Robert E. Lee's Arlington House - Arlington, Virginia

Note: We are observing Confederate History Month by taking special looks at historic sites related to the War Between the States.

The Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter prompted President Abraham Lincoln to call for 75,000 volunteers to put down the "rebellion in the cotton states." Lincoln's move, in turn, infuriated the people of Southern states that had not yet left the Union and they quickly joined forces with the other states already forming the Confederate States of America. Among these was the Commonwealth of Virginia, where leaders expressed outrage and alarm that Lincoln's new army might try to march across Virginia soil for an attack on her sister Southern states.

The decision of Virignia to join the Southern Confederacy caused many of her native sons to make difficult decisions about their own futures. Not least among these was Colonel Robert E. Lee, a U.S. Army officer who watched events unfold from his home at Arlington House, a beautiful mansion that overlooked the city of Washington, D.C. from the heights on the Virginia side of the Potomac River.

Lee had been married at Arlington in 1831 and he knew that any war between North and South would likely turn his own yard into a battlefield. His decision became truly significant, because he was offered command of the army that Lincoln was raising to destroy the Confederacy. Like many Southerners, however, Lee believed that his home state was part of a voluntary Union and felt that the founding fathers, of whom his own father was one, had intended for the states to remain strongly independent of the central government.

Forced with making a decision that could have made him a hero across the North, he chose instead to remain loyal to his home state and declined the offer to command Lincoln's army. When Virginia left the Union, he offered his services to his home state and was quickly named commander in chief of Virginia's military. He eventually became the Confederacy's most famed general, but in 1861 he was but one of many Southern officers who volunteered to defend their home states.

The war cost Lee his own home, as Arlington House was quickly occupied by Union troops. The grounds today make up Arlington National Cemetery. To learn more about this remarkable historic site, please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/arlington.

Arlington House - Home of Gen. Robert E. Lee

Arlington National Cemetery in Alexandria, Virginia, has become one of the most sacred sites in America, but long before the U.S. Army began burying its dead on this ground, Arlington was the home of Robert E. Lee. His beautiful columned home still crowns the height overlooking the rows of graves.

Arlington House, now preserved by the National Park Service as a memorial to General Lee, was originally built between 1802 and 1818 by George Washington Parke Custis to honor the memory of another famous American general, George Washington. Custis had been raised by George and Martha Washington after his natural father died the same year he was born.

Custis's daughter attracted the attention of a number of well-known suitors, among them future Texas President Sam Houston. The one who won her affections, however, was a young U.S. Army officer named Robert E. Lee. The two were married in the family parlor of Arlington House on June 30, 1831.

Arlington House then became the home of the Lee family and it was here that six of his seven children were born. It was also here that Lee came to consider his fate as the nation reached the verge of civil war. Lee penned his resignation from the army in a second floor bedroom.

When the war began, the Lee family was forced to flee Arlington never to return. Union soldiers occupied the house and soon began using a section of the grounds to bury their dead. The Union army's quartermaster general, Montgomery Meigs, became fixated with the idea of preventing Lee from ever again occupying the house overlooking the nation's capital. He ordered that war dead be buried in the very yards of the house. His plan worked and Arlington was never again occupied by General Lee. Instead, the grounds were turned into America's best known national cemetery.

To learn more about Arlington House, please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/arlington.