In the autumn of 1859, while home on leave, he was ordered to assist in capturing John Brown, who had taken Harper’s Ferry.  At the head of a company of marines, he took Brown prisoner and, protecting him from a mob which would have lynched him, handed him over to the authorities.  Two years later came the great trial of his life, when he was called upon to decide between North and South, between Virginia and the Union.

Lee was not a believer in slavery; he had never owned slaves, and when Custis died in 1859, Lee had carried out the dead man’s desire that all the slaves at Arlington should be freed.  Neither was he a believer in secession; but, on the other hand, he questioned the North’s right to invade and coerce the seceding states, and when Virginia joined them, and made him commander-in-chief of her army, he accepted the trust.  Shortly before, at the instance of his fellow-Virginian, General Scott, he had been offered command of the Union army, but declined it, stating that, though opposed to secession and deprecating war, he could take no part in an invasion of the southern states.

Curiously enough, the southern press, which was to end by idolizing him, began by abusing him.  His first campaign was in western Virginia and was a woeful failure, due partly to the splendid way in which McClellan, on the Union side, managed it, and partly to blunders on the Confederate side for which Lee was in no way responsible; but the result was that that section of the state was lost to the Confederacy forever, and Lee got the blame.  Even his friends feared that he had been over-rated, and he was sent away from the field of active hostilities to the far South, where he was assigned to command Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.  He accepted the assignment without comment, and went to work immediately fortifying the coast, to such good purpose that his reputation was soon again firmly established.  Early in 1862, he was recalled to Richmond to assist in its defense.  He found his beautiful estate on the heights opposite Washington confiscated, his family exiled, his fortune gone.

General Joseph E. Johnston was in command of the forces at Richmond, and was preparing to meet McClellan, who was slowly advancing up the peninsula.  But Johnston was wounded at the battle of Seven Pines, on May 31, and on the following day, Lee assumed command of the army.  He got it well in hand at once, sent Stuart on a raid around McClellan’s lines, and gradually forced the Union army away from Richmond, until the capital of the Confederacy was no longer in danger.  Flushed with success, Lee threw his army to the northeast against Pope, routed him, crossed the Potomac into Maryland, threatened Washington, and carried the war with a vengeance into the enemy’s country.  A more complete reversal of conditions could not be imagined; a month before, he had been engaged in a seemingly desperate effort to save Richmond; now he had started upon an invasion of the North which promised serious results.