think that bunker hill was being sufficiently preserved. in middle age in the thirties they starting to plan the washington monument and though he didn't an official role in that he course with a lot of the people who were planning it and he even offered his son at arlington house as a to be the washington monument. and it took 20 years. you know, you all remember that the monument was begun. i think it's 1848. it's begun. and then halts during the civil war and it's only half built. but custer's has a donated a stone with his name on it somewhere up on like the sixth floor or something. you're not to go in those places anymore today. and then he also in his forties, fifties, became an active playwright and he chose of course a lot of george washington themes. that's what the indian prophecy is about. it's a story. in 1770 when washington's physician, james, thank you. and washington went back to west virginia to look at the sites from the french and indian war where washington had made his name and. they encountered one of the indians that they had years earlier and that indian supposedly told them that he remembers a great wave white leader on horseback who invulnerable to their weaponry, and that one day he predicted he would be the leader of a great nation. and of course, that's washington. he he is other place of all pocahontas. was he? he tried to write a play on 14th century scotland, but it was kind a flop and he had hundreds of people in the audience, 2300 at one production. they were produced in boston, new york, at the brand new national theater in washington, d.c., in 1836. and down in charles ton. but i think the critics, some of the professional drama critics, were not as impressed and he when he wrote one play under deadline in 9 hours he also took to painting. and if you go to arlington today, you can see his studio with all its set up again with all the equipment and even his daughter acknowledged he really wasn't so skilled, but his paintings did deliver a lot of battlefield detail uniforms and weaponry that he was qualified to give. since he had talked to a lot of the participants. and so he his paintings were displayed briefly on capitol hill and in city hall. but some senators complained about how bad they were. so they got taken out, which humiliated him across kansas. he did. oh, this is another of his work. this is called his equestrian painting class. this did have detractors. he besides the jeffersonians, the federally is some of them critics regarded him as a george washington and pretender. he was nicknamed the inevitable after dinner speaker in later life, he seemed kind of stuck in the past. in late middle age. he was one of the last out in the 19th century to appear in breeches and ruffled shirts. and he's saying revolutionary war era songs well into the 1850s. so that's why i say that, you know, his life was kind of an amalgamation of mediocrity and national greatness. but as the head, the american colonization society wrote later, custis read much. his memory was quick retentive and his knowledge of history and public affairs of the world was remarkably for an accurate. so this brings us to really the big issue his life, whether he liked it or not, which was slavery. so his his attitude was complex. so this is a printer's proof of the, let's say, pass a document that an enslaved worker would need have if he wanted to go off the property was asked to send into old town alexandria to buy purchased things that he would have to get a signature of custis and custis would throw in a little spending money and he was very apparently very willing to give such permission. but custis also, he showed at the annual meetings of the american colonization society and he argued a lot of sort of pseudoscientific arguments and data about how skin color determine which races were best suited for which climates, i should say. and he was. but you got to remember that. the american colonization society was very mainstream. you know, it was formed in 1816, and it had james monroe and bushra in washington and supreme court justice john marshall were involved, as were the presidents of the major colleges at the time. and it was heavily attacked by the abolitionist editor, william lloyd garrison. and he wrote, he attacked kansas by and nellie custis was furious at the garrison's rhetoric. she considered dangerous that she wrote an angry letter about him, which i reproduce in the book. and of course, frederick douglass later denounced the american colonization society. in the end, about 16,000 and american blacks did go back to africa and a couple of them were from arlington house. and wrote to mrs. lee cautiously to keep in touch with her and said they were doing well there. so i'm so pleased that in the modern era that i get to individus allows the enslaved persons a little more than perhaps what was done, you know, in decades past. so there are three major individuals and families that i want to highlight at. arlington house, selina gray and her husband, thornton, she's best known she was mrs. lee's chamber maid and she rescued washington treasures at the of the civil war when the union troops were arriving to occupy arlington house. and she arranged for them to be stored at the us patent office. then you had the lawrence, the father and james the son. this is a drawing of laurence parks, an enslaved man done by mary