I shall not feel my long separation from you if I find that my absence has been of no injury to you, and that you have both grown in goodness and knowledge as well as in stature; but how I shall suffer on my return if the reverse has occurred.  You enter into all my thoughts, into all my prayers, and on you in part will depend whether I shall be happy or miserable, as you know how much I love you.

Ten years later, when the son had become a lieutenant in the Army, he admonishes him: 

I hope you will always be distinguished for your avoidance of the universal bane whisky and every immorality.  Nor need you fear to be ruled out of the society that indulges in it, for you will acquire their esteem and respect, as all venerate, if they do not practice, virtue.  I hope you will make many friends, as you will be thrown with those who deserve this feeling.  But indiscriminate intimacies you will find annoying and entangling, and they can be avoided by politeness and civility.  When I think of your youth, impulsiveness, and many temptations, your distance from me, and the ease (and even innocence) with which you might commence an erroneous course, my heart quails within me and my whole frame and being tremble at the possible results.  May Almighty God have you in His holy keeping.  To His merciful providence I commit you, and I will rely upon Him and the efficacy of the prayers that will be daily and hourly offered up by those who love you.

A year or two later, on New Year’s Day, 1859, he writes: 

I always thought there was stuff in you for a good soldier and I trust you will prove it.  I can not express the gratification I felt, in meeting Col.  May in New York, at the encomium he passed upon your soldiership, your zeal, and your devotion to your duty.  But I was more pleased at the report of your conduct; that went more to my heart and was of infinite comfort to me.  Hold on to your purity and virtue; they will proudly sustain you in all trials and difficulties and cheer you in every calamity.

So, too, when the young lieutenant had married and settled down a typical Virginian farmer upon the estate left him by his grandfather Custis, the well-known “White House” on the Pamunkey, the home of Martha Washington: 

I am glad to hear that your mechanics are all paid off and that you have managed your funds so well as to have enough for your purposes.  As you have commenced, I hope you will continue never to exceed your means.  It will save you much anxiety and mortification and enable you to maintain your independence of character and feeling.  It is easier to make our wishes conform to our means than to make our means conform to our wishes.  In fact, we want but little.  Our happiness depends upon our independence, the success of our operations, prosperity of our plans, health, contentment, and the esteem of our friends, all of which, my dear son, I hope you may enjoy to the full.

With such counsels, glowing with a father’s love and enforced by the constant example of a father’s life, it is no wonder that the son grew into the manliness, the gentleness and modesty, the charitableness of judgment, the unconspicuous and patient devotion to duty, and the personal lovableness of Gen. LEE.