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never materialized, unless one counts the fusillade of reproach that Mary Custis Lee poured down upon those now
occupying her property. 33
    “It never occurred to me,” she scolded General Sandford, “that such an outrage as its military occupation to the exclusion
of me & my children could ever have been perpetrated by any one … I am left homeless & not even able to get or send to
Alexa. [Alexandria] where my funds are deposited to obtain means for my support … The whole country is filled with men,
women, & children flying in terror.” 34
    Unlike her stoic husband, who favored understatement over hyperbole, Mrs. Lee had inherited her father’s flair for the dramatic,
which grew more pronounced under stress. Her pen flew across the pages of her letters, the words slanting harder as she warmed
to her outrage. She underscored key points with a slash of the pen.
    There was plenty for her to lament in that first springtime of war. With her husband away, her children scattered, and her
health eroding, Mary Custis Lee lived a rootless life, moving from one relative’s house to another, trying to stay ahead of
the conflict. She was cut off from the home where she had been raised, where her marriage had taken place, where she had borne
six of her seven children, and where her parents were buried. Robert E. Lee was greatly attached to Arlington, to be sure,
but for Mary Custis Lee the riverside farm was a part of her essence.
    Lee tried to understand. “I sympathize deeply in your feelings at leaving your dear home,” he wrote Mary on the first day
of Arlington’s occupation. “I have experienced them myself & they are constantly revived. I fear we have not been grateful
enough for the happiness there within our reach & our heavenly father has found it necessary to deprive us of what He had
given us. I acknowledge my ingratitude, my transgressions & my unworthiness & submit with resignation to what He thinks proper
to inflict upon me.” 35
    Lee continued to preach in subsequent letters.
    “No one can say what is the future,” he wrote a few days later, “nor is it wise to anticipate evil … There is no saying
when you can return to your home or what may be its condition when you do return … 36 I am sorry to learn that you are so anxious & uneasy about passing events … Our private distresses we must bear with
resignation like Christians & not aggravate them by repining.” 37
    But Mary Lee continued to repine. Nobody could stop her. 38 She would not accept the loss of Arlington. Meanwhile, life had to go on. By mail, Mrs. Lee tried to keep Arlington’s cycle of planting and harvesting going forward through a farm manager who still lived on the estate. She continued to agonize about
the George Washington artifacts locked away at Arlington. And she felt responsible for the bondsmen who remained there. She acted as if she was still in charge, writing to Union officers to arrange for slaves to continue living on the plantation, where they grew food and flowers for the market, buried their friends, and lived among an extended family network. Some maintained ties across the river in Washington, which required military passes for those who rowed over for conjugal visits. Toward the end of May, Mary Lee appealed to General Sandford to continue these arrangements. “You have a beautiful home & people that you love & can sympathise perhaps even with the wife of a ‘traitor & a rebel,’” she wrote.
    I implore you by the courtesy due any woman & which no brave soldier could deny to allow my old coachman by whom I send this
    letter to get his clothes, to give some letters to my manager relative to the farm & c, to give my market man a pass that
    will enable him to go and return from Washington as usual, where his family reside. My gardener Ephraim also has a wife in Washington and is accustomed to go over there every Saturday & return on Monday. My old cook has also a wife in the neighborhood, to
    allow