Pettifogging about the details of uniforms is one of the few areas of history that director Ron Maxwell (in both Gettysburg and its abysmally bad prequel Gods and Generals) can actually be counted upon to get right. In this case, it is actually true that Lee (shown here in Gettysburg, played by Martin Sheen) regularly wore the collar insignia of a Confederate colonel (three unadorned gold stars), rather than the wreathed gold stars to which his actual rank (General) entitled him. Here's a composite of two photographs (of Lee and Stonewall Jackson) clearly showing the difference. This habit of Lee's has been remarked upon by biographers like Gary W. Gallagher and William C. Davis.

Just why he did this (and how often) is not absolutely certain, though speculation and unsupported claims certainly can be found. It doesn't help that Lee never got around to writing his own memoirs, postponing the project until his death just five years after the end of the war. Many of his biographers have been closer to hagiographers and are therefore suspect as sources. Robert E. Lee, Jr., doesn't mention it in his Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee, and neither does Douglas Southall Freeman in his four-volume 1935 biography Lee (surprising omissions, given the obvious reverence with which both men approached their subject). The most we can surely say is that Lee did do it.

The odd custom has been integrated into the larger "Marble Man" mythos of Lee, which is in turn an integral part of the "Lost Cause" narrative. Here we see Lee portrayed as Washington re-incarnate, the beau ideal of Southern nobility, a self-denying genius of profound humility who wore the insignia of his rank in the peacetime Federal army because he believed that he had not yet earned anything more. In his 1874 book Personal Reminiscences, Anecdotes, and Letters of Gen. Robert E. Lee, chaplain John William Jones (again, more of a hagiographer than a biographer) provides an often-repeated story of unknown provenance that perfectly expresses this attitude:

During the war, [Lee] usually wore a suit of gray, without ornament, and with no insignia of rank save three stars on his collar, which every Confederate colonel was entitle to wear. But he always kept a handsomer (thought equally simply) uniform, which he wore upon occasions of ceremony. ... One of his brigadiers asked him one day, "Why is it, general, that you do not wear the full insignia of your rank, but content yourself with the stars of a colonel?" 'Oh,' replied the modest chieftain, 'I do not care for display. And the truth is that the rank of colonel is about as high as I ought ever to have gotten; or, perhaps, I might manage a good cavalry brigade if I had the right kind of subordinates.'

As is the case with so much that was written about Lee by his contemporaries, this story might be true, or it might just be a flattering chestnut.