Washington's Gift, Lee's Redemption

The school tucked into the Shenandoah Valley town of Lexington, Virginia, carries two of the most consequential names in American history, and both of those men left their mark on it in ways that still shape the campus today.

The institution began in seventeen forty-nine as Augusta Academy, making it one of the nine oldest colleges in the United States. It limped along as Liberty Hall until a fire nearly destroyed it in the seventeen nineties. Then George Washington stepped in. Grateful that a Virginia institution was committed to educating future citizens, he donated twenty thousand dollars in canal company shares, a vast sum at the time, and the school renamed itself Washington Academy in his honor. It became Washington College in eighteen thirteen.

The second transformation came after the Civil War. In the fall of eighteen sixty-five, Robert E. Lee, the most famous defeated general in American history, accepted the presidency of this small, struggling college when he could have rested on his legend. He believed that rebuilding the South meant educating its young men, and he set to work. Lee modernized the curriculum in ways that were radical for the era: he added journalism, engineering, modern languages, and applied science. He established an elective course system and personally shaped an honor code he believed was the foundation of genuine education. He also commissioned the chapel that bears his name, completing it in eighteen sixty-eight. It became his tomb when he died in October of eighteen seventy.

The trustees changed the school's name to Washington and Lee University almost immediately after his death, joining the two men's legacies permanently.

Lee's recumbent statue, sculpted by Edward Valentine and installed in the Lee Chapel, has drawn visitors for more than a century and a half. The question of how to honor Lee while reckoning honestly with what he fought for remains a living debate on this campus, making it one of the more complicated places in American higher education.