Hoke’s Kinship of Spirit With Lee
From: bernhard1848@att.net
One of Robert E. Lee’s ablest generals was Robert F. Hoke of Lincolnton, North Carolina. Along with Fitzhugh Lee and Joe Wheeler, he was asked to lead US troops in the Spanish-American War of 1898. Hoke closely resembled Lee in his later years.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
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Hoke’s Kinship of Spirit With Lee:
“I once saw General [Robert F.] Hoke eating ham and eggs and buckwheat cakes in a hotel in Greensboro. A massive man with broad smooth brow and well-trimmed gray beard, he resembled the pictures of General Lee. Later in the day when I was introduced to him at a railway station, the talk fell on the war with Spain, which had just ended and he told me President McKinley had offered him by telegraph a brigadier’s commission in the army preparing to go to Cuba.
He thanked the President but declined. “I have seen enough of war in my time,” he said. He spoke as casually as if he had said,” “I had all the buckwheat cakes for breakfast I wanted.”
We were then only four miles from the spot where he as the commander of a division in [General Joe] Johnston’s army had surrendered to Sherman. I tried to draw him out on the subject, but he was politely uninterested.
General Hoke engaged in mining and railroading after 1865. He resolutely refused to enter politics, unlike many of his brother officers who were only too ready to capitalize their war records. In this General Hoke revealed a kinship of the spirit of General Lee.”
(Son of Carolina, Augustus White Long, Duke University Press, 1939, pp. 36-37)
