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Robert Edward Lee (January 19, 1807  October 12,
1870) was a career army officer and the most
successful general of the Confederate forces
during the American Civil War. He eventually
commanded all Confederate armies as
general-in-chief. Like Hannibal earlier and Erwin
Rommel|Rommel later, his victories against
superior forces in an ultimately losing cause won
him enduring fame. After the war, he urged
reconciliation, and spent his final years as a
progressive college president.  Lee remains an
iconic figure of the Confederacy to this day and
an important educational leader.

==Early life and career==

Lee was born at Stratford Hall Plantation, in
Westmoreland County, Virginia, the fourth child of
American Revolutionary War|Revolutionary War hero
Light Horse Harry Lee|Henry Lee ("Lighthorse
Harry") and Anne Hill Carter|Anne Hill (Carter)
Lee. He entered the United States Military Academy
in 1825. When he graduated (second in his class of
46) in 1829 he had not only attained the top
academic record but was the first cadet (and so
far the only) to graduate the Academy without a
single demerit. He was commissioned as a second
lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers.

Lee served for seventeen months at Fort Pulaski on
Cockspur Island, Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia. In
1831, he was transferred to Fort Monroe, Virginia,
as assistant engineer. While he was stationed
there, he married Mary Anna Randolph Custis
(1808–1873), the great-granddaughter of
Martha Washington, at Shirley Plantation in
Charles City County, Virginia, where she had been
born. They lived in the Custis-Lee Mansion|Custis
mansion, which today is a Arlington House, The
Robert E. Lee Memorial| National Memorial on the
banks of the Potomac River in Arlington County,
Virginia|Arlington, just across from Washington,
D.C.. They eventually had three sons and four
daughters: George Washington Custis Lee | George
Washington Custis, William Henry Fitzhugh Lee |
William H. Fitzhugh, Robert Edward, Mary, Agnes,
Annie, and Mildred.

===Engineering===

Lee served as an assistant in the chief engineer's
office in Washington from 1834 to 1837, but spent
the summer of 1835 helping to lay out the state
line between Ohio and Michigan. In 1837, he got
his first important command. As a first lieutenant
of engineers, he supervised the engineering work
for St. Louis harbor and for the upper Mississippi
River|Mississippi and Missouri River|Missouri
rivers. His work there earned him a promotion to
captain. In 1841, he was transferred to Fort
Hamilton in New York Harbor, where he took charge
of building fortifications.

===Mexican War, West Point, and Texas===

Lee distinguished himself in the Mexican-American
War|Mexican War (1846–1848). He was one of
Winfield Scott's chief aides in the march from
Veracruz (city)|Veracruz to Mexico City. He was
instrumental in several American victories through
his personal reconnaissance as a staff officer; he
found routes of attack that the Mexico|Mexicans
had not defended because they thought the terrain
was impassable.

He was promoted to major after the Battle of Cerro
Gordo in April, 1847. He also fought at Contreras,
Churubusco, and Chapultepec, and was wounded at
the latter. By the end of the war he had been
promoted to lieutenant colonel. 

After the Mexican War, he spent three years at
Fort Carroll in Baltimore harbor, after which he
became the superintendent of West Point in 1852.
During his three years at West Point, he improved
the buildings, the courses, and spent a lot of
time with the cadets. Lee's oldest son, George
Washington Custis Lee, attended West Point during
his tenure. Custis Lee graduated in 1854, first in
his class. 

In 1855, Lee became Lieutenant Colonel of the
Second Cavalry and was sent to the Texas frontier.
There he helped protect settlers from attacks by
the Apache Tribe|Apache and the Comanche.

These were not happy years for Lee as he did not
like to be away from his family for long periods
of time, especially as his wife was becoming
increasingly ill. Lee came home to see her as
often as he could.

He happened to be in Washington at the time of
John Brown (abolitionist)|John Brown's raid on
Harpers Ferry, West Virginia|Harpers Ferry,
Virginia (now West Virginia) in 1859, and was sent
there to arrest Brown and to restore order. He did
this very quickly and then returned to his
regiment in Texas. When Texas seceded from the
Union (American Civil War)|Union in 1861, Lee was
called to Washington, DC to wait for further
orders.

