A Thousand Words a Battle: Arlington House
Arlington House, Arlington, Virginia
April 20, 1861
On April 18, 1861, United States Col. Robert E. Lee left his home at Arlington House to travel into Washington, D.C., to meet with Francis Preston Blair. President Abraham Lincoln had called for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the Confederacy, and Lincoln and Secretary of War Simon Cameron had directed Blair to see if Lee would be interested in taking command of the army. For Lee, who had spent more than thirty years as an officer in the United States Army, this was the culmination of decades of work and effort in service to the country. However, although Lee opposed secession and hoped war could be averted, he noted that he “could take no part in an invasion of the Southern States.”[1] Lee declined the offer.
Lee went immediately to see his mentor, friend, and fellow Virginian General Winfield Scott. He told Scott about his meeting to which Scott replied: “[Y]ou have made the greatest mistake of your life; but I feared it would be so.”[2]
The next morning Lee learned that Virginia had voted to secede from the Union. Lee’s ultimate fears had been realized as he now had to choose between Virginia and the Union. Lee wrestled with the decision all day and night on April 19. His family watched as he paced throughout the house and grounds. For Lee, his reputation, loyalty, and legacy were on the line. For his family, their home and future were on the line. For his country and state, their destiny and fate were on the line. His wife described it as the “severest struggle of his life.”[3]
Shortly after midnight, in the early morning hours of April 20, 1861, Lee made his decision to resign his commission. He wrote a short resignation letter to the Secretary of War and then wrote a longer letter explaining his decision to General Scott.
Arlington House was quiet and almost in a state of mourning as Lee explained his decision to his family. He then sat down and wrote letters to explain his decision to his brother and sister. His sister, Anne Kinloch Lee Marshall, was a Unionist, as were her husband and son (who was serving in the United States army). His letter to her exhibits how difficult a decision it was for him, and the conflicting loyalties he was forced to contend with.
Arlington, Virginia, April 20, 1861.
My Dear Sister:
I am grieved at my inability to see you . . . . I have been waiting for a “more convenient season,” which has brought to many before me deep and lasting regret. Now we are in a state of war which will yield to nothing. The whole south is in a state of revolution, into which Virginia, after a long struggle, has been drawn; and, though I recognize no necessity for this state of things, and would have forborne and pleaded to the end for a redress of grievances, real or supposed, yet in my own person I had to meet the question whether I should take part against my native state.
With all my devotion to the Union and the feeling of loyalty and duty of an American citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home. I have therefore resigned my commission in the Army, and save in defense of my native state, with the sincere hope that my poor services may never be needed, I hope I may never be called on to draw my sword. I know that you will blame me; but you must think as kindly of me as you can, and believe that I have endeavored to do what I thought right.
To show you the feeling and struggle it has cost me, I send you a copy of my letter of resignation. I have no time for more. May God guard and protect you and yours and shower upon you everlasting blessings, is the prayer of your devoted brother,
R.E. Lee.[4]
Lee received no reply and never communicated with his sister again. A few days later, Lee accepted command of Virginia’s military forces in Richmond. Lee never returned to his beloved Arlington, which was seized and turned into a military cemetery by Union officials in 1864 as an act of spite.
Arlington House stands today in the middle of Arlington National Cemetery and has been restored to the way it appeared around the time of Lee’s resignation. The National Park Service preserves the house and grounds in perpetuity as a national memorial to honor Robert E. Lee.
— Mark Maloy
[1] Freeman, Douglas Southall. R.E. Lee. Vol. I, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934. 437.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Pryor, Elizabeth Brown. Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters. New York: Viking Press, 2007. 291.
[4] Freeman, Douglas Southall. R.E. Lee. Vol. I, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934. 443.
The Last Battle of the Civil War: United States versus Lee, 1861-1883, Anthony J. Gaughan (LSU 2011) is a fascinating account of the federal government’s seizure of the Lee property and the post-war litigation filed by the Lee family to seek compensation. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled in the Lee family’s favor.
Your last sentence surprised me. Is it really preserved to honor Robert E. Lee? It’s been years since I’ve been there, but everything I’ve been reading led me to believe that they were trying to distance themselves from him. Hard to do, I know. I think it should be preserved as it was, and the history honestly told, but I do not think Lee is deserving of honor.
Oops! Obviously meant as a reply to Mark’s article, not you John!
Thanks for the article Mark. Bill your in good company. I’m sure Union Brigadier General Montgomery Meigs Quartermaster and architect of the cemetery is buried 100 yards behind the house next to his son killed during the war has turned over in his grave many times! He considered Lee to be a traitor but the journey to turn the house into Lee’s Memorial took a long road. It was originally the first memorial to George Washington cause his adopted grandson, George Washington Parke Custis built the house. His daughter Mary Anna Custis married Robert E. Lee in the house. Eventually after the war the Daughters of Confederacy ask to restore the house to honor Lee. It was denied and a compromise was reached at the same time the Memorial Bridge (symbolized the reuniting North and South)was built. The government restored the house and made it a Memorial to Lee based on that he helped reunite the country at Appomattox and after. The Congress even restored his citizenship in 1975. I suggest visiting the house now after the NPS 2021 major restoration of the house that included leaving Union soldiers graffiti from the war.
Thanks for mentioning the history so implicit in today’s status of Arlington as a National Cemetery. The lawsuit was primarily re the legality of its seizure; given the determination that it was not legal, Custis Lee could have demanded its return to the family and required the removal of graves to a site elsewhere. But he did not, and agreed to avoid that issue and allow it to remain, then, a War Cemetery and, later, a National Cemetery. This was despite knowing his mother’s heartbreak at losing her childhood home and having family possessions dispersed. With regard to BillF’s remark above that Lee doesn’t deserve honor, perhaps all the other comments in response to this article and the information that the immediate Lee family, all Confederate supporters, participated directly in the establishment of Arlington as our National Cemetery, will mitigate that view. Confederate soldiers were buried and memorialized there first around 1900; that fact bothered no one until recent political activity resulted in the removal of the Confederate memorial. It’s a relevant fact that all Confederates who survived the War become U. S. citizens again, and served their country in many diverse ways, including military and Congressional, for decades after. Exception to “all”: Jefferson Davis, who never applied, after being held for two years in prison. R. E. Lee, as noted elsewhere in these comments, did apply but his application was strangely “lost” until 1975, when it was approved, so that he, too, honorably became a U. S. citizen after the War.
Lee has taken a lot of shots and fought for the wrong side, but we make a mistake when we deny the humanity of Lee and many of his Confederate comrades. The few ancestors I had in this country at that time served in the Union army, but I can recognize Lee’s struggle with where his duty lay. Things that are clear today were not that clear a century and a half ago. There is a reason President Eisenhower had a portrait of Lee in the Oval Office.
Great post, Mark. Lee’s struggle really humanizes the fratricidal nature of the conflict. People who have never walked in his shoes or faced the conflicting senses of duty and honor that he did too easily dismiss him and condemn his ultimate decision. As Gary Gallagher has written, there is nothing easier than feeling superior to people who lived in a different time.
thanks Mark — nicely done … after spending his entire adult life in the army, it must have agony for Lee to make the decision he made — hard to imagine … and who could have foreseen the bloody war that would follow … it’s right and proper, and a little ironic, that so many thousands of US service men and women and their families rest in Lee’s former home.