The grind of war continues this week 150 years ago in the Civil War as a contingent of 3,000 Confederate fighters overrun a 1,000-man Union force at Front Royal in northern Virginia in a battle fought May 23, 1862.On April 20, 1861, Robert Edward Lee resigns his commission in the U.S. Army and soon heads to Richmond, Va., emerging capital of the Confederacy, where he will be offered a military command. For Lee, a native son of Virginia who graduated from West Point in 1829 near the top of his class, the war would shape his destiny.
In 1859, Lee as an Army officer had been sent from Washington with troops under his command to Harper’s Ferry, now in West Virginia, to capture abolitionist John Brown and his followers after their surprise raid on a U.S. arsenal.
As a U.S. Army officer, Lee never considered the idea of rebellion against the government, but with Virginia’s secession his hand would be forced. Offered a command in the Union Army, he declines to accept because of ties to Virginia. Lee left his home in Arlington, Va., across the Potomac River from Washington, never to return there again.
Lee would later become a key military adviser to the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, and enter history as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. He would make his greatest military mistake in the battle of Gettysburg in 1863, a turning point in the Union’s favor. Lee would never invade the North again before his surrender of his remaining Confederate forces on April 9, 1865.