===Lee as slave-owner===
As a member of the Virginia aristocracy, Lee had
lived in close contact with slavery all of his
life, but he never held more than about a
half-dozen slaves under his own name—in
fact, it was not positively known that he had held
any slaves at all under his own name until the
rediscovery of his 1846 will in the records of
Rockbridge County, Virginia, which referred to an
enslaved woman named Nancy and her children, and
provided for their manumission in case of his
death.
http://www.nathanielturner.com/willofgeorgewashing
tonparkecustis2.htm

However, when Lee's father-in-law, George
Washington Parke Custis, died in October 1857, Lee
came into a considerable amount of property
through his wife, and also gained temporary
control of a large population of
slaves—sixty-three men, women, and children,
in all—as the executor of Custis's will.
Under
http://www.nathanielturner.com/willofgeorgewashing
tonparkecustis.htm the terms of the will, the
slaves were to be freed "in such a manner as to my
executors may seem most expedient and proper",
with a maximum of five years from the date of
Custis's death provided to arrange for the
necessary legal details of manumission.

Custis's will was probated on December 7, 1857.
Although Robert Lee Randolph, Right Reverend
William Meade, and George Washington Peter were
named as executors along with Robert E. Lee, the
other three men failed to qualify, leaving Lee
with the sole responsibility of settling the
estate, and with exclusive control over all of
Custis's former slaves. Although the will provided
for the slaves to be emancipated "in such a manner
as to my executors may seem most expedient and
proper", Lee found himself in need of funds, and
decided to make money by hiring out the slaves to
neighboring plantations in eastern Virginia during
the five years that the will had allowed him
control of them. The decision caused
dissatisfaction among Custis's slaves, who had
been given to understand that they were to be made
free as soon as Custis died.

In 1859, three of the slaves—Wesley Norris,
his sister Mary, and a cousin of theirs—fled
for the North. An 1859
http://www.nathanielturner.com/willofgeorgewashing
tonparkecustis2.htm letter to the New York Tribune
| New York Tribune and an 1866
http://fair-use.org/wesley-norris/testimony-of-wes
ley-norris interview with Wesley Norris record
that the Norrises were captured a few miles from
the Pennsylvania border and returned to Lee, who
had them whipped and their lacerated backs rubbed
with brine. After the whipping, Lee forced them to
go to work in Richmond, Virginia, and then
Alabama, where Wesley Norris gained his freedom in
January 1863 by escaping through the rebel lines
to Union-controlled territory.

Lee released Custis's other slaves after the end
of the five year period in the winter of 1862.

==Civil War==


On April 18, 1861, on the eve of the American
Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln, through
Secretary of War Simon Cameron, offered Lee
command of the United States Army (Union Army)
through an intermediary, Maryland Republican
politician Francis P. Blair, at the home of
Blair's son Montgomery Blair|Montgomery, Lincoln's
Postmaster-General, in Washington. Lee's
sentiments were against secession, which he
denounced in an 1861 letter as "nothing but
revolution" and a betrayal of the efforts of the
Founders. However his loyalty to his native
Virginia led him to join the Confederacy. 

At the outbreak of war he was appointed to command
all of Virginia's forces, and then as one of the
first five full generals of Confederate forces.
Lee, however, refused to wear the insignia of a
Confederate General stating that, in honor to his
rank of Colonel in the United States Army, he
would only display the three stars of a
Confederate Colonel until the Civil War had been
won and Lee could be promoted, in peacetime, to a
General in the Confederate Army. 

After commanding Confederate forces in western
Virginia, and then in charge of coastal defenses
along the Carolina seaboards, he became military
adviser to Jefferson Davis, president of the
Confederate States of America|Confederacy, whom he
knew from West Point.

===Commander, Army of Northern Virginia===

Following the wounding of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston
at the Battle of Seven Pines, on June 1, 1862, Lee
assumed command of the Army of Northern Virginia,
his first opportunity to lead an army in the
field. He soon launched a series of attacks, the
Seven Days Battles, against General George B.
McClellan's Union forces threatening Richmond,
Virginia, the Confederate capital. Lee's attacks
resulted in heavy Confederate casualties and they
were marred by clumsy tactical performances by his
subordinates, but his aggressive actions unnerved
McClellan. After McClellan's retreat, Lee defeated
another Union army at the Second Battle of Bull
Run. He then invaded Maryland, hoping to replenish
his supplies and possibly influence the Northern
elections that fall in favor of ending the war.
McClellan obtained a lost order that revealed
Lee's plans and brought superior forces to bear at
Battle of Antietam|Antietam before Lee's army
could be assembled. In the bloodiest day of the
war, Lee withstood the Union assaults, but
withdrew his battered army back to Virginia.


