Lee Mansion National Memorial, Arlington, Virginia (1953)

VIRGINIA
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR March 3, 1849
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR Douglas McKay, Secretary
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE Conrad L. Wirth, Director
Reprint 1953 16—52238-7 U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
In this Mansion, which became his home when he married Mary Custis, Robert E. Lee wrote his resignation from the United States Army in April 1861, to join the cause of Virginia and the South.
The Lee Mansion National Memorial, or Arlington House, as it was formerly known, distinctive through its associations with the families of Custis, Washington, and Lee, stands within the Nation’s most famous cemetery on the Virginia side of the Potomac opposite Washington. This house of the foster son of the First President was for years the treasury of both the Washington heirlooms and the Washington tradition. Here Robert E. Lee, a young lieutenant in the U. S. Army, and Mary Custis, the great-granddaughter of Martha Washington, were married and reared a family. Here, also, Col. Robert E. Lee, torn between devotion to his country and to his native State, made his fateful decision, the substance of which he had written to his son a few months before: “It is the principle I contend for.... But I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union.... Still, a Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets ... has no charm for me. I shall mourn for my country and for the welfare and progress of mankind. If the Union is dissolved ... I shall return to my native State ... and save in defence will draw my sword on none.” Today Arlington House, furnished with appointments of its early period, preserves for posterity the atmosphere of gracious living, typical of a romantic age of American history.
George Washington Parke Custis, builder of Arlington House, was the grandson of Martha Washington and the foster son of George Washington. When Martha Dandridge Custis became the wife of Col. George Washington she was a widow with two children, Martha Parke Custis and John Parke Custis. Martha Parke Custis died in her teens without having been married, but John Parke Custis married Eleanor Calvert of Maryland in 1774, and upon his death at the close of the Revolutionary War left four children. The death of John Parke Custis was a shock, not only to his mother, Mrs. Washington, but to General Washington as well, as he is reported to have remarked to the grieving mother at the deathbed, “I adopt the two youngest children as my own.” Their names were Eleanor Parke Custis (Nellie) and George Washington Parke Custis. They were reared at Mount Vernon and are often referred to as the “Children of Mount Vernon.”