lee, when she was probably a teenager. she used to draw a lot and son james parks is so interesting because he was born as an enslaved person in the early 1850s and after the civil war and emancipation, he stayed on as a worker for the u.s. army arlington cemetery, and he would serve until 1929. and in 19 1928, the evening star published an interview that a local scholar had written interviewing him about. and that's where we get some of the information about what it was like to be enslaved person and under customs and how customs was not so cruel as maybe perhaps robert de la rose. we can talk about that later. but the biggest story of the enslaved community and you can see all this if you visit arlington house was the story of mariah cy facts. so it had long been oral tradition, but it's pretty much been verified through other means that custis fathered, a child with an enslaved woman at least once, maybe more, there were lots of mixed race children, the plantation. eventually. but in 1803, ariana carter, who is the mother who came over from mt. vernon, she gave birth to mariah carter, who then would marry charles swift acts and. the first clue that we have that the mariah cipher was custis. his daughter comes in 1821 when they are permitted to their wedding in the parlor, which was unusual. and the enslaved community and mariah and her husband, charles. and then in 1826, custis man omits mariah and her children, but not charles for mysterious reasons. and them 17 acres of land in arlington house property. and that land would in the smith family which is still very united and does a lot of genealogy well into the 20/20 century. and finally, in the 1880s, when she was nearing the end of her life, mariah songfacts gave an interview to a kansas report in which she said that the george washington parke custis had called her in one day and said that i am your father and that she was very close. and to mrs. lee, is your sister, and that they were mrs. lee smith said that mrs. lee and she were always very close. this is where mariah ceefax is buried with other family members in suitland maryland. and if you if you go to arlington house, you'll see that they do a family tree of the justices in the washington and the lees, and they have a direct dotted line now between mariah cy facts and martha washington. she would be the great great grandmother, great granddaughter. so we'll see whether that that takes so in the 1850s because this is nearing its final days and there's a there's a grouping deaths in the extended family. his sister nellie dies. it's it's 1852 and his his sister martha is 1854. and wife molly dies in 1853, which put cassius kind of at a loss and had to have living help cousins, nieces to help him get along and he finally succumbed to pneumonia. in october of 1857, his funeral at the arlington house front yard was attended by thousands, but it got worldwide press. there were military units in formation. it's interesting that kansas had been invited to attend what would be the 1858 opening of mount vernon as refurbished rescued by the mount vernon. ladies. but of course, that that was not to. although the ladies continue to with their work and there was a fight over costs as well and i reprint the will in the book because he probably ends up as the executor, although legally it's mrs. lee who inherits arlington house and custis says that all the enslaved should be freed within five years and but at the same time, each of the seven grandchildren need to inherit $10,000, which is a lot more money back then. so lee is stuck with this kind of no win situation where supposed to make the two plantations profitable enough to come up with that money for the grandchild. and he's not to free the slaves. the slaves themselves had been told and they testified to this in court cases that they had been promised their freedom instantaneously. so lee delays. and so it's not until the middle of the civil war or december of 1862, right after the battle of fredericksburg, that lee frees the slaves. so after custis dies. this is the final photo of him, which i'll come back that i think this is his grave at arlington house. that's his wife's on the right. and you can see that oak tree has is damaging those tombs. and we're hoping that the army will do something about that. they're in charge of it rather than the park service. so benson lost was an accomplished archivist and historian, journalist sketch artist who had written widely on mount vernon and on revolutionary war battle. and he did a whole profile feature in harpers magazine on arlington house in 1853 and became friendly with custer's. so for the next four years, they correspond, ended. and you can see towards the end of custer's life that lansing is writing him these kind of seduction, charming letters, trying to persuade him to put pen to paper. tell us what life was like lived growing up at george washington. hurry, don't write plays paint because you don't have to log on this planet. he's in so many words. he's saying that so after the death, losing teams up with mary lee the daughter and they edit put together the book and it's published in 1860 and it's about 600 pages it's a fact compendium with lots of different elements to it. i've tried to read the whole thing, but i use it more for reference. it has profiles and recollections and. materials such as his version of