Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln pages 349-350
Colonel Robert E. Lee resigns from the U.S. Army April 20, 1861
The day after Virginia seceded, Francis Blair, Sr., invited Colonel Robert E. Lee to his yellow house on Pennsylvania Avenue. A graduate of West Point, the fifty-four-year-old Lee had served in the Mexican War, held the post of superintendent at West Point, and commended the forces that captured John Brown at Harpers Ferry. General Scott regarded him as “the very best soldier I ever saw in the field.” Lincoln had designated Blair to tender Lee the highest-ranking military position within the president’s power to proffer.
I come to you on the part of President Lincoln,” Blair began, “to ask whether any inducement that he can offer will prevail on you to take command of the Union army?” Lee responded “as candidly and as courteously” as he could: “Mr. Blair, I look upon secession as anarchy. If I owned the four millions of slaves in the South I would sacrifice them all to the Union; but how can I draw my sword upon Virginia, my native state?”
When the meeting ended, Lee called upon old General Scott to discuss the dilemma further. Then he returned to his Arlington home to think. Two days later, he contacted Scott to tender his resignation from the U.S. Army. “It would have been presented at once,” Lee explained, “but for the struggle it has cost me to separate myself from a service to which I have devoted all the best years of my life & all the ability I possessed. During the whole of the time, more than 30 years, I have experienced nothing but kindness from my superiors and the most cordial friendship from my companions. . . . I shall carry with me to the grave the most grateful recollections of your kind consideration, & your name & fame will always be dear to me.”
That same day, a distraught Lee wrote to his sister: “Now we are in a state of war which will yield to nothing.” Though he could apprehend “no necessity for this state of things, and would have forborne and pleaded to the end for redress of grievances, real or supposed,” he was unable, he explained, “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 upon to draw my sword.” Shortly thereafter, Lee was designated commander of the Virginia state forces.