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the servants to go on with their usual occupations unmolested by the soldiers & protected by your authority, also to
    allow my boy Billy whom I only left at home to complete some work in the garden to come to me with his clothes as I cannot
    use my carriage without his aid & to permit my maid Marcellina to send me some small articles that I did not bring away. 39
    By the time this letter passed through military lines and arrived at Arlington, its intended recipient had been replaced by
Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell, an Ohio native, a West Pointer, and one of Lee’s many friends still serving the Union. McDowell,
whose sense of propriety matched Lee’s, went to extraordinary lengths to accommodate his new enemy. He acceded to Mrs. Lee’s
requests about the slaves, offered her safe passage to Arlington if she wanted it, posted guards to protect her overseer’s
house, and pledged that her home would remain “as little disturbed as possible.” 40 In a further gesture of respect, McDowell had his tent pitched on the lawn at Arlington, where he preferred to sleep rather
than intrude upon the hospitality of absent owners. His office consisted of an unvarnished table and a plain chair set under
the trees, a Spartan arrangement that impressed more than one war correspondent. 41 “He declined occupying his friend’s house,” the Washington National Republican reported with approval, “and gave strict orders that the most severe penalties should be inflicted upon any person, officer,
or private found guilty of … defacing the grounds.” 42
    Selina Gray, the formidable Lee slave who held the keys to the mansion, reinforced McDowell’s orders. She patrolled the property
brandishing a ring of keys like a weapon, warning soldiers to keep their hands off the family’s possessions. 43 But neither she nor General McDowell could effectively monitor the thousands of men encamped at Arlington that spring. With
no battles yet to fight and time on their hands, they found other diversions—they shot the farm overseer’s pet chickens and
rabbits, threatened slaves, and broke into the mansion’s locked rooms for a look around. 44 John Chapman, Company K, 25th Pennsylvania, penciled his name on a beam in the attic, where his scrawl remains visible to
this day. Another warrior slouched in a bedroom with his feet on the furniture, a scene immortalized in a sketch, “The Civil
War—Roughing It at Arlington.” 45 Other marauders rifled through boxes for war souvenirs, making off with some of the irreplaceable George Washington relics, including pieces of Mount Vernon china. Upon discovering these treasures were missing, Selina Gray promptly reported
the losses to McDowell, who collected the remaining artifacts and sent them to the Patent Office in Washington for safekeeping, where they remained for the rest of the war. 46
    Such gentlemanly behavior was not unusual at this stage of the Civil War, which remained civilized in its opening months.
Until the real bloodshed began, new soldiers acted as if they were on holiday, enjoying the camaraderie of life in camp and
the thrill of artillery practice, which rattled the mansion’s windows and echoed down the river. A few jittery Union men took
potshots at an experimental observation balloon as it loomed threateningly above Arlington, much to the dismay of Professor
Thaddeus Sobieski Coulincourt Lowe, who was flying on behalf of the Union. 47 Despite such moments of excitement, the early months of the Civil War were calm ones, with room for brother officers to treat
one another with exaggerated courtesy, even across enemy lines. This was about to change.
    The heat of summer built in Washington, producing the menacing black clouds and rumbling storms characteristic of the season. Horace Greeley, the prominent editor
of the New York Tribune , added to the atmospheric disturbances with calls for a Union attack on the Confederate capital, where the insurgent Congress
was convening