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.
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