Lee was a Gentleman. His responce as to his reasons that he resigned was written as that of a Gentleman. A Gentleman will typically understate in such communications his reasons. It was the character of Col. Lee that he had reached his decision no matter what the contributing circumstances were and that there was no need to enflame the matter by airing dirty laundry. That is the mark of a Gentleman.

I don't believe that I've speculated on anything. Col. Lee was in fact a senior member of the Army in 1861, so senior that he had been recommended to command the Union Army. Who would it have been that recommended him to Mr. Blair and Lincoln? He had long been in fact chosen for advancement within that structure. He had been given command of the federal forces to surpress the John Brown rebellion at Harpers Ferry and had to have been privy to the interworkings of the War Department. He was summoned to Washington from his command of the 1st US Cavalry then it Texas by none other than Winfield Scott. Did Scott not brief Col. Lee on what the situation was, and as to why Scott had called Col. Lee to Washington?

Soldiers don't go running off across country without orders or justification. You've been in the military, as I understand from reading your prior posting. You know that you do not leave your post without orders and that upon arrival at your new assigned post you report your presence and recieve instructions as to what you are to do.

If the general public had knowledge and were aware of an invasion convoys gathering in New York harbor in March of 1861 and that this information was published in the New York Times newspaper, Col. Lee had to have known it also. Or else Col. Lee had to be the most ill-informed Soldier in the entire army.

I do not believe that to be the fact here, I believe in his reporting to Gen. Winfield Scott upon his arrival in Washington, he was apprized by Scott personnally, who was himself a very trusted member of Lincoln's inner circle of advisors, as to the situation and why he was called to Washington in the first place. To what degree Scott briefed Lee about operations and planning we will not know, BUT, Lee was no idiot he had the power of observation and deduction. Lincoln plans were not secret. Everybody in the South knew what Lincoln was doing and was going to do. And Lincoln didn't disappoint anyones expectations as to those plans. If Lee was that unaware that he resigned simply over the mear fact that Virginia had seceeded, then he was walking around Washington with his head in a bucket to not hear the very talk on the streets at the very least.

Col. Lee also had to have been aware as to why his personal friends and former commanders such as Joe E. Johnston and Albert S. Johnson submitted their resignations. Col. Lee was not the only member of his own family to submit his resignation. Col Lee's nephew Fitzhugh Lee submitted his resignation as an Officer and and instructor at West Point upon hearing the news of Virginia's secession. Certainly Fitzhugh Lee knew of P.G.T. Beauregards resignation. Do you think that Fitzhugh and his Uncle Bob might have wrote each other about such things? After all Uncle Bob was the military patriach of the Lee family?

No Col. Lee's reasons for resigning, as explained in his letter of resignation, and his letter to his wife are far too simplistic for the situation that Lee found hiself in. Or for the kind of calculating man that Lee was. Engineers are precise people who figure every angle and possibility, that was Lee's training and his character was not to approach things without thinking them out fully weighting all the possibilities.

This is why hindsight in history is never 20/20 vision. We rely too heavily to that which is written down in simple english.