the letters between george him when he was in. he's in college. but to give you an example of the kind of information that the public it's sold pretty well at first the public wanted about george washington as late as 1860 was custis was asked which george washington likeness is the most accurate and he told this new york businessman trumbull well for the figure stuart for the head and sharples the expression and you have all you can have the portraiture of washington. so after custer's his life he let's see i think i want to do this this he had a passenger steamer and a civil war balloon named for him. there was a waltz and a polka written for him about arlington house. so i talk about in the ending of the book and i want to give credit to my colleague matthew penrod, who wrote a fine afterword for the he spent 28 years at arlington as a ranger. you ask, could custis have imagined himself, imagined the forces that his life had unleashed? i mean, if he had lived to see his son in law leading southern troops in the civil war, it's no surprise that customers would mimic his hero, george washington, in freeing his enslaved people only after his own death. he also seemed to have presumed self. certainly that lee, as his executor, would work miracles in paying for the emancipation by heightening profitability at the plantations. but his relative leniency towards the enslaved and his ill fated for the american colonization society were likely overshadowed his mind by where his heart. lay that being the central theme his life a patriots perpetuate version of the fame and memory of george washington as a son that never sets to the end of his days, cousins preserved what i call a patriotic optimism, one that leaped from his orations and writings but was perhaps out of step with the times during the days. a great national unpleasantness. so here's what kansas told the jamestown society one of his final speeches. if in the wildest days, the wildest that ever was of woman had been told that the united states of america in the short period of some three score years would become of the leading powers of the world and would be in a short time the mistress of the world. he would pronounced the prophecy an idle dream. so that's my former presentation. i did want to add a little coda. if any of you like to travel to the smoky river just an hour east of here, this is you would see of what on the left was the white house. it's really a suburban subdivision. yeah. now this is somebody's backyard. this picture is taken from and on the right is what rum and coke became. and it was it's really more of a former railroad track buried in the woods without much human life nearby. but i greatly enjoyed visit to the saint peter's episcopal church. a lot of active parishioners still there. they're not all talking about curses. i admit, but they were just being normal churchgoers when i was there. but it's you can see the customs is and washington is all attended this church at various times and in the graveyard is the tomb, the grave of the rector who married george and martha washington, david rassam so i recommend that to you. will so i'm ready to take any people have either by zoom or in the in the audience and i will repeat the questions if we hear from people by zoom. so we have yes. two microphones there. thank you for. do you. please last name of can i just say something about her family. yes. the fits use. yeah, it really was. you said what's her last name. well, that's the name of one of robert de lee's sons. so that's why it's very confusing, these interlocking virginia families and they all take each other's names. so we official was a wealthy and he first built this chatham plantation, which is right in downtown fredericksburg. you can still visit that today. it's run by the national park service and there was a big slave rebellion there in 1805. he was getting nervous, so he moved up to alexandria where he took over the house i think had already been built that i you described as lee's boyhood home and his family built ravensworth, which was a big house out fairfax county which today is off braddock road and they have a sign there it down in the 1930s. but all the justices and the lees the randolph's wood and have it all those properties at different times and there's yet another property called hope park in fairfax and that's where david stewart, who was a d.c. planner and wealthy planter, he married wash his mother after she lost her first husband. and they went on to have a dozen or more and more children. and it's interesting that while she was being raised at mount vernon, while his stepfather and mother were continuing to raise and even be even bigger family, some. you mentioned that. constance was a very calm and gentle, a slave owner, but that e lee was not. can you you said you were going. yes. comment on that and i must have missed it. no, you didn't. miss is an excellent question. and i was so saving it for the q&a because, you know, i, i want to be a customs special is i'm not really a robert e lee specialist. i learned in this research that you really to branch out and i read numerous biographies of lee and i read a lot of letters him too. but i do talk about this drama in the book that lee was accused of i mean he was of mixed minds on slavery he join the colonization society because he was a military officer. he couldn't take