by Elizabeth Fleming Rhodes On the Fringe of Fame
THE CAREER OF
RICHARD BLAND LEE II
IN THE SOUTH AND WEST
1797–1875
On the Fringe of Fame, by Elizabeth Fleming Rhodes
On the Fringe of Fame
by Elizabeth Fleming Rhodes
[Note: Elizabeth “Betty” Fleming Rhodes was a great-great granddaughter of Richard Bland Lee II. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1915 to Margaret and Thomas Fleming, Betty moved with her family to Pasadena, California, in 1929. She graduated from Westridge School, attended Scripps College for two years, and graduated with honors from Wellesley College as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Betty began writing at an early age and crafted a sizable body of poetry. In addition to writing On the Fringe of Fame, she was the author of two other books, the biographical Call Me Margaret (Pasadena, Calf., 1984) and her autobiographical Getting There (Pasadena, Calf., 1999), a work that also included poetry.
Betty and her husband Ken raised four children and both were active in their local community as volunteers for a host of poverty, social justice, and educational issues and causes. She and Ken traveled extensively in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, including three treks in the Himalayas and a rough sea voyage to Antarctica on a Russian Ice Breaker. Betty died in 2000 at the age of 84.]
On the Fringe of Fame THE CAREER OF RICHARD BLAND LEE II IN THE SOUTH AND WEST 1797–1875
Zemula Fleming Barr, the Oregon artist who sketched the flags on the title page, was surprised to discover that the Confederate military flag was square, government flags rectangular.
For my favorite explorer, Kenneth and Richard Bland Lee’s great-great-great grandchildren, Richard, Margaret, Thomas, and Edgar.
Board of Commissioners, California Claims, 1852–1855. Commissariat at Benicia and San Francisco, 1855–1859. Near shipwreck oon S.S. California, 1855. Self induced Court Martial, 1857.
I AM GREATLY INDEBTED to David Lavender who first set me on the trail of Richard Bland Lee II. A footnote in Lavender’s Bent’s Fort questions whether the Lee who went into the Rocky Mountains in 1833–1834 with Kit Carson was R. B. Lee or Stephen Luis Lee. Confident that I could prove that it was Richard Bland Lee II, I started delving into the records at the National Archives and became so engrossed that I could not stop until the entire biography had been researched.
I am also grateful to the late Allan Nevins for his encouragement, to the late Rodman Wilson Paul, Josephine M. Rodes, Eleanor Lee Templeman, the late Ludwell Lee Montague, Mardee de Wetter, Jerene Hewitt, and Mary Lawrence Test for their careful reading of the manuscript and for their many helpful suggestions and corrections. Thanks are also due to Samuel Exum Cobb and the late Clarissa Fleming for their sleuthing, to the libraries and staffs of all the historical societies who patiently answered my questions, and to the Huntington Library for the privilege of having access to the rare books and assistance from their staff. My greatest gratitude goes to my mother, Margaret Fleming; my daughter, Margaret Louise Rhodes; and my husband, Kenneth O. Rhodes, for their proofreading and general morale bolstering; without these, the manuscript would never have been finished.
THERE ARE GREAT MEN, men of genius, who illuminate the pages of history with their brilliance. Others achieve fame or notoriety through luck, through being on the spot at the right time, or through political machinations. Sometimes a simple backwoodsman soars to national popularity in ballad, book, for film. Forgotten are the many whose courage and plodding steadfastness are unsung or appear merely as a brief footnote in a scholarly treatise.
Relegated to such a footnote is Colonel Richard Bland Lee II. Although Lee participated in the stream of great events of nineteenth-century American history, fame and fortune eluded him. His Santa Fe Trail and Rocky Mountain experiences were eclipsed by the explorations of other army officers such as Pike, Long, and Fremont; his orders to California during the Gold Rush kept him away from the gold fields. The Civil War found him old and infirm, pushed aside by younger officers, remembered only as Robert E. Lee’s cousin. His one moment of fame came during the Florida War, but his chance for advancement was aborted by wounds and illness.
Although Lee only once made a headline, his life was interesting and so representative of the era that he deserves to be promoted from footnote to protagonist. As we follow his life from 1797 to 1875, we meet many of the great men who were instrumental in creating the American empire; we suffer the trials of exploration, horrors of four wars and pestilence; we are stirred by the driving force of Manifest Destiny, and we are torn by the threatened disintegration of the Union.
