While many Southerners did not own slaves and did not believe in slavery, the question of States' Rights found them with undivided front. Had not this doctrine been expressly implied in the Federal Constitution? Had not this right been invoked more than once in the North—by the staunch State of Massachusetts, for example, as early as 1809, and as lately as 1842? Thus they reasoned, and when matters at last reached a breaking point in 1861, the Southern States, following South Carolina's lead one by one, felt that they were acting only within their recognized rights.
The actual call to arms brought a heart-breaking time to many homes.
In some it actually parted father and son, or brother and brother.
While it created no such chasm in the Lee family, it brought to Robert
E. Lee the bitterest and most trying decision of his whole life.
Lee had loved his country. He had served her faithfully for thirty-two years. His actions rather than his words had proved his entire devotion, but the words too were not lacking, as references to his letters will show. One such glimpse of his heart is seen in a letter written from Texas, in 1856. In telling his wife about his Fourth of July celebration, he says: "Mine was spent after a march of thirty miles, on one of the branches of the Brazos, under my blanket, elevated on four sticks driven in the ground, as a sunshade. The sun was fiery hot, the atmosphere like a blast from a hot-air furnace, the water salt, still my feelings for my country were as ardent, my faith in her future as true, and my hope for her advancement as unabated, as they would have been under better circumstances."
When finally the choice had to be made, between State and Nation, Lee was sore beset. He had no interest in the perpetuation of slavery. His views all tended the other way. "In this enlightened age," he wrote, "there are few, I believe, but will acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil." He had already set free his own slaves, and was in favor of freeing "all the slaves in the South."
But when it came a question of deserting his own State, his beloved Virginia, the problem was far more difficult. "All night nearly he paced his chamber," says Thomas Nelson Page, "often seeking on his knees the guidance of the God he trusted in. But in the morning light had come. His wife's family were strongly Union in their sentiments, and the writer has heard that powerful family influences were exerted to prevail on him to adhere to the Union side. 'My husband has wept tears of blood,' wrote Mrs. Lee to his old commander, Scott, who did him the justice to declare that he knew he acted under a compelling sense of duty."
Lee had no illusions as to the sternness of the contest, and the sacrifices that he with all others would have to make. His own beautiful home lay just across the river from Washington. He must have seen with prophetic vision how it would be seized by the Federal Government and held for other purposes—an act of confiscation that was only partially atoned for half a century later. He knew also that Virginia being a border State would bear the brunt of war.
"I can contemplate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union," he wrote in January. And in April that dissolution came.
Nor did the fortunes of the War itself swerve him from the belief that in serving his State, he was doing his highest duty. After it was over and he had gone into the retirement of work in Washington College, we find him writing to General Beauregard as follows:
"I need not tell you that true patriotism sometimes requires men to act exactly contrary at one period to that which it does at another—and the motive which impels them—the desire to do right—is precisely the same. History is full of illustrations of this. Washington himself is an example." (Here he invokes the example that had been his guiding star since early boyhood.) "He fought at one time against the French under Braddock, in the service of the King of Great Britain. At another he fought with the French at Yorktown, under the orders of the Continental Congress, against him. He has not been branded by the world with reproach for this; but his course has been applauded."
While Lee was wrestling with his momentous decision, a further temptation was placed in his path, which he thrust aside. He was offered the high post of commander-in-chief of the Union forces. This offer came at a suggestion from Scott that "Colonel Lee would be worth fifty thousand troops to our side"; and although Lincoln had never met him, he was glad to accede to the suggestion. Lee quietly remarked in declining the honor, "I stated as candidly and courteously as I could, that, though opposed to secession and deprecating war, I could take no part in an invasion of the Southern States."