Lee, Robert E. (Robert Edward), 1807-1870

Robert Edward Lee was the Confederacy’s most famous general, commanding the primary southern army in the eastern theater from 1862 to 1865.

Born on January 19, 1807, at Stratford Hall, Virginia, Lee was the son of a famed veteran of the American Revolution. Although his father fell into financial despair and abandoned the family, Lee maintained a good reputation and received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. He graduated second in his class in 1829 and shortly afterwards married Mary Anna Randolph Custis, the great-grand daughter of Mary Washington (George Washington’s wife). The couple eventually had seven children.

Lee served in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for nearly two decades before serving on the staff of General Winfield Scott during the Mexican-American War in the mid-1840s. He performed very well during the war, receiving three brevet (honorary) promotions (major, lieutenant colonel, and then colonel) for his actions Cerro Gordo, Contreras, Churubusco, and Chapultepec. After the war, Lee served at various army posts before receiving an administrative position at West Point. He was the superintendent of the military academy from 1852 to 1855. He then received a field assignment as second-in-command of the Second Cavalry Regiment in Texas, under future Confederate general Albert Sidney Johnston.

In 1857, Lee’s father-in-law passed away, leaving Lee and his wife Mary to inherit significant amounts of land—including a large plantation and home in Arlington, Virginia, across the river from Washington, D.C.—hundreds of slaves, and a large debt. Lee took time away from the military to get the properties and finances in order, which involved overseeing the work, discipline, and sale of enslaved laborers. In 1859, while in Virginia, Lee was called to lead military forces against John Brown’s abolitionists who had attacked the U.S. arsenal at Harper’s Ferry as part of an effort to spark a slave rebellion in the south. When Lee arrived, Brown’s group was surrounded in a brick building. When Brown refused orders to surrender, Lee instructed his troops to attack, and they captured Brown and killed or captured his followers within minutes. The event made national news in the already tense political battle between pro-slavery and anti-slavery interests in the United States.

When southern states began declaring their separation from the Union following Abraham Lincoln’s election to the presidency in November 1860, Lee initially opposed secession. However, after Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter in April 1861, prompting Lincoln to call for volunteers to defeat the secessionists, Lee’s home state of Virginia officially joined the Confederacy. Lee was offered high ranking command in the Union, but he declined. He resigned from the U.S. Army and volunteered for military service within Virginia.

Lee’s first military assignment was command of Confederate troops in modern-day western Virginia. He suffered defeats in small battles there in 1861, but retained his reputation as an able officer and took a position as an advisor to Confederate president Jefferson Davis in Richmond. Then, in the summer of 1862, Lee was placed in command of an army defending the Confederate capital from Union forces, after General Joseph E. Johnston was wounded. Lee’s aggressive attacks prompted the Union army, under cautious commander General George B. McClellan, to withdraw, thereby elevating Lee’s reputation as a savior of the Confederacy. For the rest of the war, Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia were the Confederacy’s most famous and successful military force.

Lee proved to be a creative commander, willing to take risks and attack aggressively to overcome his opponents’ superiority in size. Lee often chose good positions to defend, and then ordered strategic counterattacks to disrupt and defeat Union forces. Among his greatest victories were the Battle of Second Manassas in August 1862 and the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863, in which he thoroughly defeated much larger Union armies through surprise flank attacks.

Lee’s military gambles did not always succeed. He conducted only two offensive campaigns during the Civil War—into Maryland in September 1862 and into Pennsylvania in 1863. Both were intended to draw Union forces away from Virginia. He also hoped military victories on battlefields further north would more effectively harm the Union war effort, and possibly draw the border state of Maryland into the Confederacy. However, Lee lost both campaigns after a single major battle (Antietam in Maryland, and Gettysburg in Pennsylvania), in turn invigorating the Union war effort. President Abraham Lincoln used the Union victory of Lee at Antietam in September 1862 to announce his intention to issue an Emancipation Proclamation declaring freedom for all enslaved people within Confederate territories.

By 1864, Lee had abandoned plans for offensive strategic operations. Other than ordering limited and diversionary assaults, he spent the rest of the war using the Army of Northern Virginia to defend Richmond. That spring, Ulysses S. Grant was placed in charge of Union forces in Virginia and began a stubborn advance to capture the Confederate capital. The result was a series of deadly battles in northern Virginia, followed by a lengthy stand off around Petersburg, Virginia. In the spring of 1865, Grant’s forces broke Lee’s defensive line, forcing the Confederates to abandon Richmond and retreat southward. Overwhelmed and cut off by superior numbers, Lee formally surrendered in April 1865 at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia. Although not the last Confederate army to surrender, Lee’s capitulation signaled to most people in the north and south that the Confederacy had been defeated.

After the war, Lee returned to Virginia. The U.S. government had confiscated his family home at Arlington and turned it into a war cemetery. Lee’s family sued the federal government and eventually received some financial compensation. The estate is now preserved by the U.S. government as Arlington National Cemetery.

In October 1865, Lee accepted an appointment as president of Washington College (modern-day Washington and Lee University) in Lexington, Virginia. His fame helped draw money to the school, and he proved to be a very capable administrator. Lee died on October 12, 1870, from complications of a stroke and pneumonia. He is entombed in the University Chapel Museum at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. (Wikipedia; American Battlefield Trust; FindaGrave)