Before donning a gray uniform, Robert E. Lee once
described himself as being “very solitary.” His only companions, he said in a
letter to his wife, were “my dog and cats.” According to the lonely cavalry
officer, his dog went with him to his office every morning and lay down “from
eight to four without moving.”
During his U.S. Army days, Lieutenant Colonel Lee
once crossed the “Narrows” between Fort Hamilton and Staten Island, New York.
Halfway over the body of water, he spied a female dog with its head barely
above the waves. He rescued the animal, named her Dart, and took her home with
him.
One of her pups, Spec, was an alert and
especially affectionate black and tan terrier who once jumped out of a high
window to join the family at church. Lee was so impressed by the valor of the
animal that he permitted Spec to “go into the church afterwards, whenever he
wished.”
