In 1857, when he was pursuing his studies in the University of Harvard, in preparation for the active and serious duties of life, he received from the then President of the United States the appointment of brevet second lieutenant in the Sixth Infantry.  At that time the spirit of resistance to the authority of the National Government was being exhibited to such an extent in Utah as to call for measures of repression.  Assassinations and outrages of all kinds were common, and the officers of the United States were powerless either to prevent or punish their commission.

When Mr. Buchanan became President the resolution was formed that the insubordination and conflict of authority existing in that Territory should cease, and the necessary executive and judicial officers having been appointed for the enforcement of the laws of the United States and the preservation of the public peace, it was determined to send a detachment of the Army to protect them against violence and to assist them as a posse comitatus, when necessary, in the performance of their duties.  Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston became the commander of this military force, and Lieut.  LEE had his first experience of the service in this expedition.  As the occasion does not call for a recital of the events of that period, I will content myself with the remark that he was then, as on every occasion in after years, faithful to the obligations of duty.  His term of service in the Army was of short duration, and from that fact we may infer that he was not enamored with the life of a soldier in time of peace.

In 1859 he resigned his commission, and soon thereafter was married to Miss Wickham, the daughter of a family distinguished in the annals of Virginia.  They went to reside at the White House, on the Pamunkey River, in the county of New Kent.  It was at this old historic country home that the marriage of George Washington with the Widow Custis was celebrated.  It descended to Gen. LEE from his mother, who was the great-granddaughter of Washington’s wife.

Here he devoted himself to the tillage of the soil and became engrossed with the pursuits of a plain and unostentatious farmer.  His condition and surroundings at this time were such as to invite contentment and encourage the cultivation of those pure and lofty sentiments for which he was ever distinguished.

Being in the flower and strength of his young manhood and blessed with affluence and the love of an accomplished wife, there seemed wanting nothing to make his home an earthly paradise.

But the course of this peaceful and happy life was not to run thus smoothly to the end.  Dark and threatening clouds of war soon lowered upon our land, and the political conflicts and antagonisms, which had grown in intensity and bitterness with the flight of years, ripened into civil war in 1861.  The crisis then arrived when the appeal to arms was inevitable, and with it the necessity that all men should decide whether allegiance was first due to the State or General Government.  There were honest differences of opinion on this question, which had existed from the very foundation of the Republic.