Lee Comes to Leesburg

On the afternoon of September 4, 1862, five days after the Confederate victory at the Second Battle of Manassas, throngs of well-wishers lined Leesburg's streets, including King Street behind you, to welcome the threadbare but jubilant Army of Northern Virginia as it marched through the town. Among its 55,000 men was a horse-drawn ambulance carrying the army's injured commander, Gen. Robert E. Lee. Here, before the grand entrance to Harrison Hall, home of a distant relative of the Lees, the ambulance halted. Lee, hands bandaged - one broken, one badly sprained when his horse, Traveller, bolted at Second Manassas - was escorted inside and treated by local physician Samuel Jackson, who lived in the house to your right.<br><br>That afternoon, in the first-floor room to the right of the front door, Lee quietly visited with his son Robert, a private in the Rockbridge Artillery. Later, escorted by two young daughters of the household, the general walked to the home of John Janney, which still stands at 10 Cornwall Street. Janney had served as president of the Virginia Secession Convention in 1861. Although Janney voted against secession, it was he who handed the sword of command of Virginia's troops to Lee.<br><br>The next morning, a rare conference too place when Gens. Lee, Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, J.E.B. Stuart, James Longstreet, and Lewis A. Armistead all assembled here in the dining room. When the generals later rose from their meeting, they had planned to execute Lee's daring decision to invade Maryland, which culminated at Antietam in the bloodiest day in American history.<br><br><i>"The doorways and curbstones are like living bouquets of beauty - everything that wears a crinoline or pretty face is out."</i><br>- Felix de Fontaine, <i>Charleston (SC) Daily Courier</i>, 1862, on the reception of Lee's army into Leesburg