The Navy of the united States evacuates its dockyard, at Norfolk, Virginia.

       [added 3/18/2022]

       Colonel Robert E. Lee resigns his commission, after refusing the offer of Commander-in-Chief Abraham Lincoln, of the united States, to command the defenses of the District of Columbia.  Explaining his reasoning to his sister Lee writes: “With all my devotion to the [voluntary] Union … I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home.”

       Postscript: Two days later, Democratic (constitutionalist) Governor John Letcher, of the Commonwealth of Virginia, commissioned Lee as a Major General, and gave him command of the State Militia.

       NOTE: Lee’s father, Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee, was a hero of the first American Revolution, Governor of Virginia, and a member of both the sixth Confederation and sixth Constitutional Congresses (elected in accordance with Article I, Section 3 [Clause 1]); where he eulogized the late-President Washington as “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”  Other members of his family were signatories to the unanimous Declaration (of Independence) and fought for independence.  There can be little doubt that Lee, as well as many of his other contemporaries now saw Lincoln and the Republican (nationalist) Congress as the ideological heirs of George III and the British Parliament.

       [restored 3/18/2022]  Thanks to Freedom’s Phoenix for this entry.