Traveller (horse)

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Traveller, a gray American Saddlebred born in 1857 near the Blue Sulphur Springs in Greenbrier County, Virginia, became the most recognized horse of the American Civil War. He carried Robert E. Lee through the most punishing campaigns of that conflict, from the western Virginia hills to the fields of Gettysburg. How did a colt who won first prize at county fairs become the most famous horse in a war that consumed hundreds of thousands of lives? And what happened to his bones after both he and his master were gone?

• 2. Born at the Springs

  ›

  Grey Eagle, a notable Thoroughbred racehorse, sired the colt who would become Traveller. He was born to a mare named Flora and first owned by James W. Johnston. His training fell to Frank Winfield Page, a young enslaved boy. The colt was originally named Jeff Davis. At the Lewisburg, Virginia fairs in 1859 and 1860, he took first prize, marking him early as a horse worth watching. By the time he reached adulthood, he stood as a sturdy animal weighing 1100 lbs, iron gray in color with black point coloration, a long mane and a flowing tail.

  Captain Joseph M. Broun acquired the horse next and renamed him Greenbrier. Broun had been directed by his regiment, the 3rd Regiment of the Wise Legion, to purchase a good serviceable horse from the best Greenbrier stock for use in the war. He paid $175, the equivalent of roughly $4,545 in 2008, buying him from Captain James W. Johnston, the son of the horse's first owner. Major Thomas L. Broun, Joseph's brother, later recalled that Robert E. Lee took a great fancy to the horse from the start. Lee called him his "colt" and told Broun he expected to ride him before the war ended.

  When Lee was transferred to South Carolina, Joseph Broun sold the horse to him for $200 in February 1862. Lee renamed him Traveller.

• 3. The Horse in Battle

  ›

  Traveller's great asset was his stamina and his steadiness under fire. Lee described him at length in a letter to Markie Williams, a cousin of Lee's wife, who wanted to paint the horse's portrait. The horse was difficult to frighten, which made him valuable for an officer at the front. He could, however, grow nervous and spirited under the right conditions.

  At the Second Battle of Bull Run, Lee was dismounted and holding Traveller by the bridle while reconnoitering at the front. The horse became frightened by some movement of the enemy and plunged, pulling Lee down onto a stump. Both of Lee's hands were broken. He spent much of the remainder of that campaign in an ambulance, and when he did ride, a courier rode ahead leading Traveller.

  Lee's concern for horses extended beyond Traveller alone. During the Peninsula Campaign he instructed J.E.B. Stuart to "Endeavor to spare your horses as much as possible, and charge your officers to look to their comfort." At Gettysburg he confronted an officer who was beating his horse, saying "Don't whip him, captain; it does no good. I had a foolish horse, once, and kind treatment is the best." On the day Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, an aide arrived having ridden his horse to exhaustion. Lee reprimanded him directly: "Why did you do it? You have killed your beautiful horse."

• 4. Life After the War

  ›

  Traveller followed Lee to Washington College in Lexington, Virginia after the war ended. The horse became a celebrity in his own right, and admirers including veterans and college students began pulling hairs from his tail as souvenirs. Lee wrote to his daughter Mildred Childe Lee that "the boys are plucking out his tail, and he is presenting the appearance of a plucked chicken."

  Lee's wife described the depth of her husband's attachment: "He does not like to part even for a time from his beloved steed." When Lee died in 1870, Traveller was led behind the caisson carrying the general's casket during the funeral procession. His saddle and bridle were draped with black crepe. Lee's other horses had scattered or died during the war years, but Traveller remained.

• 5. Tetanus and a Strange Afterlife

  ›

  In 1871, not long after Lee's death, Traveller stepped on a nail and contracted tetanus. There was no cure available, and he was shot to relieve his suffering. He was initially buried behind the main buildings of the college. Unknown persons later unearthed his remains, and his bones were bleached for public exhibition in Rochester, New York in 1875 and 1876.

  In 1907, a Richmond journalist named Joseph Bryan paid to have the bones mounted and shipped back to the college, which had by then been renamed Washington and Lee University. The skeleton went on display in the Brooks Museum, in what is now Robinson Hall. Students periodically vandalized it there, carving their initials into the bones for good luck.

  In 1929 the bones were relocated to a museum in the basement of the University Chapel, where they stood for the next thirty years. Exposure caused continued deterioration. Finally, in 1971, the remains were buried in a wooden box encased in concrete beside the chapel, a few feet from the Lee family crypt, where Lee himself is interred.

• 6. Tradition, Controversy, and Legacy

  ›

  The stable where Traveller spent his final days stands directly connected to the Lee House on the Washington and Lee campus. By tradition, its doors are kept open, said to allow his spirit to wander freely. Thomas Burish, the 24th President of Washington and Lee, drew strong criticism from the university community when he closed the stable gates in violation of this custom. He later had the gate doors repainted and described the color in campus newspapers as "Traveller Green."

  In 2023, following community protests, Traveller's headstone was replaced with a new one that removed any mention of General Lee. The university also removed a separate campus plaque that had honored the horse. A now-defunct post newspaper at the United States Army's Fort Lee in Petersburg, Virginia had also taken the name Traveller in recognition of the horse's fame.

  Richard Adams, author of Watership Down, wrote a 1988 novel titled Traveller published by Knopf, giving the horse a fictional first-person voice narrating his equine memoirs to a cat in the stable of the retired general. Connie Willis's 1987 novel Lincoln's Dreams opens every chapter with a paragraph about Traveller. The horse's name also traveled into television: a 1955 Chevrolet in the 1975 film Moonrunners, which carried a Confederate flag on its roof, was named Traveller. That car was later transformed into the 1969 Dodge Charger known as the General Lee in the TV series The Dukes of Hazzard.