A Life of Robert E Lee Part 2 Ch 02

A Life of General Robert E. Lee

This untoward event rendered it necessary to find a new commander for the army without loss of time. General Lee had returned some time before from the South, and to him all eyes were turned. He had had no opportunity to display his abilities upon a conspicuous theatre--the sole command he had been intrusted with, that in trans-Alleghany Virginia, could scarcely be called a real command--and he owed his elevation now to the place vacated by General Johnston, rather to his services performed in the old army of the United States, than to any thing he had effected in the war of the Confederacy. The confidence of the Virginia people in his great abilities had never wavered, and there is no reason to suppose that the Confederate authorities were backward in conceding his merits as a soldier. Whatever may have been the considerations leading to his appointment, he was assigned on the 3d day of June to the command of the army, and thus the Virginians assembled to defend the capital of their State found themselves under the command of the most illustrious of their own countrymen.