Before the outbreak of the American Civil War, Colonel Robert E Lee wrote: I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union. It would be an accumulation of all the evils we complain of, and I am willing to sacrifice everything but honor for its preservation. Yet on April 20, 1861, Lee resigned from the Union army. By the 23rd April he was commander of all state forces in Virginia, one of the secessionist states.