General Robert E. Lee's letters home

Some of Lee's letters, written during the trying times of the war, reveal how much he missed his family and home. Just a month later, Lee wrote to his daughter on Christmas Day:

"My Dear Daughter: Having distributed such poor Christmas gifts as I had to those around me, I have been looking for something for you. Trifles even are hard to get these war-times, and you must not therefore expect more. I have sent you what I thought most useful in your separation from me, and hope it will be of some service...To compensate for such ?trash,'[money] I send you some sweet violets, that I gathered for you this morning while covered with dense white frost, whose crystals glittered in the bright sun like diamonds, and formed a brooch of rare beauty and sweetness, which could not be fabricated by the expenditure of a world of money. ...Among the calamities of war, the hardest to bear perhaps, is the separation of families and friends."...

Of Arlington and Stratford, the two homes around which so many hallowed memories were grouped, he wrote his wife the same day:

"I cannot let this day of grateful rejoicing pass without some communion with you. I am thankful for the many among the past that I have passed with you, and the remembrance of them fills me with pleasure. As to our old home, if not destroyed it will be difficult ever to be recognized. ... It is better to make up our minds to a general loss. They cannot take away the remembrances of the spot, and the memories of those that to us rendered it sacred. That will remain to us as long as life will last and that we can preserve. In the absence of a home I wish I could purchase Stratford. It is the only other place I could go to now acceptable to us, that would inspire me with pleasure and local love. You and the girls could remain there in quiet. It is a poor place, but we could make enough cornbread and bacon for our support, and the girls could weave us our clothes. ..."