Disappointed by McClellan's failure to destroy
Lee's army, Lincoln named Ambrose Burnside as
commander of the Army of the Potomac. Burnside
ordered an attack across the Rappahannock River at
Battle of Fredericksburg|Fredericksburg. Delays in
getting bridges built across the river allowed
Lee's army ample time to organize strong defenses,
and the attack on December 12, 1862, was a
disaster for the Union. Lincoln then named Joseph
Hooker commander of the Army of the Potomac.
Hooker's advance to attack Lee in May, 1863, near
Battle of Chancellorsville|Chancellorsville,
Virginia, was defeated by Lee and Thomas J.
Jackson|Stonewall Jackson's daring plan to divide
the army and attack Hooker's flank. It was an
enormous victory over a larger force, but came at
a great cost as Jackson, Lee's best subordinate,
was mortally wounded.

In the summer of 1863, Lee proceeded to invade the
North again, hoping for a Southern victory that
would compel the North to grant Confederate
independence. But his attempts to defeat the Union
forces under George G. Meade at Battle of
Gettysburg|Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, failed. His
subordinates did not attack with the aggressive
drive Lee expected, J.E.B. Stuart's cavalry was
out of the area, and Lee's decision to launch a
massive frontal assault on the center of the Union
line—the disastrous Pickett's
Charge—resulted in heavy losses. Lee was
compelled to retreat again but, as after Antietam,
was not vigorously pursued. Following his defeat
at Gettysburg, Lee sent a letter of resignation to
Confederate President Jefferson Davis on August 8,
1863, but Davis refused Lee's request. 

In 1864, the new Union general-in-chief Ulysses S.
Grant sought to destroy Lee's army and capture
Richmond. Lee and his men stopped each advance,
but Grant had superior reinforcements and kept
pushing each time a bit further to the southeast.
These battles in the Overland Campaign included
the Battle of the Wilderness|Wilderness, Battle of
Spotsylvania Court House|Spotsylvania Court House,
and Battle of Cold Harbor|Cold Harbor. Grant
eventually fooled Lee by stealthily moving his
army across the James River. After stopping a
Union attempt to capture Petersburg, Virginia, a
vital railroad link supplying Richmond, Lee's men
built elaborate trenches and were besieged in
Petersburg. He attempted to break the stalemate by
sending Jubal A. Early on a raid through the
Shenandoah Valley to Washington, D.C., but Early
was defeated by the superior forces of Philip
Sheridan. The Siege of Petersburg would last from
June 1864 until April, 1865.

===General-in-chief===

On January 31, 1865, Lee was promoted to be
general-in-chief of Confederate forces. In early
1865, he urged adoption of a scheme to allow
slaves to join the Confederate army in exchange
for their freedom. The scheme never came to
fruition in the short time the Confederacy had
left before it ceased to exist.

As the Confederate army was worn down by months of
battle, a Union attempt to capture Petersburg,
Virginia|Petersburg on April 2, 1865, succeeded.
Lee abandoned the defense of Richmond and sought
to join General Joseph Johnston's army in North
Carolina. His forces were surrounded by the Union
Army|Union army and he surrendered to General
Grant on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House,
Virginia. Lee resisted calls by some subordinates
(and indirectly by Jefferson Davis) to reject
surrender and allow small units to melt away into
the mountains, setting up a lengthy guerrilla war.

==After the War==

Following the war, Lee applied for, but was never
granted, the official postwar amnesty. After
filling out the application form, it was delivered
to the desk of Secretary of State William H.
Seward, who, assuming that the matter had been
dealt with by someone else and that this was just
a personal copy, filed it away until it was found
decades later in his desk drawer. Lee took the
lack of response either way to mean that the
government wished to retain the right to prosecute
him in the future. 

Lee's example of applying for amnesty was an
encouragement to many other former members of the
Confederate States of America|Confederacy's armed
forces to accept being citizens of the United
States once again. In 1975, President Gerald Ford
granted a posthumous pardon and the U.S. Congress
restored his citizenship, following the discovery
of his oath of allegiance by an employee of the
National Archives and Records
Administration|National Archives in 1970.