public positions. but in and he felt guilty. he thought that slavery the white man as well as the blacks and people the people who defend lee also say that he was our reason. he fought for the south, had to do with his family ties and identification with his home state less than his the cause slavery. but that's debatable. but in the book i talk about this drama where there's a letter published and it's written by brother of salena gray, who i talked about with wesley norris, her maiden name is norris. and he was escaped from arlington house with two others and they were caught and rounded up. and this is all according to a letter that was published about 1860 or so. and they accuse they were brought into alexandria and whipped and supposedly lee himself did the whipping and. he the stripped the woman bare back and where she had wounds and he rubbed salt in them and there's all this detail and so that has in more recent years, a lot of people have. and then if you read the the traditional biographies of lee dugger south of freeman or i read emory thomas and michael korda, they this is where they sort of make fun of custer's is being sort of too timid and weak, and willie was a manly man who could extract more labor from the the enslaved. that's sort of the image in the past that has changed in the more recent biography of lee, the most recent biographer, alan gross, elmo accepts the truth of this claim that lee would have whipped this poor slave woman. you know, it's a little out of character for him because he was a commander you know, he had people he would delegate such unpleasant tasks to, you would think and also when the abolitionism is a big controversy, you know, you can imagine that there's propaganda, both sides. and you don't know for sure. you know, it's the only only evidence we have for this is the norris letter. but i print the norris letter in there and my approach was to let the readers decide really don't still consider myself enough of an expert to say exactly whether it's true so that help you know. any others. yes, sir was just about why she was dismissed from the college. yes. complicated? yes. i wonder if you'd elaborate. thank you for that question to so it's interesting that the recollections were with the sample letters from washi and george washington. so it's very clear he's a bad but there's never any explanation about why he's kicked out and there's clues you know there's a lot of 4th of july parties and there's a lot. kind of party boys we would call him today among his roommates and it wasn't until the 20th century that the faculty minutes at princeton were uncovered that showed that he was dismissed in a faculty senate vote for improper behavior or something. so that's as close as we get to an answer. but it's just interesting that. you know, of course, the recollections book has to be taken with a grain of salt. it's it's not going to i doubt they would acknowledge that, even if they knew it at the time. i don't think maybe his daughter even knew that, you know. so my guess guess. is any others, anybody on zoom will have. i'll go ahead and ask one question. yes, sir. which is he didn't live to see the civil war, but in his writings and did he express sympathies towards union secession? excellent question. to so he in the 1830s there was this crisis about nullification where a lot of the southern especially carolina were or threatening secede if they trade laws were enforced and. they also objected they had a gag rule in the congress where. they would say no debating slavery. so custis objected to all that and he he mocked the south little bit in his writings to, the american colonization society. he he talked about the southern people, a mistake in becoming so dependent on slavery. so i think it's pretty clear that he wanted and as a federalist and a george washington meyer, that he would want the country to stay united. and i think he would have been very upset with robert e lee for fighting for the south. but that's just my opinion. so. any others? yes, sir. with. a contemporary, modern viewpoint about learning disabled and so forth and and also my personal slight connection with kids in high that were really quite i wondered as you described his behavior and then these later things that he got into. i wonder if you ever considered or any of the published material ever discussed whether or not maybe this guy was a bright kid and maybe like so to speak, as was to have been a failure as a student, but turned out to have a mind that worked in different ways than the average educational system wanted. so it makes me wonder how a little more about this guy in these kinds of ways. well, i think that's a fascinating you know, you could go back and examine his letters. yeah of course he's very articulate in his letters even when he's buttering up washington for saying i'm so glad you're paying for my college and i promise you all next month, i'll do much better than i last month. so i'm paraphrasing there, but you're right that i more of the evidence to me seems he was a rich kid who knew he would money and that the george washington is specifically warned about the temptations of drink and women for college kids. so it was a common problem for the risk to crats and so but the idea that i mean he he he was really kind of a genius if he could interview lafayette and produced these essays and write a