Lee Mansion NATIONAL MEMORIAL _Arlington National Cemetery_ VIRGINIA [Illustration: NATIONAL PARK SERVICE • DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR] DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR March 3, 1849 UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR Douglas McKay, _Secretary_ NATIONAL PARK SERVICE Conrad L. Wirth, _Director_ Reprint 1953 16—52238-7 U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE _Lee Mansion National Memorial_ In this Mansion, which became his home when he married Mary Custis, Robert E. Lee wrote his resignation from the United States Army in April 1861, to join the cause of Virginia and the South. The Lee Mansion National Memorial, or Arlington House, as it was formerly known, distinctive through its associations with the families of Custis, Washington, and Lee, stands within the Nation’s most famous cemetery on the Virginia side of the Potomac opposite Washington. This house of the foster son of the First President was for years the treasury of both the Washington heirlooms and the Washington tradition. Here Robert E. Lee, a young lieutenant in the U. S. Army, and Mary Custis, the great-granddaughter of Martha Washington, were married and reared a family. Here, also, Col. Robert E. Lee, torn between devotion to his country and to his native State, made his fateful decision, the substance of which he had written to his son a few months before: “It is the principle I contend for.... But I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union.... Still, a Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets ... has no charm for me. I shall mourn for my country and for the welfare and progress of mankind. If the Union is dissolved ... I shall return to my native State ... and save in defence will draw my sword on none.” Today Arlington House, furnished with appointments of its early period, preserves for posterity the atmosphere of gracious living, typical of a romantic age of American history. _Early History_