LEE RESIGNS FROM THE UNITED STATES ARMY. While Lee watched, helpless, events moved rapidly. Fort Sumter was bombarded in April, and in a few days Lee heard that his own beloved Virginia had seceded. Great as was his pride in the Union, he did not believe that it should be preserved by force; moreover, he felt his first allegiance was to his State. Though his career be sacrificed and the lives and property of his children endangered, he believed he must do his duty as he saw it.
Arlington blazed with lights Friday night, April 19,1861, and was filled with relations and friends anxiously discussing the recent events. Finding it impossible to think about his problem amid the excitement, Colonel Lee went outside and paced back and forth under the trees while he pondered his future course. Still undecided, he returned to the house and went up to his bedroom. Downstairs, Mrs. Lee and the others waited anxiously. Overhead, they could hear Lee’s footsteps as he paced the floor, stopping only when he knelt to pray. It was after midnight when he finally arrived at a decision and sat down to write his resignation from the United States Army. That done, he came down with it in his hand to where his wife was waiting. “Well, Mary,” he said quietly, “the question is settled. Here is my letter of resignation, and a letter I have written to General Scott.”
“Arlington House” as it appeared a few years before the Civil War. From a sketch by Benson J. Lossing.
THE LEES LEAVE ARLINGTON. Monday morning, Lee said goodbye to his family and left for Richmond. Before him were the long, hard years of a bitter war from which he would gain unfading glory. But never again would he be sheltered by the friendly roof of his old home at Arlington, and only once would he have a glimpse of it, and then from a passing train, several years after the war.
A corner of the drawing room, 1956.
General Robert E. Lee in 1862. U. S. Army Signal Corps photograph.
In view of the strategic location of Arlington, Lee urged his wife to go to a place of safety, but no preparations had been made to leave when word reached Mrs. Lee, early in May, that the Federal forces were soon to move into Virginia. Then all was excitement as the family portraits were taken from their frames and, with the plate and the most valuable Washington relics, sent off for safekeeping. Curtains and carpets were packed away in the attic, books and engravings put in closets, and the china stored in boxes in the cellar. Most of the furniture had to be left behind, but this Mrs. Lee trusted she could recover later. When everything was in order, it was time to say farewell to the weeping servants, and to leave her home for what was to be the last time.