“he had no choice”
And that is the lie. Among the Virginians who served the Union were Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott, Commanding General of the Union Army; Rear Admiral Samuel Phillips Lee, who was Robert E. Lee’s third cousin; Major General George H. Thomas, who had survived the Nat Turner slave rebellion as a child and became one of the best Union generals; and Brigadier General William Terrill, who would die in service to the Union at the Battle of Perryville. Lee was offered the #2 position in the entire Union Army by Gen. Scott even though he was only a Colonel at the time, and both Scott and his cousin Samuel Phillips Lee tried to talk Robert E. Lee out of committing treason. Lee’s plantation was within sight of the US capitol, was within walking distance to Washington DC, and it had been part of DC until the 1840s!