(now in West Virginia), including John Brown, who was
later executed.
Although he came from a wealthy Virginia fam-
ily, Lee saw slavery as an evil and had liberated those
owned by his family. In 1860, Republican Abraham
Lincoln was elected President of the United States and
several southern slave states left the American Union to
form the Confederate States of America. Lee had previ-
ously written, “I can anticipate no greater calamity for
the country than the dissolution of the Union.... Still
a union that can only be maintained by swords and
bayonets, and in which strife and civil war are to take
the place of brotherly love and kindness, has no charms
for me. If the Union is dissolved and the Government
dispersed I shall return to my native State and share the
miseries of my people and, save in defense, will draw
my sword no more.” Nevertheless, when President
Lincoln ordered the American military to put down
the insurrection and offered him the command of the
army—on the recommendation of his former com-
mander, Winfield scott—Lee sided with Virginia
and the South, resigning his commission in the U.S.
Army and offering his services to the new Confederate
government.
As the war began, Lee set about organizing an army
in Virginia. He also served as the military adviser to
former secretary of war and now Confederate president
Jefferson Davis. At First Bull Run (21 July 1861), the
first major battle of the war, the Confederates were com-
manded by General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard
(1818–93). When the Union forces invaded western
Virginia, Lee was sent there to combat them, but his
soldiers were too inexperienced, and they were defeated
in several quick battles. His reputation questioned by
those in charge of the Confederacy, Lee was dispatched
not to a field command but to help organize the coastal
defenses of North and South Carolina against a Union
invasion. In March 1862, however, he was called back
to Richmond as Davis’s military adviser, just as it was
becoming clear that the Northern army was prepared to
advance south.
In the same month, the Union forces, 180,000
strong, marched into Virginia in an attempt to cap-
ture the Confederate capital, Richmond, and end the
war with one bold stroke. The South could muster only
80,000 to oppose them. As the Union moved from three
different directions, Southern commanders proposed an
all-out defense of Richmond. Lee, however, felt that an
offense against two of the three Northern wings would
save the city and the Confederacy. He advised President
Davis to send General Joseph Johnston to hold Union
general George Brinton mcclellan on the Yorktown
Peninsula and to send Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson to
attack Union forces in the Shenandoah Valley. Johnston’s
offensive, known as the battle of Seven Pines (31 May
1862), split the Union army into two, and Jackson’s
move prevented reinforcements being sent to McClel-
lan’s assistance. Johnson was wounded, however, and Lee
took Command of the Army of Northern Virginia. Mc-Robert E. Lee
lee, RobeRt eDwARD