Lee and his wife had lived at his wife's family
home prior to the Civil War, the Custis-Lee
Mansion. It was confiscated by Union forces, and
is today part of Arlington National Cemetery.
After his death, the courts ruled that the estate
had been illegally seized, and that it should be
returned to Lee's son. The government offered to
buy the land outright, to which he agreed.

He served as president of Washington College (now
Washington and Lee University) in Lexington,
Virginia, from October 2, 1865. Over five years he
transformed Washington College from a small,
undistinguished school into one of the first
American colleges to offer courses in business,
journalism, and Spanish language|Spanish. He also
incorporated law into the academic curriculum --
at the time an odd concept, because law was seen
as a technical rather than intellectual
profession. He also imposed a sweeping and
breathtakingly simple concept of honor — "We
have but one rule, and it is that every student is
a gentleman" — that endures today at
Washington and Lee and at a few other schools that
continue to maintain absolutist "honor systems."
Importantly, he focused the college on attracting
students from the north.

===Final illness and death===
 
On the evening of September 28, 1870, Lee fell
ill, unable to speak coherently. When his medical
doctors were called, the most they could do was
help put him to bed and hope for the best.
Although not diagnosed by his doctors, it is
almost certain that Lee suffered a stroke. In his
last few years, he had complained about chest pain
(probably angina pectoris) and often complained
about pain in his right arm, which he said often
felt numb. Likely he was developing
arteriosclerosis or a type of cardiovascular
disorder, and it would gradually weaken him the
rest of his life. In his last year of his life, an
aged and weak Lee confided to friends that he felt
like he could die any moment. The stroke damaged
the frontal lobes of the brain, which made speech
impossible, and made him unable to cough or
expectorate, which would prove a fatal problem. He
was force-fed food and liquids to build up his
strength, but some of these liquids found their
way into his lungs, and pneumonia developed. With
no ability to cough, Lee died from the effects of
pneumonia (not from the stroke itself). He died
two weeks after the stroke on the morning of
October 12, 1870, in Lexington, Virginia, and was
buried underneath the chapel at Washington and Lee
University.

==Trivia==

*A story in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations and his
definitive biography (R. E. Lee by Douglas S.
Freeman) had Lee uttering his last words on
October 12, 1870, shortly before his death. He
reputedly said "Tell Hill he must come up. Strike
the Tent." It is doubtful that Lee said this or
anything else after his stroke on September 28. 

*The birth of Robert E. Lee is celebrated in the
state of Virginia as part of Lee-Jackson Day and
as a state holiday in Mississippi, celebrated in
conjunction with Martin Luther King, Jr.'s
birthday.

*Traveller (horse)|Traveller, Lee's favorite
horse, accompanied Lee to Washington College after
the war. He lost many hairs from his tail to
admirers who wanted a souvenir of the famous horse
and his general. In 1870, when Lee died, Traveller
was led behind the General's hearse. Not long
after Lee's death, Traveller stepped on a rusty
nail and developed lockjaw. There was no cure, and
he was euthanized to relieve his suffering. He was
buried next to the Lee Chapel at Washington and
Lee University. In 1907 his remains were
disinterred and displayed at the Chapel, before
being reburied outside the Lee Chapel in 1971.

*Despite his presidential pardon by Gerald Ford,
Lee's portrayal on a mural on Richmond's Flood
Wall on the James River (Virginia)|James River was
offensive to some, including African Americans,
and was removed in the 1990s in the interest of
racial harmony.

==Monuments to Robert E. Lee==




Lee County, Alabama is also named in his honor.

==External links==

*http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/P
eople/Robert_E_Lee/FREREL/home.html R. E. Lee, the
biography by Douglas Southall Freeman (4 vols.,
complete online version)
*http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/About%
20the%20General.htm Robert E. Lee Historical
Preservation Site
*http://leechapel.wlu.edu/ Lee Chapel at
Washington and Lee University where Robert E. Lee
is buried
*http://www.floridamemory.com/FloridaHighlights/Ro
bert_E_Lee/ Notice of Robert E. Lee's Assignment
to Command of Confederate Forces on the Coast of
South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, 1861 From the
State Library & Archives of Florida.