Beschreibung:

LEE'S AUTOGRAPH COPY OF THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF GEORGE WASHINGTON PARKE CUSTIS LEE, ROBERT E. 1807-1870. Autograph Manuscript Signed ("R.E. Lee") as co-executor, being Lee's "true copy" of the last will and testament for his father-in-law George Washington Parke Custis 4 pp, 271 x 215, bifolium, ink on thin paper, [Arlington], March 26, 1855, docketed to final leaf by Lee, "Last Will and Testament of George Washington Parke Custis | Made & executed the 26th of March, 1855 | 26 March 1855 | A True Copy R.E. Lee, Col. USA," some dampstaining, repairs at the folds, framed flat in double-sided frame. Provenance: by descent; the Collection of John G. Petrasch. ROBERT E. LEE'S AUTOGRAPH "TRUE COPY" OF HIS FATHER-IN-LAW GEORGE WASHINGTON PARKE CUSTIS'S 1855 LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT DISPENSING THE LANDS THAT WOULD BECOME ARLINGTON CEMETERY, AND ARRANGING FOR THE MANUMISSION OF HIS SLAVES. George Washington Parke Custis was raised by his grandmother and (step)grandfather, George and Martha Washington, at Mount Vernon and in the Presidential quarters in New York during the first two administrations. At 21, he inherited a large swath of land in what is now Arlington, VA from his father, John Parke "Jacky" Custis, who had died of "camp fever" at Yorktown in 1781. After George Washington's death in 1799, and again upon Martha Washington's passing in 1802, Custis was left another large sum, and he soon took over his father's lands near Arlington (which he called Mount Washington). Almost immediately, he began construction on Arlington House, intended as a shrine to the grandfather who had raised him, George Washington, and housing many of the family relics. Custis's only surviving daughter, Mary Anna Randolph Custis, married a young soldier named Robert E. Lee at Arlington House in 1831. When Captain Robert E. Lee was summoned home in October of 1857 to tend to Custis's estate as executor, he initially requested two months leave from the Department of Texas in order to fulfill his obligations. He would request three more extensions and spend two years at Arlington wading through the confusing language and difficult prescriptions (see lot 166). Foremost, Custis had given the nearly 200 enslaved men and women who worked for him their emancipation, "And upon the legacies to my four granddaughters being paid, and my estates that are required to pay the said legacies being clear of debt, then I give freedom to my slaves, the said slaves to be emancipated by my executors in such manner as to my executors may seem most expedient and proper, the said emancipation to be accomplished in not exceeding five years from the time of my decease." When Lee extended his leave again in October 1858, he wrote, "The most important point to be determined by the Court is the period of the emancipation of the slaves, which is dependent upon the conditions of the will. Justice to them requires their earliest fulfilment" (Lee to A.A.G. Irvin McDowell, Oct. 22, 1858). The estate was deeply in debt, and Lee argued that under the terms of the will, he could not fulfill the legacies in the stated timeframe for manumission. While his motives remain in question, Lee did finally give freedom to Custis's enslaved men and women during the last week of December, 1862, in the midst of the War and just days before Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Arlington itself was taken by the United States government in 1864, and the Federal commanders had begun burying their dead in the surrounding environments in May of that year. After the war, the Lees made various attempts to assert their right to Arlington, largely based upon this will, and the government's defense of their position transformed the estate from an ad hoc wartime potter's field to sacred burial ground. While they had little success, their son George Washington Custis Lee finally prevailed, time having softened the animosity of north-south, and Arlington was returned to the Lee family in 1883. Lee promptly agr