Photograph as originally submitted to this page in the Historical Marker Database www.HMdb.org. Click on photo to resize in browser. Scroll down to see metadata.

Photographer: Allen C. Browne
Taken: February 16, 2015
Caption: General Lee on Traveller
Additional Description: This 1876 lithograph of Robert E. Lee on Traveller by A. Hoen Lightography Co. (after Michael Miley) hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC. The caption says “photographed from life.”

“Common soldiers marched; officers rode. If officers became famous enough, so did their horses. Grant had Cincinnati and Jeff Davis, but neither became as renowned as Traveller, Lee's mount throughout the war. Lee had purchased the horse known as Greenbrier while on duty in the Carolinas in 1861, but the horse's stamina (he was a ‘a fine traveller’) led to a new sobriquet. Curiously, Grant and Lee, each a fine horseman, both suffered serious injuries from their mounts. Traveller knocked Lee over during the Antietam Campaign, spraining his wrists, and Grant had a horse fall on him before Shiloh. Traveller stayed with his master after the war, when Lee was a familiar sight riding around Lexington, Virginia. At Lee's funeral in October, 1870, Traveller walked, riderless, behind the caisson carrying the coffin. Traveller had to be put down a year later after contracting tetanus.” — National Portrait Gallery
Submitted: July 19, 2015, by Allen C. Browne of Silver Spring, Maryland.
Database Locator Identification Number: p316300
File Size: 1.617 Megabytes

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