Details
LEE, ROBERT E., General, C.S.A. Autograph letter signed ("R E Lee") to the Honorable James W[alter] Wall of New Jersey, Lexington, Va., 5 October 1865, two pages, 8vo, integral blank, removed from an album with evidence of mount at left-hand edge, right hand edge frayed, occasionally affecting final letters, clean tear at one fold, integral blank slightly stained.
Lee, who had been inaugurated as President of Washington College two days earlier, thanks Wall, a lawyer and aspiring politician from New Jersey, for his "sympathy and kind wishes" and states his own belief in education as the key to the restoration of the cultural fabric of the South:
"...The moral & intellectual culture of our youth at this time, is of the greatest importance to the country; & the efforts which our Institutions of learning are making to secure this object, I trust may be attended with success, notwithstanding the difficulties which surrounds [sic] this.
["I know this result will be highly gratifying to you who have so high an appreciation of knowledge, & who have made such valuable contributions to literature & to the general wants of society; while invariably advocating those principles, which have so greatly advanced the prosperity of the country, and which alone can secure its interests..."]
Lee, who had been inaugurated as President of Washington College two days earlier, thanks Wall, a lawyer and aspiring politician from New Jersey, for his "sympathy and kind wishes" and states his own belief in education as the key to the restoration of the cultural fabric of the South:
"...The moral & intellectual culture of our youth at this time, is of the greatest importance to the country; & the efforts which our Institutions of learning are making to secure this object, I trust may be attended with success, notwithstanding the difficulties which surrounds [sic] this.
["I know this result will be highly gratifying to you who have so high an appreciation of knowledge, & who have made such valuable contributions to literature & to the general wants of society; while invariably advocating those principles, which have so greatly advanced the prosperity of the country, and which alone can secure its interests..."]