Fitzhugh Lee, General Lee

From that point he was ordered to Washington and made assistant to the chief engineer, an agreeable change, for it brought him near the home of his wife. A fine horse carried him every morning from Arlington to his Washington office and back every evening. He loved his chosen profession, and was rising rapidly in it. Now he could combine equestrianism with engineering, and he was happy, and must have been sometimes merry, for his late lamented military secretary, General Long, narrates an incident of his inviting Captain Macomb, a brother officer, to get behind him on horseback one evening on his return to Arlington. Macomb accepted the invitation, and the two gayly rode along the great public avenue in Washington, passing by the President's house, bowing to Cabinet officers, and behaving in rather a hilarious way generally. It is difficult for a soldier of the Army of Northern Virginia to picture his commanding general in a scene such as has been described.

Five years after leaving his Alma Mater he was promoted from second to first lieutenant of engineers, and in two years more reached a captaincy. In 1835 he was made assistant astronomer of the commission appointed to lay the boundary line between Ohio and Michigan. Two years afterward he bade adieu to Arlington to obey an order to proceed to St. Louis to make estimates, prepare plans, and devise means to prevent the “Great father of Waters” from leaving his legitimate channel and overrunning property upon which he had no claims, for the Mississippi had threatened to leave the St. Louis side and become a flowing citizen of Illinois. In the performance of this duty he came prominently into notice again; he was so active, so indefatigable, and worked so intelligently and successfully, that the system of river improvements first introduced there is to this day followed. Some of the citizens of that section did not understand his methods, and threatened to drive him and his working parties away, and at one time actually brought cannon to accomplish their purpose. They did not comprehend the labors of this quiet, methodical