On Hallowed Ground Read Online Free PDF

the Arlington
mansion in early May, urging Mrs. Lee to prepare for her evacuation. “You must pack up all you value immediately and send
it off in the morning,” Lt. Orton Williams told her. Since he was one of Mrs. Lee’s many cousins and worked as secretary to
Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott, she took the warning seriously. 1
    That night she and her daughters supervised some frantic packing by slaves, who put the family silver in boxes for transfer
to Richmond, crated the papers of George Washington and G. W. P. Custis, and arranged Lee’s files in a separate box. Mrs. Lee gathered up some Washington memorabilia for shipping, stowing the larger pieces—his campaign tent, a punch bowl, and crates of Washington’s Cincinnati china—in the mansion’s basement. 2
    After the night of organizing her escape, Mary Lee tried to get some sleep, only to be awakened just after dawn by Orton Williams,
who returned with word that the Union advance upon Arlington had been delayed. 3 Although he stressed that occupation was inevitable—merely postponed—Mrs. Lee took the respite as an excuse for lingering
several more days at the home she had known since childhood. 4 She wrote newsy letters to her daughters, gossiped with visiting friends, and lamented the pushiness of South Carolina and
other states so eager for war. 5 She savored the time remaining at Arlington and sat for hours in her favorite roost, a garden arbor to the south of the mansion,
where spring flowers were making a luxuriant start on the season. Their promise of renewal seemed mockingly out of place as
the country hurried toward conflict.
    “I never saw the country more beautiful, perfectly radiant,” she wrote to Lee. “The yellow jasmine in full bloom and perfuming
the air; but a death like stillness prevails everywhere. You hear no sounds from Washington, not a soul moving about.” 6
    In that lull before the clash, General Lee sat stranded at a desk in Richmond, feverishly mobilizing Virginia’s forces, or
ganizing his blankets and camping kit for what he expected to be a long season afield, and worrying about his wife’s safety.
Effectively immobilized by arthritis, she had grown feeble in recent years, which only heightened her husband’s concern. He
tried to prod her into leaving.
    “I am very anxious about you,” he wrote on April 26. “You have to move, & make arrangements to go to some point of safety .
. . War is inevitable & there is no telling when it will burst around you.” 7
    A few days later he wrote again: “When the war commences no place will be exempt … You had better prepare all things for
removal, that is the plate, pictures, & c. & be prepared at any moment. Where to go is the difficulty.” 8
    The newspapers added credence to Lee’s fears. On May 10, the New York Daily Tribune reported that a volunteer regiment of New York Zouaves would soon “encamp on Arlington Heights” under the command of Col.
Elmer E. Ellsworth. “His men are at once to erect tents and prepare for out-door life,” said the Tribune . “At this prospect they are delighted.” 9 A few days later, the same paper revealed that General Scott was planning to place “a powerful park of artillery” on the
hills of Arlington. 10
    Lee nudged his wife once more. “You had better complete your arrangements & retire further from the scene of war,” he wrote.
“It may burst upon you at any time. It is sad to think of the devastation, if not the ruin it may bring upon a spot so endeared
to us. But God’s will be done. We must be resigned.” 11
    By this time Lee almost certainly knew that Arlington would be lost—at least in the war’s early stages. He had made no provision
to hold the heights there, choosing instead to concentrate his limited troops on a line some twenty miles to the south of
    Washington, near an important railroad junction at Manassas, Virginia. With that in mind, he boosted the state’s militia from 18,400
troops to 40,000