who is not familiar, therefore, with the main points at issue, must be ignorant beyond the power of any writer to enlighten him.  We need only say that the election of Abraham Lincoln, the nominee of the Republican party, had determined the Gulf States to leave the Union.  South Carolina accordingly seceded, on the 20th of December, 1860; and by the 1st of February, 1861, she had been followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas.  The struggle thus approached.  Military movements began at many points, like those distant flashes of lightning and vague mutterings which herald the tempest.  Early in February Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, was elected President of the Confederate States, at Montgomery.  On the 13th of April Fort Sumter surrendered to General Beauregard, and on the next day, April 14, 1861, President Lincoln issued his proclamation declaring the Gulf States in rebellion, and calling upon the States which had not seceded for seventy-five thousand men to enforce the Federal authority.

Tip to this time the older State of Virginia had persistently resisted secession.  Her refusal to array herself against the General Government had been based upon an unconquerable repugnance, it seemed, for the dissolution of that Union which she had so long loved; from real attachment to the flag which she had done so much to make honorable, and from a natural indisposition to rush headlong into a conflict whose whole fury would burst upon and desolate her own soil.  The proclamation of President Lincoln, however, decided her course.  The convention had obdurately refused, week after week, to pass the ordinance of secession.  Now the naked question was, whether Virginia should fight with or against her sisters of the Gulf States.  She was directed to furnish her quota of the seventy-five thousand troops called for by President Lincoln, and must decide at once.  On the 17th of April, 1861, accordingly, an ordinance of secession passed the Virginia Convention, and that Commonwealth cast her fortunes for weal or woe with the Southern Confederacy.

Such is a brief and rapid summary of the important public events which had preceded, or immediately followed, Lee’s return to Washington in March, 1861.  A grave, and to him a very solemn, question demanded instant decision.  Which side should he espouse—­the side of the United States or that of the South?  To choose either caused him acute pain.  The attachment of the soldier to his flag is greater than the civilian can realize, and Lee had before him the brightest military prospects.  The brief record which we have presented of his military career in Mexico conveys a very inadequate idea of the position which he had secured in the army.  He was regarded by the authorities at Washington, and by the country at large, as the ablest and most promising of all the rising class of army officers.  Upon General Winfield Scott, Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Army, he had made an impression which