Civil War in Virginia

The Lee Mansion at Arlington, Virginia, with Union troops, 1864

The state of Virginia’s position in the American Civil War echoed that of the state’s most prominent citizen during this turbulent era, one whose name would become synonymous both with the state and the war: General Robert E. Lee. Like his home state of Virginia, Lee had been an important part of the Union before the war; he counted among his family’s antecedents no less than George Washington -the Lee home at Arlington had been built, in fact, as a memorial to Washington – and had served his country with distinction as a general in the United States Army. Both Virginia and Lee were representative of what many considered the to be the finest that the U.S. had to offer – breeding, refinement, and the closest thing that America had to royalty.

However, both Lee and Virginia struggled with the decision of whether to remain with the Union or to join the burgeoning Confederacy. While Virginia, like the southern states that had seceded, was a slave state, it’s dependence on slave labor was not on the scale of the cotton and sugar plantations of the Deep South. And unlike the other southern states, Virginia held just outside it’s borders the U.S. capital of Washington D.C., ostensibly aligning the state with the Union for reasons of proximity if nothing else. But perhaps the most compelling reason that Virginia had for its indecision was the knowledge that it had been settled by and was home to many of founding fathers on whose principles the United States had been founded.

Yet after much debate, Virginia chose to align herself with the Confederacy, the process losing half of it’s territory, which became West Virginia. And like his home state, Lee with resignation admitted that “I shall never bear arms against the Union, but it may be necessary for me to carry a musket in the defense of my native state, Virginia, in which case I shall not prove recreant to my duty.” Lee’s words would prove prophetic; he soon became the General of the Army of Northern Virginia, the regiment that would come to stand as an example for all that served for the Confederacy.

The role of the state of Virginia in the American Civil War is prominent. Soon Virginia was the home of the Confederate capitol, situated in Richmond Virginia. Some of the first land battles of the war were fought in Virginia, at Manassas. As was the last significant battle, that of Appomattox Courthouse, which resulted in Lee’s surrender and the conclusion of the long war. In between Manassas and Appomattox, Virginia saw countless other battles and skirmishes.

The battles that bloodied Virginia from Richmond to the Shenandoah Valley left the state devastated by the time that peace came. Richmond lay in smoldering ruin, burned by retreating Confederates. The Shenandoah had also been burned, looted, and nearly laid waste by both Confederates and Federal soldiers. Throughout the state both the land and the people had been worn down by the war that had been fought on their soil.

As for Robert E. Lee, although he returned to his beloved Virginia, he never returned to his family’s historic home at Arlington. The Federal army had appropriated Arlington and its grounds as a military cemetery, taking a piece of Virginia – and of Lee – for the Union before the war was ever won.