This occurrence is too well known to require a minute account in these pages, and we shall accordingly pass over it briefly, indicating simply the part borne in the affair by Lee.

He was in Washington at the time--the fall of 1859--on a visit to his family, then residing at Arlington, near the city, when intelligence came that a party of desperadoes had attacked and captured Harper's Ferry, with the avowed intent of arming and inciting to insurrection the slaves of the neighborhood and entire State.

Lee was immediately, thereupon, directed by President Buchanan to proceed to the point of danger and arrest the rioters.

He did so promptly; found upon his arrival that Brown and his confederates had shut themselves up in an engine-house of the town, with a number of their prisoners.

Brown was summoned to surrender, to be delivered over to the authorities for civil trial--he refused; and Lee then proceeded to assault, with a force of marines, the stronghold to which Brown had retreated.